(im)PROPER CITIES
(re)Producing, negotiating, and contesting the category of
decaying periphery
The case of the forthcoming urban regeneration of
via Milano and surrounding neighborhoods (Brescia, Italy)
Marco Alioni
University of Amsterdam
Urban Sociology
(im)PROPER CITIES
(re)Producing, negotiating, and contesting
the category of decaying periphery
The case-study of the forthcoming urban regeneration of
via Milano and surrounding neighborhoods (Brescia, Italy)
1
streader: dr. Adeola Enigbokan
2
ndreader: dr. Olga Sezneva
To my Family
Alla mia famiglia
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to analyze and understand the contemporary Italian approach to urban development and regeneration, which is structured around the category of decaying periphery. Inspired by the works of Michel Foucault, Henry Lefebvre, and Lois Waquant, the analysis of the discourses on urban regeneration takes into account the Urban Agenda of the EU, the urban policies promoted by the Italian government, and the ways in which the Municipality of Brescia (Northern Italy) is applying them in three specific neighborhoods of this city. Then, the analysis takes into account the ways in which the residents of this area (re)produce, negotiate, and contest the discourses on urban (im)properness; these processes produce specific effects on the conceptualizations, perceptions, and experiences of these spaces in the every-day life urban interactions.
This paper suggests that the Italian approach of regeneration, and its local application in the decaying periphery of Brescia, sustain institutional forms of territorial stigmatization, framing the historical transition from the industrial to the post-industrial socioeconomic system through class, gender, and racially polarized urban representations and narratives.
COVER IMAGE
Unknown Artist – “The Ideal City” – 1470-1490 ca. - Oil and tempera on panel – 77.4cm X 220 cm – The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
This painting represents one of the most important representations of the architectural ideals and principles of the Italian Renaissance.
The position of the core city of Brescia in Northern Italy
The neighborhoods involved in the plan of the regeneration promoted by the Municipality. The black line is via Milano, the main site of the interventions.
PINK: Fiumicello BLUE: Porta Milano
TABLE OF CONTESTS
Section I
INTRODUCTION
The research topic
p. 6
The research field
p. 7
The research questions
p. 8
Structure and contents
p. 9
Section II
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The interpretive-spatial analysis
The act of walking
p. 12
p. 16
Section III
METHODOLOGY
Introduction
p. 19
Discourse analysis
p. 21
Dialogical interviews
p. 22
Walking interviews
p. 23
Access to the field
p. 24
Section IV
ANALYSIS
1. A race to the bottom
1.1 Regenerating Europe
1.1.1 Urban Deprived Areas and Neighborhoods (UDAN)
1.1.2 Regeneration as a neo-liberalized strategy of development
1.2 Two races to the bottom
1.2.1 The category of decaying urban area in the B.A.D.
1.2.2 The category of decaying periphery in the B.P, and the principle
of urban mending
1.3 Summary
p. 26
p. 27
p. 28
p. 30
p. 31
p. 33
p. 38
p. 43
2
2. The periphery at the bottom of Garibaldi
2.1 Garibaldi shows just his bottom to the periphery
2.2 Making the improper cities
2.2.1 The physical elements of urban decay
2.2.2 The social elements of urban decay
2.2.3 The historical politics of stigmatization
2.3 Building the proper city
2.3.1 The political polarization of urban decorum
2.4 Summary
p. 45
p. 45
p. 48
p. 49
p. 51
p. 53
p. 58
p. 61
p. 64
3. The periphery from the bottom of Garibaldi
3.1 “I feel like this is not my neighborhood”
p. 65
p. 65
3.2 “This is a ghetto…..if you say so!”
3.3 Summary
p. 73
p. 79
Section V
CONCLUSIONS
Dominant discourses and territorial stigmatization
p. 83
Localizing urban (im)properness
p. 84
Reproducing, negotiating, and contesting urban (im)properness
p. 88
Conclusive thoughts
p. 90
Section VI
COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY
3
TABLE OF THE PICTURES
# Description P.
Pic. 1 Michel Foucaul 14
Pic. 2 Henry Lefebvre 15
Pic. 3 The spatialized trialectic 16
Pic. 4 The conceived space of via Milano 17
Pic. 5 The lived space of via Milano 18
Pic. 6 Michel de Certeau 18
Pic. 7 Participant observation during an urban hiking in via Milano, organized by a company in partnership with the Municipality of Brescia. This picture portrays a moment of a performance in front of the abandoned factory Ideal Standard. It was very interesting for the observation of the dialectical relations between discursivity and materiality within the urban space.
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Pic. 8 Picture taken by Giorgia during the walking interview. She was explaining me the subdivision of the space of this area of Fiumicello: on the left, high quality and expensive houses “usually inhabited by middle-class, white Italians”. On the right, publicly owned complexes inhabited by “migrants and poor people”. In the middle, the renovated park of via Trivellini (W. I. #18).
26
Pic. 9 The logo of the Urban Agenda for the EU. As it is possible to see, sustainability and environmental strategies are conceived as crucial elements for the urban development of the EU
31
Pic. 10 The map of the inclusive, sustainable, and balanced urban development of the UDAN, promoted by the European Union through the Urban Agenda. It is designed as the map of a transport system, and the colored lines represent the three dimensions of development: smartness (red), greenness (green), inclusive (blue).
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Pic. 11 The statistical formula used in the B.A.D., in order to identify decaying urban areas 35
Pic. 12 The notorious Sails of Scampia, two public flat-complexes in the periphery of Naples. Because of the TV show “Gomorra”, they have become the symbols of the contemporary Italian urban decay (Chianese: 2016).
36
Pic. 13 The graffiti on the wall of the factory Caffaro, in the city of Brescia. As it will be explained in the next Chapter, these graffiti have been used by the Municipality of this city in order to strategically deploy a locally-based historical politics of stigmatization.
40
Pic. 14 The windows of the abandoned factory Ideal Standard, in the city of Brescia. As it will be explained in the next Chapter, the Municipality is going to replace this factory with a huge
theater, according to its specific political polarization of urban decorum.
