ZEN (Palermo)

Last updated
San Filippo Neri
ZEN (Zona Espansione Nord)
Quartiere of Palermo
Lo ZEN from above (13377397893).jpg
Panoramic view of the ZEN district
Palermo UPL 47 San Filippo Neri locator map.svg
Position of the district within the city of Palermo
Country Italy
Region Sicily
Province Metropolitan City of Palermo
Comune Palermo
MunicipalityVII
Population
 (2022)
 • Total
13,513
Time zone UTC+1 (CET)
 • Summer (DST) UTC+2 (CEST)
CAP
90147

ZEN, acronym for Zona Espansione Nord (North Expansion Area in English), is a social housing district in the northern outskirts of Palermo, in the autonomous region of Sicily, Southern Italy. It is included in the 7th municipal division of the city. It was renamed San Filippo Neri in 1997.

Contents

The district is one of the last public housing neighborhoods built to deal with the housing emergency that Palermo was facing after World War II, during which much of the city center had been destroyed or severely damaged by bombings. It is divided in two residential areas with different building characteristics, called ZEN 1 and ZEN 2. The latter, designed by the architect Vittorio Gregotti in 1969, is infamously known for the political and social events that made it a symbol of the urban decay associated with numerous low-income housing blocks built in Italy between the 60s and 80s, like Scampia in Naples or Quarto Oggiaro in Milan. [1] [2]

In the 70s, due to bureaucratic delays in assigning homes and political carelessness, the vast majority of houses under construction at ZEN 2 were occupied with the complicity of the Sicilian Mafia, who in actual fact exploited the poverty of the weakest social classes to take control of the area. [3] The squatting phenomenon, which still affects the neighborhood today [4] and is still controlled by mafia clans (or families), [5] stopped the construction of many infrastructure works. ZEN 2 has remained an economically deprived area ever since.

Over time, the Sicilian Mafia took advantage of the isolation and degradation of the area for drug and firearms trafficking, the coordination of racketeering, as well as to hide fugitives from the authorities. [6] [7] For this reason, it began to be considered one of the main Mafia strongholds in the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The Italian law enforcement still considers it a hot zone for anti-drug and anti-racketeering operations. [8] [9]

ZEN has frequently been depicted by the media as one of the worst neighborhoods in the country for quality of life and has been repeatedly associated with images of social decay. [10] [11] To this day, despite the work of numerous associations for its redevelopment, the district lacks adequate infrastructure and continues to present social problems due to the extreme marginalization from the rest of the city territory. For this reason, in 2015 the architect Massimiliano Fuksas proposed its demolition, together with other similar blocks in Italy. [12]

Italian director Marco Risi used ZEN as the setting for his 1990 drama film Ragazzi fuori (Boys on the Outside), which depicted the social problems and lack of opportunities faced by the unemployed youth of ZEN.

History

Background

Post-war period and Palermo housing emergency

The bombing of Palermo in the Second World War razed to the ground much of its city centre, causing a total of 227,149 displaced persons compared to the mere 400,000 inhabitants that the city had at the outbreak of the conflict (from which 2,123 officially registered civilian casualties must be subtracted, even if the number could be much higher given the unreliability of the data collected during the war by the fascist authorities). [13] [14] According to statistical surveys promoted by the AMGOT - the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories installed in Sicily after its conquest in 1943 [15] [16] - more than half of the 285,000 residential buildings existing in Palermo in 1940 were destroyed or made uninhabitable, making it one of the most affected cities by the Anglo-American strategy of carpet bombing during the Italian campaign. [17]

In the post-war period, the housing shortage crisis caused by wartime destruction was amplified by demographic growth and the significant rural exodus to the city. The same problem affected the entire Italian territory; according to the Census of 1951, the country could provide only 241 dwellings for each 1,000 inhabitants, less housing per person than any country in Western Europe except West Germany and the Netherlands. [18]

