We receive and publish a letter from the city councilor of Cosenza, Bianca Rende
Under the lights nothing or almost nothing. If there hadn’t been Black Friday and now the arrival of the sales, the non-food trade of Cosenza would be experiencing a crisis which is also manifested visually in the historic centeron the outskirts and in the same “main street”: Corso Mazzini, where prestigious clothing and footwear shops are closing, giving way to less exclusive and attractive franchises for those coming from the province, which was once economically subordinate. Therefore, awards to meritorious people are not enough but a few resilient excellences to fill a void that manifests itself in the failure, at least so far, of the Council for Commerce and in the clouding of the Chamber of Commerce. We are now becoming a “semi-city” that heats up only with football. Instead, once in Cosenza trade was the main productive activity and shopkeepers had so much faith in the Municipality that they even accepted a Bruzia Coin which would later become the mockery of an unpaid bill. Not to mention illegal construction, a real thorn in the side of regular trade, but also of urban decorumbeing more than evident, by now, the lack of control not only of the occupation of public land but also of the appropriateness of the goods displayed with the supposed or real decorum of the places illegally occupied with poorly arranged stalls or the increase in uncontrolled automatic vending machines which they often become bivouac areas, to the detriment of small businesses.
Today, the planning of a commercial policy requires an inter-municipal area challenge, at least at the level of the metropolitan city which we are only talking about, a more effective transport network and certainly not the Amaco “hole”, the creation of a plan of traffic which, as demonstrated in these Christmas holidays, is urgent to avoid the queues which have discouraged many people from approaching, the limitation of access in some parts of the city, supported with accessible and economically sustainable car parks by users, an advertisement of also a wide-ranging television area. And then, local consortia and cooperatives for the purchase of raw materials and the coordination of timetables between neighboring municipalities, the construction of a promotional brand for the entire urban area. Not to mention prominent and attractive events and the restoration of an annual fair of local products, the opening of a permanent municipal wine shop with the cellars and producers of five DOC vines, the qualified use of free time well beyond beyond the meritorious voluntarism of the Rendano Theatre, increasingly pop and less tied to the quality of tradition. Daytime and not just nighttime events, which do not bring any income advantage to local trade, being reduced to the usual round trip of occasional and free patrons who find a city at night, if not inhospitable, even devoid of ad hoc toilets and inaccessible for women and the elderly. The regionalization of trade is indispensable and already in the other Regions laws on the Districts are taking off which provide shared strategies and programs for a relaunch of commercial activities but above all the financing for a preferential tax on market rents and the serious reduction of tariffs on MSW, the support to proximity and social activities, crafts and street vendors in historic centres.