42
Pic. 15 The cover of the brochure on the mending project of the neighborhood Giambellino, in Milan. The texts under the picture say “Small advices for the mending. Repairing,
maintaining, living, and coexisting in the periphery”. 43
Pic. 16 The kit of the urban tailor. 43
Pic. 17 Renzo Piano walking around the periphery of Marghera, an industrial city close to Venice. The woman is one of the architects working on the project of urban mending of the periphery of Marghera
44
Pic. 18 Renzo Piano and the group of young architects working in his office at the Senate (Palazzo Madama, room 124)
46
Pic. 19 The kit of the urban surgeon 47
Pic. 20 An old photo (1934) of the statue of Garibaldi in Brescia. It is possible to see the entrance of
via Milano in the background of the picture. 49
Pic. 21 The Tower of Caffaro. This detail of the physical structure of the factory has become the symbol of the industrial past of these neighborhoods
50
Pic. 22 An halal butchery in via Milano 51
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via Milano). 52
Pic. 24 The park in 1May, closed since 2001 because the high level of chemical pollution of the ground.
55
Pic. 25 “We want a reality that expresses us!” 58
Pic. 26 The child playing with the kite 58
Pic. 27 The “Neighborhood Party” 59
Pic. 28 Project of the new square at via Milano 140 61
Pic. 29 List of contacts 61
Pic. 30 Project of the new square in the actual yard of Caffaro 62
Pic. 31 Official logo of Oltre la Strada, where it is possible to see the Museum of Industry (center), the theater (left) and the Tower of Caffaro (right)
62
Pic. 32 Project of new bike lanes and sidewalks 62
Pic. 33 Project of new social housings in the area of the Ex Laminatoio 62
Pic. 34 The 3D rendering of the theater 65
Pic. 35 The mayor of Brescia (L) and the deputy (R) taking a selfie in front of the construction site
of the theater 66
Pic. 36 On the left the Senegalese restaurant, in the center the buildings called Via Milano 140. 66
Pic. 37 The Senegalese restaurant on the left, and the sign posed by the Municipality on the right. On the back, Via Milano 140.
67
Pic. 38 The Mayor of Brescia (R) and the Urban Regeneration & Security City Councilor (L) during an interview in front of via Milano 140, during the inauguration of the demolition works. June, 2nd 2018
68
Pic. 39 Before/after the regeneration of via Milano 140, according to a local newspaper 73
Pic. 40 “Oltre la Strada festival”. 74
Pic. 41 Local newspaper “Brescia, a trans has been stubbed in his back with a screwdriver. The
episode happened during the night in via Milano, in an area where sex-working is deeply rooted”
75
Pic. 42 The park “Rosa Blu” before the recovery 79
Pic. 43 Sign written both in Italian and Arab, hanged on the door of the flat-complex where Roberto lives. The sign says: “Please, do not leave your garbage in the hall. This house is also yours: respect it”
79
Pic. 44 One of the buildings of the train station of Borgo San Giovanni 90
Pic. 45 The sign on the gate of the head quarter of the Municipality in via Villa Glori (Fiumicello). The sign indicates the prohibited behaviors on non-cemented surfaces of the yard, because the presence of chemical pollutants in the ground
90
Pic. 46 Black people walking in front of the wall of Caffaro. According to the analysis of the tools of communication used by the Municipality, non-white people are not part of the forthcoming proper city.
90
Pic. 47 This is the sign explaining the project of the theater hanged on the gate of the abandoned factory Ideal Standard – visible in the background
91
Pic. 48 Facebook post of the local group of Forza Nuova, an Italian nationalist and white-power organization “We are going to open a Patriots’ House in via Milano: its name will be the
Embassy! … Via Milano will be the starting point from where the People of Brescia will
take back its City…it is the heart of the invasion!”
92
Pic. 49 The flyer of the initiative “Bar Fly”, organized by Teatro 19. 92
Pic. 50 Banners hanged on a building in via Milano: “Via Milano is love”. 93
Pic. 51 Graffiti on the wall of the Monumental Cemetery. 94
Pic. 52 Banner hanged on a wall on via Milano by the neighborhood-based leftist movement Magazzino 47
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SECTION I
6
Section I
INTRODUCTION
1. The research topic
Between 2015 and 2016, the Italian government promoted two calls for bids for the regeneration of
decaying urban areas (Decaying Areas Call, or B.A.D.) and of the decaying peripheries
(Peripheries Call, or B.P.). These calls were strongly influenced by the latest European methodology of urban development, established by the 2016 Pact of Amsterdam and the Urban Agenda of the EU. Nevertheless, these calls represent the attempt to create an homogeneous strategy of regeneration of urban areas at the domestic level; indeed, the government established an approach of urban development deeply rooted in - and inspired by - the national planning traditions (Saccomanni, 2016; Mazzamuto, 2017). Italian Municipalities and Metropolitan Cities were invited to present projects of regeneration, selecting urban areas on the basis of specific parameters identifying decaying areas/peripheries.
The two core concepts around which the calls were structured are urban decay and urban
decorum. The former, that is the translation of the Italian term degrado urbano, is a label that
condensates the negative physical and social features of an urban area, which is constructed according to specific narratives and visions of the sociohistorical development of the City (Maneri, 2009, p. 9). It circulates in the Italian discourse on the City, especially regarding the suburbs and particularly problematic areas of the city centers; it assumes specific meanings according to the existent sociohistorical and institutional contexts (Saccomanni, 2016; Mazzamuto, 2017; Mazza, 2017). The latter, that is the translation of the Italian term decoro urbano, is the label that condensates the positive physical and social features of an urban area, sustained by dominant definitions of political, aesthetic, moral, ethical, and economic values. As in the case of urban decay, it circulates in the Italian discourse on the City, especially regarding the suburbs and problematic areas of the city centers (Campesi, 2009; Picker, 2017; Dal Lago, 2018). The main effect of the usage of these two concepts in this specific historical context is the definition of urban
(im)properness. It can be defined as the acceptable and non-acceptable forms that the City can
assume in the transition from the industrial to the post-industrial socioeconomic system. These definitions are sustained through social, political, and historical visions and narratives, based on physical and social characteristics of peripheral urban areas conceived as “specific and identifiable social universes” (Fava, 2008, p. 16; Picker, 2017). Indeed,
7 “[The term urban decay literally] means the abandonment of buildings, public places, parks, and monuments. However, this term has started to indicate […] the ‘decaying urban landscape, due the presence of migrants, homeless people, drug addicts, marauders’” (Maneri, 2001, p. 9)
The definition of decaying periphery (in Italian: periferia degradata) polarizes the relations between, and within, Italian urban areas. This definition of urban (im)properness has been utilized by the Italian government and local authorities in order to legitimize and establish the contemporary approach of urban development and regeneration. The approach identifies specific targets on the basis of parameters defining urban decay and decorum. The most interesting aspect of this topic lies exactly there: the Italian strategies of urban development are produced and structured within a frame sustaining institutional forms of stigmatization (Faso, 2008; Rivera, 2009; Picker, 2017). Indeed, in the Italian sociological literature the term urban decay has been defined as an “excluding word, typical of the contemporary democratic racism” (Faso, 2008, p. 52, quoted in Rivera, 2009, p. 19). The political definition of urban improperness and its dynamics is paired with de-politicized strategies for their solutions and for the construction of urban properness (Saccomanni, 2016). The government has established general guidelines, and the Italian Municipality applied them according to local situations, narratives, problems, and visions of the future.
