The conference room of the Bar Association of Catanzaro hosted the seminar “Rentals, gentrification, desertification. Problems, regulatory obstacles and solutions“, Promoted by Confedilizia Calabria with the patronage of the orders of the engineers, the chartered accountants, the college of surveyors of the province of Catanzaro and the BCC Calabria further. The meeting constituted an opportunity for deepening on phenomena that profoundly affect the urban morphology and the economic vitality of Italian cities, in particular those of the South.
To introduce the important event, moderated by Giuseppe Mercuriojournalist of the South Gazzetta, was Antonio AbateVice -President of Confedilizia Catanzaro and President Coram, who underlined the urgency to face the dynamics in place with new tools, oriented to the simplification of regulatory and the enhancement of private property as an engine of urban regeneration.
The works then entered alive thanks to the interventions of Claudio Amato (FVS researcher), Sandro Scoppa (President of Confedilizia Calabria) e Antonio Viscomi (ordinary at the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro), who have outlined from different perspectives but converging the profound causes and possible solutions to the phenomena of desertification and urban gentrification.
In particular, the reductive reading has been criticized that attributes these phenomena to an alleged excess of market freedom. On the contrary, it has been highlighted how the decline of historic centers is the result of profound transformations: the aging of the population, the fragmentation of families, the spread of smart working, the growing mobility and the expansion of digital trade. In this context, the urban district progressively loses its identity and relational dimension, transforming itself into a disarticulated set of provisional functions.
A specific focus has been reserved for non -housing leasesstrategic sector for the economic seal of urban centers, now hindered by a fragmentary legislation and bureaucratic obstacles that limit their adaptability. It was highlighted how, contrary to a certain rhetoric, the commercial fees have often reduced themselves, reflecting a weakening of the demand rather than speculative dynamics. In this context, the adoption of flexible formulas, such as i temporary storeappears decisive to intercept new needs and encourage the reuse of spaces.
There gentrification It was read in a non -ideological key, as a possible redevelopment and relaunch factor. If you govern with intelligence, it can attract new investments and revive neighborhoods in decline. The real risk has been observed, does not reside in the change itself, but in the rigidity of the rules that hinder its natural evolution.
A significant part of the interventions concerned the regulatory confusion: The intertwining of state, regional and municipal skills generates uncertainty, slows down investments and feeds the distrust. Instead of accompanying the change, the institutions too often react with new constraints, prohibitions and the return to bankruptcy formulas of the past, such as fair canon. It has been reiterated that the market should not be fought, but supported as a resource for urban relaunch.
A clear line emerged from the seminar: regenerating cities does not mean imposing rigid and uniform models, but creating an open context, based on simple rules, stable and favorable to contractual freedom. Urban vitality was born from the variety of solutions, from trust in the individual initiative and from the ability to adapt the spaces to the needs of contemporary society. The real regeneration can only start from the bottom.
In closing, an essential principle has been reaffirmed: a city is not a good to be guarded unchanged, a sort of museum, but a living organism, modeled every day by the free choices of those who live, transform it, invest it. Only by respecting these choices can we return a sense, function and future to the spaces that today risk emptying themselves not only of people, but also of meaning.