B. Murgante et al. (Eds.): ICCSA 2014, Part II, LNCS 8580, pp. 520–531, 2014. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 Characteristics of Sprawl in the Naples Metropolitan Area. Indications for Controlling and Monitoring Urban Transformations Rocco Papa 1 and Giuseppe Mazzeo 2 1 University of Naples Federico II, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (DICEA), P.le V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italy rpapa@unina.it 2 National Research Council (CNR), Institute of Studies for the Mediterranean Societies (ISSM); University of Naples Federico II, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (DICEA), P.le V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italy gimazzeo@unina.it Abstract. Naples metropolitan area is one of the largest in Italy, located in the South of the Country with a population of about 4 million inhabitants. Several studies have proposed for this area different spatial metropolitan boundaries but, despite the presence of national regulations, the area is not still defined at administrative level. One of the main characteristics of the area is the high level of unplanned urban expansion, with the consequence of a wide level of fragmentation, an extensive illegal urban development and an incorrect use of the agricultural land. The paper analyze the urbanization process in the study area and proposes a monitoring tool of the sprawl phenomenon, with a smart spatial planning approach. Keywords: Naples metropolitan area, Sprawl, Planning tools for spatial monitoring. 1 Introduction The analysis of the phenomena related to the expansion of the Naples conurbation is the starting point to suggest actions for the control of urban transformations, also using social networks technological innovations as a mean to create smarter cities. When talking about large conurbations, we use specific concepts, such as “metropolitan area” [1, 2, 3] and “urban sprawl” [4, 5]; besides, the analysis of urban conurbations are often related also to the concept of “urban hierarchy” [6]. With “metropolitan area” we refer to the urban expansion that quickly pour the area surrounding cities. Some planning models have been defined with the goal of controlling and governing the urbanization processes in a systematic and efficient way. Nerveless, in the long term, these models have revealed to be ineffective and have left the field to strategic designs, characterized by disconnected actions.