WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #170: The sack of Florence and the management of the PNRR (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The controversy relating to the opportunity to include the renovation of the

Franchi stadium in Florence among the objectives of the PNRR opens a controversy
not only at a national level, but also among the associates of that group of
politicians and fixers who has so far managed the "bag of Florence" . Over the
years, the Tuscan city has been and is at the center of a gigantic building and
urban speculation involving politicians and fixers of the most diverse families
and which has distorted the urban layout. ---- This business group began
operating more or less at the beginning of the 1980s, identifying business
opportunities in the management of the expansion of the city in the plain,
proposing to manage the progressively abandoned industrial areas and therefore
the settlement in Novoli of the University and the new Court, the establishment
of the University's scientific area in Sesto, the (irrational and impossible)
expansion of the airport. The main player in the operation was Fiat, which was
thus able to place the Novoli area sold to it on the real estate market for 10
million on condition that it built its own premises and Fondiaria. In 1984 some
private operators, Agip, FIAT and the Fondiaria, owners of land in Novoli and
Castello, have expressed their intention to start real estate transactions in
those areas. In March 1985, the City Council led by the republican Lando Conti,
with Gianni Conti (DC) in charge of town planning, launched a variant of the
master plan for the north-west sector. Three billion of investments and 4 of
million cubic meters the entity of the intervention. To understand the extent of
the investments, it is enough to consider that Agip and Fondiaria are involved in
186 hectares: more than double that of Milano Fiori and more than the Naples
business centre; in Novoli FIAT is investing on the 32 hectares of the old factory.
90 intellectuals sign a manifesto against gigantic speculation, but in vain. In
1987 the Municipality of Florence approved the "preliminary" of the master plan
and in 1988 the Region approved the Variation with some prescriptions including
in the plan the expansion of the Peretola airport squeezed between the nearby
hills and the motorway. It was too much and in March 1989 the Provincial Congress
of the PCI passed a motion against the Variation, presented by the Youth
Federation. The party leaders blocked it by threatening to resign but in June
they were disavowed by the Party Secretary Occhetto and resigned en masse; also
the municipal council. The new junta in 1990 resizes the project that restarts.
Meanwhile, elbowing in the Popular Party and then in the Margherita and after
winning 48.4 million lire in 1994, presented by his uncle Nicola Boboli,
Publitalia agent, Matteo Renzi makes his way, who from 2004 to 2009 became
president of the Province to change his seat in 2009 and become mayor of Florence
until 20014. The business committee that manages the sack of Florence takes on a
defined and stable profile.

Renzi's hands on the city

In 2013, Rignano's power was consolidated with the conquest of the secretariat of
the PS and from that position he can better organize the sack of the city which
will have to provide him with the resources for his political action. Already in
2010 he inaugurated the Leopolda conferences which take place every year in the
autumn period in Florence at the former Leopolda station, and gave life to the
Open Foundation which was born in 2012, with the name of 'Big Bang' then
modified, to support political initiatives such as Matteo Renzi's Leopolda and
Renzi's run in the Democratic Party primaries up to the arrival at Palazzo Chigi
and the campaign for the yes to the constitutional referendum.
The urban transformation plan of the city is launched, which becomes a
construction site with the construction of the tramways, the restructuring of the
quadrilateral largely owned by the Misericordia is intensified, which goes from
Piazza Duomo to Piazza Signoria, bordered on one side by via Calzaiuoli and by
the 'other than via del Proconsolo, which is emptied of the Florentines and
becomes totally available to tourists.
Nor does the speculation stop in the historic center because it involves the
Leopolda area, the former tobacco factory, Costa San Giorgio, the expansion of
the Peretola airport where the management is entrusted to a close associate of
Renzi, Marco Carrai who he "hosts" him in his home in Florence, and who in 2015
becomes the director of the Board of administration of Toscana Aeroporti. Carrai
guarantees relations with the billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian owner of Corporación
América which controls 62.3% and manages over fifty airports worldwide, with a
turnover of over 2 billion dollars and guarantees relations with international
finance which invests in Florence.
Although the picture we have given is necessarily summary but basically similar
to what happens for the lot of other cities - with the only difference of the
actors involved - it is sufficient to understand in which context the investments
of the PNRR are situated, a context in which they intervene many district
committees, thematic committees and political opposition forces with the aim of
contrasting speculation and hydrogeological, environmental and urban planning
instability.

