Cadaveri Eccellenti

Master Degree Thesis Academic year 2018/2019 Student: Marco Iembo Mentor: Matteo Umberto Poli Politecnico di Milano AUIC School Course of study in Architecture

Index

Introduction Reseach method Cadaveri Eccellenti Walking in the South

The Citizens Triscina (Castelvetrano) Dwelling in the illegality Necessity and pleasure

The Local Authorities Laws and forms Illegal housing as a landscape

The Houses Alcamo Marina “Alcamo Marina does not exist” Lentini’s summer house Illegal housing features

Nature and Concrete Building speculation Post-demolition

119

Possibilities and Scenarios Building a collective awareness A new social contract Re-use and entrepreneurship Alternative infrastructures Community Land Trust New ecologies Demolition as a tool

139

Captions

156

Bibliography

162

Research Method

overcoming the legal/illegal dichotomy.

The interest in the issue of illegal housing is focused on the analysis of the phenomenon as a social fact, or â&#x20AC;&#x153;historical documentâ&#x20AC;? of a process that brings into play practices, the territory and actors in a given historical period. The dichotomy legality/illegality, usually used as the main line of interpretation of abusiveness, will not be our guideline as a simplification of a process that in its historical evolution puts into crisis the dichotomy itself. This research, on the other hand, aims to highlight the contradiction and complexity of the phenomenon itself, its multiple causes and solutions, through a multidisciplinary perspective capable of historicizing the process by focusing on the Sicilian coasts.

Cadaveri Eccellenti

The surrealist game and the individual gesture.

Cadaveri Eccellenti, cadvre exquis, is a collective game experimented by the Surrealist movement and realized for the first time in Paris in 1925. The operation is very simple: each participant makes an individual gesture without knowing either the actions of the previous participants or the intentions of the subsequent ones. The gesture can be done in pencil on paper, with a graphic gesture that is hidden from the previous participant and the next one, on a sheet folded in several folds or composing a sentence respecting the noun-adjective-verb-noun-adjective sequence. It is evident how the individual act, although free and expression of the creativity of the single participants, respects the basic rules: the format of the sheet or the grammatical sequence. Similarly, the unauthorized building process investigated in this research appears as a collective construction consisting of individual gestures of privatization of public space that do not respect the official rules of urban planning by redesigning the territorial structure of the Sicilian coasts.

Route map: Walking along the western Sicily. CALATAFIMI SEGESTA

ALCAMO MARINA

ALCAMO

TRAPPETO PIOPPO

PALERMO

VALLO

del

MAZARA

TRE FONTANE

TRISCINA SELINUNTE

CASTELVETRANO

SALEMI

Walking in the South

The social and environmental aspects of “Mezzogiorno”.

“From now on, we must walk, thinking on foot, look at the houses slowly, find out when their crowding becomes vulgar, wishing to see the sea behind them”. This is how Franco Cassano’s book “Pensiero Meridiano” begins, and it is from the practice of walking as a cognitive action that the book binds us to itself. Walking, predisposing the eye to a penetrating gaze and the ear to a punctual listening; to carry out a nomadic research aimed at getting to know by going through, that is tended to savor the complex system of relationships and the inevitable contradictions that animate places and which links individuals to the territory and the environment. Walking as a way to intensify our perception and leave a trace of our crossing on our bodies, thus depositing vivid testimonies instead of “cold” information. Walking as exploratory and creative space practice at the same time, which predisposes the mind and body to discover and unexpected. Looking down, returning to observe the earth and the cement, savoring the slowness and fatigue of our steps, “reducing” the horizon of our goals to what can be achieved step by step, breath by breath. Walking as a eulogy of the incompleteness of the gaze, because not being able to see completely, from above, narrow the visual field to what

the body can cross and see at that moment, aware of its limits but also of the imaginative potential that our five senses possess when they are simultaneously brought into play. Walking in Sicily, outside and inside the abusive territories, to redesign the shape of those places that otherwise would appear as homogeneous, shapeless, devoid of life and evolutionary dynamics. Of a unified vision, of how a thought should be made, there is no trace. Through the pages of “Pensiero Meridiano” there are many different visual angles with which the author goes to draw a style. It is the same style that will connote this story, its steps, thoughts, slow glances facing South: to that Mediterranean basin that witnessed the birth of European civilization and today we see relegated to the outskirts of that same West that once helped to prosper. The intent of the italian sociologist is to consider the “imaginary specificities” of the South, affirming its great autonomy: “it was the foundation of a part of our spirituality, of divine transits, of marches and fasts, of temptations and fears “and not a lost peripheral part of the empire where nothing happens. It is only by affirming the ancient dignity of the SouthW and therefo-

re the Mediterranean that one can fight the “sale by auction”, which modernity has supported, of the double face of the south: a tourist paradise and a mafia nightmare. And if at first glance these two realities may seem antithetical to us, they are actually complementary because they represent the legal and illegal side of the marginal insertion of the south in tertiary development. The autonomy of the south and its thought has to do with the physical-geographical conformation of the Mediterranean. Unique place, the Mediterranean contains within it a strong complicity between land and sea. For the peoples who live in these areas, the sea is a constant presence as the awareness that beyond it there is another land, another people, another culture; from the sea in fact “come the ungrateful guests, the drama, the escape, the deception and the dreams of illegal immigrants ... It hides better, ridicules the coast guards, swallows the desperate without mercy and without guilt”. “The South is not only a land of incivility” but it is also a place of dense relationships, in which despite the dysfunction of the public res, individuals are able to create solidarity, characterized by a high

sharing of values and social norms; meridian communities that feed on the richness of the multiplicity of their Mediterranean soul “. According to this perspective, abusivism could be seen as a practice of resistance and rebellion against systems of rules imposed from above through, for example, forms of “community” self-construction not liquidable as mere occurrences of the “privatism” described above. However, if the land we inhabit represents our rooting, our safe house, the sea instead our freedom and desire for emancipation; the place “that we rediscover when we feel suffocated because we are surprised in a land surrounded by lands”. In this framework, the Mediterranean emerges as the place for the measure and the possibility of this emancipatory adventure: however, there is always the possibility of resuming the path of returning home, at its root. It is precisely the value of the return that Cassano emphasizes in the epic of Ulysses, of which the Mediterranean is theater: the greatness of the Homeric hero lies in his choice of nostos, of the decision to find Ithaca; “Only the consciousness of an origin, of a root can give meaning to the desire for freedom”.

The intellectual paths of Camus and Pasolini that Cassano highlights in the essay, although different, have in common the meridian style: both champions of freedom, have demystified public order, have always stood against the current moral. But when this emancipatory instance was elected to institutional practice, by making a massacre of every normative reference here “We observe the externalities of what has become our freedom. It is made of continuous gestures of appropriation and exclusion of others from our private possession: our childhoods are made of public places, beaches and fields in which you could feel good without locking yourself in small enclosures “ It is from this speech that we understand how the landscape has been transformed drastically with that frantic rush to modernization: while freedom and happiness will continue to identify with that “exclusive care of our private well-being, domestic interior”, the public will always remain “ a residual entity, something with which the waste of our private appropriations is discharged with less scruple “. The villas on the coasts, small and large concrete rapes that would imprison the sea, all abusive before any law, exhibit the obscenity of the property. Even before an economic

good, even before being for us the sea is for itself, it is another form of life that, just two steps away from us, flickers around a crumb falling into the water. Our return, like that of Ulysses, volunteer and full of “virtues and knowledge” can bring freedom to our root only with “small doses of courage, respect for the beauty of respect from which we can not exclude others”. When finally “we will be reunited, healed by the obsessive search for separation and distinction. Then beauty will come back to visit us “.

Walking in the Sicilian hinterland in the direction of Salemi.

1.a

1.b

The agricultural territory, Alcamo and Monte Bonifato.

Quiet morning in late August near Toretta Granitola.

The Citizens

Necessity and pleasure

The history of “building abuse” in Sicily.

The motives that lie behind the act of building abuse are different and reflect the socio-economic landscape of the periods in which it was perpetrated. One can not speak of a single “type” of abuse, rather of different types that can be split and however sometimes overlapped, because in the life cycle of an abusive product can change the needs from generation to generation, and what was born for pure personal enjoyment can turn into necessity and vice versa. What remains evident is how in Sicily and more generally in the South, illegally constructing is a socially shared act that sinks into the cultural roots of these areas. In fact, the latifondiary system played an important role in the subsequent anthropization of space, above all thanks to the “jus populandi” which allowed the peasants to build on lands belonging to barons who had the intention to populate a field of their belonging. Therefore, based on a few town planning rules, the settlers independently built their dwellings on the land granted by the feudal lord, using local materials and using simple distribution schemes suited to their basic needs. In this way the many peasants of the twentieth century inherited a house built decades ago, a house that many times had to leave to pursuit work in the mines and factories far from Sicily. Emigration plays a fundamental role in

the phenomenon of abusiveness: in the fifties and sixties, many centers in Sicily were emptied because of the departure of the family heads, and then repopulated a decade later through the construction of thousands of houses, built in short periods with the remittances of those who had left earlier. The speed with which these houses were built is the cause of an uncontrollable will to capitalize their savings with “bricks”, a real estate and lasting, preventing these savings from being squandered. Hence the incompatibility with the law, with its timing, too long compared to the “volatile” savings of the emigrants. The times of formation of the planning instruments are too long, and the practices for granting the concession too complicated, this marks the road to the unauthorized one that underlines the incapacity of the state to supply in an efficient way to the increasing demand for housing; it is what is called abusivism of necessity. However, as the years go by, the needs and abusiveness of necessity also change, giving way to a different type of abuse resulting from changed socio-economic conditions in the wake of the “economic miracle”. Lifestyles change, free time takes on new value within the new model of economic

development in the country and the second home market begins to spread in the 70’s, which is a transversal good within the reach of a wide range of the population that wants to own a home in areas of valuable landscape. This happens in a period in which 90% of Italian municipalities had no plans, thus encouraging illegal construction in an atmosphere of absolute inaction from the institutions. The land was purchased, divided and resold through notary deeds by speculators very often colluded with organized crime. It is in this scenario that the first law on building amnesty is enacted: the law n ° 47 of 1985, devised by the Craxi government and which will subsequently be followed by two other amnesty laws: the n ° 724 of 1994 and the n ° 326 of 2003 , issued during the first and the second Berlusconi government, which helped to fuel expectations and the spread of illegality. Coastal abusiveness in Sicily has been a phenomenon that has sustained the local economy for decades, fueling an irregular labor market and the sale and production of building materials by companies that mostly arose after 1968, the date of the distracted earthquake that hits the Valle del Belice. The

