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

1.1 The Features of An Implicit Housing Policy for the Mezzogiorno from the 1960s onwards

The widespread phenomenon of illegal building in post-war southern Italy can be better understood when seen in the context of the acute housing shortage that still afflicted the regions of the south in the early 1970s. Overcrowding, inadequate hygiene and sanitation were common both in old towns and rural settings. Startlingly, however, by the end of the 1980s, the ratio between inhabitants and rooms built had caught up with, and even overtaken, those in the most developed parts of northern Italy (Bellicini, 1990; Coppo and Cremaschi, 1994). From the 1950s onwards, new lifestyles and consumption models—chief among them changed housing demands—were already gaining momentum and in Italy’s Mezzogiorno, more than in other parts of the country, aspirations for change were interwoven with poverty, backwardness, and deep-rooted customs and attitudes (Crainz, 1996). Among them was the almost totemic significance assigned to the ‘family home’, an issue that was well known throughout the peninsula and that assumed particular significance in the Mezzogiorno precisely because of enduring poverty and hardships related to inadequate housing. This need for a ‘family home’ might well have been met by a secondary residence by the sea, to which part of the family would repair during the long hot summer, diverting to it a large slice of available resources, both money and manpower (Nocifora, 1987).

These demand factors generated a hypertrophy in the informal building sector, which was more marked in the Mezzogiorno than elsewhere in Italy for two main reasons. First, many rural councils were technically unable to put in place adequate Regulatory Plans (in compliance with the National Urban Planning Law No. 1150 of 1942) to manage this building boom. As a result, they effectively colluded in the construction of illegal housing. Secondly, the abusivismo edilizio was even implicitly encouraged by the local administrators themselves, because self-building not only engaged the energies of the unemployed and unskilled population, but also provided a political sop to protesters claiming their right to housing. Crucially, it consolidated the power base of local institutional elites, who exercised patronage over their clients through the tactical use of building concessions (Fera and Ginatempo, 1985; Cremaschi, 1990; Nocifora 1994).

In this sense, southern abusivismo can be seen as a more sinister manifestation of the tacit laissez faire housing policy that operated throughout Italy and which produced a marked discrepancy between the rhetoric of urban planners of the period and what was actually happening on the ground (Secchi, 1984). Mobilitazione individualistica (individualistic mobilisation) was the term coined by the sociologist Alessandro Pizzorno (1974) to describe an implicit social contract in force all over Italy, whereby an inoperative state played on disadvantage to prompt individual families into action. Italians were encouraged to work out their own solutions (i.e. to housing problems) by taking advantage of incentives and the paradoxically opportune lack of controls on the part of local authorities. On the other hand, there was no alternative: more effective planning measures did not work and public-sector housing schemes offered too little, too late—and, in the south, even less and later than in the rest of the country (Ferracuti and Marcelloni, 1982; Bellicini, 1989). ¹

Within this framework, the role of southern families in illegal building is only partially comprehensible applying the popular categories of abusivismo di necessità (need) and abusivismo di speculazione (speculation) that dominated (and still partially encumber) the public debate, just as it is only partially explained by what Banfield (1958) terms ‘amorality’. Rather, it can be far better understood as part of a more complex nexus that involves embedded social inequalities, changing aspirations and political opportunism, as noted by Pizzorno (1966).

1.2 The Building Amnesty and its Impact at Territorial and Administrative Level

Only within this specific context can the national policy known as condono edilizio (building amnesty) be fully understood. This form of ‘pardon’ was designed to confer retrospective approval and to upgrade the welter of unauthorised urban construction that went on from the 1960s. ²

Normal building procedure provides for oneri di urbanizzazione (building tax) to be paid to the local council when an approved project gets underway. Illegal builders evaded this tax, but under the condono they could obtain the amnesty by paying it retrospectively with an additional surcharge. When the government granted an amnesty, it was legally required for the local authority to implement Piani di Recupero (urban rehabilitation projects) designed to harmonise illegal quarters with the rest of the city by supplying the missing infrastructure and services.

