Proposal for the urban regeneration of the suburban district zen in palermo, italy

Abstract

The Social Housing district Z.E.N. in Palermo, today re-called “San Filippo Neri”, despite the great name of its author – Vittorio Gregotti – is sadly famous as one of the most dangerous and “criminogenic” neighbourhoods in Italy. In early 2011, inspired by the debate about the project I had developed for the Urban Regeneration Quarter Corviale in Rome, a group of people in Palermo asked me to develop a similar proposal for the Z.E.N. in Palermo. Their goal was the replacement of degraded suburbia with “biophilic” neighbourhoods, respectful of people and the environment, thus avoiding the reiteration of the of the previous forty years’ mistakes. The reasons why a group of free citizens took the decision of making this proposal lies in the awareness of the falsehoods that have taken place over time in the field of urbanism. They indeed understood that the present Z.E.N. is to be considered a typical child of that ideology, widespread in the sixties of last century, according to which “the historical centres were the embodiment of evil bourgeois”, and “as such were to be abandoned because no longer appropriate to the emerging working class”. This “anti-bourgeois” vision was translated in the sudden sprawl of cities with neighbourhoods made of concrete boxes, mono-functional zones, lack of meeting places and consequent social unrest! The only ones to benefit were (of course) speculators, landowners and contractors, and the craft sector began its downward flight to the final disappearance… the “not-standardized” work of the artisans was too bourgeois to have a value! The most serious thing – no one has ever had the courage to condemn it – is that all this has not been put into practice by the hands of unscrupulous mafia’s builders, but by those who stood behind the lecture hall, or directed the architectural magazines, or pontificated everywhere they had given the opportunity, those who came to theorize that this choice had a philanthropic goal! Indeed, on those days: “The ultimate purpose was to materialize the idea that the historic city, an expression of those social classes that had dominated and oppressed human society, was to be abandoned to its founders, while for the emerging popular classes were to be destined new neighbourhoods and suburbs that, by joining one each other, would generate the New Jerusalem: the city of the classless society, free, just and fraternal” [1]. The ideology then, accompanied by the presumption and arrogance of a certain group of architects and teachers, was able to do nothing but create the theoretical basis that would allow speculators to make money for their owninterests. Just to have a confirmation of the falseness of the “New Jerusalem” concept, we had a chance to listen to Gregotti himself who, during an interview at the TV show “Le Iene” (2007), when was asked “If you say that it is so successful and beautiful, why don’t you go and live at the ZEN?” he answered, «what does it mean? I’m doing the architect, not the proletarian!» Today this man defends his project by downloading the responsibility anywhere but on himself; indeed in 2011, during an interview by the newspaper La Stampa regarding our initiative, he run allowed to say: “My project was misrepresented,was to be a model neighbourhood […] I am guilty of having underestimated the Mafia. There, I understood what is really the crime control. At that time the mayor was Vito Ciancimino”. This paper presents the problems and the articulation of the project for the urban regeneration of an inhuman social housing district into a healthy place, a kind of project to be considered a pilot project for the regeneration of all the dangerous and unliveable suburbs, as well as for reinvigorating local economies.