Ordinary emergency: aspects of the Urban Question in Southern Italy

Great cities and european capitals are the unique cases where customs and national politics prevail; the European model deals almost with middle-sized, dynamic and strongly interconnected city networks. This point of view was formalized in adopting the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) during the Potsdam Council in May, 1999. Southern town condition is far-reaching from the strongly interconnected towns network European model. In fact, Southern territorial systems are defined by a lacking mutual interconnection, low mobility among different towns. In spite of a faint middle towns network there is a trend loss of urban government control in big metropolitan areas. Environmental question is worsening: illegal economic growth, service inadequacy for people and enterprises and decreasing woman participation to work are some of the aspects of the big Southern conurbation crisis. This is paradigmatically represented by the most populous Italian metropolitan area, that is Naples. Metropolitan government problem feedback follows an emergency logic: the superintendent practice highlights our institutional "governance" system inefficiency. Development based general politicies and good conditions do not appear in the South metropolitan big areas. Those conditions can possibly retreat: in economic functioning, in social unease expansion, in illegal activities spreading, in environmental emergency increasing.