post-earthquake reconstruction was an economic flywheel for Sicily, which saw the birth of new concrete production plants and new skilled workers in the construction of reinforced concrete buildings; which caused a proliferation of illegal housing. Most of these are small non-competitive construction companies on the market due to the low level of technology and unskilled labor. All this happens under the eyes of the state, which recognizes illegality and at the same time tolerates it due to a lack of investment in public housing, to the electoral consensus and to the revenue that a policy of sanatoria induces. In summary the incessant brick run of the 70s and 80s comes from meeting three the needs of the emigrants to build at low cost and in a short time their second home, the presence of a wide range of small construction companies born above all after the earthquake and an administrative laissez faire both at local and central level that normalizes illegality by transforming it into a widespread landscape. In Sicily, illegal housing has some common characteristics regardless of the geographical area. Usually these are second homes, summer residences where the summer months are spent. Once the se-

cond houses had a dual function of recreation and work, evident in the rural houses of the ‘70s, halfway between villas in farmhouses and clearly oversized compared to the number of users. They were organized on different levels and usually the upper floors were for the children, thus projecting the current family composition into the future. The protection of the family nucleus is the main reason behind the important investment that sometimes sees the use of all the family savings accumulated over time for the purpose of a temporary residence, fully lived a few months a year. A strong attachment to the land and to the family is therefore evident, values that are essential for the generations that have migrated to the north, traumatized by the process of “nuclearization of the family” (La città inesistente. Seconda abitazione e abusivismo edilizio in Sicilia, Enzo Nocifora) he overwhelmed them in the years following the second post-war period. However, the dream of rooting the family unit in one place has mostly vanished, and subsequent generations have decided to disassociate themselves from those degraded places without services and quality; the upper floors have remained incomplete and the exposed renforcing bars have become the emblem

of the failure of this great collective project. The desires and aspirations of the new generations coincide less and less with those who preceded them and this negatively affects the quality of these places that are desolate and deprived of a generational change. Behind the â&#x20AC;&#x153;adamic gestureâ&#x20AC;? of the abuse dictated by necessity, love for their land and for the family, hides all the problems caused by the ingenuity of individuals who, in a general view of cultural backwardness, have been indirectly entrusted with from the State to the construction of the southern territory. Immature communities that have left an indelible mark on the territory, architects and victims at the same time, under the eyes of an increasingly absent state.

The urban discontinuity of the coast of the Mazarese.

2.a

2.b

Built density in Sicily.

Triscina ( Castelvetrano)

The emblem of sicilian illegal settlements.

At the process of reconstruction of the urban centers that followed the catastrophic Belice earthquake of 1968, there was an uncontrolled urbanization that spoiled several kilometers of coastline with disorganized ranks of houses and holiday homes. Triscina, Tre Fontane and Marinella di Selinunte are the result of this assault on the coastal landscape; in fact they represent an agglomeration building that extends in a more or less continuous way along twenty kilometers along the stretch of coast between Mazara del Vallo and Sciacca. The size of these settlements is one of the most consistent in all of Sicily, particularly true for Triscina, which due to its extension and very low infrastructure has become the emblem of Sicilian coastal abusivism. The type of settlement consists of houses isolated on plots of original agricultural derivation and subsequently split up to encourage speculation and construction. These nucleus born as â&#x20AC;&#x153;ventâ&#x20AC;? on the sea of some centers located in the hinterland, today constitute independent entities given the number of settlements (mainly residential) that have taken possession of the coastal plain and which are considerable consistence especially in the stretch from Capo Lilibeo to the south of Marsala and Capo San

Marco, near Sciacca. The phenomenon of coastal abusivism intensified in the years following the Belice earthquake of 1968, when many castelvetranesi families displaced in this territory, sheltered from unsafe buildings and eventual collapses. Over time these temporary shelters became permanent and this was favored by the pleasant climate, a large amount of areas and better economic conditions favored by the economic boom of the ‘70s. The small warehouses or makeshift shelters were transformed into villas of various types also thanks to the birth of new skilled workers in reinforced concrete constructions, formed precisely in the years following the earthquake. The dunes began to be covered with houses, or dug to extract the sand necessary for the production of cement; the vegetation was destroyed and the old parceled agricultural lots, bought at the price of agricultural land by businessmen and sold by them at higher prices. All this happened in the second half of the nineteenth century in a few decades leading to what is visible today, a “seasonal” city that has 600 inhabitants stable during the year, which become dozens of knits in the summer months.

Before the abuse, in the early 60s, the territory on which today stands Triscina was an expanse of dunes covered by Mediterranean vegetation. Three traces ran along the area parallel to the coast line and were called “first, second and third schools”. The agricultural fields were orthogonal to these streets and had a narrow and long shape, optimal for the rows of vineyards that reached the beach. Another feature of the place is the presence of ground water present a few meters from the surface that firstly favored agriculture and subsequently became an optimal condition for the construction of wells at the base of illegal settlements. Even today the sewerage and sewage system is absent and based on individual systems of biological and non-biological pits. The primary urbanization works are almost absent at Triscina, apart from the few paved roads, there are no public spaces, lighting, parking lots, energy, etc. There are few seasonal businesses (restaurants, bars, bathing establishments, bakeries, butchers, etc.) immersed in fabric of second houses scattered many of them in architectural abandonment. Finally, despite the expansion of the urban core is quite extensive, its density is not as high; there are many empty spaces between the

houses, abandoned places, used as parking or simply left to what remains of nature. In Triscina the houses built without authorization are 5500; in the strip 150 m from the sea, where there is the constraint of absolute inedificabilitĂ , there are about 500 houses of which 150 before the entry into force of the regional law n.78 of 1976, which establishes the obligation to request the building permit prior construction. Of the remaining 350 illegal houses, 130 were acquired by the municipality, having been hit by demolition ordinance not complied by the owners. The acquisition aims to steal the property from the owner and then demolish it, with a charge for demolition costs. The law does not provide for the recovery of such buildings, so in this area there are no urbanization works nor a project vision after demolition. The theme of demolitions is a hot topic; the demolition of 85 houses has been planned recently and the local press affirms that the demolition contract has already been completed, we will have to wait for the next months to understand how the story will evolve, whether it will be a further political propaganda or a real position on the subject. It must be said that in any case the hypothesis of an urban regenera-

tion project for Triscina is not considered, one that could consider demolitions as a design tool able to give compensation to this place and not as a mere â&#x20AC;&#x153;exampleâ&#x20AC;? of good policy.

Triscina settlement scheme: plan 1:20000; territorial section 1:5000

3.a

3.b

The urban voids that characterize the fabric of Triscina.

4.a,b

Public access to the beach of Triscina.

Main square in Triscina.

5.b

Dwelling in the illegality

Interview with Filippo and Barbara

Filippo and Barbara are second generation “abusers”. They bought a small house by the sea in Triscina a few years ago, built a long time ago and condoned before the sale. They take care of tourism because they manage bungalows and a hotel in Triscina and Selinunte. When did you come to live in Triscina? B - We bought a house 15 years ago, and we only checked before buying that everything was in order. We are just over 150 m from the coast. But in any case, even the house next door is regular, since they were either condoned or built before ‘76. F - Many have built, almost all I would say, not presenting an executive project, because among other things there has never been a master plan! The problem is legislative. The law is made so that a need of the population is regulated, otherwise civil life would not make sense. Laws are used to regulate a phenomenon, to give it a path. Here the phenomenon was that the need to take a holiday by the sea, as happens a little ‘all over Italy from Lake Como to Lake Garda, wherever there are the abusive and “favor concessions”, now we are “constitutionally so” we talk about

all of Italy. This house is registered in the land registry then? Has the practice for amnesty been presented? F - We must follow an evolutionary thread. First there is the need for people to build their house in a holiday resort, such as Triscina, Lake Como or the Apennines; this is a need that arises as a result of the economic boom, when people start to feel good economically and to perceive the holiday as a need, so as to build the house. All the houses here in Triscina are not works of speculation but they are modest houses. Mine is a 70-square-meter house that could belong to a worker, not millions of euros. If I wanted to sell the house tomorrow I would probably have to sell it off compared to what I paid to renovate it. That of the house is therefore a personal need, people have built for themselves. There are also modest houses of workers or employees etc ... B - They are, among other things, homes built by the owners themselves sometimes over a period of ten years. Today he built a room, then with time he added another ... of building speculation there is little.

F - We are talking about a need dictated by changing times. A need that has not been addressed by urban planning tools that were never implemented. No regulatory plan or willingness to create development in a reasoned way. For example it would have been great if they had created a promenade as it exists in many places. Because here we have a wonderful sea, if they had created a promenade 100/200 meters long from the shoreline we would have had â&#x20AC;&#x153;the most beautiful beach in the worldâ&#x20AC;? right? Once here there were agricultural fields, correct? F- Here once there was sand, the land had no value. It was all an immense field of reeds, a spectacle of nature. There are some corners where these rods have survived and are wonderful. Imagine with a boat if instead of seeing this opprobrium of houses you had seen a huge hill covered with green reeds, a spectacle of nature. Unfortunately, it has built itself disfiguring the territory. Peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s need has not been regulated. Giving responsibility, the people who built it have the responsibility of not having presented a project, but where would they have presented the project if there is no master plan?

But if there is no project, how did the deed of the house took place? F - There have been repeated amnesties! which subsequently created the conditions for regulating houses. Triscina is the point of reference if we talk about illegalism, because despite the 150 m constraint, people have claimed to have built the house when this constraint did not exist. Therefore, after the various amnesties, many of these houses were condoned, passing “presumed” checks. There was the consent of the institutions, because they felt guilty for not having created any instrument. Now after 40 years all the bureaucrats have become “virgins” expiated from any responsibility. It seems that all of a sudden everyone has realized that here was born a country, how is it that nobody has noticed it before? The fact is that there was no desire to notice it. The responsibility lies with people, and today, after forty years, they are trying to punish those people, who many times are not even the first builders but nephews or relatives who are considered abusive and are likely to see their houses demolished, despite sometimes they are the only property possessed. Because there are also people who live here because they do not have where to live.

