Recycling Genoa: from waste to footprint

The essay aims to describe the Genoa Recycle Footprint. It illustrates the shape and the consistency of the unused industrial heritage and railway infrastructures in the city of Genoa. Showing the footprint means to investigate the condition of things, but also to value the potentialities and problems, and to define the parameters of urban quality and environmental performance to be obtained from recycling. The footprint is a descriptive and interpretive inquiry, addressed to a vision of change that coincides with the rethinking of the existing. In fact, during this phase, the research have been included not only the areas already abandoned but also those areas which are in a process of abandonment or transformation over the next five years. Most of the areas selected are adjacent to road or railway infrastructures and their former functions were closely linked to the industrial era, today in decline.