Although the amnesty was introduced in 1985 as an extraordinary measure, its periodic re-introduction in 1994 and 2003 ³ prompted further waves of unlawful building by encouraging the belief (well-founded as it turned out) that further measures would follow to grant legal status to unauthorised buildings constructed in the intervening years. The condono thus paved the way for more deregulated behaviours, which even led to structured initiatives on the part of criminal organisations that were quick to recognise in the shady area of abusivismo an opportunity to launder money from illegal activities (Donolo, 2001; De Leo, 2011).

This overuse of the condono made it increasingly difficult for local authorities to meet their financial commitment to upgrading former unauthorised areas, because the financial return from the amnesty has always been modest compared with the actual cost involved in rehabilitation and infrastructure provision. Moreover, guidelines contained in the amnesty law proved too burdensome for the majority of local authorities to redesign former illegal settlements. This was particularly the case in a multitude of minor centres, where the technical staff were unqualified to tackle the complexity of the interventions. In practice, urban rehabilitation in large rural and coastal areas of the Mezzogiorno was initially implemented only very locally and amid difficulties and delays (Cannarozzo, 1985; Fontana, 1988).

Hence, when in 2003 Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his finance minister announced a third condono, mayors and regional presidents the length of Italy opposed the amnesty measures. With few exceptions, the regions resisted widespread application of the amnesty by enacting regional laws designed to give more local autonomy in managing illegal building within their territories. In the majority of cases, these laws limited the application of the amnesty and the ensuing financial burden it would have imposed on local municipalities (Musolino, 2005).

This generated a legal battle between the state and the regions, which lasted until 2006. It ended with a final verdict by the Constitutional Court which established that the issue of illegal building also fell within the jurisdiction of the regions and not only of the state. ⁴ This finding marked a turning point, putting an end to what was an unsustainable situation in which the state promoted the amnesty for its own advantage, leaving local governments to foot the bill. However, it also redesigned the road map which would guide future urban policy-making.

1.3. Illegal Settlements and Related Issues: The Current State of Play

This political climate, in which the government first tolerated widespread illegal building and then set up an unsustainable and, it might be argued, inefficient recovery policy, had far-reaching consequences for the territory—dramatically so in the Mezzogiorno. Most illegal settlements have been legalised, thanks to periodic application of the amnesty, and hence no longer receive political attention—attention, it must be said, that was generously granted in the past by parliamentary candidates seeking re-election. Nonetheless, the issue of rehabilitation projects is still serious at the local level: upgrading urban plans proved in many cases to be inadequate, both in terms of procedures and spatial solutions; projects make slow progress and are at times halted, leaving dwellings only partially provided with basic infrastructure and with little public space and personal services.

In the meantime the città abusiva had undergone a constant transformation, raising a plurality of social and environmental issues. Certain sites have evolved towards an urban condition and today throw into relief the scarcity of basic facilities. This is the case of the unauthorised quarters adjacent to consolidated urban centres (medium-sized cities of inland Sicily being a typical example), or located within major urban regions well provided with infrastructure (Naples and Palermo are prime examples). Other settlements are drifting into decay and processes such as filtering and repopulation by socially disadvantaged classes. This is what is happening in the coastal settlements that have lost their initial qualities and are being progressively abandoned by the original owners (the case of Castelvolturno, in Campania, is well known). In still other cases, the location of illegally built settlements in areas at risk from landslide and flooding has led to the tragic events that have marked the history of the Mezzogiorno over the past 15 years. ⁵

As things stand today, it can be stated that there is a widening gap between the complexity of the problems raised by the città abusiva and the public policies in place to deal with them. This discrepancy does not stem only from an error of judgement by those who formulated the amnesty policy: it also traces its origins back to the cultural and political debate that began in Italy after the end of the Second World War and which will be analysed in closer detail in the following paragraphs.

2.1 The Case of Agrigento

Agrigento is a medium-sized city on the southern coast of Sicily, whose historical core was originally built by the Ancient Greeks. It is located on the top of a hill and is surrounded by a periphery that underwent rapid expansion during the 1950s and the 1960s, achieving a population of some 50,000 in 1965. In July 1966, a large portion of the hill subsided, resulting in the collapse of many buildings and leaving over 7000 people homeless. The commission of enquiry set up to establish the causes of the disaster concluded that the landslide was triggered by the collapse of several buildings that had been illegally constructed on the slopes around the urban centre, where the land was prone to subsidence (Commissione d’Indagine sulla situazione urbanistico-edilizia di Agrigento, 1966). Speculation by building firms and widespread corruption among local officials had created a tacit agreement whereby planning and landscape regulations were systematically circumvented. As a result, high-rise housing had been sited on unsuitable land, further weakened by unchecked development (see Gucciardo, 1999, for a detailed reconstruction of events).

