The bill containing land consumption has been approved. But it contains all the technical traps to slow down its effectiveness while the cement race continues. These days the yes to the bill on “Containment of land consumption and reuse of built land”, proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies. The proposal had already arrived at the Council of Ministers in June (2013), now it has been approved by the Unified Conference, composed of subjects of the state apparatus and those belonging to local autonomies, and by the Council itself. The act could constitute an important step, because finally the government not only discusses but tries to deal operatively with the problem of land consumption. However, the final draft of the measure is largely insufficient, as it preserves all the contradictory elements already present in the original draft and subject to various criticisms from many quarters because they weaken, to the point of frustrating the best options, the effectiveness of the measure.
In our country, the urban footprint covers about 20% of the national land. Bernardino Romano and other urban planners, as part of the research “Reusing Italy”, report Ecoplanum data on the census of cementified surfaces - updated to 2010 - taken from the intersection between satellite returns, orthophotocards and readings of technical maps of all regions. The data say that the partial result, relating to less than 50% of the national territory, already provides a confirmed urbanization figure of about 35 thousand square kilometers out of a total of 301 thousand, more than 10%! When the survey is completed, the figure will certainly exceed the mentioned threshold.
Alongside this order of surveys, the data relating to empty rooms and unused commercial and industrial volumes emerge sensationally: for the former we are about twenty million, while the latter now exceed one billion cubic meters (in a few weeks the data of the last census will be official). Faced with this situation, a law was invoked on the blocking of land consumption that was truly such: excluding any new building, unless there were very special cases; providing urban plans with clear tools to reduce or eliminate building rights already acquired, especially in contexts already marked by a strong overabundance of supply; canceling the possibility that Berlusconi's “emergency” laws (the Objective law for infrastructures, the special ones for energy, waste, purification, etc.) could circumvent the same planning, even landscape planning, forcefully determining recovery — instead of new buildings — in the direction of new urban and territorial policies. The measure, on the other hand, failed to detail these caveats, maintaining all the elements of confusion and contradiction reported. In a country like Italy where, as Minister Nunzia De Girolamo herself said in June of this year, “(...) every day we waterproof more or less the equivalent of 150 soccer fields” and where there has been a “166% increase in the built territory in Italy in the last 50 years.”
In fact, the controversial points clearly emerge in the legislation. At the bottom of paragraph 1 of art. 3 of the Legislative Decree on the containment of land consumption: “(...) the maximum amount of consumable agricultural area on the national territory is determined, with the objective of a progressive reduction in the consumption of land and agricultural area”. This principle is part of the European perspective of “(...) the goal of an increase in net land occupation equal to zero to be reached by 2050”. But if on the one hand Europe seems to have noticed the problem, on the other hand it seems to have not yet understood the magnitude of the emergency.” (...) From the report Overview on best practices for limiting soil sealing and mitigating its effects, presented for the first time in Italy by the European Commission during the ISPRA conference” on February 5, 2013, “about 2.3% of the continental territory is covered by cement. From the 1000 square kilometers estimated in 2011 by the European Commission — an area that exceeds the surface area of the city of Berlin — about 275 per day (1990 and 2000), it went to 920 square kilometers per year (252 ha per day) in just 6 years (2000—2006)”.
Those who deal with land and urban planning in Italy know, and there is no doubt, that such a horizon, that of 2050, could prove ineffective in starting a real alternative to the waste of agricultural land and not. Time is too long for an implementation that should take place, if not immediately, at most in a space of a few years.
Ispra argues that “(...) land consumption in Italy has grown to an average of 8 square meters per second and the historical series shows that this is a process that has not come to a standstill since 1956. It went from 2.8% in 1956 to 6.9% in 2010, an increase of 4 percentage points. In other words, on average, more than 7 square meters per second have been consumed for more than 50 years” (Ispra Press Release - Italy loses land consumed 8 square meters of land per second).
And again, “(...) The phenomenon was faster in the 90s, a period in which it was almost 10 square meters per second, but the pace of the last 5 years has always been accelerating, with a speed greater than 8 square meters per second” (Ispra Press Release - Italy loses land consumed 8 square meters of land per second).
You carry with you all the weight of past mistakes, as can be easily understood in art. 9 of the Legislative Decree: “(...) Starting from the date of entry into force of this law (...), and in any case no later than the deadline of three years, the consumption of agricultural land is not allowed except for the implementation of interventions already authorized and provided for by current urban planning tools, as well as for the works and works already included in the programming tools of the contracting stations and in the program referred to in article 1 of Law no. 443 of 21 December 2001.” And Law No. 443 is nothing more than the so-called 'Objective Law'. As if to say, it is urgent to change our actions, but calmly there is no such hurry. A dangerous contradiction.
Salvatore Settis wrote:
“(...) now resigned to the devastations that hurt us every day, we refuse to see what we should: that the anomaly is becoming the rule, that the exception is being transformed into a unique model of development, that urban sprawl is eating up cities and countryside, that entire generations of Italians (millions of people) no longer have in their inner geography any harmonious landscape to remember, nothing to fantasize about. The horizontal city, widespread and dispersed, grows on itself, spreads around like a lava flow. It swallows up the ancient countryside, but between home and home it leaves a multitude of interstitial segments. Residues and fragments that are not good either for agriculture or (still) for housing, a gray area that corresponds to a space of indecision, but also of insecurity”
(S. Settis, Landscape, Constitution and Cement, 2010).
by Andrea Alcalini and Alberto Ziparo, taken from Save the Landscape - ITALIAN FORUM OF MOVEMENTS
FOR THE LAND AND THE LANDSCAPE
(Eddyburg.it, January 10, 2014)
