geografie luoghi spazi città

launch of market-led urban regeneration projects, worked as a detonator for the protest. Urban public
space (6), as a consequence, became the base and, at the same time, the stake of the conflict between
different social groups and various stakeholders of the urban communities, representative of particular
and divergent interests.
The outcome of this confrontation can be very dissimilar, depending on the context and on different
variables such as the local governance structures, the level of local empowerment, the power relationship
between the actors, the ability of the movement to project itself externally (i.e. to expand its
range of action and its sphere of relationships with other people or other geographical areas), as well as
its ability to generate active territoriality or new urban common (7).
3. CASE STUDIES. — The main elements of the redistributive implications of urban regeneration
plans highlighted in the literature quickly reviewed in the previous section are also present in the experience
of Salerno, a medium sized city affected in the last years by a significant waterfront regeneration
program. This program has been praised by many observers and pundits as a model of dynamism
and local administrative capacity, as a benchmark and a best practice to adopt in a problematic area
like Southern Italy. However a different perspective emerges from a closer look at the case studies we
propose in the following.
3.1 Piazza della Libertà and the Crescent. — The first case study is that of the area denominated
Santa Teresa. It is located near the historic center and the commercial port of Salerno, in the most representative
section of the urban waterfront that still hosts the most valuable buildings and the major urban
functions. From the first half of the Nineties the area has been placed at the center of the urban renewal
program undertaken by the local administration in order to reaffirm its centrality and to tackle the
deteriorating conditions in which it lied (Iovino, 2002; Russo, 2011). After setting aside several design
hypotheses developed by Bohigas (the Catalan planner who in 1994 was in charge of the urban renewal
program and the drafting of the General Plan of Salerno) the regeneration project of this area is assigned
to the archistar Bofill. Following the stringent guidelines of the Municipality, his project featured a large
semi-circular square, overlooking the sea, surrounded by a classical looking hemicycle, the Crescent, of
enormous size. This iconic landmark building, which recalls previous works by the same Bofill in other
locations (Savona, for instance), is designed to accommodate apartments, offices and, on the ground
floor under the portico, shops. Other commercial activities are hosted in the space between the raised
square (under which there is an underground parking in two levels), and the new tourist port.
Since 2009, the year in which a scale model of the project is publicly presented, controversies and
disagreements arose, leading to the creation of a local committee, the NoCrescent, formed by residents
of the neighborhood and surrounding areas. Right from the start the Committee is actively supported
by the Salerno section of Italia Nostra who takes on a leading role in the protest actions. Additional
support to the NoCrescent was provided by a local association already active in the urban area and
highly critical of the local Administration, the so called “Figli delle Chianchiarelle” (8). The main
objections raised to the project by the Committee and Italia Nostra concern:
(6) The two concepts of “public space” and “common” are not equivalent, even though they are sometimes used interchangeably. This
is true not only because public spaces, unlike commons, have a legal connotation. More importantly because public spaces are not necessarily
commons from a sociological point of view. Indeed, as noted by Harvey, “Syntagma Square in Athens, Tahrir Square in Cairo, and the Plaza
de Catalunya in Barcelona were public spaces that became an urban commons as people assembled there to express their political views and
make demands” (2012, p. 73). In other words, the commons, as opposed to the public spaces, are products of the collective actions, of
“knowing how to do together”, i.e. of the commoning practices.
(7) A clear affinity emerges between the concept of active territoriality invoked before and the concept of commons, to be interpreted
as products of collective action, of “knowing how to do together” by the community (commoning) in the interest of the commons and the
Common Good. On the relationship between commons and territorialisation see Moss (2014); Turco (2014); Gattullo (2015).
(8) The name of the movement, born in 2011, comes from the appellation used by the Mayor to mock those citizens who, in opposition to
his program of renovatio urbis, questioned the redevelopment project of Santa Teresa, zone of degradation and “chianchiarelle”, i.e. wooden
boards (with reference to the discharge and processing of lumber to which the area was dedicated in the remote and less remote past).
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