This man-made disaster dominated the media at the time and the picture showing the Valley of the Temples overshadowed by Agrigento’s illegal “grattacieli” (skyscrapers) was to become an icon of how opulent property development could disfigure both the urban and natural landscape (Figure 1); of

how democracy, local autonomy, the ideals of freedom and honesty have collapsed … under the load of the most incredible speculations (Pesce, 1966; quoted in Cranz, 2003, p. 70).

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Figure 1.

“Building chaos in Agrigento: detail of landslide below Via Dante”.

“The case of Agrigento” featured the figure of the speculatore edilizio (property speculator), against whom—according to chronicles of Italian urban planning from the 1950s on—the urban planners of the time were fighting in the interest of the public good (see Cederna, 1956; Insolera, 1962; De Lucia, 1989, among others). These chronicles contain accounts by militant urban planners, often directly involved in the events described, who observed the phenomenon of abusivismo from a law-abiding perspective, stigmatising as illegality and speculation all forms of unauthorised construction. Some of them, from the late 1960s on, made explicit reference to Agrigento (for example, Salzano, 1998). It can now be assumed that this was a rather simplified and self-legitimising perspective: first, not all unplanned settlements replicated the speculative processes involved in Agrigento; secondly, by adopting a strictly legalistic position, the planners of the time exempted themselves from critically questioning the efficacy of their conceptual models and the practical applicability of their plans, which in concrete terms fell well below their expectations (Bocquet and De Pieri, 2005; for a more comprehensive overview, see also Secchi, 1984; and Piccinato, 2010).

2.2 “Freedom to Build”

During the same period, multitudes of Peruvian peasants flocked from the countryside to Lima, building suburbs of modest, makeshift houses that were painstakingly—and pointlessly—followed by the more rational residential quarters promoted by public authorities to accommodate the flows of new urban population. In 1963, a report by John Turner on these forms of urban development laments the inadequacy of government housing provision. He criticises the official approach to informal settlements—considered a malignant growth to be extirpated (see George, 1967)—and challenges the standardised, centralised solutions in line with governmental positions held at the time. Turner goes on to reassess the informal barriadas, acknowledging their creative potential in offering their inhabitants a chance to achieve self-determination in their domestic arrangements (Turner, 1963).

The image of a small house built of bricks and clay (Figure 2), gradually growing as savings are put aside, became a symbol of the ‘need’ for unplanned building—the individual’s creative response to the basic need for somewhere to live. And as known, Turner advocated this model as a serious operational proposal (Turner and Fichter, 1972).

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Figure 2.

“Little by little, the squatters build the first floor of their permanent house. A reinforced concrete roof capable of supporting a second storey must be built in one major effort, however. After years of savings, or, as in this case, (Pampa de Comas, 1963), with a short-term credit from a government agency, the owner-builder hires a neighbouring contractor to do the work”.

In Italy, the debate generated by Turner’s work inspired an entire generation of planners and architects who hailed the self-build philosophy as the spirited expression of an alternative to rigid, modern-movement architecture. This possibly superficial appreciation disregarded the criticism that Turner’s work had already attracted (Burgess, 1977). In the dialectic, ‘spontaneous’ self-build projects became identified with illegal construction and the confusion was to dog the debate for years. What was once naïve and vulgar was now creative and anti-academic: architects were attracted by the ‘spontaneous creativity’ (Orlandoni, 1977) and the ‘unconscious eclecticism’ (Portoghesi, 1982, pp 131–132) of self-build houses, while the devastating effects that illegal building was having on the landscape and local communities of the Mezzogiorno were conveniently overlooked.

2.3 ‘Control and Rehabilitation’ Policies versus ‘Assisted’ Self-build Projects

Polarising the debate in a partial and, at times, ideological way meant that the architectural and planning discourse in certain quarters acquired a self-regarding and reductive approach to what was an extremely complex phenomenon. The result was a tacit agreement not to tackle the complex social issues involved in illegal building. The effects of evading the real issues can be best appreciated if we look at the direct results of the operative approaches that developed during the 1970s and 1980s.