These are situations in which the houses are incurable, where the tenants have also tried to pay the oblation but without success. It’s as if your father gave you a house and tomorrow they tell you: “we’ll demolish your house”. Even for the connections actually it would take a land registry ... F - One wonders why there is electricity or water? These are the contradictions of Italy. B - Abusive houses also pay the IMU and TARI! F - Abusive houses are taxed, because the municipality once accepted the application for amnesty, requires to pay IMU, TARI and all other taxes ... Where do you live during the rest of the year? F - In the summer we live here, because we have bungalows, a residence and a hotel, so we live here for convenience. And then in winter as my wife works in Mazara and when it starts to rain and you’re not on the porch anymore the house is too small, we go to Santa Ninfa where we have the house. B - While from the outside you only see the defects, we live here and

we also know the merits. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a marvel, just a different guide would be enough! I refer to the municipality. Rather than focusing on abusivism, one should act. Abusivism is part of the past, we must act in the present without recriminating what has been. I analyze what I have in front of me and start from this point! I believe it is the only viable solution. The past can not be changed, the only way is to analyze what exists today and understand how to improve it. Do people still build illegaly today? F - No more, today there is a need for building permits. Obviously for regulation it is not possible to build within 150 m from the shoreline. That phase of lasseiz faire is over because people are aware that the house could be demolished. What are your hopes for this place? What would you like to be realized in the future? F - The first thing that I would very much want citizens to become aware of the territory, of what they have. To become aware of the wealth of its territory and to have respect for it. Citizens and not politicians! Before demanding from the administration. This must be at the base, hence the future can be built from here. If you are aware

you can face anything, you can also change your mind (others) but you have to be the first to know what you want. If the citizens had been aware of the beauty of the territory, they probably would not have built so wildly. B - There was no conception. We speak 40/50 years ago. Tourism still did not exist. F - I have an example: Italy is the country with the greatest cultural heritage. Even in the most isolated place you will find important finds. For many years we have not realized this potential and have even destroyed 20% of our assets if not more. Still remaining the first for heritage. Here in Selinunte they have made exceptional findings, but the problem is that we have too many monuments and we are unable to manage them. Having too much we do not understand the value of what we have. B - One day we went for a walk near the archaeological park of Selinunte, and we saw the execution of excavations with a scraper! and we saw an altar disfigured with the signs of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;teethâ&#x20AC;? of the scraper. An altar! What a mess! F - In the area between Triscina

and Selinunte there is a road that connects the temples of Selinunte with the quarries of Cusa. It is the road used to transport the boulders to build temples. Along this road there were several camps where the slaves slept. Therefore, on the way from Cusa to Selinunte, there may be several findings that could be re-emerged. But perhaps seen the treatment is better if they remain underground! F - The acropolis (Selinunte) has been massacred by tombaroli for many years. Workers who stole artifacts to sell them on the black market. So many findings of Selinunte are now scattered around the world. For years between 1970 and 1980, the evening raided specimens, and you could see torches from afar. B - It has been a territory for a long time abandoned; then suddenly the will to punish all citizens was born. Abandoned from all points of view, from illegal houses to empty tombs. They came to dump the garbage, there were illegal sand quarries! to derive building material. Abusivism is only part of the whole. So the Belice earthquake has encouraged the construction of illegal houses here in Triscina

F - I say this because some families who had a small house or a plot of land built because they came here after the drama. Instead of living in the summer barracks they preferred to build a room near the sea. The Partanesi, Castelvetranesi, the inhabitants of Santa Ninfa, came here to escape from the tent camps, and behaved like everyone else! they conformed to the general situation. Once upon a time there was a lack of rules and vision of the future on the part of people. There was no problem of how the territory could have been in the future. The sea is wonderful, clear, we have nothing to envy to the Adriatic coast. The territory can offer!

Barbara and Filippo

6.a

Barbara e Filippoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house in Triscina.

The Local Authorities

Laws and Forms

Legislation on the protection of the territory in Italy and in Sicily.

The link between construction abuse and legislation is inseparable. The construction of the illegal landscape took place in the shadow of the laws and in the light of a need of the citizens that the State has ignored more or less consciously. Reconstructing the legislative process concerning illecit construction helps to understand the evolution of the phenomenon of illegalism to the succession of building amnesties, and at the same time, dissolves the contradictions today, due to a national policy that condemns abusers in an absolute way, forgetting the mistakes committed in the past. A first technical distinction concerns the terms condono and sanatoria, many times overlapping but having two different meanings. The amnesties are acts that regularize the administrative wait for illegal buildings and are required when the buildings, built without a building permit, comply with the rules of the plan. The amnesties instead regulate both the administrative act and the criminal offense due to the construction in place where there is an alley of unedifiability. In both cases the author of the crime is required to pay an oblation, which cancels the abuse through its monetization, without any physical intervention.

This mechanism has allowed the semi - regularization of millions of abusive buildings throughout Italy, also allowing their entry into the real estate market. The desire to remedy the wrongdoing was also favored by municipal planning instruments, such as the “Zone B” pursuant to Legislative Decree 1444/1968, which recognizes the nature of a “consolidated zone” as part of an abusive city that includes buildings that are not sanitized. The panorama that precedes the first amnesty law sees a political and theoretical debate dictated on the one hand by the environmental catastrophes due to the transgression of the plan, like the 1966 landslide in Agrigento; on the other, the enhancement of informal living and its aspects of spontaneity, necessity and organization skills, praised by Turner and Fitcher in their text “Freedom of Building”. In March 1985, the approval of the law n. 47 of 1985 wanted by the Craxi government with Giovanni Prandini to the Ministry of Public Works; law that allowed to condone the buildings realized by the 1st of October 1983. The requests for amnesty were more than four million throughout Italy and ranged from small abuses, to the raising of buildings, the construction of entire buildings and

residential or productive buildings (widespread in the center-south) and aggression to coastal areas and places of tourist attraction (widespread in the south). The decree denies the amnesty to works built in areas of absolute inedability, for historical, artistic, landscape and environmental reasons. Moreover, the law of law 47/1985 confers to the mayors greater powers of repression, through demolition, confiscation, nullity of the deeds of sale and penal sanctions, especially for the cases of subdivision. Introduces the Plan Variant as an operational tool (article 14), that is an urban plan implemented by the municipalities and realized with the urbanization charges paid by the abusers in exchange for the amnesty. “The variants must: a) achieve adequate primary and secondary urbanization; b) respect the historical, artistic, archaeological, landscape, environmental and hydrogeological interests; c) realizing a rational territorial and urban insertion of the settlement “(Cf. L.47 / 1985, art 30, faculties and obligations of the municipalities). The law also provides for the relocation of individuals post-demolition: the demolition of illegal buildings and the amount of land binding for the subsequent construction of standard areas respectively correspond to forecasts

of relocation of the inhabitants in batches building / housing already made within the Zone Plans as per Law 1967/1962 and the assignment in ownership of equivalent land on the surface forming part of the available assets of the individual municipalities, for the exercise of agricultural activity. (Cf. L.47 / 1985, art.30, Faculty and Obligations of Municipalities). However, despite the urban planning tools introduced, the urban renewal of the territory is bankrupt. The technical offices are cluttered with unfavorable sanatoriums and the revenues generated by the limited oblations and in any case not sufficient for the revision of the urban planning instruments and for the realization of the primary urbanization works. The state thus favors an “implicit” policy of the house that demands the resolution of the housing problem to the individual citizen who works illegally by stimulating a whole construction market made of evasion, illegal work and non-compliance with the law. If the policy based on the proceeds of the remains in the background in the law 47/1985, the subsequent amnesties of 1994 and 2003 will exploit this mechanism to fill the coffers of the state. The second law on building amne-

sty entitled: law 724 “measures of rationalization of public finance” was issued on December 23rd 1994 by the first Berlusconi government with Roberto Radice minister of public works. As is evident from the title, the law is born as an accessory to the financial law of the following year, and aims to raise financial resources to heal the state accounts by condoning the irregular constructions completed by December 31, 1993. Also the following building amnesty, ie the law n ° 269 of 2003, which reopens the terms of amnesty extending them to the works created within March of 2003, is born as a measure linked to financial motivations. The decree is in fact included in Decree Law No. 326 “Urgent provisions to promote the development and correction of the progress of public accounts”. The law 269/2003 of the second Berlusconi government introduces a mafia attention to the urban redevelopment of the nucleuses affected by the illegal and to the containment of its diffusion through the unsinkable demolitions and the National Observatory of Building Busism, never come into operation. Compared to the previous laws 269/2003 redefines in a more inclusive way the conditions of admissibility to the amnesty of

illegal construction, admitting also “artefacts made on areas owned by the state or part of the state property, excluding the maritime state, lake and river, as well as land bearing the rights of civic use. As can be seen from the nomenclature and descriptions, the amnesties are configured as a financial strategy to raise the finances of the state, overshadowing the preservation of the Italian landscape. The effect generated is catastrophic because if it is true that the number of new houses abusive since ‘85 is constantly decreasing, also due to the economic crisis, the peaks of this process occur at the turn of the three amnesties, thanks to the frenetic rush to brick of all those families intent on building a house within the terms of the announced amnesty. In this scenario, the Regions, as already underlined, are unable to manage the unsustainable situation and begin to autonomously prepare strategic and political lines that are better suited to the different territorial contexts. In Sicily, the Regional Law No. 78 of June 12, 1976 regulates coastal urbanization, already present before its emanation and drastically increased in the years to follow, since at first the decree was valid

only through the issuing of a plan regulator, an instrument rarely used in the Sicilian context. The law aims at the development of tourism in Sicily and precisely provides indications regarding the construction near the coastal strip, specifically article 15 establishments that in “all homogeneous zones with the exception of zones A and B” the constructions must hold a distance of 150 m from the shoreline, since within this range only the presence of facilities for the use of the sea is permitted, as well as the renovation of existing buildings without altering the volumes already built; within 500 m from the shoreline the maximum territorial density index is 0.75 mc / sq m; between 500 m and 1000 m the index rises to 1.50 mc / sq m; moreover, the buildings must maintain a distance of 200 m from the limit of the woods, forest bands and the boundaries of the archaeological parks. These and other provisions should have regulated the building development in Sicily, but as we can see, with the exception of short stretches, the Sicilian coastal coast is a continuum of generic construction carried out abusively with strong landscape consequences and on the ecosystem.

