Learning from a Southern Street

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET.

SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

Learning from a Southern Street.

Socio-spatial practices in Palermo’s street markets and a new vocabulary of planning.

London School of Economics and Political Science LSE Cities - Department of Sociology MSc City Design and Social Science Candidate number 19224 Word count 9,984

Printed 26th August 2014.

All drawings, maps and images are produced by the author’s unless otherwise stated.

Cover Image: Il Capo Street Market, Palermo (2014).

Foreground and Acknowledgments

It is complicated to explain what led me to focus my researches on Palermo; the same Palermo which until a year ago was so far from my mind that seemed to belong to ‘another’ Sicily suspended in an ideal time of novels, fictions, and art, not at all mine.The bond with this city has been the result of forced collaboration necessary to enter the current path, slow and complicated gestation, a contested relation between love and hate, order and anarchy. The silent chaos, the widespread disorder, the solipsism, which rule Sicily and in particular dominate Palermo, are the elements that generated in me simultaneously a sense of precariousness and fascination and suddenly opened the horizon to the possibility of a new and interesting research.The link between this study and the city of Palermo itself, is much deeper and not simply limited to the scope of this work. It has represented for me a return to a forgotten past, the rediscovery of betrayed roots, and the re-reading from a new perspective of the social, political, cultural and urban reality, whose complexity I previously underestimated.

Palermo is a city you can just hate or love. It is a place with no room for compromises; a city in which paradoxes and contradictions coexists, where a breathtaking prestigious square lies behind the corner of the poorest and most deprived neighbourhood, and dirty and crumbling facades hide luxurious interiors. Palermitans themselves do not know middle ways; at first they look at you with suspicion, but after having gained confidence, they are ready to give you even their heart. Politics knows no middle ways; it remains indifferent and inert to external courses, but at the same time it reflects, like a heedless mirror, their incoherence and controversies. Economy knows no middle ways; the poorest prefers to starve, but drives a luxury car, while the richest also starves for the purpose of capital over-accumulation and no intention of any investment. By exploring, walking, studying, living Palermo I understood the importance of reading and observing the precarious balance of contradictory realms, of unlocking their strengths and fragilities, in order to appreciate the dense complexity of its human tissue. That human tissue that we create and from which we originate.

In concluding this dissertation, I would like to thank my family for its continued and inestimable support, G. for her tangible help and P. for his intangible assistance. I am deeply grateful to my advisor Dr. Suzi Hall for her impeccable guidance, profound knowledge and inspiring conversations. A special thanks goes to Antonia Dawes (LSE), Salvatore Di Dio and Domenico Schillaci (PUSH), Carmela Dacchile (Edizioni Precarie) and Luisa Tuttolomondo (IUAV), Maurizio Carta and Costanza Conti (Università di Palermo) for sharing their expertise and perspectives on the research and the city. I am thankful to the EU M4 Scholarship and Sicilia Futuro Organisation, which, despite the many contested and controversial events, allowed me to continue the London adventure. I finally say thank you to the many old and new friends, whose debates and discussions have made my year in London a remarkably enriching experience.

Grazie ai sogni, alle ambizioni, alle illusioni, alla leggerezza, alle peregrinazioni, alle crisi, alle paure, al blu, ai viaggiatori, alle città e ai sognatori urbani.

È delle città come dei sogni: tutto l’immaginabile può essere sognato ma anche il sogno più inatteso è un rebus che nasconde un desiderio oppure il suo rovescio, una paura.

Le città come i sogni sono costruite di desideri e di paure.

(Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili, 1972)

Contents

INTRODUCTION Palermo Ordinary City

9 10

THE URBAN CONTEXT 1.1 Contemporary Scenario 1.2 Historic Transformations

15 16 22

THE PLANNING CULTURE 2.1 Planning Framework 2.2 Attitudes and Alternatives

31 32 37

THE SPATIAL FRAMEWORK 3.1 Geography of Street Markets 3.2 Ballarò 3.3 Vucciria

41 42 46 54

THE LANGUAGE OF PLANNING 4.1 Mechanisms, Processes and Strategies 4.2 Towards a New Vocabulary of Planning

63 64 68

CONCLUSION The power of the negative grain

71 72

REFERENCES

76

INTRODUCTION |

11

Palermo Ordinary City The Value of the Everyday

FIG. 0.0 PALERMO'S EVERYDAY STREET

If one term could be provided to characterise the city of Palermo, it would certainly be the word kinetic denoting the dynamic, spontaneous, porous, adaptable structure of the city in which the demarcation between historical and contemporary, regulated and unregulated, formal and informal dissolves into one blended configuration (Mehrotra, 2011). The dynamism of transformations, rooted in the historic stratification of different dominations, cultures and languages shaping everyday life and ordinary urban spaces, has been highlighted by Eric Hobsbawm who refers to Palermo’s urban condition as an example of rapid and vast social changes occurring in The Short Twentieth Century (Hobsbawm,1994).

From a similar perspective Guido Piovene in his account of the post-war ‘Italian boom’ described Palermo as a city in which old socio-economic structures have been reinvented using available - and scarce - resources (Piovene,1957). This scenario led him to question what is Palermo going to be in fifty years and to imagine there a future Rio de Janeiro ‘that was once a noble city of Portuguese style, today a forest of concrete and skyscrapers‘ in which the old aristocratic structure ‘is replaced by a rising bourgeoisie which is not interested in affirming its power through the restoration ancient palaces but rather through investments in the new - speculative - construction and property market.’ (Piovene in Blando 2009: 391) Today, after decades of urban transformations, fostered by a laissez-faire approach of the planning culture, the optimism of political groups, and the illusion of endless growth, Palermo is facing a different challenge.The city displays a frozen image of neglect perpetuated by the lack of planning vision; the construction fervour in the ‘modern city’ has stopped, while the ‘historical city’ is divided between large-scale abandonment and excessive conservation. Moreover, the population is shrinking, outmigration is alarming but parallel to foreigners’ inflows, and socio-economic inequality is substantially growing, exacerbated by the global trend of economic crises and recession. Within this scenario, Piovene’s question is revived: how will Palermo look in fifty years, given actual divergent socio-economic courses and spatial practices? And what will its urban landscape become under the current planning attitude?

Throughout the history, Palermo has been able to survive and maintain an unfinished and frozen dimension alongside a context of increasing changes; it has been developing alternative strategies for survival, like a disquieting creature grasping its last breath before exhausting its resources in the precarious balance between beauty and destruction. This constant precariousness and instability has been perpetuated by an inadequate political economy, unable to convert opportunities for transformation, modernisation and growth into capitalised resources, and in which speculative logics and opaque powers became the driving factor of growth and development (Cancila,2006) or, more accurately, decline and underdevelopment.The peak of a disruptive politics was reached during the so-called ‘sack of Palermo’ when clandestine alliances among political, economic and mafia interests generated a modern periphery of massive illegal speculative

12

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

constructions, while the historical centre succumbed to abandonment, neglect and stigma of marginalisation (Cancila,2006; Schneider and Schneider,2003a).

After ‘Palermo’s Renaissance’ of the 1990s, the political decision of turning away from the historical city in favour of building a ‘new Palermo’ had been called back, opening the urban realm to a wider possible changes. However, official discourses were permeated by the imperative of conservation and restoration to stop abandonment in the historic centre, ignoring the social dimension of urban crises and regeneration processes (Lima,1996). Meanwhile, vibrant informal use of spaces proliferated (Cannarozzo,1996; Lo Piccolo,1996), shaping and shaped by everyday interactions of mixed social groups; a number of visible and hidden hierarchies, which preserve and destroy the historic city, emerged filling the gap between official power and the lived practices (Schneider and Schneider, 2003b). Assuming that planning is a useful and necessary tool to orient urban transformations, what kind of planning is possible within the described scenario and attitude? And which strategies others than conservation can be developed to face the challenges raised by practices and processes of emerging ‘gray spaces’ (Yiftachel,2009).

This research claims that a different planning culture is needed to sustain Palermo’s transformations; one that acknowledges that history is an alive force, manifested not only in the architectural heritage, but also expressed through contemporary lived practices. The study explores how large-scale issues can be understood through the lens of everyday interactions and small-scale activities developed in spaces that are explicitly public with a high level of socio-economic exchange and historic value. The research is framed within the concept of the ‘ordinary city’ (Amin and Graham,1997) as a ‘variegated and multiplex entity - a juxtaposition of contradictions and diversities’ (Amin and Graham,1997:418) to contrast the partial and exclusive approach of theoretical researches on Palermo emphasising the marginal spaces of the organised crime (Chubb,1982; Cole,1997; Fiume, 1991, 2000; Schneider and Schneider, 2003a; 2003b) or the prestigious location of the artistic and architectural value (Bellafiore,1956; Lo Duca,1975; 2006; Inzerillo,1981), as these were the only possible scenarios to study urban life.

FIG .0.1 PALERMO'S SIDEWALK

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 0.2 STREET CONTAMINATION

The work draws on the potential of extracting political significance from the ‘art of adaptability’ (Cole,1997; Alajmo,2005) made visible by everyday interactions in Palermo’s ‘micro-publics’ (Amin,2002) as a resource to understand urban crises and city life.Everyday activities and uses encapsulated in the historic centre of Palermo, and especially in its historical street markets, represent the interface between discourse and practice (Dines,2012).Therefore, starting from the exploration of current processes and practices taking place in public open spaces, the aim is to implement the language of planning. It proposes principles that and can mediate between the highly officiated planning culture and the adaptive cultural organisation of the city, engaging with the broader debate about the future of Palermo.