The first approach tends to confirm the role of planning law in controlling illegal building, defining the urban planner as defender of the public interest. Two sets of legislation should be mentioned here: the amendments to National Planning Law, which introduce more stringent building regulations and harsher penalties for those found guilty of unauthorised building; ⁶ and the planning measures adopted by Rome City Council in the late 1970s to rehabilitate the unplanned developments which developed around the capital after the War. ⁷ On the one hand, the law introduced heavier fines for illegal builders, granted mayors wider powers for the demolition of their buildings, and allowed municipalities to acquire and reassign for public use, free of charge, the land formerly occupied in this way. On the other hand, measures adopted in Rome—which later were to inspire guidelines for national policy on the condono edilizio—included suburban illegal settlements in the Variante del Piano Regolatore (an amendment to the Regulatory plan), creating a special zoning scheme aimed at delimiting boundaries ‘once and for all’, and implementing a rational infrastructure project that would provide sanitation, road networks and public spaces. A social priority rehousing plan was also implemented as a public-sector alternative to the illegal development, which had been triggered by the housing shortage (Leone, 1981).

Although well-intentioned, both schemes achieved modest results. On the one hand, in the case of the national planning law amendments, tighter constraints proved useless since they failed to address the planning system’s underlying problems: merely applying a rigid planning law at local level, threatening offenders with heavier sanctions, proved quite ineffective against a phenomenon that in the meantime had turned into a structured alternative to the legal housing market (Clementi, 1981). In addition, constraints provided under the law did not always take account of local realities, nor of the ability of mayors to act (Fontana, 1988). On the other hand, the schemes in Rome did not achieve the expected outcomes mainly due to the divergence between the designer’s plans and the conditions on the ground: the former were often too rigid and abstract, quite unable to respond to the complexity of the latter. This created major problems at the implementation stage and the net result was that rehabilitation came to a halt, while further illegal development in the Roman suburbs went on unabated (Pallottini, 1989).

The second approach, which advocated the self-build philosophy as the creative response to a specific need, inspired a school of design which envisaged active links between the construction industry and informal building practices. Advocates of this approach espoused the theory of ‘supports’ (Habraken, 1972), which sub-divided building processes into two technological sub-systems; one industrial (relating to primary structural elements) and the other self-build (relating to complementary elements). Attempting to transfer the system of benefits which supported the abusivo building sector to practices authorised under the Regulatory Plans, they proposed simplified components and ‘open’ construction sequences (see, among others, Aiello, 1982; Pavia, 1982). Management schemes sought to involve the community in the project and the inhabitant-builder was placed at the centre of the process, the architect taking on the role of ‘facilitator’ ( C.Ab.Au., 1980). Conversely, scant attention was paid to the impact these buildings would have on the urban context and landscape, just as it was also to the general applicability of the proposed solutions.

With hindsight, it is clear that such schemes largely failed to leave the drawing board, although they did create isolated prototypes and a handful of experimental dwellings. However, these were eclipsed by the more familiar ‘abusive’ practices based on traditional (if not to say backward) technologies, which demonstrated indifference to the theories of design professionals (see in this respect the description of the informal building sector proposed by Fera and Ginatempo, 1985).

3.1 Serrazzeta, Sarno: Responsibility and Rootedness

Antonio, Carmine and Giuseppe live in Sarno, a municipality of some 30 000 inhabitants in the Province of Salerno, in Campania Region (Figure 3). Their district, Serrazeta-Fontanelle, is a suburban area typical of many small and medium-sized villages in Italy’s South. In 2002, they set up a committee to improve the quality of their urban environment by direct action, which comprised promoting a community spirit through festivals in public spaces, renovating traditional farmsteads and constructing playgrounds for children. They were reacting to the realisation that the local territory had been destabilised by illegal building which, from the 1970s on, has transformed an exceptionally fertile plain into a residential suburb with no infrastructure and facilities. Significantly, over 6000 applications for a building amnesty have been made to the Sarno municipal council since 1985 and many of the applicants come from Serrazeta-Fontanelle which, in the absence of any Regulatory Plan, has formed an unofficial urban overspill area. The city still relies on an outmoded Programma di Fabbricazione (building programme) dated 1972, which has never been converted into an organic Regulatory Plan. Many of the largest ancient farmsteads, once the backbone of local agriculture, have been squeezed out by sprawling apartment houses that have occupied all the available land. The irrigation ditches have been used as sewers, polluting what few crops remained.

