TOWARDS A “NEW CITY”?
ANALYSIS OF PROCESSES OF URBAN SPRAWL
Original repository “Oltre il Ponte”, no. 2, 1983 Franco Angeli Ed. Milan by Giorgio Piccinato and Giuseppe De Luca*
In the literature we find an increasing emphasis on the arrest of urban concentration – in its consolidated terms of housing, productive activities and population – and of an
inversion of the trend, of the growth of non-urban areas, revitalization of marginal zones, urban decentralization. It would appear that the foremost element of socio-economic and also cultural expression of industrial development, the city, is dissolving and breaking up across the entire territory, no longer focusing on a give portion that can be physically perceived with the naked eye.
The fact that processes of transformation of the urban structure are in progress, and that they have a particular impact on large cities, appears to be indubitable. Just as there can be no doubt if we observe the trend of evolution of the Italian society, as well as others, towards a system of territorial diffusion of life. But care should be taken here: this is not the “urban nebula” of which Gambi speaks (1); that too exists, it is true, but it is the dense
intertwining of availability of income, presence of employment, official or otherwise, creation of social expectations, leveling and multiplication of information, that permits even marginal portions of territory – or in any case those considered such in an analytical perspective
closely tied to “growth as concentration” – to go through moments of extreme socio-economic and therefore also territorial dynamism.
Since the phenomenon manifests in the cessation of growth of urban and metropolitan areas, many have attempted to connect the two directions in pursuit of possible “models of consequentiality” of the inversion – as in the period of concentration – overlooking not only the dynamic element of the phenomenon, but also its territorial connotations, confusing causes with effects and local elements with general and “diffused” processes.
Of course the problem arises of the measure of the phenomenon, its impact in various territorial realities, its “spread.” But this is not easily resolved with traditional, official data sources: either because they are aggregated and anonymous, or because they cancel out the possible relations between problems, phenomena and individual behaviors, or because the narrow territorial boundaries, even when marginal, have no reason to exist given the high level of economic, social and also cultural integration. Moreover, in our view, we are faced with a form of organization of space that is not obligatory, nor predetermined on the basis of explicit objectives, as might be the case in the period of concentration, making it hard to grasp within factors of general and quantitative synthesis.
Aware of this, we have attempted to initiate a local analysis through direct
investigation in the field in two restricted situations of the Veneto. The work is simply an attempt to identify more articulate and specific systems of detection of the phenomenon in its territorial scope. We cannot help but point quite frankly at the limits of the work and its approach, strongly focused on only one social segment: the population that lived in a house built or completely refurbished after 1970. But these have been intentional, pursued choices; it is in fact these figures that determine the transformations of space, and probably represent the tip of an iceberg that is still submerged to a great extent.
1. The urban structure in the Veneto has traditionally been based on spreading settlements with small centers scattered across the territory. Even in the periods of highest urban concentration in Italy (1950s and 1960s) the phenomena of centralization of the population have not been sizeable, with the exception of certain individual situations. The process of industrialization itself has not represented a moment of “traumatic” rupture, but has been extremely “cadenced,” almost settling over the existing urban structure, reinforcing it without breaking it up. So much so that it has become common to speak of a “Veneto model” and a “polycentric urban system” in reference both to industrialization and to the territory.
The present phase of ulterior growth of minor urban systems, or those that have remained at the margins of concentrated industrialization, has therefore not taken on in this region the clarity that can be observed in other territories. It is undeniable, however, that the entire dynamic of population growth is “concentrated” in terms of both residential and industrial use only in these urban systems (2).
But how is the territory structured? We can make reference to the two observed areas and to the sole issue of housing, which is what interests us on this occasion. The observations cannot help but be partial, but we think they are sufficiently explanatory. In the two areas we have sampled, one of recent growth, the other already consolidated in its development (3), new construction is spread across the territory at a level of 65.8%, with greater weight in the area of Padua and less weight in that of Vicenza. In the total spread of housing, 46% of the units are completely isolated in the territory, while the remaining 54% are gathered in small nuclei of 4-5 dwellings (tab. 1). Most of the construction activity of the last decade has thus been located on the territory outside the main urban center. But the same data on housing located in inhabited centers is relatively significant, since we are dealing with towns of modest size, relatively distant from one another. In fact, the entire urban structure of the two areas, more strikingly in that of Padua, represents a single organism of a territorially
distributed urban fabric, where the original inhabited center – with rare exceptions –
functions more as an element of coagulation of the whole diffused residential system than as a distinctive and autonomous element. The administrative functions of the entire life of the community are not always located inside it, but are often distributed across the whole territory or prevalently in certain areas – at the intersection of two or three streets that connect a comparable number of municipalities or inhabited zones – which may also not coincide with the original urban center.
