The institutional commitment to combat urban degradation and promote integration processes in the southern area of Catanzaro and in the areas occupied by Roma communities is intensified.
Today, in the presence of the Undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior the Hon. Wanda Ferro, a Committee was held, chaired by the Prefect Castrese De Rosa, in which the Mayor of Catanzaro Nicola Fiorita, the Regional Councilor Giovanni Calabrese, the municipal councilor for the environment, the Head of the Environment Department of the Calabria Region, delegates from Arpacal, from the ASP of Catanzaro, from the Single Reclamation Consortium, from Aterp as well as the Police Commissioner Giuseppe Linares and the representatives of the other Police Forces and Provincial Fire Brigade Command.
The objective is to accelerate the processes of social cohesion, urban safety and protection of the environmental and housing heritage, through structural interventions and social mediation actions that can stem marginalization, recover the liveability conditions of entire urban contexts and at the same time give continuity to the results achieved.
The peripheral areas south of Catanzaro, in particular the district of Viale Isonzo, dell’Aran-cento, of the Pistoia district and of Via Lucrezia della Valle have long been affected by phenomena of abandonment, precarious housing conditions and the stable presence of Roma families. The historical isolation of these families has favored a state of residential and social segregation, with negative repercussions on liveability and the perception of safety. The latest fire that broke out in Via Lucrezia della Valle is testimony to this degradation and calls all the institutions to the maximum threshold of attention required so that even the intensification of the so-called “high impact” operations, certainly useful in the immediate phases of combating crimes, can find consolidation in the active policies of closeness to the communities and redevelopment. The starting point could be the establishment of educational, instructional and recreational facilities that act as a function of territorial cohesion integrated, perhaps, by modern building recovery actions, so that even the “suburbs” can become the “center” in the sense of urban decorum.
In this sense, the Municipality of Catanzaro, summarizing the interventions that will be adopted to combat social degradation and to create a school centre, has, in any case, drawn up a project for the redevelopment of Viale Isonzo and, more generally, the southern outskirts of the city and a rough estimate of the costs for the removal of waste from Via Lucrezia della Valle which will be delivered on Monday to the Environment Department of the Calabria Region to verify a possible financing hypothesis.
At the same time, on the front of preventive actions and in particular relating to the restoration of urban video surveillance networks, the Municipality has undertaken to reactivate the ordinary maintenance contracts which are suspended.
“For isolated communities, which therefore need to be rethought into worthy living contexts, widespread educational and housing inclusion in order to avoid phenomena such as those already experienced in the past can become an engine of rebirth – declared Undersecretary Ferro and Prefect De Rosa – capable of restoring trust in all citizens. An urban and social regeneration project that goes hand in hand with the restoration of order and legality is a collective project that transforms abandoned places into spaces of community. Our objective, also with the substantial investments in video surveillance systems and the intense, constant prevention and repression activity carried out by the police, is above all to guarantee safety for citizens by combating with determination any form of widespread illegality. We asked for a determined commitment from all those involved, also regarding the timing of the intervention’s implementation”.
Undersecretary Wanda Ferro and the Prefect, considering the urgent need to guarantee a reclamation of the degraded places in the southern outskirts of Catanzaro, have involved the Head of the National Civil Protection Department, Prefect Fabio Ciciliano, in order to shortly organize a joint inspection aimed at evaluating every possible emergency intervention to make the sites in question safe.