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Figure 3.

The Serrazzeta district at Sarno, Salerno. Left: aerial photograph; right: historic masseria in a state of decay, next to a more recent and abandoned apartment building, 2006 © Claudio Sabatino.

Today, Serrazeta has no quality of life: there is nowhere for people to gather and for the younger generation—including Antonio’s children, Carmine and Giuseppe—this absence of public space is becoming a reason to move out and look for somewhere else to live. Many of the apartments built by parents for their children on the upper floors of the houses today stand empty, highlighting the crisis in the concept of family and the housing need to which the città abusiva responded.

What is happening in Serrazeta is the visible symptom of a widespread process repeated throughout Italy’s south, where the model based on adult children living in a part of the parental home is disappearing (for a wider frame on the transformation of the traditional family, see Saraceno and Naldini, 2001). Meanwhile, the poor-quality settlements—based on the replication of individual buildings and lacking facilities and public space—increasingly fail to meet the demands on the part of the younger generation for a quality urban environment. This change has created a growing perception of failure that at times, as happened in Serrazeta, goes hand-in-hand with a conscious decision by the populace to take responsibility for the space in which they live. Independently organised initiatives, local consortiums and residents’ committees are growing in response to the chronic lack of a collective dimension. Recent developments such as these express an unprecedented concern for public space and give a glimpse, behind the individualistic exploitation of the territory, of an emerging sense of social capital that signals an opportunity for change.

3.2 Ardea: Individual Responses to the Lack of Infrastructure

Claudia lives with her two children and her partner in Ardea, a small municipality of 40,000 inhabitants in central-southern Lazio whose quarters sprawl into the Pontina plain (Figure 4). They live in a former holiday home which, like thousands of other houses in the area, was built without permission on farmland during the 1970s. The original owners of Claudia’s house had decided to sell it with the onset of old age. It was no longer used for family holidays, as the adjacent countryside had degenerated over the years: too many houses had been built pell-mell, with a chronic lack of basic infrastructure and facilities.

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Figure 4.

Urbanised countryside at Ardea, Latina. Left: aerial photograph; right: houses and parking in rural area, 2006. © Alessandro Lanzetta.

Today, people on low incomes, such as young couples and immigrant workers, are beginning to settle permanently, like Claudia, into seasonal properties that were originally built without planning permission, but have now been legalised under the amnesties. Such properties cost less than houses in nearby towns because they are without the basic services that are guaranteed in planned urban centres. However, for many new residents, the lack of facilities acts as a stimulus for creating workable alternatives: wells to water the vegetable plot and natural springs for drinking water (there is no connection to the water network); phytoremediation plants for domestic greywater (there are no sewers); photovoltaic panels and electric cookers (there is no gas).

Claudia’s story highlights an alternative scenario in which creative off-grid solutions are gradually implemented by individuals in response to the absence of traditional public infrastructure. It is worth noting that, decades after the houses were illegally built, low-density settlements do not evolve into higher-density ones; neither do they revert to conventional infrastructure solutions. Rather, many houses achieve a higher standard of comfort and performance due to a series of technological upgrades undertaken by individuals on their own homes (or by a consortium formed to work on a limited number of neighbouring properties).

This improvement process is gaining momentum thanks to the generation of new owners who moved in when the original residents sold up and left. These new residents, through personal choice and a philosophy quite different from that of the people who built the houses in the 1970s, enjoy a relationship with local government which manages to avoid tension due to the lack of infrastructure provision. Increasingly, they make up for shortcomings in the rehabilitation programme by providing their own solutions, at times showing an unprecedented sensitivity to ecological issues.