A prior spatial and quantitative analysis of Palermo’s urban context will serve to study the current planning attitude towards the city’s historic centre (from now on centro storico) in order to access both the specificity of the place and planning documents. The analysis of plans and policies in force in Palermo serve as a premises to observe mechanisms of exchange and interaction that are outside the formal system of planning, in order to illustrate what it misses and what are the available alternatives. Two historic street markets of Palermo’s centro storico, such as the abandoned Vucciria and the active Ballarò, form the case studies in which these mechanisms are analysed through direct observation.

The visualisation process supporting observations, serve as both illustrative and analytical tool; it discloses the socio-spatial texture of Palermo’s street markets, as well as reveals findings, whose conceptualisation leads to the final proposition.

Palermo’s street markets represent social spaces in which people regularly interact; sites where resilient process of space managing, social interaction and cultural exchange occur at the border between visibility and invisibility and places with a strong socio-cultural significance for the whole city. Thus, the fine-grained reading of these spaces and the identified key-strategies which have broader implications for Palermo’s regeneration. The outlined principles informed by the value of the everyday, soften the productive-destructive friction between official discourses and lived practices, forming a new vocabulary of planning in which the value of planning goes beyond planning values.

13

I. THE URBAN CONTEXT |

16

Contemporary Scenario A sense of Palermo

Palermo and its metropolitan region are considered to be the most dynamic area within Sicily and South Italy in terms of growth and socio-economic indicators (Comune di Palermo,2008). However, the city continues to suffer from contradictions, deficits, and delays, - typical of Southern Italian cities and opposed to the advanced national economies - exacerbated by a lack of infrastructure and services, widespread urban deprivation, interferences of a parallel state and global economic crises and regression (Cancila,2006). The following quantitative analysis serve as an information base to understand Palermo’s urban crisis and its distortions which perpetuate a tendency to socio-economic stagnation, despite the city’s last sixty years of physical and social changes.

Palermo is an important administrative centre being the capital of the region, the capital of its province and a municipality in itself. It is also a crucial gravitational point for the surrounding metropolitan area in terms of commuters flow and functional dependence. Until 1990, the municipal area was divided into 55 units of the first level, corresponding to distinct socio-urban areas of the city. At the same time, the units were grouped into 25 neighbourhoods, represented in the city council. Following decentralisation policies, the administrative boundaries have been redesigned to create eight districts. Each district is meant to be an autonomous unit, following the vision of a polycentric city, although the transition to this system is not complete yet (Lima,1996).

FIG. 1.1 PALERMO KEY-FACTS Location

Italy, Sicily

Foundation

736 BC

Surface

158.88 sq.km

Elevation

14.0 m

Population

657,561 city 1,200,000 metro

Density

4,138.7 pp./sq.km city I,740.9 pp./sq.km metro

Government

Municipality Capital of Province Capital of Region

Administration

8 Districts I 25 neighbourhoods I 55 units

Land Use

107.88 sq.km built up area I 51 sq.km green and open spaces

Geography

Gulf of Palermo on Tirrenio Sea I plane alongside the coast I mountains in the hinterland I Monte Pellegrino on North I Orieto river on South

Climate

mild and wet winters I hot and dry summers I average temperature 18.5°C

The demographic profile shows that the city is gradually shrinking. After the slow population growth of the first half of 1900s, and the accelerated expansion of the

FIG. 1.2 ITALIAN CITIES BY INHABITANTS Source: Istat 2011

1,242,123 872,367

2,617,175 962,003

657,561

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

second half, from 2001 Palermo’s overall population declined by 4.5%. In spite of that the city remains one of the biggest urban centres in Italy, competing only with Rome, Milan, Naples and Turin.The total population is assessed at 657,561 inhabitants while more than a million people live in its metropolitan belt. In the centro storico - the biggest in Italy in terms of surface - is concentrated about the 4% of the total population with a low-density ratio. Yet the centro storico displays a countertrend as its inhabitants increased by 2% in the last five years.

In fact, while the outskirt of Palermo is inhabited by stable, wealthy residents - the local bourgeoisie and the upper-middle-class - in the centro storico an increasing number of foreigners, students, and young professionals, is mixing to the long-established low-income residents.

FIG. 1.3 METROPOLITAN AREA highway ringroad main road axis municipalities boundaries palermo city palermo province primary centre secondary centre

The declining trend of natural growth is exacerbated by the negative migration flow. In 2011, the city registered an inflow of 11,604 people against an outflow of 12,324. Immigrants mainly come from other areas within the region or Italy, with only 22.3% of people coming from foreign countries. Likewise, emigrants are mainly directed to other towns of Palermo province while the remaining part moves to other Italian regions, Sicilian provinces or abroad. This factor becomes alarming if it is considered that the out-migrating population comes from the youngest, highest educated and most active segment and that the city’s age profile shows a stable, mature population and a slow generation turnover.

Among the total 20,252 foreigners, the main area of origin is Asia, especially Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, followed by countries of Africa and EU. About one forth of the immigrants lives in the historic city, with an incidence of about 20% on the total centro storico’s population.

airport harbor station

ISOLA DELLE FEMMINE

TUNIS CIVITAVECCHIA

CAPACI

A29 ZARA NI - MA TRAPA

CINISI

TERRASINI

CAGLIARI

TORRETTA NAPLES

CARINI

GIARDINELLO MONTELEPRE

FICARAZZI

A19 MES S

MONREALE PARTINICO BORGHETTO

BAGHERIA - CA TAN VILLABATE IA

INA

ALTOFONTE

BELMONTE MEZZAGNO

MISILMERI

ALTAVILLA MILICEA

17

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.1.4 POPULATION GROWTH 800 thousand

Source: Istat 2011

560 480 400 320 240

80 2001

2002

2003

2004

20

10

2007

2008

2009

2011

2010

0

20

10

0

2012

FIG.1.5A AGE PYRAMID - PALERMITANS FIG.1.5B AGE PYRAMID - FOREIGNERS Source: Istat 2011

10

20

90+ 90 - 94 85 - 89 80 - 84 75 - 79 70 - 74 65 - 69 60 - 64 55 - 59 50 - 54 45 - 49 40 - 44 35 - 39 30 - 34 25 - 29 20 - 24 15 - 19 10 - 14 5-9 0-4

male 30

2006

90+ 90 - 94 85 - 89 80 - 84 75 - 79 70 - 74 65 - 69 60 - 64 55 - 59 50 - 54 45 - 49 40 - 44 35 - 39 30 - 34 25 - 29 20 - 24 15 - 19 10 - 14 5-9 0-4

male 30

2005

0

100

160

300

640

400

1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011 500 600 700

thousand

200

720

1861 1871 1881 1901 1911 1921 1931 1936 1951

18

30 thousand

female 10

20

30 thousand

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.1.6 MIGRATION AND GROWTH RATE FIG.1.7 TRANSIENT POPULATION Source: Istat 2011

¹In Italy non-resident students are those living

and studying in the city, but coming from other areas. They are considered transient and not accounted by Census.

19

The city hosts the second-oldest university in South Italy and catalyses, therefore, a big flow of the student population. Students constitute the 8.5% of the total population, and although there are no official estimates on the number of students inhabiting the centro storico, it is assumable that a large proportion of the 19,122 non-resident¹ students prefers to live in that area because of its proximity to accessible housing stock and to university’s venues.

Without a doubt, the city’s economy is the most problematic sector. Palermo’s economy heavily relies on the tertiary sector, as demonstrated by the occupational distribution by industries (Istat,2011). Therefore, it is not surprising that more than half of the working population is employed in salaried or other types of subordinated jobs. This imbalance between hypertrophic tertiary activities and contracted industrial business generates a distortion in the city’s productive system, aggravated by the progressive dismantling of the local manufactory industry that lost its competitive nature (Cancila,2006). The tourism industry, although entailed in the tertiary sector’s estimate, doesn’t work at its maximum capacity and currently experiences a decrease in touristic flows since 2008.

migration

The occupation rate for the population aged 15-64, although measured at the provincial level, is assessed at 37.4% (against national 55.6%). Subsequently, the unemployment rate reaches the worrisome value of 21.6%, exceeding the average of national (12.3%) and Southern regional economies (19.7%).

12000

y ital 29.5

ov e 2

ly ta 3.2

inflows

births deaths

2

outflows

i

-6000

prov inc

-3000

outflows %

57.

0

inflows %

sicily 54.5

3000

ily abroad sic 2.5 .1 10

s ea rs 2.3

9

6000

e

9000

-9000 -12000 -15000

1

21

5.2 5.4

.6

eur o 21.2

country of origin %

6.9 5.7 5

28.

a

18 .3

.7

15.7

continent of origin %

asia

afr ic

foreigners-residents ratio %

others 3.9

pe

46.8

students-residents ratio %

4.0

9.9

8.5

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

Because data recorded by ISTAT - the national bureau of statistic - estimate unemployment based on persons registered at local unemployment office, they exclude those who dropped out of the labour force. At the same time, participation in the informal economy, which is largely present in the city, is not reported in the official statistics. Even more alarming is the measure of potential active population assessed at 40.2% (province), which includes both people who are looking for a job, but are unemployed and those who are potentially active, but are not in search of occupation.

FIG.1.8 ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE Source: Istat 2011

Another consequence of the city’s economic structure is inequality growing.