The speculations spread throughout the territory

The neoliberal planning that characterizes Florence has as its objective the
progressive replacement of the inhabitants by the city center. It is achieved by
favoring the change of the social composition of the city, "breaking the
conservatism of individual citizens", attracting temporary citizens, and because
they are dynamic, competitive, and therefore "progressives". Better if they are
citizens who do not invest their long-term expectations on the city, if they are
guest citizens, and therefore not voting and who therefore do not disturb the
city's managers. Neo-liberal urban planning is distinguished by the adoption of
techniques useful for expelling inhabitants towards the suburbs, beyond the
municipal borders, attracting new ones and enhancing the most parasitic of forms
of income: the annuity, i.e. the earnings obtained without pursuing work drugging
the real estate market with offers of smart, attractive, comfortable, super safe,
welcoming urban environments, but sterilized, the same everywhere, but marked by
a convincing brand, at the same time making it inaccessible to the less well-off
to rent decent housing, in central or semi-central urban areas. And social
housing (investment in social housing) which covers the needs of different social
groups is worth nothing, or little .
The offer on the market of increasingly smaller apartments covers a wide range of
demand: from mini-apartments and prestigious pied-à-terre , for medium-high
classes, for luxury tourists, for short-term rentals, for outbuildingsof hotels;
up to the "cheap" houses, but then in effect hovels of low hygienic environmental
quality intended for the underclass, indispensable for the luxury of a tourism
that also lives on exploitation by penalizing labor rights.
In short, spaces that cost a lot, or quite a bit, but are still excellent for
buyers "who have investment goals" at all levels.
A city of this kind does not need public and free meeting places, ERP social
housing (there are more than a thousand closed apartments in Florence that cannot
be attributed to those who have the right to do so), while important pieces of
the city and financialize services to citizens. A city eternally under
construction for major works that jeopardize the urban ecosystem, in a city where
every planning regulation coming from those who have governed it for decades
continues to speak of a future of city grabbing ( or hoarding of the city by
"private individuals" , mega-builders and mega-entrepreneurs often in a position
of monopoly, capitalist colonization, social expulsions).
In these cities, the so-called historical centers - citadels of history, eminent
urban sectors from a patrimonial-monumental point of view - are transformed into
ghettos for wealthy tourists, into shopping centers for oligarchs, into lounges
for emirs, ensuring that the extraction of profit from the "authenticity" of
places, cultural and artistic products places art, fashion, design and culture in
connection with the enhancement of income, as multipliers of real estate values.
The following are placed in this perspective: the transformation of the historic
headquarters of the Academy of Military Health in Costa San Giorgio transformed
into a super-luxury hotel that was planned to be connected with reserved access
and a private and reserved lift to the Boboli Gardens, transformed into an
outbuilding/appurtenance annexed to the 'Hotel, a project fortunately thwarted,
also thanks to the opposition opposed by the Director of the Uffizi Museum who
exercises jurisdiction over these properties but above all to the strong
opposition of citizens' committees.
Another gigantic speculation is that which involves the area contiguous to the
Leopolda, connecting with that on the restructuring of the tobacco factory, where
the investment concerns the construction of luxury properties, student residences
for wealthy users to the detriment of public parks for resident citizens, and
many other examples could be given.

The role of coordinations and committees and the defense of the territory

To fight against this havoc are the committees and coordinations formed in the
city and in the plain of Sesto who aggregate citizens for the defense and
enhancement of the territory, fight for public green areas, ask for the
activation of services, which supervise the anti-fascist estate and solidarity of
the population, through support for education, culture, social solidarity
initiatives, reconstructing the history of struggles and the historical memory of
the territory and promoting solidarity and integration, and carrying out
activities, spread throughout the territory, which take various forms, they see
ARCI circles, dell'Ampi converge in political activity, antagonistic forces,
social associations that strive to operate without antagonisms.
This is what has been done in the San Jacopino-via Maragliano district, in "le
Piagge", in Castello, and with different intensity and results almost everywhere
throughout the city. Study, rigorous analysis of the speculative plans, disputes
on the merits as in the case of the complaint of the pollution of the aquifers,
dispute of the speculative settlements as in the Leopolda area, dismantling of an
existing railway in the same area which could easily be transformed into a light
rail , proposals for a better use of the territory, common good, schooling
initiatives for adults and migrants, exhibitions on the history of the territory
that reconstruct memory, collective lunches and playful initiatives that produce
inclusion and integration are the tools with which we try to contrast ,

The renovation of the Stadium

In this context, the controversy over the renovation of the "Franchi" stadium
arises, a monumental project that requires not only the renovation of the old
stadium, but also the construction of a shopping center in the area, the
construction of parking spaces for 5,000 cars on the surrounding hills, the
construction of an additional tramway and much more. On this investment, the
support group for the city's building owners and sacks split and Renzi, who was
its founder, beneficiary and creator, distanced himself from Nardella and his
entourage, supporting the opportunity to finance the PNRR with the construction
of social housing in Piagge and Rocca Tebalda: who can blame him? It remains to
explain what caused the rift within the group of speculators who are carrying out
the sack of the city.
One hypothesis is that the Renzian management which operated by aiming mainly at
private capital to carry out the speculative investments facilitated in every way
by politics has been replaced by a less opaque and more legalistic management
which favors the use of public investments proposing to juggle the management of
tenders for profit rather than using a private finance which has provided large
profits, above all to Renzi (who has already paid for his luxurious house at the
first foothills of the Arno bank hills) but which has required cover and
complicity today difficult to guarantee . And then there is the political envy of
the Rignanese for having been dumped by many of the members of the Florentine salons.

Enrico Paganini

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/04/18/il-sacco-di-firenze-e-la-gestione-del-pnrr/
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