Destroying Frankenstein: using the Recovery Fund for creative restructuring
In view of the arrival of the resources foreseen by the Recovery Fund, Eurispes proposes to the Government the idea of a programme (extraordinary plan) for the detoxification of the territories affected, in recent decades, by industrial settlements that are now abandoned or unused, following a path of “demolition, rehabilitation, redevelopment, reuse” that could produce thousands of new jobs, activate a new economy in the area, give the territories back their natural vocations, and think of new development paths focused on scientific and technological research centres, qualified services, tourism, culture, and agribusiness.
According to Eurispes, such a plan, guided by the principle of creative restructuring, could alternatively be financed by the European Investment Bank in all its phases and attract private capital, especially in the redevelopment and revitalisation phase.
It is therefore necessary to promote a new policy of “entrepreneurship of the territory” and not on the territory, as has been done with a certain irresponsibility up to now.
A serious policy of “territorial entrepreneurship” passes, first and foremost, through the awareness that one must make “havoc of the havoc”, demolishing, deconstructing without fear or regret the thousands of tonnes of concrete and steel that deface coastlines, cities, and archaeological sites. It is necessary to tear down the “cathedrals in the desert”, the motorways that never open and lead to nowhere, the abandoned industrial sites that now belong to the past.
Therefore, having the responsibility, rather than the courage, to destroy in order to rebuild intelligently. This is the first step towards a healthy “entrepreneurship of the territory” that implies a geo-economic analysis of the territory, a cost-benefit assessment of the initiatives linked to a radical reconversion of the now unused social fixed capital, the targeted reconstruction of new infrastructures and advanced services capable of returning large portions of the territory to their true and original vocations, recovering environmental balances, promoting new activities in line with the challenges of globalisation, and in particular, encouraging those investments in the tourism industry that are a great and natural resource of the country.
The desire to modernise, the eagerness to grow, the mirage of wealth at our fingertips, and the myth of industrialism at all costs have led to the destruction of large sections of the territory, of great cultural heritages and local traditions, especially in the south of Italy. The country has grown by successive combinations and assemblages just as Dr. Frankenstein built his monster in a laboratory. Perhaps the time has come to dismantle the monster.
