Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
45
Sicilian and Calabrian labour market.
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However, the Bridge appears to be the only possible
way to address the local chronic economic crisis; the only action capable of generating
employment opportunities, of rapidly revitalizing the economy and of attracting large
investment. Furthermore, in South Italy there is a trade-off going on between the hope for a
better future (economic development) and a short-term choice to survive (for example, the
acceptance of potential environmental problems). As the movement’s veterans claim, the
representatives of the local governments are the most zealous tools in this process. As a RNP
veteran put it, ‘They explain the problem with the right degree of linguistic parsimony. They
say, “to reject the Bridge means to lose the only available opportunity to curb the economic
crisis.” […] This is a situation in which the fundamental needs of the citizens come into play,
and this is why the issues connected to the Bridge are numerous and complex.’
In the absence of open procedures of decision-making, it seems that a compromise has
been established between consensus and personal satisfaction, instead of between consensus
and improvement of quality of life and future well-being. Now many people claim that the
Bridge will be, at least, an element for an economic recovery, and it does not matter if such
recovery is temporary and ends when the last stone is laid. Thus, the long-term effects of a
major transportation work are being treated as minor. This is far from the transparency and
participation method formally employed in many parts of Northern Europe. What is
happening in Southern Italy reminds us of the kind of well-known unequal exchange in the
so-called developing countries of Africa and Latin America, where the classical dilemma of
the relationship between the benefits of economic growth and the distribution of
environmental and social costs is simply hidden (De Vivo 2005). The institutional rhetoric
claims that the major public works (bridges, dams, power stations, and so on) give support to
economies and societies characterized by extreme conditions of poverty. The implicit
message is that even if the positive consequences connected to the infrastructure in the near or
far future are scarce, its main mission is to revive, at whatever cost, a territory at risk of social
disintegration.
Many activists have recently started questioning their past action strategies. Once the
possibility of delaying the construction of the Bridge is accepted (occupying the building
sites, blocking motorways), the obligation to produce a quick change of ideas and political
proposals becomes necessary. Some state that the movement is outdated because the previous
reasons and social conditions have disappeared and new modes of action should be studied in
order to use the accumulated experience for a new and effective awareness campaign. Today,
the issue regarding the problem of the Bridge has changed. If at the beginning the protest was
labelled ‘the protest of NO’, from 2008 things began to change. On December 19
th
2009, the
movement organized a more proactive political proposal, asking for a new use of the funds for
the Messina Bridge. The support is considerable: 10,000 demonstrators signed the
movement’s proposal in one of the most famous squares of Messina. This considerable shift
from a reactive to a proactive movement was illustrated by a RNP activist, who said, ‘We
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Recently, the RNP stated: ‘the sites for geognostic surveys have employed 5 people from Messina
out of 125 workers. Moreover, the potential construction of the Bridge has already caused the loss of
more than 1,000 jobs in the navigation industry’.