To deal with the Palermo housing emergency, starting in the 1950s the city council promoted the construction of entire new districts in what were once peripheral areas compared to the old centre. However, the urban expansion was marked by the infiltration of Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) into the public administration; mafia clans managed to enter the Sicilian bureaucratic machine for the first time between 1943 and 1945, by exploiting the administrative needs of the Anglo-American military government, [19] and in the following decades they continued to sabotage the political life of the island to increase their power (the race for political representation by mafia families was the main cause of the First Mafia War fought between 1962 and 1963 [20] ). [21]

The Mafia's building speculation

Starting from 1948, the Sicilian Mafia chose to support the Christian Democracy party, which won the Palermo municipal elections in 1958 and 1965 thanks above all to corruption and the subjugation of the weakest social classes. [22] Politicians and mafiosi Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino, respectively mayor and assessor for public works of the elected council, allowed Cosa Nostra and the construction companies linked to it to profit from the need to expand the building surface of the city. [23] [24]

Mafia speculation on planning permissions between the 50s and the 70s altered the urban landscape for ever, and also damaged the city's environmental and historical heritage; this event took the name of Sack of Palermo. In this context, tons of concrete were poured into rich countryside areas in order to build new neighborhoods, often destroying or reducing the aristocratic resorts built in the 18th century, other noticeable buildings, and even naturalistic sites. [25]

The public housing neighborhoods

In 1949 the Italian government approved the first national plan for working class housing, the INA-Casa Plan conceived by the Minister of Labor Amintore Fanfani, which had at its disposal the funds managed by a specific organisation of the National Insurance Institute. The project aimed to uplift the classes most impoverished by the war, and in the first seven years it created about 355,000 homes in over 5,000 Italian municipalities (or comuni).

The INA-Casa Plan was soon joined by numerous other social housing projects promoted by various institutes. One of these was the Autonomous Institute of Public Housing or IACP (Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari), with branches in the main Italian cities.

Demography

According to the census of Palermo, ZEN has a population of around 13,513 people as of 2022. [26] However, it is impossible to have accurate data due to the presence of numerous unregistered families living in the neighborhood, inside illegally occupied houses. [27] According to estimates by one of the most active cultural associations in the area, ZEN Insieme, the population would be around 22,000 people. [28]

It is estimated that 21.47% of families live in conditions of economic hardship and the unemployment rate is about 16.88%. [29] The school dropout rate is among the highest in Italy, with 2 out of 3 young people abandoning their studies before getting their high school diploma. [30]