This gives rise to an initial distinction seldom addressed in the literature on this subject: speaking of urban sprawl, in our view, should not imply a completely scattered location of housing, but instead a territorially diffused minor urban system where policies of social assistance, the presence of services and infrastructures and the continuous integration of the market have made access to goods and services independent with respect to the
residential position on the territory. Hence the historic difference between city and
countryside, to sum it up in linguistic terms, tends to be erased or is no longer as important as one might think.
In these systems, then, to speak of residences located in the urban center is simply a distinctive characteristic of the terminology of urbanism, rather than a true element of distinction between different morphologies. And, in fact, if we examine the typology, the dwellings located in the center are of the single-family type (67.9%), while the apartment buildings (14.1%) or other typologies (17.9%) are less numerous. The single-family typology, furthermore, is also prevalent throughout the zone examined (tab. 2). This datum goes
together with that of property use: over 90% of the surveyed residences are owned by their inhabitants, singularly (86.4%) or in co-ownership (4.2%) (tab. 3). The rental system is not widespread, which means that movements from the larger urban centers towards the area are not caused by a tight housing market, even if we assume that law no. 392 of 1978, by
excluding municipalities with a population lower than 5000 inhabitants from rent regulation, steers the demand for rental housing into these areas. If anything, a shift takes place in the municipalities in close proximity to the large urban center and not in other areas such as those we have examined. Areas we could define as intermediate, between the townships adjacent to urban concentration, reflecting all the ills of the latter, and the remaining, marginal municipalities.
The growth dynamic thus has connotations that are totally endogenous, presumably due to a sizeable increase of income and job opportunities existing in the area. The
movements are therefore inter-area (tab. 4), connected with processes of relocation and/or qualitative improvement of the dwelling. Here the subdivision of land ownership that exists in the region becomes the key element to remove one of the main costs of residential relocation: that of the land (tab. 5). There have been many cases of new residential constructions
alongside old settlements of an agricultural character. But this would not have been possible had there not been a remarkable increase of availability of income for each individual family nucleus at the same time. And in fact, in the families we have surveyed, which do not
represent a sort of “nouveau riche” (4), unemployment is practically absent: out of an average household size of 3.9 persons/family, on the average two of those persons hold jobs. If we consider the fact that the school age members have an average of 1.2 per family, we can see that there is a high deployment of the entire potential labor force in the official job market. This is a telling factor for the economy of the area we have surveyed, or at least its families. The work opportunities themselves have not been created in parasitic sectors, but in productive sectors (51.9%).
We should not forget that precisely inside the central area there has been a marked trend towards the growth of small businesses in the proper sense of the term, aided by a series of structural conditions existing in the region (5). This is joined by the agricultural sector which tends to take on the role of a reservoir of second jobs and therefore of added income: almost all the residences we have surveyed are located on agricultural lands that are cultivated by the families, or by others called in for the purpose (6). This latter form of
employment (and income) eludes any quantification because it happens on the family’s own property and is therefore seen as an obligation/duty with respect to ownership.
The presence of income probably also functions as an element of attraction, if we consider the fact that 10.3% of the families previously lived in municipalities outside the district. This is undoubtedly a small quantity that cannot be significant enough to represent a trend signal. If these areas have “found” the elasticity needed to attract new population, plausibly also returning to the area given the fact that these were zones impacted by
emigration in the 1950s and 1960s, it means that they are no longer “peripheral” with respect to the overall model of development.
Therefore, if on the one hand the growth has endogenous connotations (residential improvement), on the other it closely depends on exogenous factors (location of employment opportunities), consequences of the intense economic growth recorded during the course of the 1970s in the region, particularly in the central areas.
