by Marco Olivieri
MESSINA – The city and the bridge over the Strait: what will become of Messina? If the bridge had really been the true objective of the centre-right, whoever governs would have removed it from the daily controversy. He would have given the technicians all the time necessary to fully evaluate every aspect, without propaganda haste. It takes years to evaluate the details of such a demanding work in such a fragile territory. Today, however, the bridge over the Strait is used as a chimera and fetish useful to cover the void of Salvini and Meloni’s centre-right.
The invasiveness of the work and the worrying environmental impact, the rigorous analysis of the enormous costs and benefits and the need to use the development and cohesion funds on other fronts: for once it is not wrong to say that we must think about other, immediately and in a short time, in terms of planning services and infrastructures. Let’s call it a Keynesian plan or something else but, on a European scale, an extraordinary project is needed to make the South a pearl of Europe. And no longer the Cinderella of the West.
However, an adequate policy is missing. The response to the 239 requests for integration by the Ministry of the Environment, to the many reservations of environmentalist associations, in a 536-page document, and to the technical findings of the Municipalities of Messina and Villa San Giovanni could have been different, instead of limiting themselves to reassure. Let’s admit that society Strait of Messina is able to reply on everything within 30 days, as he states, there are still many issues on a structural level and would require a little more reflection and consideration. In any case, the experts will speak on these points and will have to clarify.
The mayor underlined: “The bridge project was that of 2011 and has been updated”, referring to an “old” Messina. Basile highlights: “The project probably needed not a time deadline aimed at who knows what other objective (political propaganda but Basile prefers not to say it, ed.). On the contrary, it was necessary to arrive at the Services Conference with different preparations. A preparation that probably would have prevented the Municipality of Messina from asking, for example, why the SPAs, the Special Protection Zones, were not taken into consideration.”
An “ancient” bridge project in a city that has changed in the meantime
And again: “There is the theme of the nature reserve, with the change in morphology in an area with a subtle balance. The points on which we ask for specific clarification concern design and construction. And it is unthinkable that in six months from now we will not know where we are starting and where we are arriving, even on the issue of expropriations. While another fundamental theme concerns both onshore works and complementary works. The analyzes did not provide an objective assessment of what the city is like today.”
As the engineer Sergio De Cola observed (“Instead of the bridge”), “such an important work cannot be compared with the current urban planning instruments”. In the findings presented by the associations to the Ministry of the Environment, there are many elements that deserve further investigation: “From the cost-benefit analysis to construction sites, materials, vulnerability, air quality, noise impact, traffic data and impacts on seismic hazard and risk ”. And, of course, the 239 observations of the ministry itself must be carefully studied, for example, on the subject of safety and hydrogeological structure.
In these areas, it is up to the technicians to clarify.
Messina has already suffered enough earthquakes to be able to withstand the weight of such invasive work
In the meantime, however, the political void of a centre-right, its inability to think of the south in terms of development, while proposing differentiated autonomy, is partly filled by the saving idea of the bridge. On the other side, Pd and Cinquestelle cannot limit themselves to saying “no” to the big project. But they must develop a planning effort capable of offering a perspective to the South. The two parties, despite their limitations, could, from the opposition, pressure the government and work to embody a credible alternative in the future. No one is exempt from responsibility if the infrastructure and services situation is this: the centre-right and centre-left have not dictated the agenda but have too often followed the wind.
Messina cannot be the sacrificial victim
In the Messina context, however, the feeling is that the work on the bridge would deliver the final blow to a city earthquaked by an economic and vocational crisis lasting at least thirty years. A city that needs to find objectives and a European scope that will remove it from the quagmire of eternal emergency. The current political void is filled by Salvini and Meloni with symbolic elements, but not adequately thought out and reworked. Be it the premiership, differentiated autonomy or the bridge. And Messina cannot be the sacrificial victim. A guinea pig to drown even more in chaos and meaninglessness.
Perhaps another future is possible, in terms of projects and ideas, and any choice must start from the idea of the South that one wants to realize. On the contrary, without adequate preparation linked to the great work and without an infrastructural reasoning for the whole of the South, Messina is only sucked into great uncertainty, which adds to its structural problems. The requests of the ministry and the analysis of the associations are an opportunity to study carefully which is the right path to take. All without slogans and media shortcuts.
Sometimes going back is the only way to then take a run up and start again with more momentum. And the starting point can only be the southern question. The great removed of Italian politics.
Tags: bridge covers political void Messina act guinea pig
