The Città Abusiva in Contemporary Southern Italy: Illegal Building and Prospects for Change

Abstract

This study returns to the topic of unauthorised development in the south of Italy. It starts by assessing the main positions that have informed the debate since the 1960s and evaluates the consequences of the condono edilizio (building amnesty) policy, in the light of the impact that illegal construction has had on the landscape, both urban, rural and coastal. A close observation of three case studies, unplanned settlements in Lazio, Campania and Sicily, suggests that the original energies and expectations behind their development have long since lost their momentum. Rather, the emergence of new evolutionary trends-hitherto underrepresented within the political debate-demand a different interpretative framework. Three design scenarios are outlined, based on recycling existing social and physical material: they translate into a future-oriented discourse those symptoms of change that are already appearing in an embryonic form throughout Italy's Mezzogiorno.

The family house and its territories in contemporary Italy: present conditions and future perspectives

“…Thus, in the Mezzogiorno we find vast unauthorized urban development both on the coast and inland, a subject which deserves separate discussion but which is not the focus of the present study (see Zanfi 2013). (Boeri, Lanzani, and Marini 1993, 222); top right, road network in central Veneto up to 1968 (Munarin andTosi 2001, 155); bottom left, small-scale infrastructure in Salento: paved roads, unpaved roads and pathways (Viganò 2001, 126); bottom right, road network in Pescara Province, Marche 1993 (Bianchetti and Vettoretto 1999).…”

The Dark Side of Urban Informality in the Global North: Housing Illegality and Organized Crime in Northern Italy

“…This kind of public discourse on housing illegality must be seen in the wider Italian context: in many areas of the country (especially, but not exclusively, southern Italy), illegal building has been implicitly encouraged by local administrations, either because they were unable to directly fulfil, by means of public policies, residents’ housing needs (e.g. due to budget deficits) or as a means of garnering electoral support and favouring firmly entrenched political client bases (Nocifora, ; Coppola, ; Zanfi, ).…”

“…It does not primarily concern the very poor or marginal groups, but instead ‘ordinary’ middle‐class people—who do not squat on land, but build without public authorization on plots that they own. The result is, in many cases, the construction of illegal housing units (both unauthorized extensions and entire new buildings) which are barely distinguishable in aesthetic terms from regular housing (Zanfi, ). The public approach to the issue in these ‘transition areas’ is characterized by certain shared features too: on the one hand, there is a general assumption that there exists an effective enforcement system which guarantees general compliance with planning and building regulations; on the other hand, enforcement often fails to work and various measures intended to legalize informal buildings have been promoted (Calor and Alterman, ).…”

‘Ruins of Modernity’: The Critical Implications of Unfinished Public Works in Italy

“…It is important to note that Alterazioni Video's exclusive focus on unfinished ‘public’ works reflects a necessity to create an artistic discourse wherein ‘public’ entails a cultural attitude, a universal aspiration––as opposed to private initiatives, wherein lurk the phenomena of ‘abusivism’ (Zanfi, ) and ‘eco‐monsters’ (Romita, ; Guido et al ., ), also widely associated with incompletion. Although the tangible repercussions of unfinished works are similar, be they privately or publicly developed, Masu distinguishes between the two in an attempt to classify unfinished public works as a factor representative of Italian society as a whole…”