Trasformazioni delle città contemporanee tra pubblico e privato. Centri commerciali tra gli agrumeti storici di Palermo

Abstract

In the last fifty years the governance and the transformations of cities reflects the phase of “uncertainty” produced by the formation of a new frame of spatial planning practises. At the moment, the way of planning the urban and territorial transformations, and the different possibilities to realise a project, are regulated by new forms of relationships between public and private. If from one side, new forms of negotiated actions between public and private actors make possible a larger flexibility in the process of transformation, from the other side, the general vision defined by the plan is lost and the risk is to generate an irreversible process of transformation. This situation occurs especially in the most external areas in the cities where are concentrated the interventions of private initiative for the realisation of shopping malls. The present experiences in Italy show an increasing tendency to use private investments to activate projects of urban transformation and regeneration. But if the private initiative is the element to set processes of urban renewal, it is also very important to balance the private interests with the, possible, perspectives of development for the public actors. In Italy, exist numerous urban contexts, as in Palermo, still characterized by a strong interrelation between city and territory. But the historical landscape tend to disappear, both for the, legal and illegal urban sprawl, both for the tendency to transform the agricultural areas and the ancient historical citrus groves into places to destine to the commerce. In Palermo, the recent events, connected to the realisation of two new shopping malls in historical agricultural areas, show the increasing tendency to read the green areas as neutral support on which is possible to put any type of commercial object. In this sense, the paper intend to propose some reflections on the necessity to valorise the place identity in the peripheral areas where, as in the case of Palermo, the signs of a historical and cultural landscape, still remain. The paper intends to investigate the aspects related to the possibility to integrate the public interest with the logic of the private investments, also in the peripheral areas where it is necessary to guarantee urban quality departing from the recognition of the local identities.