Coastal Area subject to building constraits.W

Illegal housing as landscape

Seminar in Castrelvetrano held by the local authorities

Meeting with the special commissioner Salvatore Caccamo, the municipal official with responsibility for urban planning Claudio Vitale and Professor Giuseppe Trombino of the University of Palermo. The municipality of Castelvetrano was dissolved for mafia in 2017 and for 18 months the town will be administered by a commission. The illegal activity is a hot topic and a clear position emerges on the subject of the father of the new junta, which has issued, in the name of legality, numerous demolition orders not yet performed. During the meeting the will and contradictions of this policy emerge and above all the inability to observe the problem with a profound gaze emerges. Claudio Vitale: Speaking of abusiveness I dusted off the national anti-corruption plan of the ANAC 2016. The only institutional literature on the subject. Here is a clear picture that frames the mechanisms of corruption in the government of the territory: building abusive is one of these mechanisms. So saying I do not want to say that where there is abusive there is always corruption, but a relationship emerges between the two phenomena, excluding the residual parts that take the name

of unauthorized need (although some of our colleagues say that the illegal tout court is abusive and just, without any artificial distinction). The typical institutions that we urban planners have set in motion by lending ourselves to politics, that is, from those conventional mechanisms, stipulated with all good intentions, with the intention of immediately solving the problem, were born of the mechanisms of corruption. It is town planning that has been almost blamed for facilitating these mechanisms. I am a professional urban planner and I can say that it is not like that! Because good urban planning also exists alongside these mechanisms. I always remember the phrase of my professor Astengo, who said: “Urbanism more than a profession is a mission”. If we technicians always remember this phrase, we would certainly do a good job, delivering a better landscape to future generations. In the “Gaia Scienza” of Nietzsche, when he was a guest in Genoa, he distinguished the cities of the north from those of the south. “The cities of northern Europe are built where the law imposes itself and the pleasure of legality is universally widespread, as well as obedience to the rule and the law, one guesses in all this that interior dispose to equality.” strong.

there is a moral tension, a civic tension to look at the landscape. These things we technicians should never forget, because illegal as a practice gains us an immense crowd of technicians, the state, the local government, which actually loses us because it has to provide for the works of urbanization with its coffers in territories born in a disordered way that have sometimes irreversibly scarred the landscape. With the demolition of the houses of those who have broken the rules we solve the problem in half. The problem must be solved in a global way with the redevelopment of the territory that must be immediately following a drastic operation of scalpels. So we can experiment with forms of compensation and equalization that can come with incentive reward mechanisms to re-qualify other parts of the territory by returning the entire coastal part of this land as a public good. The illegal construction would require a solution because it is really difficult to govern the process of order in context where there is disorder and disfigurement of the territory, it is a grueling battle. And it is a battle that must be unitary and not relegated to individual realities. We have a great duty, we must learn that civic beauty exists, which must be defended by each of us in our

roles and in our offices. I leave the word to Doctor Caccamo. Salvatore Caccamo: The municipality of Castelvetrano has been dissolved due to mafia infiltration, and so I administer it together with other colleagues. The abusivismo as it is present in the Sicilian territory, the daily chronicles say that also beyond the strait is present. And the excessive overbuilding has also caused victims, since it is built in areas with absolute constraints of inedificabilitĂ , with the risk of hydrogeological instability. As highlighted by the architect Vitale, it is a question of respecting rules and regulations. An institutional body has the precise duty to enforce the rules. We are trying to bring everything back into the field of legality. Where illegal building is considered an illegal act it must be prosecuted. It is clear that the other social needs that arise along the way must also be met. However, the concept of legality must be taken into account. We mentioned the village of Drag which I will not dwell on because the problem of illegal immigration concerns the national area, so it seems superfluous to speak only of Triscina, when it happens the same on the Calabrian or Apulian coast. What has been done so far here in Castelvetrano

can be counted among the exemplary practices of the region, since the common beyond having found the necessary funds for the demolitions and restoration of the state of the places. It becomes a good practice all the administrative procedure that has taken place along this path, or the establishment within the municipality of a working group dedicated to the topic, each with its own tasks (monitoring, archive, identification, etc.). It is an example for the other municipal administrations for the possibility of the local body not only to quickly identify the perpetrator of the abuse but the implementation of the sanctions provided by law. It is a fairly laborious and complex activity that leads to a result that regardless of the final objective, that is to return to the territory its landscape and artistic and architectural beauties. If we refer to the Sicilian coast, which has various riches that strongly contrast with reinforced concrete. As I remember the day I arrived in Castelvetrano, there was a social need, that is, several families with fixed children who could not enjoy the beaches. The unauthorized need is an account but we must also take into account the other side of the coin, the violated rights but above all the return to the territory of all those beauties

that have been violated, which are not aspects in the background. The house is an important theme, but where housing is not necessary but a luxury we are on another field. Finally, in the general sense of the municipality of Castelvetrano that is seen in negative terms compared to the issue of illegalism, in other respects it is a cutting-edge municipality, absolutely innovative and absolutely up to the norms and rules and their respect. Consider these aspects too ... Trombino: I will talk about abusivism seen as a territorial phenomenon, which affects what are the characteristics of a territory and that marks it in an evidently negative, since it is an illegal phenomenon, which we can not however simply define as such, because it is a phenomenon that in a certain historical period he had a diffusion out of the ordinary. Out of the ordinary that usually has a regularity. There was a period in Sicily where the irregular construction has largely outclassed the regular one. It is a phenomenon that dates back to the 60s, in its first acute manifestations and which has an economic basis. The fact is that Sicily comes out of the war in a disastrous condition, which has become such as a result of the war

demolitions and that it was already a critical condition before the war. Suffice it to say that the index of housing crowding, or the ratio between the number of inhabitants and occupied rooms, in the census of 1961 carried the value of 2.3, meaning that in a two-room dwelling five people lived. There were situations in rural countries where this value reached 3.5 - 3.7 in Palma (AG) municipality of the sociologist Danilo Dolci, great â&#x20AC;&#x153;fatherâ&#x20AC;? of the planners for his battles. He brought out this painful reality of those years, especially in Palma and Licata, where he concentrated. Another inhabitant of the compartment was the donkey, which was an economic source for the time, so imagine the hygienic conditions in which you lived. It happens that the Marshall Plan begins to give its results and in Sicily comes wellness in the form of work abroad but in other Italian and European companies. Emigration begins and the emigrantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; remittances begin to return because these people have never thought about leaving Sicily, the exodus was only for work reasons. Their idea was to return as soon as possible to their land, and this happened. The economic recovery in Sicily occurred in this way, because the economic boom it has directly hit the north, through industrialization,

while in Sicily it spreads as a result of widespread economic prosperity. In Sicily the only industry that has been set up is the construction industry. In what years, I was a young researcher, and I began to study these situations through the available data, those of the ISTAT, then through censuses and inspections in the various sites. The ISTAT data between ‘51 and ‘61 show a doubling of the existing building heritage in Sicily, which means that in ten years in Sicily more houses have been built than in all previous centuries. One million rooms were present in the Sicilian territory in 51, and two million in 1961. An unprecedented building boom that will reoccur in the following decade until it is almost completely exhausted in our days. What we in the university tried to do was understand the reasons. The reason why this large building stock built in a very short period of time was built irregularly. The figure that has come out is that of this heritage of about one million rooms, about 64% were built irregularly. The method we used was the overlapping of the elementary cartography then available (1: 25000) overlapping the regulatory plans; where you saw a neighborhood developed in those years and there was no confirmation

in the master plan was certainly abusive. By making this verification for all the Sicilian municipalities we have come to 64% of illegal immigration in Sicily. The main question from which we started is: Why does a population choose the path of illegality rather than that of legality? The answers can be many. I generalize because the answers are endless; however, the summary data has its strength, because that 64% of irregular construction tells us something. We began to look for the causes and since we are urban planners, we began to question the nexus of this form of irregular construction and urban planning, because this process of building growth in Sicily should have followed the guidelines of urban plans. Plans that then, as now, followed the general plan of 1942, an instrument not yet abandoned! The law of ‘42 provided for the Manufacturing Plans, tools for planning the building development, designed ad hoc for the post-war period, to guide these building phenomena; so it was not because in the years of strong construction activity, building planning did not exist in Sicily. No municipality in Sicily had a town plan; Palermo, the capital of Sicily will have it in ‘62, while other municipalities in the ‘70s and’ 80s, others still do not

have it today and use inadequate tools. There is a relationship between the phenomenon of abusiveness and the phenomenon of planning in Sicily. It’s a correlation! this does not mean that one is the cause of the other. What did this phenomenon consist of? What can be said beyond the percentage? 64% concerned more the hinterland than the coast. Today when we think of a particularly violent phenomenon of abusiveness we generally think of coastal abusiveness, which is an important component of Sicilian abusiveness, but it is not a majority in those years. At the time building on the coast meant building on the dedicated area according to the green agricultural plan. Until 1967 it could be built without requiring any building permit, so until ‘68 it was built in a disordered way on the coast without breaking the rules, if not when the subdivisions were made. Here we need to make an analysis on the term “lottizzazioni”: the main fault of illegal is certainly politics, administrations, technicians who have earned us but if the phenomenon has existed it is because sales acts have been committed by notaries who should reality guaranteeing legality. Until 1985, notaries were not sanctioned for the phenomena

of splitting the land, before it was never allowed but not even prohibited. If the 1942 law is consulted, the activity of dividing the land for building purposes is forbidden. In areas outside the built-up areas, however, it could still be built but with very low indices, which in 68 will be redefined with the limit of 0.03. Therefore, the deeds of sale drawn up by notaries were the bases for carrying out any type of abusive building activity, and even if not explicitly sanctioned there was the awareness of being contributing to the conditions for the commission of the offense. The phenomenon of abusiveness has been so vast as to determine the various amnesties discussed. Beyond the data itself, the amnesty disadvantages those who have followed the rule and this is not very commendable. The amnesty has had a huge importance in the history of the Sicilian territory, since a large amount of territories built outside the rules have been made to fall, in the following years, in a speech of legality. Certainly much more easily in the suburbs than in the coastal strip, because these have a separate history and are very vulnerable territories, both in terms of landscape and hydrogeological, which see the sharpening of problems where intense

atmospheric phenomena occur. Coastal abusivism is still a problem, not solved and little addressed by urban planning. In the case of urban centers, however, the Sicilian region has, through its own law, favored a return to normal conditions, but 50 years have passed. In 1985, the Sicily region, in conjunction with the law on national amnesty, issued a law that has had a good application, inserting a mechanism that has allowed us to begin to tackle the problem of abusiveness in peri-urban areas. What are the territorial outcomes of unauthorized? When I say that in 10 years a million rooms have been built, it means that only the rooms have been built, the roads, the sewers, the aqueducts, public places of the urban space have not been built; a city has not been built! But only a million rooms are thrown into the territory according to particular logics that generally arose from the splitting of land. We did a lot of research, comparing the cadastre of the 60s and what came later, and we noticed a direct transposition between the cadastral parcel of the 60s and the construction of the following years until the post-season years. The subdivision, I repeat, is the main cause of abusivism, because without it it could not be built illegally in the forms in which it

was built. So it happened in those years is that these neighborhoods were built for the building speculation of a few but built by many, who went to engage the “home”, which in Sicily has a historical tradition, since many Sicilian towns of the foundation of the seventeenth-seventeenth century they were born from nothing in the latifundium when in Sicily dominated the Spanish crown that released to the nobles what was called “licentia popolandi”, the right to form a city. Today we have in Sicily about 60% of Sicilian municipalities born in this way, with very simple land splitting projects, and since we remember the Greek domination is the strongest, the hippodamea jersey was found, which can be found in all the ancient cities and in all the inhabited Sicilian towns from the sixteenth century onwards. The abusiveness has taken over those archaic models that were based on the double-spine block, that is isolated cut out on two streets with double-plug houses with a central wall and houses on both sides. So on the sides of this wall of thorn were cut out the “home” that were lots of 100 to 200 square meters in which housing was made for a family, this is the Sicilian illegal. The houses were built with the savings of the emigrants and subsequently