2. The research field
Brescia is a mid-sized city in Northern Italy, one hundred kilometers East from Milan. Even if it has suffered from strong processes of deindustrialization, it is still one of the most important European industrial poles. However, the industrial economy moved from the areas around the city center to the province (Corsini & Zane, 2014). The Municipality has chosen the area of via Milano and surrounding neighborhoods (Fiumicello, Porta Milano, Quartiere Primo Maggio) as the site for the regeneration plan presented to the B.A.D. and the B.P.. This area used to represent the industrial heart of the city: during the 20th century several important factories created works and richness for thousands of families in Brescia (Ruzzenenti, 2001). Nowadays, most of them are closed, and these neighborhoods are depicted as weak, crumbling, and forlorn urban areas, from where irregular migrants, sex-workers, and marauders threat the social order of the city as a whole. For this reason, according to the Municipality they need to be regenerated and “given back to the rest of the city”, as said by the Mayor of Brescia Emilio del Bono. In order to do so, the plan involves physical, infrastructural, and aesthetic upgrading of the neighborhoods, through which the Municipality is calling for new and higher-status residents; this is made clear by the communication tools deployed by the Municipality, such as brochures, meetings, and the electoral spots of the actual Administration of Brescia.
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3.
The research questions
The concepts of urban decay and urban decorum have been used to define and establish the contemporary national strategy of regeneration of the decaying peripheries. These terms have been historically used as political labels and differentiating principles between urban areas, especially regarding suburban areas and city centers, fostering institutional forms of territorial stigmatization (Campesi, 2009; Picker, 2017; Dal Lago, 2018). This research is inspired by the works of Michel Foucault, Henry Lefebvre, and Lois Waquant (Waquant, 2007; 2014); it aims to understand the historical, political, and social meanings carried by - and the effects produced by - these labels within the contemporary approach of urban regeneration adopted by the Italian government. This strategical approach is a set of techniques of urban governance deployed within the neo-liberalized context of the European policy-making in the urban field; the Italian government is redefining its priorities, programs of action, and frameworks through the translation of this European methodology of urban development (Atkinson & Rossignolo, 2009; Rossi & Vanolo, 2013; Rossi, 2017). Thus, it is interesting to analyze the ways through which the contemporary Italian discourses on urban regeneration structures institutional forms of territorial stigmatization, that are discursively framed as sets of strategies of urban regeneration in the historical transition from the industrial to the post-industrial socioeconomic system (Waquant, 2007; Waquant et al., 2014). Therefore, the main question of this research is:
In which ways does the Italian approach of urban regeneration of the decaying
peripheries foster institutional processes of territorial stigmatization?
The Municipality of Brescia presented an integrated project of regeneration of the area of via Milano and the surrounding neighborhoods, in the West side of the city. The project presented to the B.A.D. – via Milano 140 - arrived 1st among hundreds of projects, and funded for 2 million Euro; the project presented to the B.P. – Oltre la Strada (Beyond the Road, or O.L.S.) – arrived 11th on more than 120 projects, and funded for 18 million. Because of the great success obtained by these two projects, this Municipality has been selected as a case-study in order to analyze how the mechanisms of institutional territorial stigmatization work on a local level; therefore, the first research sub-question is the following:
In which ways does the Municipality of Brescia (re)produce and apply the national discourses on urban (im)properness, regarding the decaying periphery of via Milano and the surrounding neighborhoods?
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Because the qualitative character of this research, the second sub-question is related to the experiences of the decaying periphery by the residents of urban areas labelled as such. Indeed, the discourses on the decaying peripheries and urban (im)properness produce specific effects in the material and social life of the City. Therefore, the second research sub-question is the following:
In which ways do the residents of the neighborhoods involved in the plan of the Municipality of Brescia reproduce, negotiate, and/or contest the discourses on the decaying periphery and urban (im)properness?
4.
Structure and contents
In order to answer to the research questions, this paper has been divided in several Chapters and Sections.
In Section IV, I develop my analysis in order to answer to the research questions. In Chapter I, I analyze the calls for bids promoted by the Italian government. In the first part of the Chapter, I delineate the contemporary European approach to urban regeneration, through the analysis of the 2016 Pact of Amsterdam and the Urban Agenda. Indeed, the Italian calls are examples of policy
translation, through which domestic governments apply the general guidelines and frameworks
developed at the European level within their national policy-making (Atkinson & Rossignolo: 2009; Carpenter: 2013). Even if the Italian strategy of urban development is based on the European framework, it has been strongly influenced by national planning traditions, especially the discourses on urban (im)properness and on the decaying peripheries (Faso, 2008; Picker; 2017). Therefore, in the second part of the Chapter I analyze the techniques and the procedures through which the national government produces, legitimizes, and establishes institutional forms of territorial
stigmatization, framed as integrated solutions to wide ranges of urban problems (Picker: 2017; Dal
Lago: 2018).
In Chapter II, I analyze the official discourse produced and sustained by the Municipality of Brescia, about the decaying periphery of via Milano and the surrounding neighborhoods. In the first Section, I introduce the context of Brescia and this specific area, reconstructing its history and its roles within the urban fabric of the city. In the second Section, I describe the elements and the narratives that sustain the vision of these neighborhoods as improper urban areas promoted by the Municipality; I also analyze how the historical politics of stigmatization produces a consensual and proper vision of the industrial history, that frames and mirrors the present as an improper one. In the
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third Section, I analyze the projects of regeneration and its elements; I suggest that the analysis of the elements of the plan shows that on one hand the plan is based on stigmatizing and politicized definitions of urban decorum; on the other, the political polarization of urban decorum strictly regulates the access to the vision of the proper city, discriminating the actual residents on the basis of class, gender, and racial features.