The average income per capita, calculated on the basis of taxpayers, is assessed around 25,000€. But if the same value is measured on the number of residents, the value drops to 9,995€. Indeed, the 14.8% of the population lives below the minimum income of 10,000€, while only 4.1% is above 70,000€. In comparison to the rest of Italy, Palermo is strongly disadvantaged as together with Naples and Catania, it is the only city under the poverty threshold. Moreover the 2013 report of the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore measuring the liveability of Italian cities through a combination of various features, assesses Palermo’s quality of life as second-last among 107 cities, only preceding Naples.

others finance

transport

healthcare

education

administrative

commerce&hospitality

10 0

ser v

5

main economic sectors %

81

type of occupation %

2

emp lo 79

re i ultu ndus ric 2 16 .

y tr

self e m 11.8

ed oy pl

d ye .2

ag

15

20 %

This bad performance is, among other factors, affected by the poor conditions of the built environment and infrastructure, which reach the peak in Palermo’s

es ic .8

20

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

AVERAGE INCOME 9,995€/pp.

21.6%

14.8%

under minimum of 10,000€

4.1%

above 75,000€

12.3%

Italy

Palermo (province)

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.1.9 QUALITY OF LIFE Source: Il Sole 24 Ore 2013 The map is the result of the combination 36 indicators grouped in 6 macro-categories (liveability standard, services and environment, business and work, public order and security, population, leisure time). To each indicator is assigned a score. The sum of all values correspondent to the city performance are then combined into a comparative ranking where the biggest and the lighter, the better. under the average over the average total score

centro storico. Despite the richness of its assets, only 29.6% of the historicartistic heritage is in a good state; 31.5% of residential properties are vacant, and 1/6 of buildings is in warning for collapse; the provision of infrastructure and facilities, similarly of green, public and amenity space is undersized or inadequate.

A whole chapter could be devoted to traffic and transport problems, affecting the city since decades. Although the city has a good accessibility on the regional level, because Palermo embodies one of the principal local airport, harbour and street hub, on the city level it suffers of a highly congested street network and inoperative public transportation.

In addition to socio-economic and physical constraints, the city is challenged by environmental issues as only 10.2% of total waste is recycled, and air and water pollution exceeded the tolerance level several times throughout the year. Finally, Palermo struggles with a negative reputation. Because of its regional isolation and history of corruption, the city is sometimes perceived as remote, backward and unsafe. In this respect, the centro storico represents both the exasperation of these characteristics (Alajmo,2005) and the turning point inverting this trend.

It is a shared opinion among citizens and administrators that as the social mix of the centro storico is increasing the area is becoming more vibrant and is discouraging crimes. Meanwhile, the touristic flow is slowly growing, and a renovated interest towards the centro storico heritage could improve Palermo’s reputation.

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22

Historic Transformations Urban Development and Planning

The city of Palermo is often read as in a permanent state of crisis, with few moments of prosperity (Cancila,2006; Cole,1996; Inzerillo,1981; Schneider and Schneider,2003a; 2003b). In spite of that the centro storico has always survived as a lived and dynamic space, and adapted its structure to the diverse and, sometimes, contradictory social, economic, cultural organisations. This attitude manifests clearly in its stratified urban structure, which mirrored the transformations experienced by the centro storico and the rest of the city. Since its foundation, the centro storico’s urban grain has carried the signs of the socioeconomic structure characterising the dominant population; from the Punic age and the Roman conquest, to the Arabic and Norman domination, until the annexation to the Kingdom of Naples first, and to Italian state after (Cancila, 2006; Lo Duca, 1975; 2006).

The urban core of Palermo developed from a fishbone street pattern in the central peninsula surrounded by two rivers and the sea. Later the longitudinal axis, in part correspondent to the actual via Vittorio Emanuele or Cassaro, became the backbone of the medieval urban structure and its mercantile society. The interest in coastal flows determined the East-West orientated expansion across centuries (Bellafiore,1956; Lo Duca,1975; Lo Piccolo,1996). The construction of via Maqueda between the 1400s and 1500s at the intersection with the Cassaro, rotated the axis of development by 90°, making the North-South orientation the main direction of expansion until recent time (Cannarozzo,1996; Lo Piccolo,1996).

The centro storico, originally entailing five neighbourhoods, assumed the current form, divided into four quarters, also known as Mandamenti. During the 16th and 17th century Palermo focused on enriching its architectural asset through the construction of palace and villas, under the influence baroque culture and of a flourishing aristocracy (Cannarozzo,1996; Lima,1997; Lo Piccolo,1996).

Yet, rural society and agricultural economy remained still the foundation of the urban life (Lo Duca,1975; Lima,1996).

Until this time, the stratification of the centro storico was not generated by a particular idea about the city, but more the result of organic urban growth. From the 1860s Palermo inaugurated a season of visionary planning because, under the pressure of socio-economic and urban restructuring, city’s development started to be driven by official visions and objectives. The Italian reunification brought an innovative administrative organisation with a whole set of jobs, bureaucrats, and demands for modern standards. State functionaries coming from all-over Italy and rural migrants from the surrounding areas moved to Palermo and mixed with the well-established middle class of merchants and the powerful aristocracy (Cancila, 2006). This process, fostered by the debate on public interest and ‘healthy’ urban development², had an immense impact on the city’s shape.

Among varied proposition, the Giarrusso Plan adopted in 1894, and in force until 1941, impose a new urban pattern through clearance operations (sventramenti), healing demolitions (risanamento), displacements without relocation, became

FIG. 1.10 HISTORIC TRANSFORMATION 831-1412

1412-1534

1534-1624

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

² The 1885 Napoli laws enabled to expropriate properties for ‘recovering’ from unsanitary urban conditions. ³ Organised crime is not a direct focus of this research, although it intersects obliquely the theme. For more detail on the mafiaconstruction industry relation, see Schneider and Schneider,2003a;2003b. � The concept here is different from the ‘urban renaissance’ promoted by the 1999 Urban Task Force Report, as it relates to changes in urban politics orientation, not to design improvements in the public realm (Imrie and Raco in Dines,2012).

1624-1859

1859-1996

the actions to (Dines,2012; Salzano,1998). The scheme entailed the ‘cleaningup’ of the four Mandamenti and the delineation of new construction areas to accommodate the population outside the city walls, demolished to facilitate vehicular traffic (Inzerillo,1981; Lima,1996). Fortunately, only demolitions necessary to the ‘cut’ of via Roma were accomplished, disrupting permanently the morphology of one quarter. The aristocracy and the middle class moved to the new suburban areas, enriched by theatres, villas, public gardens, while the old centre, already densely populated and in unacceptable sanitary conditions, was left to the proletariat, underclasses and to an increasing number of rural migrants (Cannarozzo,1996;Lo Piccolo,1996).The powerful groups were more interested in developing the ‘modern’ city, than in managing ancient palaces of the historic city, which relentlessly decayed. This process of abandoning the centro storico in favour of a new city was exacerbated by the bombing of the Second World War, which heavily damaged the historic core, and continued until recent days.

Today the centro storico appears surrounded by a widespread grain, mainly resulting from the ruinous planning and construction practices of the postwar.

Under the lack of any reconstruction plans for the centro storico and ambiguous regulations for the expansion areas, the alliances among planning, politics and mafia³ manifested in the unplanned massive expansion where speculative construction and abusivismo (literally ‘illegal building’) drove urban development (Schneider and Schneider,2003). The implications for the centro storico were enormous. During this ‘sack of Palermo’, the centro storico experienced a total lack of maintenance of its historic-architectural asset, precarious environmental conditions, social marginalisation and deprivation. The ethnographic work of Danilo Dolci (1957) To feed the Hungry purposely aimed at acknowledging the failure of the postwar growth and the necessity to implement more democratic and participative mechanisms.

However, it was not the right time for a democratisation of planning. The local government, already corrupted by speculative interests, promoted in 1962 from the top-down the Piano Regolatore Generale (PRG) - the most important planning instrument of the Italian regulation. The plan did not consider the historical centre as an area for protection or conservation, rather, as an area ‘frozen’ in its critical conditions. Within the lack of conservation programmes, the negligence of the city government and the progressive abandonment of inhabitants, the physical degradation went hand in hand with the degeneration of services and infrastructure (Cannarozzo, 1996; Lo Piccolo, 1996). The centro storico became a ‘waiting land’ where obsolescence and collapses were seen as opportunities for ‘tabula rasa’ profitable redevelopments, under the same logic of the ‘savage’ growth of suburban Palermo (Cancila,2006; Lima,1996). A turning point was reached during ‘Palermo Renaissance’� in the early 1990s. The antimafia movement, Orlando’s left-oriented political government, the national debate on the regeneration of historic town centres (Cervellati,1991) and a renewed sensitivity to social issues, converged in the agenda of creating a ‘good city’ (Amin,2006) which led to the revision of planning attitudes.

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 1.11 FOOTPRINT

FIG.1.12 URBAN STRUCTURE ACCRETION Source: Palermo Strutture e Dinamiche, 1996 VIII - XVIII century 1860 - 1945 1945 - 1975 1975 - 1990

The urban fabric of the historical centre presents the typical arabic and medieval street network surrounded by 2- 3- storeys buildings; narrowa nd curvy alleys interrupted by small squares or courts and the pattern follows organically the natural topography of the area.

The 1800s urban fabric displays the domination of geometry and simmety.

Longitudinal axis and big blocks are planned either alongside or replacing the ancient structure.

The city experiences what are commonly referred as clearances (sventramenti) and healing (risanamenti) interventions.

The postwar grain recovered from bombing through the constuction of bigger speculative blocks in the outskirts.

The exacerbation of the specultative construction manifests in the contemporary grain of large public housing.

