• 27.12.2010

With best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

"We are, we feel out of place. We feel lost, in both metaphorical and literal sense. We recognize in the horizons (physical and political) that surround us .... We see the disintegration of the state and the death of public interest, the emptying of the institutions and the selling off of public assets, according to an economy of plunder designed for friends of friends. In a country increasingly provincial, no longer know how to deal with others ....
We are, we feel out of place in our cities, our landscape, reduced to a hunting ground for those who want to make loot.
These and many other hardships are widespread and shared. Yet, most still seem out of place to express them aloud ... Overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems, we wait for someone else to support them, but do not want to see that victims of this reference to 'someone else' we are ourselves too often close in an embarrassed silence.
To 'start over' this must be done collectively: the citizens by citizens (trying to understand the jargon of the specialists), the experts using the best of their expertise in the field, but remember to be first of all citizens, and that it is their duty to respect , if and as professionals, high ethical standards and conduct.
On the one hand, builders and speculators in the name of their private profit touted as development, progress, growth, and supported by administrators conniving, use no more than the reproductive power of their businesses and flood the cities and countryside of new development (the curve growth of settlements does not respect the balance with the environment, but squeeze it until you pass the threshold of sustainability, but left to its fate), and second, the defenders of the public interest, a 'species' which includes the constituents and the public about environmental groups, and directs thought and action in the public interest and whose growth model is based on adapting the development needs of the 'carrying capacity' of the environment, to maintain a long-run equilibrium.
We must understand that this area does not make compromises, because it lasts is the struggle between the profit of the predatory interest of the community.
We must be able to recover the sense of our history, reminding us that Italy has played a leading role in global history and strategies of protection and that it has won for the quality of the widespread culture of conservation among citizens from all over the country and of all social classes.
We must be convinced that 'investing in bricks and mortar' with the pace that we are following is insane. That we are neglecting to do so much more productive forms of investment, closing the parameters of an archaic culture that condemns the country's economy to stall and marginality.
We must be convinced (and convincing other citizens) that the quality of the landscape and environment is not a luxury but a necessity. It is an investment in our future ... directly affects the quality of life, the happiness of individuals and the richness of ordinary life.
We must fight the disintegration of the landscape / environment-land, very concrete space in which we live, its transformation into an abstract cloud of words, just crushed between different disciplines who are deaf to each other (the right geography, aesthetics, history art, urban planning), and immediately pulverized in an incomprehensible map of administrative competence, of powers and conflicts.
We have to beat the miserable but frequent argument against the devastation of the landscape and the environment you would not for the benefit of a few, but to maintain or increase the level of employment.
We must place to place by local mind, to be convinced (and convincing other citizens) that it is possible, indeed necessary and positive, redeploy manpower and activity of industry sectors redirected to more far-sighted, to more productive investment, as farming and agriculture of quality such as the conversion or rehabilitation of housing facilities in operation for energy saving, such as reusing or in some cases, the demolition of disused buildings, as the safety of an area like ours , plagued by landslides, earthquakes, groundwater pollution, and a hundred other problems that threaten all of us and the welfare of our society.
We need to ensure that incentives should be directed to public investment of this kind, not the senseless proliferation of the "brick", rather than on new invasions of the territories under the guise of a green economy and wrongly understood pretext.
And we know that this is possible tomorrow ...
We need to create and spread awareness not only of the problems, but of possible solutions, we must do for ourselves and for our children.
The heart of this action must be convinced, morally and legally founded, as the environment, landscape and land management are a key asset on which we all, individually and collectively, not just a passive right to use, but an active right and duty to protect and defend (Constitution Art. 1: "Sovereignty belongs to the people."

Salvatore Settis in "Landscape, Constitution, Cement", ed. Einaudi 2010