In Chapter III, I observe the ways in which the residents of the neighborhoods reproduce, negotiate, and contest the dominant discourse on the decaying periphery of via Milano. In the first Section, I analyze the outcomes of the processes of reproduction of the dominant discourse. These processes affect the everyday interactions between people, spaces, and spatial elements; they also negatively frame the interactions between people, and the presence of specific residents in the public spaces of the neighborhoods. In the second Section, I analyze the strategy through which the residents negotiate and contest the dominant discourse on the area. I talk about the historical working-class character of these neighborhoods and the chemical pollution of the ground as examples to explain how several residents refuse and contest the a-historical dominant discourse on urban decay. I also use the example of the walking interview with Giorgia to explain how residents reject the dichotomy of urban (im)properness, in order to reconstruct, define, and establish a radically different vision of the decaying status of these neighborhoods.
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SECTION II
THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORK
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Section II
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1. The interpretive-spatial analysis
This research needs a framework that enable to conceptualize the dynamics of production of the dominant discourse, and its effects on the urban spaces of the neighborhoods involved in the project of regeneration. The so-called interpretive-spatial analysis, developed by Lee Pugalis, is a useful tool in this effort (Pugalis, 2009). It is a theoretical approach based on one hand on the theory of the discourse delineated by Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1968; 1972; 1980); on the other, the analysis of the urban spaces is inspired by the theory of the social production of the
space developed by Henry Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1991). According to Lee Pugalis, the urban space
is the result of social processes of socio-spatial production, structured around the dialectical relations between the discursive and the material dimensions of the social life of the City (Pugalis, 2009, p. 82). In this research, the interpretive-spatial approach allows to understand the discursive processes of spatial production and negotiation of the decaying periphery of Brescia. These processes are mediated through multi-level negotiations of the discourses on urban development and urban decay at the European and national level (policy translation). These processes are also reproduced and contested on the local level by the residents of the neighborhoods involved in the regeneration plan promoted by the Municipality. Therefore, the interpretive-spatial approach considers the discourse not as something all-powerful and immutable, but as something “open to challenge and adaptation by human actors”, conceptualizing it as “operating in a state of constant reconstitution” (p. 89).
According to Michel Foucault, the discourse is an interrelated group of assertions that supplies for a specific language for talking about a specific subject, within a specific sociohistorical conformation (Hall, 1992 p. 291). The discourse constructs its object, and manages the ways through which this object can be consequentially and meaningfully produced, reproduced and talked about (Hall, 2001, p. 74). The discourse analysis has to reconstruct “the discursive fact, the way in which [the object] is put into discourse” (Foucault, 1968, p. 12). For this reason, it is extremely important to understand the sociohistorical context within which a
13
specific discourse has been created; indeed, the production of the object establishes a unity of
discourses, namely the interactions of different discourses that regulate the transformation of the
discursive object (Foucault, 1972, p. 32). The discourse establishes a specific power/knowledge
nexus, producing a specific truth (Foucault, 1980, p. 131; Pugais, 2009, p. 89). The mechanisms,
the techniques, and the procedures that allow its circulation within the social body produce a “regime of truth”, namely “the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated, and specific effects of power are attached to the truth” (p.132). In this sense, the discourse analysis allows to grasp the circulation and the configuration of the power/knowledge nexus, deepening the understanding of the internal and external transformation of the regimes of truth (p. 138). In other words, the discourse analysis enables to understand the ways through which specific kinds of knowledge and regimes of truth sustain the rationality of the discourse and of the power/knowledge producing it, because the nexus between knowledge and power is made comprehensible through the discourse (Pugalis, 2009, p. 81; Richardson, 2005, p. 335).
According to Henry Lefebvre, the urban space is a social product (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 18). The production of space is a social process involving the “the dialectical relations of material engagement, scientific conception, and cultural expression” (Pugalis, 2009, p. 79). The space “embraces a multitude of intersections”, embodying them in the form of “buildings, monuments, and works of art” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). In order to explain the complex every-day process of the social production of space, Lefebvre has developed an analytic triad, composed by spatial practices, the representations of
space, and the representational spaces (p. 33; Pugalis, 2009, p.
80). The spatial practices “give structure to everyday activities
within the wider socioeconomic context”; they are linked to the perceived space, that is “reveled through the deciphering of the space” (Kam Ng, 2010, p. 413). The representations of space is the dominant space of the society, the space “of planners, scientists, urbanists, technocrats” (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). This is the conceived space, that is tied to the “relations of production and the order which those relations impose” (p. 34). The representational space is the space of the everyday, the “dominated and hence passively experienced space” that the imagination of its users tries to appropriate and transform (p. 33). This is the lived space (Kam Ng, 2010, p. 414).
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The interpretive-spatial approach analyzes the processes through which social agents seize and structure meaning to specific spaces; the focus of the approach is on the “spatiality of the social life” as well as on the “social construction of the spatial” (Pugalis, 2009, p. 81). Therefore, the analysis of the social production of urban spaces must focalize on three main processual dimensions: the discursivity, the materiality, and the sociality of the urban social life (p. 81, Pic. 3). The space is thus conceived as both a field, but also a basis of the action of social agents (p. 82); indeed, the production of space is conceived as “the social production of the spaces within social life takes place” (Johnston et al., 2000, p. vii).
Within the interpretive-spatial approach, the contact point between Lefebvre and Foucault lies in the analysis of the ways through which particular discursive representations of space influence and affect how people perceive, interact, and structure those spaces, producing social and material transformations. Discourses are “ways of knowing, acting organizing, and representing things in particular ways […], devices of understanding and instruments of power: linguistic articulation, socio-spatial material practices and power-rationality configuration” (Pugalis, 2009, p. 84). The discourses are expressed in several ways, from “cultural texts” to “practices and artefacts like the built space” (p. 85). Therefore, practices and languages are complementary and reinforcing each
Pic. 3 The spatialized
trialectic Source: Pugalis, 2009
15
other. According to this framework, the material spaces and the discourse are elements of the same dialectical relations; within the urban spaces, the discourse “shapes and is shaped by urban reality” (p. 82). For this reason, this approach takes into account the materialization of the discourse and the
discourse materialized in the analysis of the spatial production (p. 83). The former shows the
“power to transmit idealized spatial imaginaries of present and future needs and desires”, while the latter demonstrates “the power of urban reality to shape future needs and desires as reflected in discourse” (p. 82). The most important point of this approach lies in the fact that the material (re)production of spaces has its origin in the ways through which the experience of the urban landscape is mediated through discourses “that are independent from the materiality of space” (p. 83). In other words, a multiplicity of (even conflictual) discourses can exist and shape the same place, and it is through the discourse that people produce the meanings of their worlds (p. 84). In this way, discourses become fundamental elements in the processes of spatial production, and they also become spatially contingent: “a Foucauldian influenced interpretive-spatial analysis examines how particular representations of space provoke how people perceive, think and act, and produce socio-material transformations” (p. 85). Discourses produce their own tools, techniques, and practices of representations of urban spaces; therefore, the main effect of the discursive (social) production of space is that the ways to perceive, conceive and live spatial realities are framed within a regime of truth (p. 86). In this way, discourses inscribe in the space “hegemonic conception of culture, society, politics, economy, in an on space [in order] to construct space” (p. 87; Pic. 4). Indeed, discourses are not neutral means of ways of knowing, but they always embody cultural, ideological, and political visions (p. 88) The urban discourses have a crucial performative character, and the socio-spatial regimes of truth are sustained by specific practices and procedures of representation (Pic. 4) (p. 87). Therefore, the interpretive-spatial analysis, taking into account the discursive-material dialectic, considers “how something is constituted, what is created, and also the spatial object informing and informed by the first two field” in relation to each other (p. 90). The analysis considers decision-making processes, policy-making and social events as “arenas where representational struggles are played-out” (p. 91).