In few cases the densification of the original grain reconfigured the old typological pattern

An other form of speculative building is the fragmented lowdensity private housing of peripheral areas.

25

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 1.12 AREAL MAP Source: Bing Maps, 2014

FIG. 1.13 ENVIRONMENT AND MOBILITY coast line ring road main road network railway network tram network (under construction) cycle and pedestrian path contour lines (woods and mountains) natural reserve park

botanic - zoological gardens cimitery other

state owned (woods) agricultural public gardens

urban parks historic gardens complementary green areas protected green areas

0

5

10

15

20

25 sq.km

urban facilities

WASTE AND RECYCLING

AIR POLLUTION

373

thousands tons produced

50.3

7.7%

recycled (-0.4% from 2009)

40

mg/mg3 NO2 (year avarage)

mg/mg3 (average limit)

CYCLE LANES

VEHICLES

21.1 km

397thousand

P CYCLE LANES

VEHICLES

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

LOTS

21.1 km

397thousand

341 km

20

P

Source: Comune di Palermo, 2010 PUBLIC TRANSPORT

LOTS

341 km

20

thousand

thousand

27

28

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

49 50

47 48

52

46 45

55 44

54 43 38

53 41 42

36

37

40

33

51

34

39 32

35 31

27

26

25

29

30

28 24

23

22

4 3

21

1 2 5

18

20

10

16

19

11

17 12

13

15

6

14

8

9

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

NEIGHBOURHOODS

FIG. 1.14 ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES

UNITS

I district

Tribunali-Castellammare 1 Tribunali or Kalsa 4 Castellammare or Loggia Palazzo Reale - Monte di Pietà 2 Palazzo Reale or Albergaria 3 Monte di Pietà or Seracaldi

II district

Oreto stazione I Brancaccio - Ciaculli Settecannoli

5 Corso deiMille-S.Erasmo 8 Brancaccio- Conte Federico 9 Ciaculli-Croce Verde 6 Settecannoli 7 Roccella - Acqua dei Corsari

III district

Oreto stazione II Villagrazia - Falsomiele

10 Oreto-Perez 11 Oreto - Guadagna 12 Falsomiele-Borgo Ulivia 13 Bonagia 14 Chiavelli-S.Maria di Gesù 15 Villagrazia

VI district

Cuba - Calatafimi Montegrappa - S.Rosalia Altarello Mezzomonreale - Villa Tasca Boccadifalco

18 Cuba - Calatafimi 16 Montegrappa 17 S.Rosalia 23 Altarello - Tasca Lanza 19 Villa Tasca 20 Mezzomonreale 24 Boccadifalco - Baida

Zisa Uditore - Passo di Rigano Noce Borgo Nuovo

21Zisa-Ingastone 22 Zisa-Quattrocamere 28 Olivuzza 31LeonardodaVinci-DiBlasi 34 Uditore 35 Passo di Rigano 29 Parlatore - Serradifalco 30 Noce 36 Borgo Nuovo

Cruillas - S.Giovanni Apostolo Resuttana - SanLorenzo

37 S.Giovanni Apostolo 38 Cruillas 43 Resuttana 44 SanLorenzo

Arenella - Vergine Maria Pallavicino Tommaso Natale - Sferrcavallo Partanna - Mondello

54 Arenella 55 Vergine Maria 45 Patti-Villaggio Ruffini 46 Pallavicino 47 San Filippo Neri 48 Tommaso Natale-Cardillo 49 Sferracavallo 50 Partanna Mondello

Politeama

25 Borgo Vecchio -Principe di Scordia 26 Croci-Ruggero Settimo 27 S.Francesco di Paola-Terrasanta 39 Notarbartolo-Giardino Inglese 40 Villa Sperlinga 41 Vitto rio Veneto 42 M archese di Villabianca-Sampolo 51Cantieri 52 Monte Pellegrino 53 Acquasanta 32 Malaspina-Leonardo Da Vinci 33 Principe di Palagonia

V district

VI district VII district

Libertà

VIII district

29

Montepellegrino Malaspina - Palagonia FIG. 1.15 CENTRO STORICO KEY-FACTS Surface

249,7 ha

Population

22,417 21,977 (2009) +2%

Density

89.77 pp/ha

Migration

1084 pp inflow 660 pp outflow

Foreigners

5,604 pp

Families

8,280

Students

n.a.

RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES

OPEN AND AMENITY SPACE

HERITAGE

31.5% 1/6

1.1% 77,8

29.6%

vacant collapsing

ur cayinegcaying de d 9 9 79 79

ur degradation index 4 n. buildings

ur

4

degradation index n. buildings degradation index n. buildings

sq. m./pp PUBLIC EXPENDITURE RESTORATIONS

66,602,589 66,602,589 50,910,554 66,602,589 50,910,554 50,910,554 84,800,000 84,800,000 36,800,000 84,800,000 36,800,000 36,800,000

€ € invested required until 2010 € invested until 2010 € required

cru m

3

ing bl 04

ing bl 04 ing bl 04

caying de 9 79

in a good state

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE € invested until 2010 PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

nt ge 32

nt ntcrum crum ge ge 3 32 32 3

4

of surface

Source: Comune di Palermo, 2010

PRIVATE EXPENDITURE

€ required

PRIVATE EXPENDITURE € contribution to privates PRIVATE EXPENDITURE € to privates € contribution already provided € contribution to privates € already provided € already provided

THE PLANNING CULTURE |

32

Planning Framework Current Plans and Policies

The analysis of plans and policies in act is crucial for the understanding of how the formal power addresses urban crisis and the centro storico’s challenges.

The current regulatory framework entails a General Regulatory Plan (PRGVariante) and a Strategic Integrate Plan (PSI) at the city scale and a Detailed Executive Plan for the centro storico (PPE) at the district scale. Although some would argue that Palermo would be better understood at its metropolitan scale as Palermo does not coincide with its centro storico nor does it stops at its administrative boundaries, by shrinking the focus of investigation to the centro storico regulation, it is possible to achieve a more detailed understanding of the planning attitude and of Palermo’s urban life.

In 1995, the PRG is implemented starting from the assumption that the city is overbuilt, its population will not increase and must, therefore, encourage the consolidation of existing resources (Cervellati,1995; Schneider and Schneider,2003a). The plan reorganises administratively the territory, envisioning a system of ‘cities within a city’ (le città nella città) to overcome the historic centre-periphery dualism, considered at the origin of the centro storico degradation. However, after almost twenty years from this reorganisation, the new municipalities still lack a clear administrative structure and are misaligned from a strategical unified vision (Lima,1996).The PRG delegates to subordinated tools district level policies, such as the PPE for centro storico.

In 1993, Palermo becomes one of the few Italian cities having a local executive plan to regulate and regenerate the historic core. Although reversing its urban policies, the PPE fails in acknowledging the ‘evolving‘ urban nature of the centro storico and promotes its a museification by following the slogan conservation over new construction (Lima,1996). The plan acknowledges the deprivation and urban decay characterising the centro storico, but aims at restoration strategies using a similar methodology adopted for the regeneration of Bologna’s historic centre. In fact, ‘typological categories’ defined through a

FIG. 2.1 PRESTIGE (QUATTRO CANTI) ALONGSIDE COLLAPSE (PIAZZA GARRAFFELLO)

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 2.2 DECAY (ALBERGHERIA QUARTER) ALONGSIDE PROTECTION (VIA VITTORIO EMANUELE)

historical analysis determine guidelines and standards for policy interventions (Benevolo et al.,1989) such as philological or typological restoration, demolition without reconstruction. The plan emphasises the netto storico‘s protectioneverything that is antecedent to 1939 - and to rectify the ‘incorrect’ usage of spaces (Cannarozzo,1996; Lima,1996; Lo Piccolo,1996).

The plan also envisions 50,000 people to return and live in the centro storico (after twenty years it counts only 26,000 residents). This target generated the priority of redeveloping the area for residential use; however without a coordinated socio-economic strategy, the plan failed to create the conditions that sustain residency. In fact, the PPE set standards but did not promote public spaces redevelopment, public housing or shared facilities provision. Standards were never translated into actions and, by simply walking through the centro storico, one can still notice the lack of any services and the neglect of collective spaces.

Yet, the PPE was not driven by ‘public policies’ defining land use and activities, beyond the emphasis on tourism and hotel industry. The bias toward obsessive conservation and the short term vision of the PPE didn’t succeed in reactivating the area and in promoting physical, social and economic regeneration as demonstrated by the persistent area’s depopulation and socio-economic fragility. Moreover besides the questionable issue of what use is ‘incorrect’, and in respect to which references restoration is philologically and typologically acceptable (Lima,1996), the plan also doesn’t recognise informal strategies of adaptation developed during almost fifty years of city government’s recklessness.

Even today it is not difficult to find cloisters turned into parking lots, churches used as stables or monumental entrances transformed into commercial fronts.

While focusing on the museification of the city, the planning language was paying little attention to the people who live and work in those areas, with a narrow understanding on what regeneration could and should do.

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.2.3 PPE CENTRO STORICO LAND USE Source: Comune di Palermo, 1989 civic religious cultural-religious residential - palace typology residential - other typology non-historic unaccessible green space - public or private accessible green space - public

FIG. 2.4 PSI PALERMO Source: Comune di Palermo, 2008

A more accurate proposition, sensitive to the socio-economic matrix of the centro storico, was entailed in the Piano Programma, a cognitive tool elaborated

by De Carlo e Samonà (1981). The plan tried to overcome the decline of the centro storico on the assumption that the area cannot be treated as a homogeneous context and that interventions must be developed starting from the small scale, and more specifically, from the critical reading of open spaces.

