Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
46
denounce a system of interests which is not concerned with the future of Sicily and does not
operate according to a long-term perspective. We want to find a planning dimension linked to
the existence of the territories, to their quality of life and to the real needs of the citizens. We
want a planning process capable of including the environmental, economic, social, and
cultural dimension of the intervention. The movement cannot lessen itself to a simple scheme
of opposition. The main issue is the search for an analysis that can involve all the people, and
I am not referring only to Sicily but to all of Southern Italy.’
This change in the strategies of the activists can be also explained through the
observation of the transformations in the relationships among the few actors that have openly
criticized the Bridge in the past. The RNP received the most significant political support from
the Radical Left. However, in the last few years the political influence of the Radical Left has
been extensively reduced. On the other hand, the Democratic Party (the main Italian Centre-
left party) shows little interest in radical forms of commitment and continues to maintain a
‘soft’ position regarding the infrastructure. As we said earlier, it is also important to
remember that the amount of symbolic, economic, scientific and organizational resources held
by the movement has been drastically reduced, and that the representatives of the local
authorities show an indifferent attitude. Therefore, all the alliances which allowed the
dissidents to express their views in an effective way have broken down.
Another issue which has been discussed many times concerns the inefficient use of the
natural resources. The movement’s appeals continue to portray the Strait of Messina as a
common good that cannot be evaluated from an economic perspective. As we have explained,
the movement tends to analyse the issue of the Bridge not only from an environmental point
of view, but as part of a complex socioeconomic, infrastructure and financial framework. For
example, the landslide of Giampilieri, near Messina, which caused the death of 37 people, has
had a huge impact on the re-thinking of the motivations for the protest. In 2010, RNP argued
that the funds for the Bridge should be used to secure the Sicilian territories from hydro-
geological instability. This was the main theme of two demonstrations that took place in
Messina on August 28
th
and October 2
nd
2010. The general message that the organizers
attempted to convey was that public funds for the Bridge were capital taken away from
crucial services (such as health, education, and so on) and public works. This vision was
defended in many articles published by the activists in 2011 and 2012. These recent actions
have contributed to the construction of a new identity of the movement, and they seem to
represent a new cognitive praxis which is changing the distribution of political power in
Messina, as in 2013 a well-known exponent of the RNP movement became Mayor of
Messina. His electoral strategy focused on ideas and results achieved by the protest
movement; so, at the moment, a part of the RNP has become a government actor. Finally, we
now know that the Bridge will not be built. In March of 2013 the government led by Mario
Monti decided to terminate the contract with Eurolink (the General Contractor), an act that
ended a long period of political tensions and social conflict in the area and that indirectly
seems to support the thesis that before designing an infrastructure it is important to build a
widely shared social legitimacy around the project.