Pic. 4 Conceived space of via Milano.
Source of the picture: document released by the Municipality of Brescia.
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In other words, the operational fields of the analysis are the languages, the practices, and the power/knowledge: this allows the dynamic understanding of the historical, political, and contextual relations between discursivity and materiality in the production of space. The analysis looks at “representations of space, spatial practices, and space of representations in situ, [and at the ways in which] the [discourse] is produced and reproduced in tools of representation, institutional practices, and every-day practices” (p. 93; Pic. 5).
2. The act of walking
Spatial practices can be conceived on one hand as productive of the urban spaces; on the other, they are utilized in order to negotiate the dominant discourse inscribed on the urban landscape in material forms. In this sense, the space is a form of materialized discourse reproduced, negotiated, and contested through the every-day bodily experiences of the city by the individuals. This is particularly relevant regarding the act of walking. According to Michel de Certeau, the bodies of the walkers and the city are “subjected to contradictory movements that offset
each other and interact [with the urbanized language of power] outside the purview of the panoptic power. The city becomes the dominant theme of political epic but it is no longer a theater for programmed, controlled operation […] The motions of walking are spatial creations” (de Certeau, 1985, p. 128-129). Therefore, walking has a discursive (uttering) function: if on one hand the walker actualizes the limited range of possibilities imposed by the space, on the other one is able to transform and re-shape spatial signifiers, increasing spatial opportunities and
Pic. 6 Michel de Certeau Pic. 5 Lived
space of via Milano (Brescia,
17
setting new limits (p. 130). The walker has the possibility to create a sort of discontinuity in the spatial order, reproducing or negotiating the spatial language through the use of this language itself, affirming, denying, or altering the trajectories in which it is written (p. 132). The dance of
bodies in the urban space composes a rhetoric of space, where the gestures open up new spaces
within a specific and predetermined spatial system, playing within the labyrinth of signs and codes; in this way, the walkers can trace new pathways, “foreign to the meaning of the [dominant] sentences” (p. 131). Walking represents an important practice of discursive negotiation and production; the analysis of the dance of the body is useful to grasp the ways in which the decaying periphery is discursively produced through programmed and un-controlled spatial practices.
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SECTION III
19
Section III
METHODOLOGY
1. Introduction
The data collection of this research has been carried out through a qualitative methodology. The four methods utilized were: discourse analysis of the European and Italian urban policies; walking interviews; dialogical interviews; participant observations in the daily life of the neighborhoods and in several events connected to the regeneration plan of this area. All the interviews and the participant observations were carried out during April, 2018.
In general, the main methodological goal is to structure a grounded theory about the process of reproduction and negotiation of the category of degraded periphery. The underlying idea is to “develop higher level of understanding that is grounded […] in a systematic analysis of data […] and [it is appropriate when] the study of interactions and experiences aims to explain a process” (Lingard et al., 2008, p. 337). The grounded theory is based on an iterative process, namely on cycles of data collection and analysis, where analysis prepares the field for the next cycle of data collection (p. 338).
In total, I made twenty interviews (sixteen dialogical interviews; four walking interviews) during the field research. All the interviewees have the Italian citizenship; only Mohammed has a non-Western background. I made four interviews with institutional actors: the Urban Planning City Councilor of the Municipality of Brescia, the chief of the local police, an urban planner from the Municipality, and an urban planner from the local university. I made three interviews with people who work for companies/organizations in partnership with the Municipality within the project of the regeneration; only Rosa is both a partner of the Municipality and a resident of the neighborhood, while Simone and Camillo live in other areas of Brescia. The other interviewees are residents or former residents of the neighborhoods involved in the plan. The sampling was based on the snow-ball method started from my own social network in the field: for this reason, several interviewees are young people. Eight out twenty participants were woman (nine out of twentyone, if we consider the double interview with Carlo and Laura).
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Dialogical interviews
1. Chief of the Local Police – man,– Interview in his office – Apr. 4th, afternoon – 20min 2. Urban planner from the university of Brescia – woman,– Interview at her office, Apr. 6th,
morning – 1.18h
3. Luca – man, 20yo, resident of Porta Milano – Interview at Magazzino 47, Apr. 6th, afternoon – 59min
4. Federico – man, 26yo, resident of Fiumicello – Interview in a bar in the city center of Brescia – Apr, 9th, afternoon –55min
5. Urban planner from the Municipality of Brescia – woman,– Interview in her office in the Urban Planning Department – Apr. 10th, afternoon - 1.23h.