However, the Piano Programma was never incorporated into formal planning documents, and its objectives were easily dismissed.

The PPE resulted in punctual uncoordinated interventions, manifested in jeopardised physical restorations, mostly localised in prestigious areas of the centro storico (Cannarozzo,2004); meanwhile, the ‘out-of-prestige’ places developed organisational mechanisms out of the formal control and, at time, out of legality. A multitude of collateral plans, programmes and projects were used to compensate what the PPE is either missing or delegating to other instruments.

These initiatives provided opportunities for accelerating renewal, but operated on a fragmented and case-by-case basis, thus supported partial and private interests, rather than integrated and coordinated public strategies.

In 2003, Palermo slowly entered the path towards a strategic planning process, concluded in 2008 with the implementation of the PSI. The plan proposes objectives and strategies for transforming Palermo into the Mediterranean gateway city (Comune di Palermo,2008). The vision is based on nine strategical goals to cluster new urban centralities around urban themes (culture, health, transport). Within this strategy, the PSI defines a Pivotal Project for the centro storico‘s socio-economic and cultural regeneration.The key-argument is that the 'valuations of cultural resources' may foster broader regeneration of the area (Comune di Palermo,2008). Once again, the premises did not find an application in any specific policies or plans, and the PSI continues to exist as only orientation, non-regulatory tool.

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

To conclude, the validity of all the planning instruments formally in force has expired because, according to the Italian law, general regulatory plans can last for ten years while detailed executive plans last for five, before being replaced, revised or implemented. The contemporary scenario hence includes an expired PRG, an outdated PPE and a powerless and incomplete PSI. How is it possible for a city to continue being in the absence of planning and long term vision, alongside a context of critical changes? And how can such planning culture adequately address urban crisis and promote regeneration, if its highly officiated attitude continues to ignore the ‘multiplexity of urban life’ (Amin and Graham,1997) characterising the resilience of Palermo’s centro storico?

Plan

PPE 1993

OBJECTIVES : Regeneration of Centro Storico ACTIONS: Detailed interventions plan on public buildings and relative streets, open spaces and facilities I Promotion of private restorations I Restructuring mobility and public services OUTCOME: Collaeral policies and programmes I Complementary plans

Policies and Programmes

PIC URBAN 1 1994 - 1999 PIC URBAN 2 2000 - 2006

OBJECTIVES: Urban regeneration of historical centres with a high degree of physical and social deprivation with impacts on economic and cultural resources.

ACTIONS: Immision of EU, national, and municipal funds for public assets and private housing restoration, local enterprises support, occupation promotion, social health and security services provision, infrastructure and environment implementation, at singular projects’ scale.

OUTCOME: Punctual interventions in Castellamare and Tribunali quarters.

PRU I PRUSST

OBJECTIVES: Urban regeneration of low density areas with low levels of economic activity.

1999 - 2002 ACTIONS: Public coordination and private interventions for public facilities creation, touristic and productive assets implementation, residential and commercial properties restoration, at the district scale.

OUTCOME: Requalification of public open spaces, restoration and implementation of housing.

PUBLIC FUNDING PROGRAMME FOR PRIVATE RESTORATION

OBJECTIVES: Urban regeneration of Centro Strorico built environment to increase residency.

1995 - 2007

OUTCOME: Geopardised restoration of private buildings.

ACTIONS: Private restoration subsidised by public funds under the coordination of municipal governments at singular projects’ scale.

Complementary Plans

3 YEARS PLAN FOR PUBLIC WORKS 2010

URBAN TRAFFIC PLAN 2012 PRG HARBOR 2008

STU - URBAN TRANSFORMATION UNITS (proposed)

PIVOTAL PROJECT - PSI 2008 (proposed)

RECOVERY PLANS (ALBERGHERIA AND CAPO) 1989-93

FIG. 2.5 OUTLINE OF CURRENT PLANS, PROJECTS AND POLICIES FOR THE CENTRO STORICO

37

Attitudes and Alternatives Critiques and Reactions

Throughout the last twenty years, many voices in the Italian debate argued that, under current conditions, regulation alone is not adequate in guiding urban transformations (Carta,2011; Lima,1996; Ponzi,2008). Urban conservationism pursued a radical agenda, safeguarding the demographic, economic and physical make-up as an antidote to urban sprawl (Dines,2012). The politics of conservation in the centro storico of Palermo, while overemphasising the preservation of the physical asset, has resulted in fragmented, nearly absent, social policies, ignoring that history is a living force, made of people, exchanges and transformations. This approach appears even more inappropriate today, in relation to the changing civic and productive structure of the city. According to Friedmann (2001), a genuine alternative would have to shift from a state-centric planning to a different starting point. Indeed, claims for a more democratic planning process emerge in Palermo both ‘from the top‘ and ‘from below’.

Antonietta Lima in Palermo: struttura e dinamiche (1996), highlights the fragilities of current plans and proposes guidelines for an alternative approach. She argues for an ‘organic planning culture, open to the dynamism of life’ proposing the democratisation of the planning process, based on social integration and inclusive design of elastic and self-regenerative spaces in order to contrast marginalisation and foster multi-functionalism (Lima,1996). Nowadays similar discourses on participation, inclusive design, and community involvement are a shared feature of the contemporary planning language. However, the extent of their success depends on the way narratives are translated into actions, which are up until now in Palermo almost absent.

The necessity to shift towards integrated ‘creative policies’ which integrate political, economic, professional, social and cultural goals to promote competitiveness and cohesion, against decay (Carta, 2011) is a shared opinion also among planners and administrative actors.

‘The PPE was the best alternative possible at the time of its introduction. However, today it represents an ‘inflexible shield’ for the centro storico, while Palermo would rather a spear and a horse. The revision of the PSI together with the implementation of other tools, is a crucial opportunity to intercept resources and activate coordinated processes. Palermo needs to rethink its metropolitan dimension - at the moment constrained within its communal boundaries - from which broader economic and societal development can start. A metropolitan scale for policies, although challenging, could improve Palermo’s liveability, social cohesion, competitiveness by targeting a larger territory, more dynamic demography, and a broader functional demand, from which also the centro storico would benefit..‘ Planner and Ex City Councillor (Field notes, July 2014).

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

The restructuring of the current planning framework is, therefore, understood as a necessary step to successfully face Palermo’s urban issues. A desirable PPE 2.0 is believed to translate the PSI objectives into actions guided by culture and leisure space promotion, slow mobility strategies, and creative urban recycle for the activation of financial resources (Carta,2010). The city council seems to support the path towards strategical and democratic planning and is keen to implement a revision of its documents involving public consultation. Various stakeholders met in the past months around urban topics that will inform new PRG, and the revision of the PSI will start the end of 2014 although the Planner says ‘most of the work will depend on the availability of funds’ (Field notes, July 2014). For the scarcity of official sources and the opaqueness of the administrative machine, unaccessible within the short temporal framework of this research, it is difficult to assess where this revision process is going to lead and whether the typical detachment existing between formal power and citizens’ lived practices will be perpetuated or softened.

Yet, it can be said that the gap between city politics and people is partially filled by the growing activism of non-governmental organisations, start-ups, and citizens associations, involved in a process of regeneration ‘from below’. At the intersection between formal discourses and informal practices, many projects on participative co-design, cultural promotion and social innovation, have been initiated.

‘To face urban issues Palermo needs a virtuous model for participation, one that engages citizens in the process of communication and cooperative design. Technology allows you to have 1:1 relation with citizens becoming the best tool to analyse the urban landscape. It makes people’s perspective on urban problems visible, so that both public and private actors can better identify the matrix of needs and demands and re-orient interventions by integrating the traditional planning instruments to more complex reading of the urban realm.’

Civic Start-up member 1(Field notes, July 2014).

Improving collaboration among citizens, horizontal associations and public actors in contrasts to the absence of integrated visions and approach of decisionmakers is considered a necessary step to overcome partial interests and activate the renewal machine.

‘The council should work as a coordinator of processes already at stake, like a server that collects resources. The role of planning is not to propose uses, functions or majestic plans, but rather incorporate multiple visions originated from everyday city’s users. Our company works as a facilitator in this sense. It is necessary to simplify the bureaucratic structure of planning, moving towards more flexible and less detailed plans that can be implemented by citizens’ feedback. Technology is the tool visualising resources, but policy is the instrument to convert resources into coordinated strategies.’

Civic Start-up member 2 (Field notes, July 2014).

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

However, most of the times these ‘bottom up’ initiatives belong to a formal world of privileged users. Although providing complex approaches to reading and analysing the urban, they use a prestigious language, from which marginal population, underground economies and informal realities are largely excluded.

Friedmann defines planning culture as ‘the ways, both formal and informal, that spatial planning in a given multi-national region, country or city is conceived, institutionalised and enacted’ (Friedmann,2011:168). What Palermo’s planning culture is missing is the recognition - even before the institutionalisation - of informal socio-spatial practices and their strong cultural and social significance.

In Palermo’s centro storico, where abandonment is substantial, and adaptability is visible, informality has redefined urban life within decades of decline.

The planning culture needs soft tools to be able to acknowledge and dialogue with the invisible and fine-grained culture of informality and adaptability, as formal tools and narratives generated frictions with the informal hierarchies and practices taking place in the urban realm. Hence not only it is important to include the civil society in the process of planning as one of the key actors shaping cities (Friedmann,2011), but also to make informality visible to the landscape of politics.

