How was your neighborhood committee born and why?
«It all started from a simple idea, over the years we have seen this neighborhood become more and more a place forgotten by everyone almost devoid of commercial activities, our ancient and fragile roads become traffic clearing pointsour squares become places of devastation and wild parking. We want to bring the neighborhood back to life starting from the streets and squares, reliving the places that are dear to us. A strong and heartfelt need from many residents and so after an initial word of mouth we met and our journey began. Our vision is based on the integration and involvement of all residents with the creation of a neighborhood community that, a bit like 50 years agothey met and helped each other in one relational exchange based on trust and sense of belonging. Thus was born “Sott’a la port”, a group of residents who try to make the neighborhood more livable and to act for the social well-being of citizens by undertaking concrete actions of active citizenship”.
What is the choice of name linked to?
«The name Sott’a la port it takes up the ancient plaque in via Domenico Piccawe didn’t want to identify ourselves with the name of a street, a square or a neighborhood because we are the combination of several neighborhoods. The area covers streets/areas Catacombs, via Domenico Picca, via S. Scolastica, Sant’Angelo, new rooms, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and surrounding areas. Our idea is to encourage the establishment of nearby committees in order to create a synergistic coordination network. In this sense we are already trying to support the establishment of a committee in the neighborhood that covers the area from via Annunziata to via Paniscotti. It’s a complex bottom-up citizenship project but which is slowly taking shape thanks to the proactivity of many residents.”
What are your goals and future plans?
«We would like to continue social and cultural sharing projects as social lunches, concerts, events, moments of aggregation essential for creating a community between residents and citizens. At this moment, however, we believe that there are basic and urgent problems that we have the duty to put before the more “cheerful” and convivial ones. We identified in the assembly the main objectivesi: safety, traffic/parking, street cleaning and decoration/street furniture. We have started to address the issue of “traffic and parking”, as complex as the others we are analysing, we are studying resolutions and projects in order to develop our proposal which we will bring to the attention of the administration. Within the committee we have different skills and professionals. For each theme, after a public assembly, we establish vertical focuses with those of the residents who have expertise in the sector in question in order to develop a studied, reasoned, shared and feasible proposal. We are aware that it will not be easy but we live in this neighborhood with very high historical and cultural value, we want to take care of it to create something beautiful, together. We invite anyone who lives in the neighborhood to join us and come and give their contribution and vision. In this first phase we meet in theoratory of the parish of San Gennaro who kindly offered us hospitality, while for communications regarding the dates of the meetings we use a WhatsApp group open to anyone who resides in the Committee’s neighborhoods. We also share our activities on Facebook and Instagram.”