Here we encounter a second point for clarification. In our view, the growth of the modern capitalist economy no longer seeks a specific place in which to concentrate the multipliers by accumulation; instead, it “distributes” them, “spreads” them, “organizes” them across the entire territory. It is the territory per se that becomes the preferred place of all the factors of production, but also those of reproduction. This is joined by a strong tendency towards the “personification” of the lifestyle – particularly perceptible in social realities such as that of the Veneto – towards the segmentation of the decision-making power of the State on both administrative and managerial fronts, towards the spread of “social wellbeing” over the entire territory in terms of assistance, income and culture, towards the presence – also in
marginal portions of the territory – of businesses and of all the products available on the market, with a high level of diffusion of service industries in the territory made possible by the spread of data processing.
Hence the possibility of extending the urban effect – not just in physical terms – over increasingly vast portions of the territory; an effect that probably does not create territorial systems from scratch, but relies (at least in the situations of ramified urbanization like the Veneto) on existing systems, exploiting combined factors like the increased productivity of agriculture, the presence of infrastructures of reference, etc., renovating them and “adjusting” them with respect to the new needs of production in such a way as to get beyond the typical rigidities of concentration.
2. It is therefore the possibility of access also to diversified sources of income and of deploying almost the entire workforce that determines – in social realities like this one where the family is still the central fulcrum of convivial experience – an elasticity in the use of
savings that has an immediate impact on the house-asset. And this also is reflected in the general living conditions of the family, both in terms of the needs satisfied and the services installed in the residence. This discourse opens the way to new observations that the theme of this contribution does not permit us to explore. We can simply mention them: from private locomotion (the family-automobile ratio is 1:1.9, with a preference for medium-high engine size), to color television sets, walk-in freezers, etc.; thus to the house of large size (over 150 square meters of living space in 80% of the cases), typically of the “suburban villa” typology of very bad taste, with two or three bathrooms.
A reality that is a “carbon copy” of the most detrimental citified civilization, where autonomy is confused with dependence and “wellbeing” with social conservation.
3. Naturally this type of settlement, which breaks away from the historic structure in settlement nuclei (and therefore in albeit minimum forms of concentration), leads to serious difficulties in terms of consumption of agricultural land, pollution (only 7.5% of the houses we surveyed are connected to the public sewer system, while the rest have cesspools, 89.3%, or nothing at all, 3.2%), and excessive infrastructure. What makes the problem even more complex than in the past is the fact that this “mode” of settlement is not simply the result of a sum of purely speculative behaviors – and thus liable to being addressed by effective
standards and controls, were the political will for this not lacking – but of the form assumed in space by economic and social structures that differ from those of the past.
To distinguish and separate the different uses of the land, in keeping with the
traditional indications of urban planning, somehow implies the existence of social conditions of production in which the functions are clearly marked and to some extent autonomous: exactly the opposite of what happens in the model we have described, where the range of activities in a single social cell is such as to deny the possibility of a real distinction. The proof of this can be found by examining the regional legislation on construction development and protection of agricultural zones (LR no. 58, 1978) (7). If the intentions – praiseworthy but perhaps not timely – were to regulate the structure of agricultural space, the result is instead that of temporarily freezing new construction, while permitting extensive restructuring of what already exists, with the transformation and expansion of agricultural annexes.
Therefore, in practice, the outcome has been what was supposed to be avoided, in terms of undermining of roles – and in what has probably been the worst or in any case least
controlled way. It would be hard to imagine that a legal standard could suffice to combat the final results of a deeply rooted structural transformation, which cannot help but be reflected in a different organization of space.
Here we get to the crux of the issue. What has been called the “regulatory obsession” of Italian urbanism has actually been a way to try to resolve by edict contradictions and conflicts that are hard to interpret, and even harder to control. This is the symptom of a serious
difficulty in coming to terms with real complexity, clinging to a guarantism that has no
effective impact because it is detached from the processes of change in progress, and failing to construct the means and tools with which to grasp that change in a timely way.
