New Arrivals, Old Places: Demographic Changes and New Planning Challenges in Palermo and Naples

Abstract

If we look at the demographic changes in the largest cities in Southern Italy, the most significant trend is a balance between population growth and decline, affecting in particular inner urban areas, which is due to the predominance of new ethnic inhabitants. After having described these demographic changes in Naples and Palermo, the paper will include some considerations on the ‘institutional’ landscape of planning and the related policies. How do planning policies and practices face this quick change in such peripheral contexts, which are new to the phenomenon? Can the plural composition of the local society be viewed as an opportunity, and not just as a threat? The paper will use some analyses of the immigrants' distribution and characteristics of housing problems as elements of discussions of the changes in the urban social structure, which can be considered as positive potential for a more equal and culturally mixed context.

Acknowledgements

Although the article should be considered a result of the common work and reflection of the two authors, Lo Piccolo took primary responsibility for the sections Introduction, Policies for Ethnic Communities and Planning Challenges in Palermo and Conclusions and Leone for the sections Distribution of New Ethnic Inhabitants in the City of Palermo, Distribution of New Ethnic Inhabitants in the City of Naples and Planning Policies on Immigration in Naples: The Housing Issue. The authors would like to thank Marco Nieli and Giovanni Laino for having generously provided detailed information on immigrants' condition in Naples and local initiatives undertaken in both the voluntary and institutional sectors. A special thanks is also due to Huw Thomas, who read several drafts of the manuscript and offered irreplaceable guidance and comments.

Notes

The national-based data is supplied by Istat (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) and the Caritas Migrantes reports on immigration in Italy. Data concerning local structures comes from the Registry Office and the AUSL (Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale) reports.

As highlighted by Vicari (2001:105), ‘southern poverty has a specific profile. (…) Poverty is not produced as a consequence of the break-up of family ties; to the contrary, it is within the family and through the exchange and sharing of a rich variety of goods and services that survival is achieved. Second, they are poor because the lack of regular jobs forces them to rely on the informal economy as a source of income, an income which is by and large irregular and low. (…) Third, the Italian welfare system does not provide adequate support to families. (…) These differences, however, do not make southern Italian poverty less exclusionary or less permanent’.

This data refers to 2005. All of the data relates to that year and comes from Di Liberto and Mulè (2006). Unless otherwise specified, all data are from the above mentioned source.

Analysis of quantity is problematic for several reasons. The ISTAT, Questura and the Registry Office issue the most reliable data. The ISTAT data only cover those immigrants who obtained a lawful residence permit in compliance with law 943/1986 but do not indicate the place of residence.

From a general point of view, Palermo behaves like other big Italian cities having a high number of ethnic groups, as opposed to smaller cities which tend to ‘specialize’ in drawing some nationalities rather than others. As a consequence, if on a regional level about 80% of non-EC immigrants come from Central and Northern Africa, in Palermo the figure is lower than 60%.

The data is supplied by the Registry Office, for a necessity of coherence between different system of counting people and also because of a different amount of data that are considered each year.

Occasional regularization of the residence permits of illegal immigrants. In fact, most of the debate and political action — especially during the 1980s and the first half of 1990s — was around the issue of accepting the newcomers and regulating this process, without any long-term view and policies regarding the social exclusion of immigrants.

In this case we refer to the ISTAT data because of the comparison of the urban and regional scales; this is also why we refer to the year 2001, which was the year of the last general census of the population.

An interview with a Tunisian restaurateur resident in Palermo for 25 years illustrates this aspect. In fact, the story that he recounts regards the fact that 25 years ago the Tunisian community was relatively small, with a main business in buying goods in Italy and resell them in Tunisia; with the changing value of money, this work become unprofitable, so the immigrants changed their approach, becoming workers (Leone et al., 2006).

The church of S. Paolino dei Giardinieri in the Capo district, which was in a state of decay and not used for devotional purposes — like many others in the historic centre — was restored with public funds and given to the Muslim community for its religious and cultural activities (Lo Piccolo, 2000).

Under Don Meli's guidance, in fact, ethnic communities were allowed to attend other confessional rites (Lo Piccolo, 2000, 2003). The priest who replaced Meli forsook this very ‘civic’ practice. So the informal co-presence of a little mosque and of a Hindu temple, which were arranged in some spaces adjoining the Catholic Church, was forbidden.

These elements were highlighted in many interviews with immigrants running shops or restaurants in Palermo, such as a Bangladesh restaurateur who recounted his life story. The restaurateur told us that, after his work in Germany and his wanderings around Europe looking for other job opportunities, he found Palermo a good place to reinvest what he had earned in his life (Leone et al., 2006).

The data we are considering are for the year 2003 and were provided by the research group led by Ignazia Pinzello, Dipartimento Città e Territorio, University of Palermo.