39

THE SPATIAL FRAMEWORK |

43

Geography of Street Markets Centro Storico and Historical Street Markets

FIG. 3.1 SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICE IN THE MARKETS (PIAZZA GARRAFFELLO)

The decision to concentrate the analysis on two markets of the centro storico grew up from three specific concerns. Firstly narratives and strategies for the centro storico renewal have large implications on historic street markets.

They fall within the macro-areas of decay and deprivation, where the physical landscape of neglect overlaps the socio-economic landscape of poverty and ethnic differences (Comune di Palermo,1995; 2010). Secondly, regulation and planning have given to these places a symbolic order and value; historic markets have been accounted as local pride of culture and folklore and, from this perspective, the council is developing discourses of place promotion and city marketing, manifesting the influence of urban entrepreneurialism (Harvey,1989).

Finally, historic street markets represent a public meeting ground where since centuries different individuals and groups come into contact through everyday practices supported by physical and sensorial interaction, and secular rituals (Sennet in Hall,2012).The social process and practice of communicating, trading, and consuming engage users in multiple exchanges that cement social and cultural identity.

Through a fine-grained observation of the socio-spatial matrix of historic street markets, the analysis of their social and cultural significance visible, and at highlighting strength and fragilities of their ecosystems. The investigation on the urban landscape of historic street markets shows how the different geographies of the Ballarò and Vucciria are an outcome of diverse spatial-functional interactions in which various morphological-formal and organic-functional characteristics interface (D’Alessandro, 2008). Both markets are mainly specialised in the trade of fish, meat, fruit and vegetables (Confesercenti Report,2005); yet, differences in history, location, assets and users, generate a specific urban character and catalyse special complementary functions. At the same time, the markets share some mechanisms that illustrate the universal value of adaptability and resilience strategies beyond the specificity of the markets.Thus, the evaluation of conceptual value. The evaluation of only two historical markets, the active Ballarò market and the abandoned Vucciria market (excluding Capo market) is a necessary selective criteria to evaluate how adaptive strategies have been developed at extremes, and to read adaptability through changing and permanent features, which constitute the basis of historic markets’ resilience.

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

23,5

11,3

18,9

TEATRO MASSIMO

PIAZZA SAN DOMENICO

12,2

8,7

QUATTRO CANTI

PIAZZA PRETORIA

16,2

CATHEDRAL

VIA V. EMANUELE

COR

23,8

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

2,8

6,9

FIG.3.2 ASSETS ALBERGHERIA AND LOGGIA

FORO ITALICO LA CALA

2,6

cultural institutional religious civic educational

2,1

natural

PIAZZA MARINA

markets ballarò vucciria axis landmark I point of reference

LA MAGIONE 9,9

7,5

VIA ROMA VIA MAQUEDA

RSO TUKORY

45

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

47

Ballaro The Active Market

FIG. 3.3 BALLARO' SQUARE

Spatial Features: located Albergheria or Palazzo Reale quarter, at the intersection between Coso Tukory and Via Maqueda, the market pours into the interior alleys reaching the historic complex of Casa Professa and the City Library. In its centre, on the west side of Ballarò square is located the Church of Carmine Maggiore, a religious and cultural aggregative centre for the entire neighbourhood, while other cultural and administrative buildings surround the area.

The market develops alongside a longitudinal axis with three main entry points on its south, north and east side. Accessibility is a big issue as the street pattern makes vehicular circulation difficult. Unregulated traffic creates an anarchy of flows, and it is very common to see cars or motorbikes passing through stands and pedestrian paths. Moreover, there is no space for parking, and the only lots available in Ballarò square are usually ‘occupied’ by employed of surrounding city and university offices, leaving no space for market users or residents.

The market’s streets are enriched by small shops and taverns. These collateral activities are often located in multiple sub-divided units, proving a misalignment between cadastral records and de-facto condition. The extensive presence of abandoned buildings left room to informal construction and illegal occupation of both private housing and public architectural heritage. Abusive bodies leaning against historic buildings are informally used as deposits; singular commercial units are subdivided into multiple shops; facades are transformed into active fronts to expand businesses to the street.

Among 112 activities, 97 occupy counters placed in front of the formal shops, creating continuity between interior and exterior, while are only 15 activities formally result as market stands occupying the public ground. In reality, stands exceed the official number and usually cover a bigger area than authorised. The licensed activities result to be 71, and there are, at times, multiple registrations for the same physical unit (Confesercenti, 2005).It means that the level of informal and unauthorised commerce is very high in the market, leaving room for disadvantaged, and poor traders to sell their goods without taxation, but also creating pockets for illegal activities.

Social Texture: Traders and users are normally native Palermitans, usually long-established residents of the area, living in public housing or obsolete longowned apartments. Merely living from market-related and Ballarò-centric activities, they experience fragile economic condition and social-cultural marginality.The large number of immigrants established in the quarter improved the residential mix and led to contamination of the once closed-community of historic markets’ traders. Although still limited, today one can find specialised shops/stalls with international products, African hair-dressers, muslim butchers, and sometimes young migrants work as employees of the long-established local traders. Due to the presence of university venues and a student hall, the student community is expanding the social mix and slowly activating a gentrification process, as proved by the night-bars that opened at the edge of the market.

Rarely, middle-class employees of surrounding offices, make use of the market to take away hot meals from the many street food stalls.

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 3.4 BALLARO' ANALYSIS

FORMAL-INFORMAL TRADE

a 20 0

8 am

23 %

d

67% foo

ps sho

Long-established I shops

Temporary

occasional

fish

2

olives

4

fruit and vegetable

6

0

TRADERS Long-established I stalls

10 8

handcraft

news-stand

ethnic

tobacco

phamacy

shoes

haberdasher

shops d shops underwear ood oo n-f n-f o n butcher no house wares

0

clothes

1

jewellery

cheese

coffee

poulterer

olives

butcher

bakery

fruit and vegetable

fish

shops ood n-f no

deli

2

23 %

3

23 %

23 %

0

ised hor ut

5

4

ps sho

10

12

d

15

5

a

20

non

30 25

67% foo

6

ps sho

40 35

TEMPORARY STALLS

d

ed is

NON - FOOD SHOPS

catering

3

40

food shops

shops ood n-f no

60

non

licensed activities %

ps sho

no use

80

temporary stalls

d

occasional use

67% foo auth or FOOD SHOPS

100

other shops

67% foo auth or 63.4

market

9pm

pm

TYPE OF ACTIVITIES

ed is

6

TIME ACTIVITIES

ised hor ut 6.6

48

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

SOCIO-SPATIAL ORGANISATION Permanence

Semi-Permanence

Disappearence

Disappearence

Transformation

Transformation

Extension

Extension

Reciprocity

Convenience

Contamination

Hiding

Transient

Occasional

TRADERS Multiethnic

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.3.5 PATTERN OF USES daytime active front nighttime active front tangent activity (not directly related to market) informal stalls (temporary stable and transient) pedestrians

monday 9.30-10.00 am medium activity

sunday 11.30 am-12.00 pm high activity

wednesday 6.00-6.30 pm high concentrated activity

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

fruit and vegetable fish and meat homewares street food taverns FIG.3.6 CHARACTERS

occasional trades taverns

shopping activity

fish street food taverns

other activity smuggling

fruit and vegetable street food fruit and vegetable homewares street food fruit and vegetable clothes meat and fish meat and fish accessories cheese spices fruit and vegetable ethic food street food homewares meat and fish clothes

meat and fish

sitting chatting drinking eating

eating playing sitting chatting drinking eating

eating

parking sitting chatting drinking eating

playing sitting chatting parking

side door entering staying

front door entering staying

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LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

Use Pattern: The Ballarò has always served as a commercial facility for Albergheria’s residents. Despite the bombing of 1943 severely damaged the market, the Ballarò did not suffer of the depopulation of the centro storico , and the commercial activity in the postwar period was immediately restored thanks to users flows coming from proximal districts of the city. The economic function seems to prevail, although resized by the general economic crisis and the increasing competition of large-scale commercial facilities. The Ballarò is still more convenient than any other shop or supermarket and benefits of a relatively high residential density and a central location. The second large activity is connected to the street food culture.The sell of cooked products mainly takes place during the day, merging with the traditional market activity. However, some food stalls remain open until late evening due to a growing nighttime population, transforming the area into an open-air restaurant. The taverns located alongside market streets also provide traditional street food but are mainly used by locals as a meeting point for drinking and playing cards. The proximity of cityand university-related buildings, together with the presence of the historical complex of Casa Professa, increases administrative uses and cultural tourism in the area. Finally, the Santa Chiara Centre, which social activities for migrants social integration, attracts foreigners living in other neighbourhoods into the market’s area, whose streets become meeting, sitting, or chatting places. Like many markets around the world, illegal activities are incorporated to the market system, manifesting in a more or less visible world of cigarettes smuggling and drug dealing.

FIG.3.7 STREET FOOD CULTURE

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.3.8 SPACE AND TIME MANAGEMENT

Socio-spatial Organisation: Lacking or ambiguous regulations creates a flexible time framework - there is no clear delineation of when the market opens or close, when the trading activity stops and nighttime activities start.

- and self-sufficient organisational and management strategies - absent noise limits, garbage collection times, public ground occupation. First, there are different degrees of permanence in the market: some opens spaces have a changing daytime/nighttime configuration while others are never emptied out.

Commercial activities that formally or informally own a storage space manage trading time and space independently from regulation because self-sufficient.