Urbanism (like politics?) has lagged behind, for many years now, and by now even their exponents themselves seem to be convinced of this fact: not by chance, the national congress of the National Institute of Urban Planning, in 1983, addresses precisely these themes.
* of the University of Architecture of Venice.
1. L. Gambi, “Da città ad area metropolitana,” in Storia d’Italia, vol. 5, book 1.
2. For example, see A. De Angelini, L’evoluzione del sistema insediativo italiano negli anni ’70; il decentramento e la crescita delle aree rurali, in 1a Conferenza italiana di Scienze Regionali, Naples, October 1981; and idem. Lo sviluppo territoriale del Veneto negli anni ’70:
decentramento urbano e industriale, in 2a Conferenza italiana di Scienze Regionali, Naples, October 1981; also B. Anastasia and E. Rullini, “La nuova periferia industriale. Saggio sul modello Veneto,” Materiali Veneti, no. 17-18, 1882; G. Rizzo and G. Robiglio Rizzo,
“Marginalizzazione e rivalorizzazione nel Vento,” in Agei, L’Italia emergente, vol. 2, F. Angeli, Milano, 1983, although the latter, considering only the demographic dimensions as a
parameter of measure, is insufficient to explain and interpret the real territorial processes. 3. The townships covered by the study are: Campo San Martino, Carmignano, Cittadella, Fontaniva (later excluded for lack of data), Galliera, Grantorto, San Giorgio delle Pertiche, San Giorgio in Bosco, Santa Giustina in Colle, Tombolo and Villa del Conte in the province of Padua; Agugliaro, Albettone, Barbarano V., Campiglia dei Berici, Noventa V., Orgiano, Poiana, Sossano, Villaga in the province of Vicenza. The research has been conducted through a questionnaire regarding 5% of the licenses and permits for new constructions or complete renovations issued starting in 1970 for a total of 310 (192 in the province of Padua, 118 in that of Vicenza). The data have been processed with the collaboration of G. Secco of the Institute of Geography of the University of Padua.
4. Out of the 62.3% of the population over 14 years of age, 74% declares employment, of which 34.4% are self-employed; hired workers represent 28.6% of the sample. See G.
Piccinato, G. De Luca, G. Cretella, “I caratteri dell’urbanizzazione in un’area periferica: analisi di un caso veneto,” in 3a Conferenza italiana di Scienze Regionali, Venice, November 1982, now in Bollettino Du, no. 1, 1983.
5. Cf. R. Camagni, La dinamica delle localizzazioni industriali nel Veneto negli anni ’70, report to the Convegno CGIL-Veneto Politiche di localizzazione industriale, Venice, April 1981; B.
Anastasia and E. Rullani, op. cit.
6. The percentage is 74.5%, of which 80.1% in the Vicenza area and 68.9% in that of Padua. 7. The regional regulation based its philosophy on a constraint of what “can be done,”
inserting itself in the logic of the distinction of the territory in functions and assigning each of them a “quantum” of maximum construction “under certain conditions.” In practice, by
granting the Provincial Inspectorate of Agriculture the right of waiver of regulatory
constraints and obliging the municipality to “take note” the result is to give rise to an intense, vast process of transformation of use (towards residence) of agricultural annexes.
A research project we are conducting demonstrates that the applications for building permits for new constructions have practically vanished, while there has been a large increase in those for the expansion of rural outbuildings or houses, all requiring waivers.
Tab. 1 – Territorial location of surveyed residences Absolute values Relative values Urban center 106 34.2% Rest of territory 201 65.8% of which: in nuclei 109 35.2% completely scattered 95 30.6% Total residences surveyed
Source: survey, November 1981.
Tab. 2 – Type of surveyed residences and their territorial location Relative values
of which
urban center nucleus scattered Single-family
Apartment building Other typologies
Source: survey, November 1981.
Tab. 3 – Structure of residential property and type – relative values ownership co-ownership rental other Single-family
Apartment building Other typologies
Source: survey, November 1981.
Tab. 4 – Location of previous residence – relative values Same neighborhood
Same municipality
Other municipality in province Other municipality in region Outside region
Source: survey, November 1981.
Tab. 5 – motivation for choice of location – relative values Land ownership
Land purchase House purchase Other