6. Simone – man, 45yo, chief of an association in partnership with the Municipality – Interview at the headquarter of the association – Apr. 10th, evening – 1.05h
7. Roberto – man, 65yo, resident of Fiumicello and activist – Interview at his place – Apr., 12th, morning – 58min
8. Carlo and Laura – wife (60yo) and husband (62yo), resident of Porta Milano – Interview in their house – Apr. 12th, afternoon - 59min
9. Lucrezia – women, around 55yo, resident of Fiumicello – Interview at the “Houses of the neighborhood” – Apr. 13th
, morning – 45min
10. Mohammed – man, 34yo, resident of Fiumicello – Interview on the balcony of his house – Apr. 13th, morning - 36min
11. Fabio – man, 26yo, former resident of Quartiere Primo Maggio – Interview in a bar in the city center of Brescia – Apr. 14th, evening – 48min
12. Eva – women, around 45yo, resident of Porta Milano – Interview in a bar in via Milano – Apr. 16th, afternoon –45min
13. Francesca – woman, 24yo, former resident of Fiumicello – Interview in a bar in the city center of Brescia – Apr. 17th, morning – 32min
14. Rosa – man, 40yo, resident of Fiumicello, and chief of a company in partnership with the Municipality – Interview at her place – Apr., 17th, morning – 1.18h
15. Camillo – man, 30yo, chief of a company in partnership with the Municipality in the project, and activist – Interview in the headquarter of his company – Apr. 18th,afternoon 1.02h
16. Urban Planning City Councilor – woman,– Interview in her office in the Urban Planning Department - Apr. 19th, afternoon – 1.01h
Walking Interviews
17. Silvio – man, 36yo, resident of Fiumicello - Walking interview around via Milano and Fiumicello –Apr. 2nd, morning – 1.28h
18. Giorgia – woman, 26yo, resident of Fiumicello and activist – Walking interview around Fiumicello, Porta Milano and via Milano – Apr. 13th, morning – 48min
19. Riccardo – man, 25yo, resident of Fiumicello – Walking interview around Fiumicello – Apr. 23rd, afternoon – 1h
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20. Mario – man, 27yo, resident of Quartiere Primo Maggio – Walking interview around Porta Milano, via Milano and Quartiere Primo Maggio – Apr. 24th, afternoon – 1.05h
2. Discourse analysis
As stated in the Theoretical Framework, the interpretive-spatial approach conceives the analysis of the discourse as the analysis of the dialectical relations between discursivity and materiality. The linguistic-textual analysis of laws, documents, and statements is a fundamental part of the analysis; however, it is necessary to consider also how the discourses are involved in the processes of social production of the space. Therefore, the dialectical relations between discursivity and materiality is analyzed in order to understand the production, the establishment, and the sustainment of a regime
of truth about the Italian degraded peripheries. In other words, practices, actions, and discourses are
crucial elements of the discourse analysis of this research. Firstly, the discourse analysis has been focused on the two calls for bids promoted by the Italian government, and on the official documentations released by the European Union regarding the Pact of Amsterdam and the Urban Agenda of the EU. In these cases, the discourse analysis is focalized on policies and documents, connecting discourses and contexts in a complementary relation (Gasper and Apthorpe, 1996). Therefore, because the approach of discourse analysis adopted by this research is based on the works of Michel Foucault, the analysis tries to grasp the “sociopolitical roots of the policy discourse” (Escobar, 1995, p. 62). The analyzed materials involve also the files, documentations and audio-visual productions produced by the Municipality of Brescia, and the expert discourses that are at the basis of the official discourse about decaying peripheries at the national and local levels – such as Renzo Piano, or the press conferences of the mayor of Brescia (Pic. 8).
The discourse analysis has been informed by, and has informed, the data collected through dialogical and walking interviews and the participant observations (Pic. 7).
Pic. 7 Participant observation during an urban hiking in via Milano,
organized by a company in partnership with the Municipality of Brescia. This picture portrays a moment of a performance in front of
the abandoned factory Ideal Standard. It was very interesting for the observation of the dialectical relations between discursivity and
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3. Dialogical interviews
The interviews have been conducted according to a specific style: the dialogical interviewing. This style of interviewing aims to reconstruct the social frame of the answers, rather than portraying the particular rationality sustaining the actors’ actions (Denzin, 2001). Therefore, the questions of the interviews are formulated in order to promote story-telling, rather than “categorizing people on the basis of the (supposed) motivations of their actions” (La Mendola, 2009, p. 24). The questions take the formula of this kind: can you tell me the last time you did this specific thing, instead of asking:
why did you do that specific things? In this way, it was possible to not force the interviewees to
“assume an a-priori social role or way of acting through the questions formulated by [the interviewer]” (p. 48). It makes also possible to observe how respondents discursively produce the space through the stories that they are telling. Indeed, during the field work the respondents’ stories were always linked to the spaces of the neighborhoods. If one of the main goal of the research was to analyze the negotiation between the every-day experiences of these spaces and the dominant socio-spatial discourse produced by the Municipality, these questions allowed the interviewees to choose their own words to talk about these spaces. The researcher could grasp the processes of socio-spatial production and negotiation through the frames created by interviewees themselves. In this way, the interviews had a double level of interpretation. On one hand, they were important because of what has been actually said by the respondents. On the other, the choices of the words, the styles of story-telling, the places chosen as the sites for the interviews, revealed the social constructions of spatial meanings and discourses underlying individual experiences of these neighborhoods (p. 54).
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4. Walking interviews
Because the goal of this research is to reconstruct and understand the spatial production of the neighborhood by its residents and other actors, the walking interview in the neighborhood were useful tools in order to “unpack the experiences of those who navigate, negotiate, and traverse the city streets in their day-to-day life.” (Middleton, 2009, p. 579).
The walking interview is a socio-spatial practice, as well as the “act of think about and articulate the [experience of the] neighborhoods” (Clark & Emmel, 2010, p. 1). At the same time, it allows to grasp the conceptualization of the neighborhoods, and the ways through which individuals relate their social life, their communities, and the relations between those elements and the space (p. 2) The walking interview is a method that enable the analysis of the production of space, through the observation of practices, representations, and discourses (Pic. 8). Walking through the neighborhood allows the interviews to be fostered by the surrounding spatial features, conceptualized both as materialized discourses and products of the materialization of the discourses (p. 3; de Certeau, 1985; Pugalis, 2009). In this sense, the walking interviews connect in a discursive-material dialectical relation what is said about the space with the actual spatial context in which something is said about the
decaying periphery of these neighborhoods
(Evans & Jones, 2011, p. 851). As mentioned in the Theoretical Framework, the body of walker is dancing within a literal spatial meaning, a labyrinth of spatial signs produced by the dominant discourse (de Certeau, 1985, p. 132). Through the walking interview it was possible to grasp “important insights on [the] everyday urban life”, understanding the sociality of spaces and places (Wunderlich, 2008, p. 129; Pugalis, 2009). In other words, the walking interviews as spatial analysis have been utilized in order to observe and understand the interactions between bodies, practices, discourses and spaces (Lefebvre, 2004, p. 93).
Pic. 8 Picture taken by Giorgia during the walking
interview. She was explaining me the subdivision of the space of this area of Fiumicello: on the left,
high quality and expensive houses “usually inhabited by middle-class, white Italians”. On the
right, publicly owned complexes inhabited by “migrants and poor people”. In the middle, the
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5. Accessing the field
The preliminary access to the field was negotiated through my personal networks in January 2018. At the time, I had two meetings with several activists and residents of the neighborhoods involved in the plan. Those people were chosen because their membership in neighborhood-based political movements, involved in an autonomous research project about the identity of these neighborhoods. Other residents, urban planners, policemen, and local politicians, have been involved through the snow-ball sampling, namely a method of recruitment based on the connections and the networks of the people already involved as participants.