They occupy the public ground, treated as private, as long as they want, close at their preferred time, but are responsible for space maintenance.Traders without a fixed storage space, assemble and dismantles every day temporary stalls on the public ground, they benefits from less control and leaving management aspects to the council. However, some stalls remain permanently on the public ground under the informal regulation of hidden hierarchies of power. Second, the continuity existing between indoor/outdoor business is recreated in the reciprocal/competitive functional relation between taverns and street food stalls, as well as in completing/substituting uses between individual residential spaces and collective publics. Market spaces are read by locals as an extension of their private house, so the public ground is constantly reinterpreted through aggregative open-air activities. Also, the migrant community contributes to redefine street life and open spaces function, which became reorganised places for living, working and interacting.

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Vucciria The Abandoned Market

FIG. 3.9 CARACCIOLO SQUARE

Spatial Features: located Loggia or Castellammare quarter, the Vucciria comprises the network of streets between Caracciolo and Garraffello square.

Since the original commercial size has been considerably reduced, the actual market area entails Caracciolo square, via Maccherronai and via Pannieri. Like in the Ballarò, the stalls are a physical extension of local shops located alongside the streets.

Among 63 commercial activities, there are only 3 temporary market stalls which are daily assembled on the public ground. In addition, a small number of transient traders fleets in the squares with improvised or mobile stands. Despite the limited size of the market, there is a big variation of activities in the area, but once again the number of authorisation doesn’t correspond to the number of actual business present on the ground. This indicates a high degree of informal activities. The neglect and abandoned ground floor units are easily transformed into informal shops, diners, deposits, overcoming formal ownership or land-use regulation. However, the precarious state of the built asset naturally constrains the phenomenon of space appropriation as collapses are ordinary events.

The Vucciria has a transformative nature as starting from the afternoon it completely changes configuration and function. The shops dismantle their stalls and close, but some instantly converts into ‘friggitorie’ and bars; dining tables are set on the squares; street food stands proliferate, and the area recycle itself for happy-hours, dinners and open-air parties. Accessibility is difficult here too, because of the lack of parking and circulation space, aggravated by the presence of inaccessible ‘islands’ created from either collapses or residents taking over the public space for private use. Nevertheless, the self-developed nighttime activity mostly attracts pedestrian flows and are spontaneously pedestrianising the area.

Social Texture: The area is characterised by low density of inhabitants and commercial activities. Planned restorations should increase the number of inhabitants. Nevertheless, residents continue to move out due the lack of appropriate facilities and due worsening conditions of the built environment.

Decentralisation policies are also transferring proximal public offices to other parts of the city, reducing the number of occasional users and customers.

However, in the last decade, students and artists started to move in the market area, attracted by low housing prices and the picturesque atmosphere of this unregulated world. Some foreigner migrants live in the area too although they do not purposely choose to live in the Vucciria. They are structurally unable to access proper housing and prefer to live in squatted buildings or to rent obsolete apartments. With a similar logic, artists and young collectives establish their studios in free-rent decaying properties in concession from private owners.

Though, the main users remain the transient night population, a very mixed combination of local young professionals, artists, students, immigrants, and tourists.

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 3.10 VUCCIRIA ANALYSIS

FORMAL-INFORMAL TRADE

7% TEMPORARY STALLS

TRADERS Long-established I stalls

Long-established I shops

Temporary

0

temporary stalls

other shops

food shops

catering

icecream taverns

0,5

restaurants

1

friggitoria

1,5

cafes - bars

2 occasional

0

under ware

0,5

3 antiquary

1

CATERING

2,5

fish

2 1,5

and vegetable

3 2,5

fruit

leather hausewares shoes d shops tobacco -foo n no handcraft

0

clothes

1 0,5

mixed music

tunafish eggs shops ood wine n-f o n

coffee

dried fruits

spices

bakery

fish

olives

93% f ood an

butcher

1,5

2

93% f ood an

deli fruit and vegetable

0

93% f ood an

d rise ho

shops ood n-f no

15 5

93% f ood an

0

shops ood n-f o n

8 am

9 3 % f ood an

2

20

ing ter ca

4

25

7%

ing ter ca

6

30

10

NON - FOOD SHOPS

non a ut

10

ing ter ca

auth or

7%

ed is

FOOD SHOPS

8

licensed activities % 3

no use

35

7% ing ter ca

leisure I catering

40

non a ut

1 am

shops ood n-f no

occasional use

ing ter ca

pm

TYPE OF ACTIVITIES

7%

auth or 67.2

market

6 pm

ed is

2

TIME ACTIVITIES

d rise ho 2.8

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SOCIO-SPATIAL ORGANISATION Permanence

Semi-Permanence

Disappearence

Abandonment

Transformation

Transformation

Extension

Extension

Recycle

Appropriation

Contamination

Hiding

Transient

Occasional

TRADERS Special

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FIG.3.11 PATTERN OF USES daytime active front nighttime active front tangent activity (not directly related to market) informal stalls (temporary stable and transient) pedestrians

FIG.3.12 CHARACTERS

souvenirs

shopping activity

meat spices homewares

other activity smuggling fruit and vegetable housewares clothes

fruit and vegetable fish fruit and vegetable

sitting chatting drinking

eating drinking chatting

eating drinking playing sitting chatting dancing eating drinking playing sitting chatting

playing

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

friday 10.30-11.00 am low activity

saturday 10.30-11.00 am low activity

wednesday1.00-1.30 am low activity

wednesday1.00-1.30 am medium activity

friday 10.00 pm-11.30 pm high concentrated activity

friday 10.00 pm-11.30 pm high concentrated activity

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Use Pattern: The market was created between the 10th and 12th century after the reclamation of lands caused by the shift of the coastline and has actively worked mainly as a fish market until the postwar. The bombing of 1943 and the subsequent lack of reconstruction accelerated depopulation. The result was a slow decline in the commercial activity, which was not counterbalanced by the potential flows from the northern districts, as residents gravitated towards modern suburban facilities. Even though, the Vucciria has always been a wellknown meeting point and an important social space for interaction, once for market consumers, now for leisure users. The shopping activity is very fragile and targets the lower-income class inhabiting the surrounding areas. But the loss of the original function is counterbalanced by the informal nighttime scene of open-air leisure activities. Because of its transformative attitude, the Vucciria is also a recognised location for largely present and very much visible underground economies. The transient night-crowd also attracts a consistent number of fleeting peddles occasionally selling roses or other small goods. The area is a used as setting for movies, street art works, artistic and cultural performances, through that the Vucciria gained international fame. The area hence serves as a tourism attractor, although it is not formally included in any touristic itinerary or regulated and supported by tourism policies.

FIG.3.13 EMPTING OUT

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG.3.14 FILLING IN

Socio-spatial Organisation: The ability to recycle spaces, organisation, users manifests in the Vucciria across time (past/present, daytime/nighttime, weekdays/weekend) and scale (ground floor units, activities, publics). Since there is no formal order, self-organisation has become the foundation of a chaotic visual order and multiple hybrid uses. The desire to meet various demands of new users, as they represent the only resource for the area to sustain itself, encourages improvisation and adaptability and inclusivity strategies. The total absence of routine, fixed configuration, habitual customers are at the same time what preserves and destroys the area. On the one hand informality and adaptability are the reactions to abandonment that enable to overcome the market crisis. On the other hand it is what creates difficulties in stabilising residential population, protecting existing shops, and attracting new inhabitants and activities, and improving the quality of urban spaces, to catalyse investments in housing, facilities and services. Resilience is intimately related to the dimension of free and borderline zone, which also facilitates the creation of pockets of illegality. The artistic and cultural scene has been crucial to the self-activation of the place, encouraging also formal and informal restoration and restructuring; however the challenges of the physical neglect and social and regulation anarchy prevents wealthy privates to move in or invest in urban transformation, excluding any gentrification processes.

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TOWARDS A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING |

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Mechanisms, Processes and Practices A Socio-Cultural Kaleidoscope

As traditional spaces for communication, social, economic and cultural exchange, Palermo historic street markets represent a ‘total social fact’ (Mauss,1954; Durkheim,1966), a ‘vernacular space in which men and women engage in social practices of prolonged and habitual consumption’ (Zukin,2012:282). The increased opportunities for communal activity in the public life in both Ballarò and Vucciria has become a key-strategy to overcome abandonment, isolation, marginalisation in the centro storico and to sustain the markets’ socio-economic system independently from city’s policies and planning.

The first consideration is that mechanisms of adaptability enabled the markets to survive in their original location despite various disruptive events, and to maintain their structure against every attempt of modernisation and functional adaptation. Though self-organisation, self-regulation and self-management the space of the street, of courtyards and buildings is daily reinvented in the markets.

This context is complemented by the mutual relation with different collateral activities hosted in the markets. The organisational mechanisms of informality and hybridity preserve the space from further abandonment but at the same time threatens the urban quality of the urban environment.

The second aspect of adaptability is the contamination of uses. Practices of everyday consumption successfully increase opportunities to participate in the communal life of the street and sustains the casual ‘’sidewalk ballet’ (Jacobs,1961) of market users. In both Ballarò and Vucciria those practices merge with moments of popular culture and tradition. As an example, street food consumption becomes one of the most important collective moments of the market. Street food is not simply an alternative to eating at home or in a restaurant, but it constitutes a social ritual of eating together outdoor. In Mediterranean cities, this is an identifying character of social spaces; the process of sale and consuming food generates an immediate form of communication and reveals the texture of gastronomic and ideological meanings underlying the culture and ordinariness of everyday life (Giallombardo,2006).

