The Strait of Messina: A polycentric city on water

Abstract

The cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria constitute a unitary territorial system, paroxysmally contradictory somehow, which finds its own geographical identity in the Strait of Messina, a large square on water which connects and separates both urban centers and representative of a southern culture where many points of tangency can find correspondence in as many differences. Such particular condition of potential polycentrism can apply to the innermost structure of cities and to the land line that separates it from the sea. It would be necessary to imagine a more intense relational continuity between the coasts, trying to interpret the virtual grid already defined by the projection of urban and geographical elements. If included within a broader vision, the different areas of the Strait would be the platforms of economic, social and environmental polarities capable of supplying the entire geographical area, determining its widespread functioning.