We refer to the Luigi Piccinato Master Plan of Naples (1939) and to the Piccinato ‘Piano comprensoriale’ (Sub-Regional plan) of the early 1960s.

These data are for 2005; all other data also refer to that year and comes from Milone (2006). Unless otherwise specified, all the data refer to that document and come from the ‘Registry Office’ system.

For example, in the Scampia and Secondigliano quarters there are only 500 immigrants officially registered; as the above mentioned official data consider all the foreign population, these data really underestimate the true number of immigrants: in fact, if we consider the unofficial data provided by the ‘Opera Nomadi’ (Rom) organization, there are in fact 1600 Rom living in the two quarters. This data comes out from the work of a particular office that works with and is located in the Rom settlement (which mainly consists of Eastern Europe migrants) and that includes in its statistics — in accordance with its mission — those who do not have legal status as citizens, or who do not hold a resident's permit. The difference between 1600 real, but unofficial, Rom people and 500 official Rom people shows how much the phenomenon of immigration is underestimated.

The name comes from the historical development of the place. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the Spanish viceroy Vincenzo da Toledo developed in the area a high-density residential settlement in order to quarter the Spanish troops. Given the nature of this massive military residential area, the housing stock and the urban pattern were characterized by high density, residential use of ground floors, simple typologies, small and overcrowded housing units, regular and narrow streets (De Seta, 2004). Due to their historical origin, the ‘Spanish Quarters’ represent up to now one of the most fascinating as well as deprived place in Naples.

The difference in the timing of the registration of the phenomena between Palermo and Naples is due to different times of local application of the law, and in particular by a local delay in Naples; this appears clearly in a comparison with rest of the Neapolitan hinterland, which had a corresponding peak in the same year as Palermo.

The islands in question are Capri, Ischia and Procida, and they all have an incidence of immigrants of about 4.5%. Due to the overwhelming tourist activities and economy, they developed quite particular conditions.

Castelvolturno is in the provincial administrative area of Caserta, but it is well connected with Naples, by the main urban motorway, built in the 1970s.

Data supplied by the ‘Social Report 2007’ of the Naples' provincial branch of the IACP (Social Housing Institute).

These facts make clear the failure of the law no. 431/1998 which cut off the so-called equocanone (fixed rents), shifting all responsibility for housing prices to the law of market (Caudo, 2007a). Nowadays it is clear that it is important to restore some policies regarding the cost of housing.

A recent (2007) law proposal regarding the housing question (titled: Una nuova politica per la casa, that is ‘For a new housing policy’), which was presented by the previous centre-left national government, mentioned immigrants as marginal social category. In this proposal, signed by eminent Italian planners like Bernardo Rossi-Doria, Vezio De Lucia, Alessandro Dal Piaz, Federico Oliva and many others, attention is focused on the description of the phenomenon and on the main strategies to augment the stock of social housing. These strategies concern most of all the reuse and renewal of buildings that already exist.

The building of the Northern area started in the 1960s in a lot of different locations in the Northern part of Naples. But for different reasons most of the building and, more particularly, allocation of the units, did not take place until the 1980s, when a major earthquake transformed a difficult situation into a dramatic one. The rebuilding process after the earthquake in 1980 was characterized by an organic plan called ‘Plan for suburban areas’, drawn up in 1979, now considered from many points of view as a best practice (Ciccone, 1984; Petrella, 1989), for the first time preferring a strategy of reuse to new construction. The emergency due to the earthquake also created a rapid social change in the Northern area of Naples causing a marginalization process in this area. Thus, after the earthquake, there was the biggest concentration of ready-to-use social houses. While the ‘Plan for Suburban Areas’ aimed to reuse and restructure the old ‘Casali’ (rural villages) that were around the historic centre, new parts of the city were built, such as the quarter of Scampia. These areas are now considered as some of the more marginal in the Neapolitan context, the Scampia quarter in particular is considered a symbol of this.

Although it was set up in 2000, the story of the Rom office started some years previously, in 1998, with a tragic event that involved the local and the Rom communities and brought the Rom to the public attention. The story started with a murder of a young girl by a Rom from Bergamo and with the violent reaction of the autochthonous community. At the same time the construction of new infrastructure required the removal of an unauthorized Rom settlement.

The office works in close collaboration with the non-profit organization (Opera Nomadi) directed by Marco Nieli. This organization had been working in the territory since 1994 but after the integration with the office in 2000, its interventions became much more effective.

Considering the very important needs of the Rom population in the unofficial settlements, the buildings are in very poor condition, but there is also a lack of primary infrastructure like potable water and sanitation.

These ground floor flats are typical of Naples; they generally have just one entrance, which is the only source of daylight and cannot be entered from other parts of the building.

The right-wing National Government — which won the last elections also exploiting a diffuse sense of fear and insecurity in the population — introduced, in order to prevent crime, some racial discriminatory measures against Rom people and immigrants.