Cultural Heritage as a Common Good for the Valorization and Regeneration of Seaside Cities

The recent development of European and national politics considers cultural heritage as "common good" and as a basic element for the sustainable development and the social innovation, encouraging the States to promote processes of participatory enhancement, based on synergy among public institutions, private citizens, associations. This topic has a special significance in the Bay of Naples, where the coastline shows millennia of cultural history and harmony between nature and human artifice, which is reflected in historic Neapolitan view painting, in which land views and sea views are balanced. Over the centuries, land views seem to outnumber sea views, as a proof of the gradual moving away of the community from water: the sea is still present but its perception is fragmented. Broad tracts of the coastline are the main areas where the decay takes place and where important testimonies of the past are in a dreadful state. The purpose of this paper is to enhance a new method of governance aiming at the promotion of this patrimony, seen as common good, through the involvement of citizens and stakeholders. The aim is to define a decision procedure replacing the linear top-down approach with a new one consisting in a circular and collaborative approach, in order to build a shared vision of goals and strategies, based on own maritime culture. The paper illustrates the ongoing trial of this model at San Vincenzo Dock, the main breakwater of the Port of Naples which, despite its historic and cultural significance and its environmental and architectural importance, lays in a state of neglect and unavailability. Through the restoration of maritime culture, Naples and other great centers of the Bay can recover their maritime identity and become a collaborative multidisciplinary laboratory for the knowledge and the regeneration of metropolitan coast and trigger wider processes affecting areas and community.