New Arrivals, Old Places: Demographic Changes and New Planning Challenges in Palermo and Naples

Abstract

If we look at the demographic changes in the largest cities in Southern Italy, the most significant trend is a balance between population growth and decline, affecting in particular inner urban areas, which is due to the predominance of new ethnic inhabitants. After having described these demographic changes in Naples and Palermo, the paper will include some considerations on the ‘institutional’ landscape of planning and the related policies. How do planning policies and practices face this quick change in such peripheral contexts, which are new to the phenomenon? Can the plural composition of the local society be viewed as an opportunity, and not just as a threat? The paper will use some analyses of the immigrants’ distribution and characteristics of housing problems as elements of discussions of the changes in the urban social structure, which can be considered as positive potential for a more equal and culturally mixed context

The “Souths” of the “Wests”. Southern critique and comparative housing studies in Southern Europe and USA

“…Racial/ethnic stratification is paradigmatic of analogy in difference. Both regions have been places of emigration since the late nineteenth century-with few exceptions like the industrial triangle of North-Western Italy, which has long been recipient of internal migration-and have become recipients of international immigration since the 1990s (e.g., Lo Piccolo & Leone, 2008;Lloyd, 2012). However, immigration added layers of diversity on a traditionally dual (White and Black) society in the South of USA and a relatively more homogeneous society in Southern Europe-but with exceptions, linked to the history of colonialism (see Giuliani, 2013;Peralta & Domingos, 2019) and the long-term presence of Roma and other Gitano groups (see van Baar et al, 2018).…”

From “Spaces of Fear” to “Fearscapes”

“…The city's "delay" is found at the levels of economy, governance, and urban development, associated with the presence of organized crime-and the acquiescence of politicians-which, at least as far as the late 1980s, influenced urban governance, bringing about turbulent urban growth without any effective regulation (Cannarozzo, 2000). Palermo is, nowadays, experiencing important transformations: late metropolitanization and suburbanization processes (Casanicchia et al, 2006), urban renewal in central areas, and emerging immigration fluxes (Lo Piccolo & Leone, 2008). 3.…”