thanks to economic development (due to the growth of buildings), but all that concerned the streets, including those for access to housing and all other infrastructure were not there. In 1985 the Sicilian region invents in the 37 the so-called Urban Recovery Plans, generally considered bankruptcy instruments, which consist of plans that had to include the abusive contexts in the context of a correct urban planning and this was possible because at the time there was it was still the â&#x20AC;&#x153;physicalâ&#x20AC;? space to act because the streets in the 80s were still natural. The idea was that the region would have financed the essential works, roads, sewers, aqueducts, etc ... and the rest would have made the abusers through the payment of the oblations that would have entered the coffers of the municipalities that should have done all the rest. It was a pact of solidarity between regions and municipalities that unfortunately for various reasons did not work. The question is: what solution to adopt today? Many things built in the past by emigrants for them and their children have remained with the incomplete upper floors. When these lodgings were built the children were still children and subsequently the model of life has changed and

the children have renounced living in the suburban urban areas by moving their homes in the countryside and in the agricultural territory, according to a logic of housing settlement quite different from that initial. The problem is what to do with these unused housing? These are phenomena to which we can hardly give a solution, since it is always a private patrimony. It is a phenomenon that urban planning can not answer on its own as it has to do with the behavior of populations in the territory. What to do then? The situations are very diversified: the simplest ones are those that concern the peripheral areas because in reality, thanks to the interventions carried out, many of these houses have been made to fall into the urban fabric, and today they are no longer abusive. There are a number of problems that mainly concern the coastal strip and sensitive areas, in which the amnesty is impossible because the values that have been violated are so high that the law does not allow them to be remedied. What we need to imagine for these territories is a perspective of rehabilitation that removes to use all those territories and those houses, when demolition is not mandatory, to ensure that they fall within a process of urban development of urban

centers. We have repeatedly urged the regional government to deal with it on a global level, because if we think that every municipality can solve the problem separately we are off track, some virtuous commune could do it but overall it would not solve the problem. It is necessary to imagine a solution that passes for a regional planning that takes charge of connecting all the themes of the municipal planning, taking up again the discourse left in the 60s from the territorial planning. In Sicily, urban planning has never really existed, but if we look at the territorial planning the conditions are “naturally” are much worse. The process of regional planning should be resumed; once there were the provinces that were the appropriate tools according to assessments made a few years ago ... The fact is that we planners of my generation have a huge responsibility because we have failed to make understand the demands of the discipline. The conscience is nevertheless calm because we have tried in spite of our efforts, and in 2005 we went close by presenting a bill called “norms for the government of the territory” that was ready to go to the assembly of the regional assembly for approval . Probably a design that would change the fate of the Sicilian territory;

as you can imagine it is still here to complain about the condition of urbanism in Sicily.

The Houses

Alcamo Marina Alcamesi’s shore.

Alcamo Marina, like many other centers on the Sicilian coast has never been a place linked to tourism, nor a city of foundation; it represents the bathing place of the populations that consider this coast as the bathing area of their city, Alcamo. This applies to both the Alcamesi residents in Sicily, who traditionally move to Alcamo Marina after the party of the SS. Madonna dei Miracoli (end of June); that for those residing elsewhere and looking for a compromise between summer holidays and back home. The illegal settlements on the coast arise from the need to spend the summer in a quiet place, near the “own” sea and in “own” land. It is interesting how these settlements deny all forms of public life that in Italy and especially in the south are an integral part of citizens’ everyday life. The square, the walk on the course, the coffee at the bar, the card game, the market and the rituals linked to some festivities; they cancel for a period of two / three months and leave space for a very restricted public life, which takes place in the inadequate space of a fenced yard.

Although most of the abusive housing developments on the coast are the result of the same social and economic pressures, they present different characters, mainly due to the topography of the places on which they arise. We have not always chosen to build on the plains, sometimes we tried to tame a complex territory, building on the slope of a hill to take advantage of a better view. This is what happened in part to Alcamo Marina, where in addition to having colonized the dunes near the shoreline, it was also built on slopes until you reach the top of the ridges that from Monte Bonifato stretch towards the coast. As in Triscina, in this case too, the agricultural route has been taken up again, made up of narrow, long orthogonal lots, to the trazzas that from Alcamo reach the beach. This process is particularly evident on the flat top of the ridges, less dense than the coastal plain, which instead presents a disorderly building and bounded on the north by the road and the railway. Finally continuing towards the sea we find a curtain of houses that follows the shore and that, together with the highway and the railway, is the third barrier that complicates access to the beach.

Alcamo Marina settlement scheme: planimetry 1:20000; territorial section 1:5000

7.a

7.b

View of Alcamo Marina from the beach.

Alcamo Marina seawalk.

Access to the beach is what remains of the private space.

8.a

Open air church in Alcamo Marina

Late summer afternoon in Alcamo Marina.

The unused railroad as a futher barrier to the beach

Alcamo Marina does not exist Interview with Vittorio Sessi.

Vittorio Sessi spends every summer in seasonal house on the beach of Alcamo Marina, as many Alcamesi do. However Vittorio choose to buy a small house that belonged to an old Tonnara, eventually turned into a residencial block. His decion is a statement against the illegaly that has changed this beautiful cost for worst. V -In 1800 Marsala was the richest city in Europe, there were the Florio, the Whitacker, both for the tuna and marsala trade, etc. They were the first to work the tuna and to market it worked. This was the tonnara of Alcamo marina, including the church of the fishermen, and there was the quay; in fact on the beach there were some pieces of stone that were actually the quay. And these were fishermenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s houses, the remittances where they put the boats inside. Why is the Tonnara? The Tonnara is a system of nets and tops (because at sea the ropes are called peaks) stretched for miles and kilometers, so off the tuna came in, and without realizing they reached what they then went to close: the famous chamber of death, where the slaughter occurred. In 1914 they sold it for a holiday home and built a new tonnara in front of the railway station of Castellamare, where today there is a

nightclub. So there was the tonnara of Alcamo marina, the tonnara the Magazzinazzi, the tonnara of Castellamare, then there was the tonnara of Scopello, which is the last remaining still intact ... it is very beautiful and begins the Zingaro reserve. There was a whole tuna system. In 1914 t were the only buildings, the tonnara, Alcamo marina was not there. There were beautiful beaches and then the well-being began ... the Alcamese is a great worker producing wine, there were producers who sold excellent wine to the Italian army and so on. Because San Vito lo Capo was a village, in some ways, poor and distant found that changed the mentality and all the villages, which were not rich, but were near the sea, practically built the houses ... Alcamo marina has become homes, houses, houses. Therefore Alcamo Marina came after Alcamo, correct? V: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Alcamo marina does not exist! Alcamo marina is a bunch of houses is not a country, it is nothing ... it is the second home of the people of Alcamo who now miss more and rent them to Palermo. The market: everything under the railway line is very valuable. At the beginning this was the only

built part? V - These houses, only the tonnara block with fishermen’s houses. Then over time the houses were transformed, changed ... The building bodies of the past are not those of now. This was processing warehouse, these are all houses, houses, houses ... Thereafter the warehouse was divided? V - It’s all about houses, there’s a courtyard in there. The gardens are gone ... since 1914 how many years have passed? 104! “ How long have you been living here? V - Me since 1990. I paid a lot of money ... they got me crazy. But just to be close to the sea ... You know what’s nice ... at 7 get up take a bath, the water seems warm, take a shower breakfast and go to work ... It is priceless! So you are from Alcamo and not from Alcamo Marina... V - Alcamo marina does not exist ... I live in Alcamo and in summer here. I have been swimming in the sea in winter for seven years ... better than Montalbano! Do you sometimes know what I do? From the sea, then I say I do I take a shower or I go to the spa? And I’m

going to the spa. Two years ago my son, the first son, told me: “Do you know that you let us practice the arteries? Cold water and then hot water makes them dilate and it is good for the arteries. “We should go back to the urban planning ... Alcamo marina is destroyed! It is not a city. From 1914 the first holiday homes begin. In the ‘70s a bus stopped, they were French, and they asked us: “But sorry there was an epidemic? Are all the people of this city dead? “No, here only in July and August we come. Absurd here have been built all these houses for two months, July and August, which then some who are owners who have inherited, now, do not even come, because the houses for July and August have simple fixtures, do not have the characteristics to be lived d ‘winter because when there is the wind and the tramontana is cold! “ Why you have choosen to spend the summer here? V - Because of the sea! I had three children and i wanted to live close to the sea. Have you ever consider building or buying a condoned house? V - No, no! Whoever comes here asks me are there homes that are

sold? Only here it is very dear. “

where they do not have a purifier. “

How extended was the builted area during the ‘90? V - It had already been built. The damage was done in the 70s. “

Do you have a purifier? V - Not even us. But this is not the problem. Twenty years ago, a “sea brush” had been made, a submarine pipeline that carried the sludge offshore, now with the storms no longer exists, from which Castellamare, with the currents, arrives here.

And what is the relationship between you and the post-70s? Among the legal and abusive, let’s say ... V - The rich and powerful, the administrators of the time, built everyone on the beach, and the people on the slopes of the mountains. “

But everyone has IMHOFF pits! V - Some. Almost all of them have black wells. “

Are all these canals that spred into the sea purified? V - If you came from Canalotto, and have you seen one or two? At least two you have seen. The first the big one is the Canalotto and there is the purifier in Alcamo, but if someone later turns on the dive pump and discharges into the river ... it can happen! The others are torrents that collect rainwater. Instead later, at the border of the territory, there is the river San Bartolomeo, which is a short river of a few kilometers, which comes from the confluence of the river Caldo and the river Freddo, and becomes San Bartolomeo. “

Is thi relevant for the pollution of the sea? V - No. For some years now we have had problems with polluted waters because there has been a boom in tourism in Castellamare,

Alle the house on the beach are irregular? V - In the ‘60s, when there was no plan, because the first law was that of Mancini who said that the exercise of building is not free, before

And there were no signs of denunciation among the inhabitants? V - No, no, no we’re all very accommodating! A large part has the approved project, there was no master plan, the house without a sewer was approved. There is no one organization, there is no sewage system. “

it was enough that you were the owner you had the right to make a home . The ‘42 and ‘67, in ‘42 was legislated on the outskirts, with the law of ‘67 even in cities. “ What was here before all of these house were built? V - Sand! Sand, then to protect the railroad there were many forestations. “ The system of streets when it was created? Because in Triscina they do not have real roads... V - Do not talk about Triscina. In Triscina there are roads that go down to the sea, but here it is on the contrary, there is this road under the railway line and the state road then there is nothing left. There are some private streets, but they do not reach the sea because then there is the railway. But streets have a name V - Last year they named the streets! “ And what do you think you need here at Alcamo marina? You citizens what do you think there is not that you would want, maybe public space. I see this is the only piece of seawalk... V - This was the promenade of Alcamo marina. Now they have

abandoned it, because who has to take the car to come here to walk in this piece does not find parking and then because everything changes, everything evolves and now everyone goes to Scopello, Castellamare ... know how Castellamare for now? A lot of alcamesi, instead of investing in Alcamo, have invested in Castellamare, but also b & b, commercial activities, the Vogue the most famous bar in Castellamare is from alcamesi. “

Vittorio

View of the houses on the hill from Vittorioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s balcony.

