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Grazia Napoli. The Value of the Useless in the Urban Landscape of Small Islands

THE VALUE OF THE USELESS IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE OF
SMALL ISLANDS

Grazia Napoli
University of Palermo

Abstract. In the variety of the Italian landscape-cultural mosaic, the morphology of
Favignana (Egadi Islands) is the outcome of the long-term relationship between natural
environment and human actions that has drawn both natural and urban landscape. This
relationship, that constitutes the Favignana’s architectural and landscape heritage, is often
denied or forgotten because of the transformations caused by a new demand of efficiency
(usefulness?) in reference to an economic policy based on the tourism-related activities. In
this case-study, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) has been applied to support the choice
among alternative scenarios of urban renewal, to verify if the profitable use of the ground
(usefulness) can be satisfied without giving up an aesthetical ideal (uselessness?).

Keywords. Multicriteria Analysis, ANP, Social Use Value, Urban Landscape.

Introduction

This paper is mainly concerned with the MultiCriteria Analysis (MCA) that can
be used to support managing the urban transformation in Favignana, one of the
Egadi Islands (Italy). Favignana was chosen as a representative case study among
the small islands of the Mediterranean sea, where there is a delicate balance
between nature/artifice and social community/natural environment. This balance
is now upset by deep modifications so that it has become crucial to re-establish a
social communication on the basis of a "consensual linguistic dominion"
(Luhmann, 1990). This paper analyzes the process which leads to the
acknowledgement of common social values and to their organisation into a model
for the evaluation of urban and architectural quality. The Analytic Network
Process (ANP) (Saaty, 2005) is applied to the above theoretical frame to rank the
different rehabilitation projects, which best meet the objective of preserving the
local natural and cultural heritage.

General Issues and Evaluation Premises

Time and Transformation. The “morphology” of Favignana can be regarded as a
system of signs which yields information about the dominant cultural models
(usefulness and useless, values and anti-values). “Arenaria” (sandstone) quarrying
activities shaped both the landscape and the cityscape. In fact, quarries are indeed
the generating factor of the road system, of the building blocks, as well as of the
architectural units (buildings). During the last decades, the growth of tourism-

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