Bibliography

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References

  1. ↑ "ZEN". Manifesta 12 Palermo. 2018-04-26. Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  2. ↑ "Occupazioni abusive, campi rom e rifiuti: ecco le periferie dimenticate" [Squatting, Roma camps and waste: these are the forgotten suburbs]. OFCS.Report (in Italian). 2017-11-28. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  3. ↑ "Lo Zen di Palermo, ovvero il grande alibi di una politica e di una cultura compromesse" [The ZEN of Palermo, or the great alibi of a compromised politics and culture]. La Voce di New York (in Italian). 2015-04-05. Retrieved 2025-02-03. [The mafia effectively took possession of the unfinished homes. Thus, the homes, far from being delivered to the rightful owners, are partly managed in an anomalous manner.]
  4. ↑ "Gli abusi senza fine dello Zen" [The Endless Abuses of Zen]. la Repubblica (in Italian). 2018-05-06. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  5. ↑ Lo Verso, Riccardo (2016-06-13). "La mafia delle case popolari" [The Public Housing Mafia]. Live Sicilia (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  6. ↑ Turco, Andrea (2019-03-26). "L'uomo della cocaina e l'appoggio di Cosa nostra" [Cocaine Man and the support of Cosa Nostra]. Meridionews (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  7. ↑ "Palermo, scoperto un bunker della mafia rifugio per latitanti" [Palermo, Mafia bunker discovered, a refuge for fugitives]. ilGiornale.it (in Italian). 2008-11-23. Archived from the original on 2024-12-11. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  8. ↑ "Attività anti droga allo Zen" [Anti-drug operations at ZEN]. carabinieri.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 2025-01-23. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  9. ↑ "Operazione antidroga tra lo ZEN e la Spagna" [Anti-drug operation between ZEN and Spain]. ilSicilia.it (in Italian). 2021-07-28. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
  10. ↑ Fabio d'Urso, "Librino e lo Zen, tra Urbanistica e Antropologia", 30 November 2008, Bollettino d'Ateneo, University of the Studies of Catania, retrieved on 28 February 2009
  11. ↑ "Accordo di rete per la rigenerazione e lo sviluppo del quartiere ZEN (San Filippo Neri)" (PDF). comune.palermo.it.
  12. ↑ Interview in Corriere della Sera , 3 April 2006
  13. ↑ Patti, Manoela (2018). "Storie di guerra. Sfollati, rimpatriati, profughi a Palermo (1940-1943)" [War Stories. Displaced Persons, Repatriates, Refugees in Palermo (1940-1943)](PDF). InTrasformazione (in Italian): 48–67. [The extremely violent Anglo-American bombings on the city, which from the end of 1942 had become one of the privileged targets of the strategy of moral bombing on Axis cities, implemented to bring down the internal front, forced thousands of people to move to the municipalities of the province, or further away. In April 1943, there were a total of 227,149 evacuees from Palermo, a city which at the outbreak of the conflict had about 400,000 inhabitants.]
  14. ↑ "The bombings of Messina and Palermo". www.liberationroute.com. Retrieved 2025-02-01.
  15. ↑ "AMG - Enciclopedia". Treccani (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-01. [The establishment of an AMG for Italy was decided, at the same time as the decision to land in Sicily, by the Casablanca Conference (24 January 1943). Its main purpose was to facilitate military operations, in the sense of guaranteeing "the security of the occupation forces and their lines of communication" and to govern an occupied and "presumably hostile" nation (the well-being of the local population and political reforms were in any case to be subordinated to this ineluctable military necessity); to "use" the economic resources of the occupied territory and "support the political and military efforts of the Allied forces in view of future operations". This was the meaning of the provisions issued on 1 May 1943 by General D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces in the Mediterranean. The first governor was then General Harold Alexander.]
  16. ↑ "L'AMGOT: storia del governo militare della Sicilia durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale" [AMGOT: history of the military government of Sicily during the Second World War]. UniVersoMe (in Italian). 2021-02-11. Retrieved 2025-02-01. [The experience of AMGOT in Sicily ended with Proclamation Number 16 by General Alexander, issued on 11 February 1944. This act, in fact, sanctioned the passage of the Island to the jurisdiction of the Italian government, presided over by Badoglio (1871-1956), even if – like the rest of the liberated territories – it remained under the supervision of a body established as an evolution of AMGOT: the Allied Control Commission. This body controlled political and administrative life in Italy until the elections of the Constituent Assembly and the institutional Referendum of 1946, to prevent the country from moving away from the sphere of political influence of the Anglo-Americans, put at risk by the growing strength of the social-communist alignment.]
  17. ↑ Colombini, Paola (1978). Angeli, Franco (ed.). I Censimenti e le indagini statistiche promossi dagli alleati nell’Italia liberata: 1944-45[The Censuses and Statistical Surveys Promoted by the Allies in Liberated Italy: 1944-45] (in Italian). p. 196.
  18. ↑ Wendt, Paul F. (1962). "Post World-War-II Housing Policies in Italy". Land Economics. 38 (2): 113–133. doi:10.2307/3144613. ISSN   0023-7639.