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SECTION IV
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CHAPTER I
A RACE TO THE BOTTOM
The Italian translation of the European approach to urban regeneration
Introduction
At the Italian and European levels, the importance of urban development and regeneration is growing. Indeed, there is a strong tendency to improve the position of urban transformations in the socioeconomic policy-making processes. The European Union is trying to develop a common framework regarding urban regeneration, in order to influence the decision-makings in domestic governances, through which promoting a sustainable, balanced, and inclusive urban development. Nevertheless, the domestic governments have the possibility to translate this framework, according to national traditions, tendencies, and frameworks already existing in their urban field.
Translating the framework means that the national governments have the possibility to produce, sustain and justify their particular approaches on a double level. On one hand, the legitimacy of their policy-making is based on the work of the European urban partnerships, that are developing an integrated methodology of actions on - and visions of - the European post-industrial City. On the other, the national discourses sustain specific narratives and representations, that are tailored on national and local experiences and political trends. Therefore, the European vocabulary of urban regeneration produces specific effects on the domestic level. The national vocabularies are influenced by the European one, but they also establish meanings and priorities focusing on particular phenomena considered as crucial in their contexts. As will be analyzed in this Chapter, in the case of Italy the European approach takes the form of the discourses on urban (im)properness. The calls for bids promoted by the Italian government in 2015 and 2016 for the regeneration of the
decaying peripheries took the form of a race to the bottom. Instead of promoting patterns of
inclusive, sustainable, and balanced development, the Italian Municipalities had to identify specific areas of their cities, according to parameters that were not supposed to identify the best projects as suggested by the European methodology, but the worst urban areas, fostering processes of institutional territorial stigmatization (Waquant et al, 2014). Metaphorically speaking, the Italian translation of the European methodology produces deprived urban areas as modern Carthage, the sources of all the contemporary urban problems that has to be fought, erased, and then regenerated through the official strategies deployed by the national and local authorities.
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1.1 Regenerating Europe
In the last thirty years, there was an intense effort at the European level towards the creation of a common framework regarding urban development (Carpenter, 2013). Through the 2016 Pact of Amsterdam the member States of the EU are structuring common objectives, thematic priorities, and operational frameworks (Olejnik, 2017, p. 177). The EU is creating partnerships between multi-level institutions, in order to homogenize the domestic urban policing (p. 178). This framework has the goal to increase the quality and the efficiency of the urban regulations, the mechanisms of the funding, and the exchange of knowledge between the member States and the EU (pp. 178-179). The European Urban Agenda points out twelve thematic priorities1, which are considered fundamental elements in the contemporary methodology for urban development and regeneration (Urban Agenda of the EU, 2016; Carpenter, 2013). Nevertheless, the EU has no treaty-based competences on domestic urban policing; therefore, the EU has no direct juridical power on the national strategies of urban development (Olejnik, 2017, p. 176). The twelve fields of action identified in the Urban Agenda2 are based on the peculiar visions of urban development carried out by the European Union (Pic. 9). According to this vision, on one hand urban areas are the engines of the European economic growth and competitiveness within the globalized world (Pact of Amsterdam, 2016, p. 3); on the other, they are places where segregation, unemployment and poverty are structurally concentrated (p. 3). Through the solutions of these problems raised by the social challenges of the 21st century urbanization, urban development can be carried out according to the principle of socioeconomic and environmental sustainability, that are fundamental for the European economic, social, and territorial cohesion. (p. 3). Therefore, the City has become the crucial institution for the European sustainable socio-economic growth, prosperity, and competitiveness (CEC: 2010; Carpenter, 2013, p. 109).
The European discourse on urban development fosters the process of homogenization of the national policies among member States, the so-called process of soft Europeanization (Atkinson, 2008; Atkinson & Rossingolo, 2009). Nevertheless, this discourse has to be translated by national,
1 Inclusion of migrants and refugees / Air quality / Urban poverty / Sustainable soil consumption / Adaptation to climate
change / Social housing / Jobs & skills / Housing / Circular economy / Energy transition / Urban mobility / Digital transition / Public procurement.
2https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/urban-agenda
Pic. 9 The logo of the
Urban Agenda for the EU. As it is possible to see,
sustainability and environmental strategies
are conceived as crucial elements for the urban development of the EU.
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regional, and urban authorities. In this way, the outcomes of the European approach are influenced by multi-level processes of negotiation. The result is that the European vocabulary applied in specific contexts will produce specific effects, because the meanings and the interpretations of its key-words can vary among different national, regional, or urban levels of policy translation (p. 204). The EU is promoting an European model of integrated urban regeneration, which is also contributing to the creation of a general framework for common solutions to common problems (p. 205). In this context, the Urban Agenda of the EU can be considered as accumulated bodies of knowledge and patterns of action, that set the EU as a crucial actor in the urban policy-making processes of the member States (p. 204). Thus, the aims of the construction of the urban Europeanization are: 1) the setting out of a common kit of urban policies and regeneration practices; 2) the acknowledgment of the differences between countries and their priorities, leaving freedom to the member States for the translation and for the operationalization of the European approach in their domestic policing (p. 204; Carpenter, 2013, p. 111).
Until the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, the European discourse considered the City as a problem because of the consequences of deindustrialization, unsustainable patterns of development, and the global competition between cities (Carpenter, 2013, p. 111). In the last decade it has become the place of opportunity for the regional and national growth (p. 112). Nevertheless, the competitiveness of European cities is both threatened by deprivation, socioeconomic exclusion, and unsustainable routes of development (p. 110). Therefore, the European discourse is setting urban regeneration as its most important tool, because its rationale is the enhancement of city and regional competitiveness balanced with the efforts toward the improvement of social cohesion and environmental quality, and the empowerment of local communities and stakeholders (p. 110).