3.3 Marina di Acate: Abandon and Decay

Enzo is separated and lives alone in his former seaside house at Marina di Acate, a small coastal resort in south-east Sicily between Gela and Ragusa, almost hidden among the greenhouses of a large intensive-farming complex (Figure 5). Here, in the 1970s, a few hundred summer homes were built without planning permission by families from the urban centres a few kilometres inland (Caltagirone, Acate). Most of the buildings were legalised under the amnesties—even if a significant proportion were not, since they are less than 150 metres from the sea and paradoxically survive a demolition order—and the Regulatory Plan of 2001 provides upgrading measures for the settlement. Nevertheless, the situation at Marina has been worsening for years. The promised services and infrastructure have still not materialised and, in the absence of a drainage system, sewage from private houses pollute the sea and the water table. To cap it all, unchecked development along the dunes has triggered desertification in surrounding farmland.

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Figure 5.

Coastal settlement at Marina di Acate, Ragusa. Left: aerial photograph; right: vegetation and underutilised summerhouses, 2006. © Stefano Graziani.

As a result, the landscape has degenerated to such an extent that several houses are no longer used by their owners during the summer season, but have been let at low rents to the illegal immigrants who work as farm labourers in the adjacent agricultural units. Maintenance work on buildings is rarely, if ever, carried out and many houses are drifting towards underutilisation and abandonment.

As with Marina di Acate, an increasing number of illegal settlements throughout southern Italy, mainly in coastal resorts, are showing serious signs of neglect barely decades after being built (similar conditions can be found along route 106 in Calabria, or along route 7 Domitiana in Campania). The poorer the building quality, the sooner the fabric ages and the faster the decline in the natural environment makes them increasingly unsuitable for tourism and seasonal use. In such a state of decay, they are unable to attract the investment needed for maintenance and, as a result, property values plummet. Given the lack of policies to correct such trends, many resorts go into irreversible decline. What ensues is an ineluctable process of repopulation on the part of marginalised groups and this adds in many cases a social emergency to what is already a serious environmental issue.

4.1 Joint Initiatives

In the first scenario, the città abusiva is assimilated to the planned, existing city. Its collective assets are upgraded and it regenerates its own resources, both material and social, achieving a level of self-awareness and inhabitability that finally turn it into a ‘city’. This scenario is based on the premise that today, in many unauthorised settlements, the residents perceive the limits of individual and family action; thus a gradual awareness develops of the need to devote greater attention to common assets (following a mechanism similar to that described by Hirschmann, 1982). What is needed is a policy that addresses the individual’s tendency to feel exempt from responsibility for collective resources and promotes conditions in which these potential communities are encouraged to feel responsible within the confines of their property, co-operating in upgrading their terrain.

A different approach is then required to rehabilitation. Citizens should no longer have to wait passively for services to be supplied by a remote authority—nor should they have to demand such services after the payment of the amnesty surcharge—but should feel involved as aware agents. In those settlements where residents already show an embryonic sense of cohesion and awareness, local authorities might invite the potential communities to a strategic dialogue on urban-planning issues and on how best to use collective and public resources allocated for the upgrade programme.

In this respect, the experience of Consorzi di AutoRecupero (self-improvement schemes), launched in 1995 by the Rome Municipality, ⁸ can be considered an example of good practice. What happens is that local government invites residents from unauthorised suburban developments to form small consortiums (from 1995, 140 consortiums have formed, with some 40 000 members, that involve around 120 000 residents). ⁹ With the technical assistance from council experts, these consortiums jointly manage amnesty revenues allocated for upgrading their properties. These revenues do not go into the council coffers, but are paid direct to the consortium; in this way, funds are earmarked for priority schemes decided in residents’ assemblies and managed directly, while the Municipality deals with the quality control of the projects and their compliance with the norms. The complexity of such a broad participatory process is not without its chiaroscuro effects: there are owners participating in the consortium mainly to safeguard their private interests and consortiums managed by local potentates in a way that alienates people from genuine participation in the choices (Cellamare, 2010). However, the concrete results in the construction of infrastructure make this system an effective approach and it should be tested in other contexts of the Mezzogiorno. This should be done, not only because it reduces bureaucratic lead times, but also because it creates greater satisfaction with the works undertaken and a sense of self-determination and social cohesion within the local communities (Cellamare and Perin, 2010). ¹⁰

4.2 Scattered Self-improvement Schemes

In the second scenario, the città abusiva exploits the lack of infrastructure provision to launch an improvement scheme focused on its non-built sectors. Spontaneous, individual actions impact on the networks and the quality of the open spaces and have a positive effect on the overall ecological performance of the settlements.

