White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 3this kind of picture there is very littleroom for the modern rural landscapeproduced by contemporaryindustrialised farming practices(Staffan Helmfrid, Dimensionemetropolitana, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1999,pp. 65 ff.).Moreover, as the city grows, it istransformed beyond recognition, notso much for urban dwellers whoexperience and change it, as for allthose who wish to describe andadministrate it and are no longer ableto keep up with the pace of changesince they rely on outdated models ofinterpretation and governance. Wewere used to identifying the source ofthese changes in productiontransformations and of course this iscorrect. But this has led to focusingwholly on the visible aspects of thephenomenon – such as the opening upof huge gaps in the urban fabric due tothe relocation or transformation offactories during the industrialtransition – diverting attention froman equally if not more importantphenomenon for the lives of millionsof people: changes in dwellingpractice. To take one example, theturn of the 1960s saw the largestinternal migration of people fromperipheries (countryside) to centres(cities) in Italian history and one of thelargest migrations of its kind in thecontemporary world. Most Italianobservers – always liable to forego anunderstanding of the facts in the nameof aesthetic or prescriptive judgements– stress the apparent foolishness ofmillions of domestic immigrants readyto crowd into crammed quarters onthe city outskirts and metropolitanperipheries, abandoning a supposedlyhigher quality rural life. But few realisethat the offer of a house with sanitaryservices and running water wasirresistible for people who forcenturies – when not actually livingwith animals, as was the fairlywidespread case in the ruralpopulations, especially in the south –had to satisfy their physical needs in allconditions of weather and health bygoing outside and crouching over astinking hole. The bourgeoisintellectuals, who had no experience ofsuch problems, easily triumphed intheir sarcastic attacks on the “whiteclaycivilisation”, and even spreadurban legends about terroni (“clods” –term of abuse for Southern Italians)who cultivated basil in their bathtubs(so what anyway?). Today, thanks tothe careful studies by more objective,rigorous observers we know that therelationship between the body and thedwelling context and the complexinterplay of intimacy and the public(an integral and apparently trivial partof our daily lives) actually concealsymbolic and prescriptive meanings incomplicated effects. In pursuing the“art of living”, we unconsciouslycomply to these meanings, whichcareful analysis reveals as beingintermeshed in the overall socialsystem.As we will see, this is not the only casein which the internal micro-sociologicalorder of the conditions of dwelling(structures, hygiene and buildingstandards) are directly linked to themacro-sociological order (urbanWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 60