  19. ↑ "Il ruolo della mafia: leggenda e verità" [The Role of the Mafia: Legend and Truth]. www.liberationroute.com (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-03. [Mafia did not contribute in any way to the landing even if, after the occupation, it infiltrated the public administration taking advantage of the Anglo-Americans' need to manage the Sicilian territory. The Allies installed a provisional government in Sicily, called AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory), which had the task of restoring normal state administration for the Sicilians. It was in this context that the mafiosi were able to insert themselves into the institutional apparatus: the boss Vito Genovese, for example, acted as official interpreter for Charles Poletti, the AMGOT commissioner in charge of the civil administration of Palermo and, later, Naples. AMGOT appointed the mafiosi Giuseppe Genco Russo (in Mussomeli) and Calogero Vizzini (in Villalba) as mayors; both supported separatism, becoming, at least in the initial phase, prominent figures in the birth and development of the Sicilian Independence Movement, founded by Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile.]
  20. ↑ Baudino, Stefano (2019-12-16). "Il Sacco di Palermo e la prima guerra di mafia" [The Sack of Palermo and the First Mafia War]. Antimafia Duemila (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-04.
  21. ↑ Sacco, Salvatore. "L'incidenza della criminalità organizzata sull'economia" [The impact of organized crime on the economy](PDF).
  22. ↑ "Quando i mafiosi si iscrivono in massa alla Democrazia Cristiana" [When Mafiosi Join Christian Democracy En masse]. www.editorialedomani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-04.
  23. ↑ Schneider & Schneider (2003). Reversible Destiny. pp. 14–19.
  24. ↑ "Il Sacco di Palermo: Edilizia Illecita e Mafia-Politica negli Anni '50 e '60" [The Sack of Palermo: Illicit Construction and Mafia-Politics in the 50s and 60s]. www.docsity.com (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-04. [Palermo, hit hard by allied bombing during the second world war, became the 'capital' of a new 'special statute region'. The demand for housing was enormous but the municipality was unable to meet the demand. This led to a large illegal building expansion, with the granting of 4200 building permits, many of which were registered to front men and financed by credit institutions. This was the 'sack of palermo', which led to the destruction of numerous liberty villas and represented the origin of a link between cosa nostra and important local political figures. The mafia gangs profited above all from subcontracts for cement, road maintenance and street cleaning.]
  25. ↑ Monteleone, Daniele (2020-08-01). "L'oro di Palermo coperto dal cemento: come cambiò la Conca panormita" [Palermo's Gold Covered by Cement: How the Conca Panormita Changed]. Eco Internazionale (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-05. [1960 was the center of the so-called Building Sack of Palermo, a period that erased much of that floral wealth, from Piana dei Colli to Bagheria, from Monreale to Ciaculli. It was, in fact, an environmental and landscape disaster. The pouring of concrete that changed the face of Palermo forever in the 1960s and 1970s is made clear by the numbers: building speculation, between 1953 and 1966 alone, increased the urban building surface by 125 percent. It is difficult to quantify exactly how much was placed on the Conca: data from the Urban Planning Department of the Municipality indicate as a figure 300 million cubic meters of residential buildings constructed in Palermo from the post-war period to the 1990s.]
  26. ↑ "Portale Open Data - Popolazione residente a Palermo al 31/12/2022 per Unita' di primo livello e cittadinanza - Comune di Palermo". opendata.comune.palermo.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-01-18.
  27. ↑ Buccini, Goffredo (2017-01-09). "Alloggi pubblici in preda agli abusivi: ecco il racket delle case" [Public housing in the grip of squatters: here is the housing racket]. Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-03. [ZEN, synonymous with almost absolute illegality (illegal occupations reach 90 percent) in western Sicily.]
  28. ↑ "Il Quartiere" [The Quarter]. ZEN Insieme (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-02-02. [San Filippo Neri, formerly ZEN, today officially has approximately 22,000 inhabitants, of which 1,495 are elderly.]
  29. ↑ Picone, Marco. "Una segregazione paradossale e multi-scalare: il caso del quartiere ZEN di Palermo" [A Case of Paradoxical and Multi-Scalar Segregation: The ZEN District of Palermo](PDF). Università degli Studi di Palermo (in Italian).
  30. ↑ "I quartieri più pericolosi d'Italia dove la vita mescola il bene e il male" [Most dangerous neighborhoods in Italy where life mixes good and evil]. italiaore24.it (in Italian). 2021-03-11. Retrieved 2025-01-30. [Here the school dropout is among the highest in Italy (2 out of 3 kids drop out of school to become a petty criminal). Here many families are poor and live crowded together in real hovels and children play among garbage. No municipal administration in the capital of Palermo has managed to heal that wound.]

38°10′45″N13°18′57″E / 38.17917°N 13.31583°E / 38.17917; 13.31583


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