This scenario might prove particularly effective where buildings alternate with open spaces which already host individual and creative schemes in response to the lack of traditional infrastructure (sanitation, energy, etc.). Such spontaneous actions could be further enhanced by strategic policy and incentives, thus outperforming the rehabilitation plans proposed under the condono, where the illegal settlement was seen as an amorphous site into which ready-made infrastructure based on abstract standards could be fitted as an afterthought. Two appreciable shifts emerge in this perspective.

First, there is a innovation in the infrastructure paradigm. The rigid, hierarchical, public-sector scheme envisaged by the Piani di Recupero gives way to a more flexible and decentralised model, where the public-sector infrastructure is only one among several agents (both technical and natural) serving the illegal settlements. Such a model can be implemented locally both at individual and consortium level (for a theoretical framework, see Branzi, 2006).

Secondly, the approach to the natural landscape also changes. It is no more a matter of trying to restore a lost environment invaded by unauthorised housing, as provided (in theory) under the Piani di Recupero. Rather, it is a question of seeing the natural landscape itself as an infrastructure that can be re-activated, where necessary, both compensating for the absence of traditional networks with its biological processes and improving the open spaces with vegetation (see, among others, Desvigne, 2009; Bélanger, 2009).

The plan developed in 2001 by Paola Viganò for the Province of Lecce, in southern Puglia, can be cited as an example of good practice in this regard. ¹¹ Here, the spread of small urban centres in the Salento plain, and the presence of numerous unplanned coastal settlements entirely devoid of infrastructure, has inspired innovative measures. Rather than relying entirely on public intervention, the plan makes use of incentives and new regulations to foster the spread of decentralised facilities owned by individuals and consortiums. These include plants for producing energy from renewable sources, treating organic domestic waste, recycling water and purifying sewage. They can be implemented flexibly to take account of the specific morphology of the terrain and the seasonal variations in requirement. Quite apart from providing workable technical solutions, they also promote collaborative practices (Viganò, 2001).

4.3 Removal

The third and final scenario sees the città abusiva fading into the landscape. Processes of disuse and abandonment are assisted and illegal settlements are removed, building by building, by applying a system of techniques and incentives that makes it possible to free land occupied by decaying structures. Nature gradually reasserts itself.

This scenario relies on the fact that today, throughout the Mezzogiorno, many illegal settlements show irreversible processes of underuse and abandonment, and pose radical questions about their sustainable future. Beyond the environmental emergency and the risk factors they create, these phenomena can be seen as an opportunity to inspire new policies, which can take advantage of the decay to move the expired buildings from the most degraded areas towards more consolidated centres, within a more coherent framework of territorial recomposition. It is a long-term strategy that attempts to predict changing tastes in future generations—the children and grandchildren of those responsible for unauthorised building—that might be persuaded to consider valuable alternatives rather than maintaining inherited, decaying buildings in run-down areas.

In place of the lenient and, at times, unsustainable redevelopment principles enshrined in the Piani di Recupero, we must accept the fact that some portions of the città abusiva are bound to fall into disrepair, and equip ourselves accordingly (Lynch, 1990). Policies are thus required to transfer the development rights of buildings regularised through amnesties from the shoddier developments, whose market value is falling, towards more dynamic areas with future development prospects. In the first, building fading can be planned and hastened, both recycling abandoned structures—once suitably treated—as raw materials in new infrastructure or landscaping projects on the same sites, and managing their spontaneous and gradual return to the landscape over an extended period of time—where this is judged a fitting end for a city that has lost its raison d’etre (Corner, 2001; Berger, 2006). In the latter case, the arrival of new built matter might promote regulated work of the kind needed to integrate new amenities and reinforce the urban fabric, as in the first scenario depicted earlier.

In this respect, it is imperative for the regions of the Mezzogiorno to import planning measures that have been successfully applied in other urban-shrinkage contexts (see, among others, Oswalt, 2006; Schilling and Logan, 2008), tailoring them to the distinctive features of the città abusiva, as other Italian regions have recently done, in accordance with their territorial specificities. ¹²