1.1.1 The Urban Deprived Areas and Neighborhoods (UDAN)
The 2016 Pact of Amsterdam emphasized the importance of place- and people-based urban regeneration in specific fields of development – urban poverty, soil consumption and housing – in which regeneration represents the most important strategic approach of urban development (Pact of Amsterdam, 2016, p. 8). The double-layer approach of urban regeneration must reinforce the roles and the re-functionalization of UDAN, because the structural concentration of poverty in certain urban areas is considered one of the main threats to European socioeconomic development (p. iii). The EU also considers environmental sustainability as a key element for the improvement of the
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quality of life of the citizens, and for the reduction of social and spatial inequalities within European cities (p. iv; Pic. 10). In the definition of the UDAN, physical environments are connected to specific social conditions, and in addressing sustainable development the approach of regeneration must have a specific focus on fighting urban poverty (Urban Agenda for the EU – Urban Poverty Partnership, 2017, p. 16). Indeed, poverty is strictly linked to “unemployment, ungraduated inhabitants, a deteriorated living environment, important weight of single-parents families, and the concentration of population with migrant backgrounds” (p. 10). The partnership recognizes the cooperation of urban authorities as crucial, because they must identify deprivation and to erase its causes, in order to “design regeneration plans that can reverse urban poverty trends” (p. 22). The approach considers necessary to adopt a place-and people-based approach, promoting participated initiatives and programs of action (Pic. 10) (p. 40). The
Partnership has recognized four dimensions of urban poverty that must be addressed by regeneration: 1) improving the living environment reinforcing their attractiveness; 2) fostering the social cohesion among the weakest social groups, integrating marginalized communities; 3) fostering an inclusive economic development of the UDAN; 4) Supporting UDAN in the challenges of sustainability.
The selections and the definition of the UDAN must be done by national authorities, through categories based on their peculiar strategies (p. 42). This is also the case of social housing. The regeneration of deprived urban areas has become a fundamental part of the actions for the promotion of social cohesion and of non-segregated mixed communities, enlarging the basic approach to social housing as defined by the 2012 Services of General Economic Interest (Urban Agenda for the EU – S.H., 2017, p. 9). The relations
between European UDAN and the City are also key elements in the policing about soil consumption (Urban Agenda for the EU – S.C., 2017). The regeneration must enhance the existing City through social, economic, and environmental interventions, because redevelopment and reuse of already-built up areas are considered as crucial elements in order to promote sustainable land use (p. 8). According to this framework, densification and regeneration provide for the compatibility of the
Pic. 10 The map of the inclusive,
sustainable, and balanced urban development of the UDAN, promoted by
the European Union through the Urban Agenda. It is designed as the map of a transport system, and the colored lines
represent the three dimensions of development: smartness (red), greenness (green), inclusive (blue). (Source: Urban
Agenda for the EU: Urban Poverty Partnership: 2017).
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urban fabrics with the urban system and its environmental and social conditions, fostering the quality of life, namely the livable and sustainable characters of the regenerated neighborhoods and districts (p. 9).
1.1.2 Regeneration as a neo-liberalized strategy of development
Even if the attention social exclusion and deprivation has been the crucial character of the European approach to regeneration, the issue of competitiveness has been increasingly the focus of the regeneration strategies of many European cities (Saccomanni, 2016, p. 3). Indeed, these approaches have focused entirely on infrastructural and physical interventions (p. 5). The globalized and neo-liberalized tendencies in the urban field are changing the modalities through which public authorities define urban areas as lively, declining, or lifeless spaces (Rossi & Vanolo, 2013, p. 124). The regeneration machines of the Western cities, composed by public-private partnerships and coalitions of interests, are exploiting international capitals and markets, while they are developing at the local level political strategies influencing land-use regulations, policies, and processes of decision-making. (Knox, 2017, p. 82). This entails that the approach to regeneration has been shaped by the ways through which the new regimes of development are transforming the profitability of urban areas on a local scale (Rossi & Vanolo, 2013, p. 124). The discourses on urban regeneration must be considered in the global competition between cities, and the understanding of their terms must be contextualized within the neo-liberalized Europe. The European approach to urban regeneration can be seen as a technology enabling the circulation of specific patterns of urban development, which are transformed by local authorities into narratives sustaining regenerative interventions (Rossi, 2017, p. 87). Regeneration practices are part of an European official strategy that produces specific representations of urban fabrics, especially connected to the UDAN; indeed, the areas selected for the regenerating projects are chosen as sites of curative interventions to bumpy urban evolution (Pugalis & McGuinness, 2013, p. 345). Because of the kinds of problems for which regeneration is constructed as a crucial solution, the European model of urban regeneration has the tendency to polarize the attention in specific areas of the cities according to specific characteristics, which spread stereotyped representations that will be reproduced, fostered, and interiorized by the residents themselves (Galdini, 2009, p. 110). The discourse on European urban development produces narratives on the problems of UDAN and their residents, which must be solved through an integrated approach of regeneration based on a process of construction of urban spaces, strongly influenced by neoliberal planning principles (Rossi & Vanolo, 2013).
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1.2 Two races to the bottom
Between 2015 and 2016, the Italian government announced two calls for bids for its Municipalities. These two calls are both parts of the national strategy dealing with urban problems and solutions, strongly influenced by the latest upgrades of the European methodology of urban development discussed above. These two calls were important in Italian urban planning, because for the first time national laws gave juridical definitions of “decaying urban areas” and “peripheries” (Mazzamuto, 2017; Mazza, 2017).
Bando Aree Degradate – Decaying Areas Call (or B.A.D.) In 2015, the Italian government
released the National plan for the cultural and social requalification of the decaying urban areas, namely for coordinated interventions toward the reduction of phenomena such as social marginality and urban decay, the upgrading of the quality of urban decorum and the socioenvironmental urban contexts (G.U . n.300 – Dec. 29th, 2014). According to the call, an urban area can be defined as a decaying urban area if the Index of Social Distress (ISD) and the Index of Physical Degrade (IPD) overtake the national weighted averages (Pic. 11). The ISD was composed by: 1) unemployment rates; 2) employment rates; 3) youth concentration rates; 4) education rates. The IPD was composed by the amount of “residential buildings in bad status of conservation” and of “residential buildings in mediocre status of conservation” in the area; these data had to be confronted with the total number of residential buildings in the same area. The Municipalities had to attach a document about the expected spill-over effects of the interventions on the rest of the city. They were also required to attach the documentation about the “decaying status” of the interested areas, especially regarding: crime rates; sexual abuses and domestic violence; school dropout; existing social and cultural opportunities; presence of irregular immigration; presence of abandoned and/or degraded areas; strategical positioning of the areas; economic weakness. In total, the funding originally was of 194 million Euro, then reduced to 78 million Euro. Each project could be funded for maximum 2 million Euro. 870 projects were submitted to the call, but only 46 projects have been financed. The committee of
Pic. 11 The statistical formula used in the B.A.D., in order
to identify decaying urban areas (Source: G.U. n. 300 – Dec. 29th, 2014)
