Giustizia spaziale e nuove diseguaglianze

Abstract

The necessary measures taken by the Italian government to tackle the pandemic, especially in the first phase of the lockdown, with the closure of productive, commercial and cultural activities, have amplified the contradictions already present in the cities and territories of our country highlighting their fragility. The worsening of new forms of inequality is reverberating to the status of socio-economic suffering in which the most vulnerable sections of the population were already at risk of marginalisation or poverty. This circumstance confirms that the places in which we live constitute, in terms of spatial justice, the proof of the concrete inequalities in terms of accessibility to primary goods, spaces and public services for the exercise of rights, questioning that "right to the city" which should always be guaranteed. In the face of the deficiencies of public welfare systems to support the weaker sections of the population, during the lockdown period, in particular in some "peripheral" contexts of our cities (coinciding not only with social housing neighbourhoods but also with portions of the historic cities, especially of the South), have emerged forms of reaction to isolation that have resulted in self-organized micro-networks of assistance between social groups and third-sector actors, through which solidarity actions and participatory programmes have been activated, which have compensated for the failure or late intervention of the institutions.