The other important form of contamination is the interlaced relation between sacred and profane. In both the Ballarò and Vucciria the functional tie between traditional and popular culture and the social fabric of the city emerges during religious festivities. In fact, the influence of the confraternities - religious associations based on the principle of brotherhood among members of the same parish - on markets’ area fosters the engagement of the neighbourhood’s social fabric (civic and religious institutions, parish, residents, vendors, neighbourhood and traders association) into sacred rituals. The scenic area of​the market is transformed to accommodate processions of devotees and simulacra; stalls disappear and flags, sheets and lights appear on balconies to celebrate patrons and saints.

During religious festivity, even the merchandise takes different configuration, with carefully studied expositions of symbolic meaning (Sorgi, 2006).Secular and sacred practices are bond within the same urban space, revealing the vitality of collective moments as both foundation of the ‘exceptional’ and ‘ordinary’.

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 4.I CONTAMINATION

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The third character of markets’ adaptive cultural organisation is the creation of sui-generis inter-communication practices. High levels of sociability are achieved through simple gesture of ‘doing’ (Laurier and Philo,2006; Paddison and McCann,2014), through daily performances based on intangible and ephemeral phenomena that become a facet of mutual acknowledgement of togetherness.

The pizzini (price tags) represent an old communication strategy based on optical illusion. Every price is rounded to 0.99 so that the hand-drawn 9 on tags looks like a 0; the label acquires communicative force and attractive power, inviting passers-by to come closer to the stand. The abbanniate (‘shouts’ to sell the products) produce a similar effect. Shouts and rimes of vendors capture customers in the dazzling dimension of ancient oral traditions, and once they are closer, the rapture is emphasised the chromatic, olfactory and tactile effects of goods. The coppi (conical paper to wrap the goods) have more functional purpose. Their conic package prevents the products from being squashed by their weight and is an easy system to carry things. Knowing how to wrap goods with the correct movements is part of the exchange ritual between traders and customers, which makes the whole transaction credible (La Cecla,2002). Thus, these objects also hold symbolic meaning, as ‘The idea of delivering to someone an article which takes on importance by being wrapped, tied up, protected and concealed, is ancient as the practice of giving and offering. [...] The packaging is the thought behind the article, which transcends its material form to give status to the transaction, to what the things ‘do’ to people and between people. ' (La Cecla,2002:34) The materiality goes beyond the object and becomes a narrator of a sub-world made of invisible orders and intangible actions5.

The opening towards multiculturalism increases possibilities for socio-cultural inter-communication. Multiculturalism merges sub-worlds of the street ‘in which form of belonging are sustained through everyday conveniences’ (Hall,2012:7) and is prominent in the Ballarò, while less pronounced in the Vucciria. The participation of an ethnically diverse population to the life of the market involves the socio-spatial texture in processes of re-interpretation of the traditional functions and meanings. The market initially perceived as a place of aggregation and identification exclusively by Palermitans, now holds the same importance for migrants who, through their everyday experiences, become key-actors in the ongoing construction of the space.

On this account see the project called Edizioni Precarie on the re-functionalisation of market’s wrapping paper, used as a means to tell the precariousness and invisibility of markets’ sub-worlds.

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FIG. 4.2 COMMUNICATION

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Retrofitting Traditional Planning Principles to reorient Key Strategies

The mechanisms, processes and practices analysed above represent a significant resource to understand markets resilience and adaptability, which can be scaled up to build a renovated dialogue with the official planning culture. The focus on small politics of the everyday with the idea of rethinking the large-scale institutional approach can produce a ‘trickle-up effect’ (Cruz,2008) to retrofit and challenge the top-down language of planning. It means that these mechanisms, processes and practices have a broader significance than for markets itself and that strategies proposed to rethink spatial planning in Palermo can be reproduced and translated in different environments and at different scales.

The concept of Minimalism addresses the need of a flexible and porous spatial organisation. In contexts of high historical-artistic value, such as in the central location of the markets, spatial regulation is essential to preserve heritage’s value for future generations. Nevertheless, the spatial fabric of the markets also holds a symbolic-functional originated in the possibilities for informal adaptation and appropriation. Therefore, planning is required to take on a minimal approach, whose language allows both fixed configurations and transformative attitudes.

Spatial and organisational regulations need to be rigorous when they address assets of explicit public value, but rules need to become looser when improvised and reinvented uses of both built and open spaces overcome degradation and abandonment through dynamic re-interpretation. By limiting the intervention on public spaces improvement and leaving adjustable power for reuse, renewal and restoration to privates, the city can activate the catalysing of negative grain, bringing the private city within the public life.

FIG. 4.3 SPACE POROSITY

LEARNING FROM A SOUTHERN STREET. SOCIO-SPATIAL PRACTICES IN PALERMO’S STREET MARKETS AND A NEW VOCABULARY OF PLANNING.

FIG. 4.2 SOCIAL ELASTICITY

The notion of Mixed-Users instead than mixed-uses aims at guaranteeing a multifaceted society within places of high level of exchange. Planning needs to shift from its bi-dimensional language of restoration/construction to the threedimensionality of socio-spatial practices. By widening the ray of citizens to include stable, transient, occasional, multiethnic users, regulation can improve the intensity of socio-economic and cultural exchanges, planning regulation can enhance a more dynamic density of relations and interactions, as a necessary foundation for collective expression and participation to city life. If, on the one hand, the markets are catalysts for tourists and other temporary users, on the other hand, its vitality depends on the quantity and quality of residents. Planning needs to regulate the contamination of the everyday with occasional and special rituals, transforming the markets into linking places between local and global conveniences.

In order to capture hidden value of the urban realm, the planning culture necessitates of Mediation. Urban mediators, such as start-up, associations and consortium, are strategic players with the capacity to relate institutional actors with common people and bridge the formal-informal language and culture.

Policy frameworks needs to provide space for platforms which can mediate between the top-dow, formal, institutional agenda and bottom-up, informal, social capital. For instance, the recognition in official planning of existing trade unions or grouping interfaces can become a key-strategy to improve management, cultural and economic attractiveness, to increase liveability and urban quality, and regenerate the image of the markets.

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CONCLUSION |

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The potential of the negative grain.

Extracting Value from In-between Spaces

FIG. 5.1 URBAN CRISIS

In the era of global capitalism, urbanisation and population growth, Palermo is in a state of crisis. The city is shrinking, while socio-economic changes put high pressure on the environment, financial resources are almost exhausted, and the urban landscape experiences prolonged abandonment and decay.

The consequences of a controversial political economy, rooted in decades of corruption and speculation, manifest in a wounded territory, whose crisis is exacerbated by invisible hierarchies of power both preserving and destroying the city. Within this context Palermo needs to identify mechanisms, processes and strategies, which can be in some ways effective to sustain a model of urban development where prosperity and liveability can exist in the absence of growth.

The planning culture has revealed an unsuitable attitude to face this challenges.

The overstressed urban conservationism and the absent socio-economic policies constrained Palermo in its urban crisis, missing the chance to activating processes of social, economic and urban regeneration. Although other approaches to planning have been emerging both from the ‘top-down’ culture and ‘bottom-up’ activism, the misplaced incorporation in official strategies and the wider lack of awareness and knowledge of lived practices present on the ground, limits the potential effectiveness of such alternatives.

In fact, this dissipative de-growing city, maintains the ability to reconfigure the urban, by making use of its long-established adaptive culture organisation.

Informal socio-spatial practices of management, occupation, uses, interaction, communication keep reinventing urban life in the everyday of Palermo, disclosing a dynamic social and cultural identity and a self-sufficient regulation.The informal city can only partially fill the voids of incoherent formal order and its unregulated nature often threatens the urban quality of the built environment.

This research investigates what mechanisms, processes and strategies can be in some ways effective to mediate between lived practices and prescriptive structures in Palermo, and it proposes to implement the language of planning and to retrofit its highly officiated culture starting from an understanding of adaptability in everyday heterogeneous realms. In Palermo’s centro storico where urban decay and adaptive culture organisation substantially coexist with a high level of artistic-historic-cultural heritage, historic street markets represent structural permanent features that serve as complex interface between the formal and informal city.

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The fine-grained observation of the socio-spatial matrix characterising the Ballarò and the Vucciria market leads to identifying key-principles of Minimalism, Mixed-users and Mediation that Palermo’s planning culture needs to embrace in order to activate the markets’ public realm. These strategies can have broader consequences on private spaces that rely outside formal control and decision making and on the regeneration of the whole city.

On the one hand, the promotion of historic street markets can transform those places of socio-cultural identity into drivers of urban regeneration, incentivising investments, economic growth and socio-cultural cohesion in the area, as proved by similar experiences elsewhere - Porta Palazzo (Turin), Boqueria (Barcellona), Központi Vàsàrcsarnok (Budapest), Borough Market (London), Les Halles (Lyon).

On the other hand, these public spaces with a high level of socio-economic exchange and historic value, can act as engines for 'widespread urban quality’ through a ‘zero-volume’ approach(Aymonino,2006).

The new vocabulary of planning here proposed symbolises the attempt to bridge the world of official planning and the many sub-worlds of citizens. It represents an approach to orient planning and design by using fine-grained observation of small-scale in-between spaces as potential urban catalysts for a broader process of regeneration. Strategies to overcome urban crisis require new ways of thinking. An alternative language of planning, one that addresses the multiplex city (Amin and Graham, 1997) and entails multiple models of city making, has wider significance for the global debate around regeneration. By rethinking the relation between built and unbuilt environment, private and public space, top-down and bottom-up strategies, the formal and informal world, it is possible to extract meaning from the negative grain of the city and identify innovative solutions to face urban challenges.

FIG. 5.2 CREATIVE NEGATIVE GRAIN

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