The Alteration and Degradation of the Urban Form and Social Relations: The Reconstruction of L’Aquila

The 2009 earthquake found the city of L’Aquila without a plan or a strategy for in Italy post-earthquake strategies are being prepared a posteriori within the development of the Reconstruction Plan. It is assumed that the Reconstruction Plan can open a new approach to the future development of the urban system. It is what partially happened in few cases. In L’Aquila, recovery did not open ways to urban restoration and revitalisation, and the timespans of reconstruction resulted in private buildings that are being finished and public ones along with public spaces the revitalisation and restoration of which has not started yet. Today it becomes evident that a process, which tends to recover a city by rebuilding is as it was where it was, is only recovering its physical structure. Moreover, the problems of urban sprawl and peripherical settlements are neglected. A pre-disaster planning approach would allow avoiding this fundamental, methodological error.