Lentini’s summer house Interview with Giuseppe Lentini.

Mr. Giuseppe Lentini, an activist for the protection of the rights of the abusers of Alcamo Marina, welcomed us by offering us sun-dried figs, white and yellow prickly pears. His wife, Mary, is Italian American. Joseph has a contradictory attitude of those who know they are in the false but sweeten the pill with false or partially true arguments. Activism_ Lentini ha creato l’associazione “Alcamo Marina” ( sito web http://www.sicilyalcamo.it/ ) per dialogare meglio con le istituzioni e con il comune. La riunione dell’associazione prevista per il lunedì successivo al nostro incontro, si sarebbe focalizzata sulle strade. Giuseppe vuole convincere i concittadini a donare le strade private ai comuni in cambio di servizi, attualmente assenti. Non è un accordo scritto ma è un inizio di dialogo. Legality_There are only 280 people who are part of the association, few compared to the houses present. Even if everyone accepted Lentini’s proposal to enter the law, it would not be enough. Legality costs and is not a common desire for everyone. Schizophrenia/Alienation_out of 10,000 houses, how do they all

think that the sea is clean if ALL discharges in an abusive way? Why does nobody doubt about the sea bathing? Water_ Giuseppe had water from the well that had built his grandfather. It is an important reason to build, often the building constructions are born above the water tables. Alcamo Marina’s commercial businesses, besides demonstrating that they have a “well” (biological septic tank), must prove that at least 4 times a year they have called the purging. Invention_Giuseppe has a minimum of constructive skills having made the wooden house to his niece. He has done the same thing for his house, the ability to invent is basic. He hired a surveyor and an engineer for his projects but then they could not finish anything. According to the same engineer, if more than three families live on a private road, the road becomes public.

Giuseppe

Main bedroom.

Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room.

Former hair saloon inside the house.

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9.a

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collection of objects and furnishings.

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Kitchen with exposed hollow bricks and no windows.

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Illegal houses features

The characters of sicilian illegal housing.

La città abusiva è una raccolta disordinata di gesti individuali, compiuti in momenti differenti e scaturiti da motivazioni diverse. Nonostante le differenze, possiamo isolare in questi rami di città contemporanea alcuni caratteri comuni che vanno aldilà della sola trasgressione delle norme. The construction type at the base of the abusive buildings is the reinforced concrete frame; the “Maison Dom-ino” conceived by Le Corbusier in the early 1900s as a model for post-war reconstruction and subsequently used extensively in the building field, to become the typology that transformed the Italian coastal landscape (99 Dom-Ino ). The use of the reinforced concrete frame in Sicily is linked to the birth of specialized workers and concrete production plants born after the Belice earthquake of ‘68. Furthermore, the constructive simplicity of this model has favored its spread among small businesses and individuals, thus favoring illegal construction. The possibility of separating the structure from the curtain walls has allowed the incremental construction of the buildings, punctuated by phases that coincide with the economic possibilities and the needs of the moment. Usually the

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compartments are completed on the ground floor while the upper ones, reserved for children, are added according to family needs. It often happens that the buildings remain incomplete and the bars of sight recall become the manifesto of a project in crisis, which does not contemplate the â&#x20AC;&#x153;mobility of the new generationsâ&#x20AC;? and is fixed on a family vision more similar to that of a clan. (MAIFINITO). The resulting urban image is a concentration of houses having different stages of completion: from the houses finished in detail, to those with curtain walls in blocks of tufa or exposed brick, houses that have incomplete floors and never finished skeletons. A sort of indefinite time permeates the abusive city, which remains suspended between present and future; a compartment can be added, a widened veranda, an occluded window, a raised floor and so on, everything follows the pragmatic utilitarian principle generated these places. Another element in common with the houses is their constructive process. The process is promoted by individuals, who to reduce construction costs try to internalize some phases of construction relying on the help of family members, or engaging

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in informal labor. Construction materials are purchased by small businesses in a semi-submerged market. Usually the purchase and sale of the lots, when it happens, is mediated by speculators who first buy the lots at the agricultural price and sell them at higher costs. The families that buy are generally composed of a couple of parents around forty years who decides to make a new house at the sea in order to spend their holidays by the sea during the summer months. The family moved at the beginning of the summer, after the end of the school year, and the father was commuting to the city. It is an urbanization oriented to a sort of residential tourism consisting of a private patrimony of one or two-family buildings, isolated on the lot with the function of a second home. The second house is oriented to the public, and is designed to accommodate friends and relatives. The veranda is the space of sociability, perhaps the true public space of the abusive city, so it represents the representative space, the one that is more refined. There are also those who, on the contrary, pay more attention to the interiors that are enriched with details, leaving the rustic exterior.

Finally, another character of the abusive city is the decline of its artifacts. This aspect may in the first instance be traced back to the low building quality of buildings, which exposed to the aggressiveness of atmospheric agents, to saltiness and to the high humidity due to the presence of the sea, require constant maintenance to avoid premature aging. Moreover, the decay of the building is emphasized by that of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;public spaceâ&#x20AC;?, or perhaps the space of none, which is in serious degradation conditions, even in full season. This triggers a mechanism that allows owners to disinvest further on their assets, selling them off, or renting them at low prices or in the worst cases, completely renouncing that asset. There are those who, however, benefit from this devaluation; it is families with limited economic capital - young people, elderly people, immigrants - who move into these seasonal settlements and can not afford to rent more central areas. In the most extreme cases these buildings are inhabited by poor and immigrant populations in an informal rent situation that also includes forms of exploitation (caporalato). This happens in those areas that have totally lost their recreational character.

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Abuse is transformed over time; it is built for the need to have a place in which to live and in the year this same place can become the scenario in which to spend the summers, or vice versa, as often happens, what is born as a second home by the sea ends up becoming the only one alternative for an increasingly wider segment of the population.

Illegal house in front of Tre Fontane seaside.

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Unused houses facing the seaside in Tre Fontane.

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Architectonic decay concerns many houses in Tre Fontane.

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12.a

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Fences and walls to protect the private space.

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The threshold as public space.

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13.a

Nature and Concrete

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Building speculation

Overbuilding and its consequences on the ecosystem.

Since the first half of the ‘50s we have witnessed an ever increasing consumption of soil in our peninsula, this is linked to many factors that led to the uncontrolled consolidation of vast areas. Cement is comprising Itali. The waterproofed surface is the constant increase: 500% more in about 50 years. To launch the alarm are the Wwf and the Fai in the files “Terra Rubata”. Both united by the will to protect the territory FAI and WWF work together to combine a reading of the territory that binds deeply landscape interests (territory in terms of its historical-cultural value) and environmental (protection of biodiversity). The Dossier’s reading gives us a picture of the Italian territory of extreme gravity, on the threshold of irreversibility. A projection of the data available up to now on the entire national territory leads to an average daily conversion area equal to over 75 ha / d, which leads to a scenario of about 600,000 ha of surfaces waterproofed in the next twenty years. Given this, it can be schematically represented with a square of about 80 km of side. The last thirty years have seen the rapid and incisive affirmation of the transformative interests on the territory concretized, not only in Italy, by a surge with few preceden-

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ts of the urban conversion of soil, due to which millions of hectares of largely agricultural land, have disappeared and become anthropized and waterproofed areas in various capacities. Through the analysis of the few regional and provincial observatories on the phenomenon of “landuptake” it is found that between 1965 and 2001 the anthropized surfaces were of the order of 500%. Growth is in contradiction with the rate of population growth that, in Italy, has been almost stable in the last decades. This trend can be pointed out to several factors: the change from a historic city to a modern city, the abandonment of the fields, the lack of intelligent territorial planning, construction speculation, illegal construction and the various amnesties launched between 1985 and today. The proliferation of construction that has been undermined by demography is also provoked by exquisitely economic phenomena: from this point of view it is particularly interesting to check how, even in the less productively dynamic and economically marginal realities, look at the construction industry as a vector of recovery, even in presence of a clear recession of productive and industrial initiatives. Add to this the fluctuation of financial stocks that

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has made for long periods convenient and profitable to invest “in the brick” fueling the real estate market to a degree completely disconnected from real residential needs. The urban-territorial plans have accompanied and supported this orientation: the land acquire value on the real estate market only if the planning instruments prescribe the building destination. The planning has given priority to this function of catalyzing the values of the soil in an explicit way up to the 80s and early 90s, even if it continues in more controlled ways to this day. Moreover, the municipalities, in a logic of “fiscal autonomy”, show a marked interest in the urban conversion and construction of its territory by private individuals in order to increase taxes on buildings. The outcome of the synthetically described processes has involved, and is leading to, in Italy, an unprecedented land consumption that affects, as has already been mentioned, in terms of direct erosion particularly on agro-ecosystems, but indirectly creates disturbances and threats on a other great quantity and type of natural environments due to the enormous territorial pulverization of the urbanized parts and the necessary connection infrastructures.

To all this are combined negative effects on energy consumption and climate change at the local level. Any interventions to contain building transformative activities must therefore be carried out take into account the gigantic social dimension involved, which leads to the hypothesis of a necessity inevitable of very progressive action in the reabsorption and reconversion of forces productive today employed in the urban mutation of new soils in activity prevalently oriented towards the recovery, restoration, redevelopment and reuse of already compromised spaces. Moreover, the country manifests with increasing intensity its vulnerability to multiple risk factors, with an alarming frequency of environmental disasters from the return times always shorter, which undoubtedly justifies significant investments in reducing the effects caused from climatic and hydrogeological agents.

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Building frame of a small building in Kartibubbo ( Mazara del Vallo).

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The dissonant relationship between natural dunes and cement.

