Rewriting the Mediterranean City. Geography of Transformation

• The study of the evolution and decay of one of the outstanding arab-islamic medinas, the Tripoli Medina (Libya). I like to call it a “Mediterranean medina” considering the prevailing Mediterranean look (in relation to others north-African medinas) of the urban fabric: windows and balconies opening on the street, more integration between public and private etc. The recent formation of empty and demolished areas due to the abandonment, during the Arab-Israeli wars, of the hara, the ghettos inhabited by the Jew population, is deeply changing the character of the historical city, producing a genetic mutation of the Mediterranean fabric. Towards which model are these transformations going? • Another subject is the relation between the archaeological areas and the urban settlements in the Mediterranean regions. The integration and sometimes the overlapping of urban centres on the archaeological sites is one of the fascinating features of many Mediterranean cities, revealing an extraordinary complexity. This kind of integration is going to be lost, substituted by more difficult relations because of the pressure of the urban growth and the new tourist needs and requirements. These recent changes are reshaping and transforming not just the Mediterranean landscapes, but are more general, suggesting a broader and more complex geography. The crisis of the old medinas and of the traditional way of making and transforming cities in the Mediterranean areas is also a spy of the crisis of the traditional cultural and anthropological boundaries, asking for new concepts ad interpretations of a difficult reality.