Urban and Architectural Identities in Mediterranean Cities

Dense by their geography and history, the architectural and urban diversity characterising Mediterranean cities is inseparable from their identity. It seems clear that this diversity and multiplicity of different identities are to be considered as one of the greatest values in the cultural sense but also with regard to the richness of the daily life of the local populations who flows. Indeed, the connotations of the architectural components of the structures of the Mediterranean city and the architectural language specific to each urban layout are rather easy to grasp, but the reality of the identity factor, whether individual or collective, is often ambiguous and paradoxical. several Mediterranean cities are experiencing a period of profound changes linked to the new territorial and migratory dynamics, the redeployment of central functions, urban renewal projects, environmental concerns, multiple transformations in a competitive environment, etc. These projects and interventions on the fabric of the city, which are some times presented as accentuated relationships in the urban environment, suffer in several sites from the absence of an identity.