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Post-Demolition Carini, Palermo

On the seafront of Carini, province of Palermo, for decades a slow and controversial work of abatement of illegal houses is in place. This stretch of coast was isolated in 1963 from the construction of the Palermo-Mazzara del Vallo motorway. The track, once distant from the sea, was later diverted to safeguard land properties in the immediate hinterland. Because of the wrong management of the coastal properties, the intentions of this work are now betrayed, which according to the Superintendency commission had the purpose of safeguarding this stretch of the motorway because â&#x20AC;&#x153;it is all a viewpoint from which the panoramic beauty can be enjoyed upstream. made up of the panorama of Carini [...] and downstream you can admire the enchanting Gulf of Carini â&#x20AC;&#x153;. If in the paper the intentions are clear and prescriptive, with a constraint of inedificabilitĂ for a band of 60 meters of respect, in reality this infrastructure is transformed into an impassable trench. The coast passes like this, as too often happens in the Sicilian context, from the main facade to the back of the city. In a short time this stretch of coastline is presented as an almost continuous sequence of illegally built holiday homes. In 1976 the inedificability constraint

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is added for a strip of 150 meters from the sea, but this does not guarantee the protection of the coast. The beauty of this coast and this sea is attacked by many investors, especially from nearby Palermo, in a vicious circle, who wanted at all costs to enjoy its small piece of nature has in fact caused the landscape and ecological ruin, making it unusable for themselves and for the community. In the sea where it is said once the lobsters were fished, for thirty years the bathing bans dominated the beach, and a nauseating smell discourages any attempt to approach. Another element that has been penalized by illegal construction is sand. The dunes covered with spontaneous vegetation, such as the agave, have been replaced by the reinforced concrete fences of the houses. To complete the scenario are today the rubble and the remains of the demolitions of various houses, with the presence of asbestos residues. The long sea of Carini is today a good example to reflect on the demolition of illegal buildings. As well described in the book “Territori Dell ‘Abusivismo” by Francesco Curci, Enrico Formato and Federico Zanfi, in the chapter dedicated to Carini “Complexity and contradictions of demolition”: “The catalog

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of situations that presents itself is varied and changing, in some cyclic cases. Areas subject to demolition in past decades are now open unused places, renaturalised on the surface, isolated houses still inhabited, partially dismantled prefabricated, debris of recent demolition campaigns, waiting to be removed. In other stretches, metaphysical places, where the floors of the rooms are intact and the dispositions of the houses still legible as in an archaeological park of the contemporary, all conditions alternated with blocks of houses, and isolated rows of small trees show their emancipation from the previous conformation to hedges. “Demolitions began in the early 1990s, some of which were carried out by the owners themselves, and from 1997 began a demolition campaign carried out by the municipality. Of the 1100 illegal houses, to date 300 have been destroyed (of which 180 by the municipality). Self-deconstruction practice is spreading among property owners. The citizens, resigned to the inevitability of demolition, prefer to dismantle their homes themselves so as to maintain the ownership of the land, save and save as much as possible the reusable elements (doors, shingles and blocks of stone). It would be a laudable practice of “sustai-

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nable deconstructionâ&#x20AC;? if done well. In our case these fragmentary and individually-initiated operations are not adequately managed and controlled, which leads to a partial removal and disposal of the same unlawful waste. Too often we think of demolition as an immediate action that begins and ends very close together, quite the opposite of a construction work where attention is paid to the process. As in the construction, even in the demolition, more attention should be paid to the various demolition phases, to the demolition project, and to the renaturalization of the places that does not end with the demolition of the structures, but which should count on improving the accessibility of the sites, an aid in improving the quality of the water and the reclamation of the areas already released.

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Signs of the demolition of building artefact in Mazara del Vallo.

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Possibilities and Scenarios

Building a collective awareness A strategy for the illegal settelments.

“Only urban planning works that have identity.” - “Demolition is not a project, but an action to get to the project.” - “The sign is a lack of humility, it is a trace of the architect’s ego; monument of himself in the territory. “A.Bazzi, meeting” Urbanistica e Mafia “, Piazza della Magione, Palermo. When we talk about the project of abusive areas, we must first reflect on the concept of building a new collective awareness. Action is needed to sensitize the communities to the problems of abusiveness for the purpose of social mobilization. The awareness must be a non-violent rebellion to the status quo; a demand for new conditions both by individuals and by designers. Often these places marked by illegality have a negative image, and this has prevented the inhabitants themselves from becoming aware of themselves, depriving them of that external recognition which is a condition for the development of a reflexive self-consciousness. The project must therefore instill a sense of community and compose an image of the place that can not be extraneous to the geographical area of reference, since this would result in a further invalidation of the ability of these subjects to imagine themselves and their own

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habitat in a different way than what they are today. It is in this sense that a project should return to reflect on the abusive city by undertaking new visionary efforts, to produce drastic deviations of the local imagination to trigger a creative climate, a contagion of processes of resignification of places and of the resubjectivation of those who inhabit them. It is essential that any economic development project involves the cultural and social dimension; a community reflection on the past and its “signs. The construction of a critical memory of one’s own history may thus allow the initiation of the elaboration of a different symbolic meaning for those places, up to the point, where the conditions arise and prefigure the benefits, to explicitly attribute a monumental function to some of those “wounds”. In fact, the heritage of illegal building, understood as a practice incompatible with the values of contemporary society, should be considered a “dissonant patrimony”, like the architecture of totalitarian regimes or the testimonies of slavery and racial segregation. It is also important to collect individual oral memories, to transmit it through the construction of archives based on material or oral

sources to the creation of events that use history, from workshops for residents to training seminars for tour operators, thus considering the memory of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;abusivism as a product of cultural tourism. Transforming the regenerated heritage of unauthorized into a dissonant cultural heritage makes it possible to develop experiences and products for visitors.

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A new social contract

A strategy for the illegal settelments.

Another fundamental tool for the regeneration of the places of illegal is the new social pact that will be established between citizens and administrations. This pact must have, among its many shared assumptions, the finding that in Italy there is a very large amount of underused patrimony, certainly tending to the limits or outside the constipated areas of metropolitan regions and positioned in problematic contexts. The state of progressive degradation, the economic irrationality of choices relating to the containment of land consumption impose a significant effort to imagine a sensible reuse of shares of this heritage. The new social pact must rebuild a hierarchy between public and private interest, which allows the use of the negotiating form as a dialogue between institutions and citizens; only in this context of redefinition of formal and informal relationships between subjects can incentive measures be placed: transforming, modifying, demolishing oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abusive home should be encouraged. The administration also plays a fundamental role in building a greater awareness of citizens. Triscina needs to be guided in a conscious dialectic process, so as to bring each citizen to the knowledge of

144

their territory, knowledge of the aspects linked to beauty, protection, and conviction that the territory is a resource that must be protected and not consumed arbitrarily, because heritage to be left to future generations, is the strong cultural element, from which possible solutions can arise.

Re-use and entrepreneurship A strategy for the illegal settelments.

As already underlined in the previous chapters, there are residential filtering processes in place on the illegal assets. Such processes processes could be regulated with a policy aimed at offering living or working spaces from the popular canons to weak and marginal categories, integrating the support to this “assisted reuse” with measures aimed at favoring local development processes, social integration and regeneration. widespread of the heritage. Since these items are of modest value, it would be admissible when examining the amnesties to provide for simplified procedures for the issuance of housing rights and above all a reduction of the concession fees and the oblation - up to the total remission - subject to the commitment by unilateral deed of obligation , to lease the property to agreed and calmed rents, guaranteeing a social use, or yielding it, always under favorable conditions, to certain low-income population groups or to social cooperatives or non-profit associations. Trying to to recover in this sense, a “function of public interest” in the use of the formerly abusive product without necessarily acquiring it to the municipal heritage.

146

It would also be possible to integrate the assisted reuse of second homes and measures to support youth entrepreneurship and immigrants. Measures of this type could help and accompany those proposing to locate in the heritage of ex-second homes business projects and economic development consistent with the location of buildings. The ex-second house, isolated on a lot, on two floors and with a small private open space, could in its typological flexibility become an artifact suitable for hosting small craft and service activities next to the residence, with positive effects of territorial protection and functional enrichment of fabrics consisting of houses only. To develop and encourage the training of non-touristic entrepreneurial start-ups, also through the activation of consortia. Using the tax incentives, non-repayable subsidies and credit facilities reserved for these business forms, it could also promote the redevelopment of second homes located in areas of poor tourist attractions but served, for example by major infrastructures of supralocal rank.

Community Land Trust

A strategy for the illegal settelments.

Encourage the creation of consortia: associations whose size and role are placed between the individual and the administration, through which they can assume the construction of primary and secondary infrastructural works, subdividing the concession charges. Citizens paying the costs in the Consortium’s coffers instead of the municipal ones, do not wait for the implementation time of the administration and are themselves, being able to manage the sums available, to propose the most urgent actions to follow the planning and implementation. The consortium works in collaboration with all the other institutions: with the Province that makes contributions to energy requalification and makes, where necessary, legislative changes, with the Municipality granting tax relief to those who give the second home to the management consortium . They are bottom-up planning models, since a bottom-up planning, experienced and felt by the recipients, appears to be more accepted and therefore respected by the citizens; It is therefore necessary to start from the new interpretations of the civitas-urbe relationship. Cities like the Archipelago, in which each inhabited fabric is understood

148

as an island with its own characteristics and identities. The notion of an archipelago in this sense stands for an extended urban field whose multiplicity is recognized ... in which all singularities identify ... a mutual interaction rather than the multiplication of indifferent fragments. (Aureli, Zenghelis, Cacciari) The urban block is no longer thought of as the sum of many separate and non-committing building acts, but as an intermediate urban structure: a porous incubatole for new forms of sociability. ... produce a sort of self-fulfilling scenario in which today’s existing material physical as well as social - can be involved as a partner in an improvement process that includes the “publication” of certain portions of space, up to that moment included in the enclosures private ... small transfers by the owners, concretely exchanged with additional building possibilities and the advantages of a previously unavailable space availability. Fluidification the outlines between inside and outside, between the public and the private sector, are less clear-cut and are consciously further weakened by design work.

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Alternative infrastructure A strategy for the illegal settelments.

The theme of alternative infrastructure represents a further perspective for the regeneration of abusive nuclei. For this city it is unreasonable to plan to spread capillary networks as if it were a compact urban context: it seems more useful to reflect rather on how this city can coexist in the future with very low levels of traditional infrastructure, developing its own alternative. Economic incentive policies could be implemented for those who decide to make technological adjustments for the preparation of renewable energy devices (purification, recycling, disposal, etc.). This could encourage the construction of small connected neighboring networks to take advantage of technology-based conveniences by intertwining ecological and social dimensions. Consortium aggregates that can experiment with unpublished ways of sharing. Small social constructs of environmental consciousness that work the soil in spots, depending on the tissues of the archipelago: from the traditional and continuous compact contexts to more stringent conditions where small ecosystems could arise that collect the owners in consortium forms.

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New ecologies

A strategy for the illegal settelments.

We could imagine new mixed and inclusive ecologies, taking the anthropization process as an essential condition to rethink â&#x20AC;&#x153;according to natureâ&#x20AC;?: to adopt incremental therapies to transform the perverse dynamics from the inside, where these have produced the current breakdowns. Artificial reconstruction of dunal systems, as resistance to the desertification process, phytoremediation of basins and rivers, planting of colonizing species to restore biodiversity ... actions for the construction of a different landscape for the latent city where nature is both environmental technical device that public space. Creative use of this second nature. Program or accelerate the decline of manufactured goods; aiming at the natural colonization of the structures in stand-by, conducting minimal revegetation interventions, to guarantee a first pioneering vegetative mantle left then free to evolve on the architectural structures.

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Demolition as a tool

A strategy for the illegal settelments.

Finally we need to think about the issue of demolition, which should not be relegated to hasty terminal practice, to hasty scrapping entirely resolved in the economic aspect, but must regain a space for the project that reflects on post-removal, which constitutes the passage of connection and necessary interpretation between the single transformation and the background. Bring the concept of demolition to a more minute scale, selective interventions: the opening of new passages or collective spaces, small subtractive improvement interventions on the unfinished artefacts that could be implemented by the individual. A policy of deconstruction of the unauthorized city could start from here, from considering it to a deposit of increasingly disused materials in their current configuration, through which trigger a series of chain reactivations of the sites interrupted in a direction of partial or complete removal of the expired building for the purpose of re-use. We need to make the latent city a site of available material. Looking at the abusive landscape not as a mere environmental problem, rather considering it as a transitional landscape, endowed with an entropic character that

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exceeds the projection of romantic landscape, and on the basis of this reconceptualization start planning an adequate evolution.

Captions

pp. 6

Map diary; collection of phrases that we have collected on our journey along western Sicily that give back the crosssection of a beautiful and fragile territory, which bears the consequences of an unregulated urbanization.

pp. 12-13

The photo is part of the photographic series â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dentro le Caseâ&#x20AC;?, by Giovanni Berengo Gardin, which restores the Italian housing condition after World War II. The photos, collected in a published publication, tell the clear disparity between north and south and show the simplicity that characterizes the interiors of the houses of the south, which often extend in the space surrounding the house, in that social network that is part of the small realities of southern Italy.

pp. 14-15

One of the first cartographic representations of Sicily, carried out by the cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi geographer and Arabian traveler. Because of its position in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily has always been half of migration over the centuries, which has favored a mixture of different cultures that represents the true wealth of the island and makes it a real subcontinent.

pp. 18

1. a,b

pp. 28-29

Mondello in the first decade of the 20th century, before the brick race took place in Sicily.

pp. 30-31

Image that tells the consequences of the devastating earthquake of Belice (1968). An earthquake that struck an underdeveloped Sicily unprepared to face phenomena of this magnitude, as will be seen in the following years.

Photos taken on the way to Palermo. The landscape of western Sicily consists of rolling hills and higher hills that stand out on the horizon. It is a powerful and fragile landscape at the same time.

pp. 33

2. a,b

pp. 34,35

The map shows the use of soil in Sicily. Urbanization pays two main forms: point-like in the hinterland, where we find the small Sicilian historical centers; and a continuous coastal construction that with several intentisa has colonized most of the Sicilian coast.

pp. 40

3. a,b

The sense of res publica is absent in Triscina. Even the timid attempts at public services are unsuccessful. The negligence is the daughter of individualism that characterizes all the illegal settlements on the coast. Walking on a day in August in Triscina is like walking through a desert of dunes, dismayed by skeletons and fences.

pp. 42

4. a,b

The images tell the spirit of appropriation of the landscape. In Triscina there is not a promenade, and the accesses to the beach are few and uncultivated. The houses arrive a few meters from the shoreline and are characterized by private access ladders and walkways that allow the access between the public beach and the private residence.

Photos taken in the periurban area of Mazara del Vallo. In this area on the coast, the built-up area is characterized by a fabric of houses piled up with discontinuity over the territory, which generate a rhythm of irrational solids and gaps and probably due to the splitting of the agricultural land. This strong anthropization clashes with an enchanting coastal landscape, made of low tufa rocks sculpted by the sea and the wind.

pp. 45

5. b

Desolation of a day at the end of August in Triscina.

pp. 52

6. a

The street on which the house of Filippo and Barbara faces. In Triscina the nomeclatura of the streets does not exist; each street is identified by a number.

pp. 60-61

The images are taken from the 1966 Urban Planning issue focusing on the events of the Agrigento landslide of the same year. The black of mourning expresses dissent for the death of urbanism, defeated by the speculation of the towers of Agrigento.

pp. 62-63

Berlusconi and Craxi: the protagonists of the building amnesty policy.

pp. 64-65

Map of the building restrictions of the regional law of 1976. The law provides for constraints up to a distance from the shoreline of 500m; the area subject to the constraint of complete inedability extends for the first 150m from the coast.

pp. 80-81

pp. 82

pp. 86

Feast of the Madonna dei Miracoli of Alcamo. It is the main festival of the country and marks the advent of summer; it is customary to move to the beach house at Alcamo Marina in the days following the party. 7. a,b

8. a

The beach of Alcamo Marina is very extensive and is in the center of the Gulf of Castellammare. Here as a triscina the building has taken over the natural dune system, and the sea is polluted because of the polluted streams and rivers that pour into the sea. In Alcamo Marina public space is also precarious and abusive, characterized by a sense of domesticity.

pp. 101

9. a

The Lentini family’s home is precarious. Furnished with scrap furniture and missing primary elements such as windows and doors. The rooms are a cluster of dissonant objects that highlight not only the precariousness but also a tendency to accumulate.

pp. 102

11. a

pp. 104

The bathroom is the emblem of the precariousness that characterizes this house. A garbage can, the exposed bricks with exposed pipes, a stick used to hold the toilet lid ...

11. a Thick walls and gates are a constant in abusive cities. They express the desire to isolate the space from that neglected by everyone or perhaps nobody.

pp. 117

13. a

pp. 124

“Kartibubbo” village, Campobello di Mazara

pp. 130

The Image taken from the book “Territories of abusivism” by Francesco Curci, Enrico Formato and Federico Zanfi. The image on page 105 shows the progression of the demolitions on the Carini coast (from 2002,2010,2016)

pp. 136 - 137

Second and third page of the Giornale di Sicilia of 08/28/2018 which shows how the illegal building still remains a hot topic in Sicily.

pp. 142-143

A propaganda image portraying Mussolini as he prepares to demolish a medieval quarter to leave space for today’s Via dei Fori Imperiali.

However, there is also an opposite current, that is a total lack of privacy in some houses, simplicity and honesty that characterized the houses of the past. This tells the different aspirations and motivations that lie behind some houses.

pp. 145

Map of urbanization in Italy.

pp. 146

Redevelopment intervention carried out by the Assemble studio in the Granby Four Streets neighborhood in Liverpool. In this context, a group of citizens, supported by the municipality and private individuals, met in a neighborhood council to improve the urban quality of the district and the building artifacts.

pp. 149

Photo showing a nineteenth-century community in the construction of a barn. This act was perceived as a collective act for these small communities because the barn was an essential work for livelihood and agricultural production.

pp. 151

Oswald Mathias Ungers, Berlin as a Green Archipelago, 1977. Reflection on the fragmentation of the city in the city.

pp. 153

The Motel Beach at Alcamo Marina was a flashing facility that enjoyed some success in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;90s andâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 80s. Today it presents itself in these conditions. The building is in a state of neglect and nature has taken over the structure.

pp. 155

Wall covering of the Ningbo Museum, designed by Wang Shu. the faĂ§ade was made with waste materials recovered from the demolitions of a village.

Bibliography

Bernard Rudofsky, Le meraviglie dell’architettura spontanea:note per una storia naturale dell’architettura con speciale riferimento a quelle specie che vengono tradizionalmente neglette o del tutto ignorate. Bari, La Terza, 1979 Gian Berengo Gardin, Luciano D’Alessadro, Dentro le case, Electa, 1978 Fernand Braudel, Il Mediterraneo :lo spazio e la storia, gli uomini e la tradizione, Milano, Bompiani, 1987 Cinà Giorgio (a cura di). Dossier Palermo, Spazio e Società, n. 41/1988, p. 82-117, Genova, Sagep, 1988. Francesco Curci, Enrico Formato, Federico Zanfi (a cura di), Territori dell’abusivismo. Un progetto per uscire dall’Italia dei condoni, Roma, Donzelli editore, 2017. Di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi. Il gattopardo. Feltrinelli, 2002. Zanfi Federico, Paolo De Stefano, Città latenti:un progetto per l’Italia abusiva, Milano, Mondadori, 2008. Pier Vittorio Aureli, The City as a Project, Berlin, Ruby Press, 2013. Ismé Gimdalcha, Il Progetto Kalhesa, Cava d’Aliga (Ragusa) , Edizioni di Storia e Studi Sociali, 2014. Rita Simone, “Abitare illegale e paesaggi legalizzati. Verso una teoria della demolizione e del riciclo”, in People meet in the Re-cycled city, pp.8797, Aracne, 2014. Gaetano Licata, MAIFINITO, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2014. Ettore Sottsass, Foto dal finestrino, Milano, Adelphi, 2009. Franco Cassano, Il Pensiero Meridiano, Laterza, 2015. Antonio Pacino, Abusivismo e informalità tra incertezze e prospettive.

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Triscina una realtà costriera della Sicilia, Tesi di Laurea Magistrale, relatore:Camilla Perrone, co-relatore:Francesco Curci, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2015. Giuseppe Trombino, “La casa in Sicilia tra abusivismo e rigenerazione urbana”, in C. Gangemi (a cura di), Housing sociale in Sicilia. Riqualificazione nei contesti deboli, pp. 83-94, Roma, Aracne Editrice, 2016. Colin Ward, Architettura del dissenso, Eulethera, 2016. Rotor, “La complessità dei detriti”, in Abitare, Gennaio, Novembre 2011 Sicilia immagini dal XIX secolo dagli Archivi Alinari Francesco Curci, Enrico Formato, Federico Zanfi (a cura di), Territori dell’abusivismo. Un progetto per uscire dall’Italia dei condoni, Roma, Donzelli editore, 2017. Luigi Mastronado, “L’Italia è una repubblica fondata sul condono”, The Vision, 26 Gennaio, 2018. Salvatore Peluso, “Rotor a Palermo:“Da quassù è tutta un’altra cosa” , Domus, 19 giugno 2018.

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Credits

Grazie ai miei genitori per tutti gli sforzi fatti, per l’amore e il supporto che mi dimostrate quotidianamente, questo lavoro è dedicato a voi. Grazie ai miei fratelli Matteo e Alessandro. Grazie a tutti i ragazzi di CTRL + S perché avete reso questi anni milanesi indimenticabili. Grazie a tutte le mitiche coinquiline di via Pecchio. Grazie a Gina perché sei speciale. Grazie a tutto il gruppo abusivi della summer school “Sicilia coast to coast”:Sarah Casaburo, Rita Maralla, Giorgio Martin Miccoli, Mariachiara Scelsi, e Chiara Pesci. Questo lavoro di ricerca è nato insieme al loro contributo intellettuale e fotografico. Infine grazie a tutti i professori e tutor che mi hanno seguito lungo il periodo di ricerca, dall’esperienza del workshop Villard, alla summer school, fino agli ultimi mesi.

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