Alexandria. Future City: In this city of ours, it happens, cyclically, that we have to witness a debate on its economic and demographic decline. This, as a rule, happens when a historic commercial activity, preferably located in the streets of the centre, decides, for various reasons, to cease trading. And the reasoning that is produced, as well as the search for causes and possible remedies, tend to focus on the difficulties and obstacles experienced by the traditional trade sector.
Thus, on the one hand, traffic limitations and the lack of parking are denounced and, on the other, larger and better-maintained pedestrian areas are called for. Positions which, finally, converge in taking note of the number and growing weight of large-scale distribution, online sales and the nearby competition of outlet. The associative organization that is manifesting itself on the part of the sector in the neighborhoods or on individual streets is certainly positive, but it is unlikely to be a solution to the phase of difficulty that the city has been going through for some time. And the convergence of responsibilities, mainly, on the sector which today suffers the most from the consequences of the crisis may not help to understand the structural reasons for Alexandria’s decline.
There was a time in which the parties and their representatives in the institutions, to better define the administrations’ programs, promoted the publication of research and studies aimed at analyzing the condition of the various productive activities and investigating the state of employment. One of these, in May 1969, organized by the capital municipality and the Industrial Union, dealt in particular with industry and the areas intended for it. The most surprising result that emerged concerned (in companies with more than five employees) the number of employees in the various industrial sectors. These, 8870 in 1968, were slightly higher than those recorded in the industrial census of 1911, almost sixty years earlier. With a population that had, however, grown by almost 12 thousand units over the period. The authors of the study recorded, “with an unconcealed concern”, the progressive dilution of the industrial component in the overall municipal employment and questioned whether or not this corresponded to a more precise tertiary vocation of the capital, or whether it had faced with a physiological transition towards pre-eminence post industrial of services. (1)
The progressive downsizing of the industry
As regards the sectors, metalworking and silversmithing were the most significant, those that had grown and consolidated the most, while the sector that for decades had had a pre-eminent weight in the Alessandria industry as a whole, clothing, was marked by the process of restructuring the Borsalinothe oldest Italian felt hat factory and the downsizing of the footwear sector.
Thus, over half a century ago, those findings aroused a well-founded concern for what, in perspective, would prove to be the primary cause of Alexandria’s lack of development and decline: the crisis and the progressive downsizing of the industrial apparatus. To remedy this, the centre-left municipal administration of the time identified planning policy as the means by which the body aimed to become the driving force behind the economic and social development of the territory.
The essential tools of this policy concerned the revision of the General Town Plan and the acquisition of land to be allocated to new “industrial areas” capable of attracting even large industrial complexes.
The first instrument, with few modifications, is still in force, while the second led, in 1971, to the establishment of the plant Michelin in Spinetta Marengo. But the ambitions of the planning policy were greater and bet, on the one hand, on the expansion potential of the Port of Genoa towards the Ligurian region, i.e. the Alessandria area, and, on the other, on the industrial decentralization of Turin. With the aim of enabling Alessandria to exercise the role of “hinge area” between the territorial economic systems of the “Industrial Triangle”.
The city drops below 100 thousand inhabitants
In the mid-70s the studies of CEDRES (2) of the Province, however, took note that the planning experience had to be considered a failure, both on a regional and provincial level. In essence, Turin, instead of decentralizing activities in the industrial sector, had further centralized them and, on the Ligurian side, the lack of development of the Port of Genoa was recorded. The failure to achieve the planning objectives has had a negative impact on the economic and social prospects of the entire province, but has especially affected the industrial apparatus of the capital. The last two decades of the last century have in fact seen the decimation of mechanical metal companies and the elimination of the entire Alessandria silver sector, with the cancellation of hundreds of jobs. Without all this leading to the start of a reflection on the causes, highlighting, in contradiction to the dynamism demonstrated in the past, the poverty of new entrepreneurial initiatives. A condition that still persists and represents a fundamental element of the decline.
Thus the industrial workers of the Municipality of Alessandria, who were 15,425 in 1961, fell to 11,264 in 1991 and to 9,919 in the 2001 census, when, in contrast to the development of the group Guala, the plastics industry reaches 944 employees (3). In the same period, the tertiary sector expands without qualification and young people either leave or often remain without work.
A situation that also affects the per capita income of the Municipality. And the demographic trend after the Second World War well supports the productive and employment trend of the city: between 1951 and 1974 the population increases and goes from 82,137 to 103,862 resident inhabitants, while, starting from 1974, there is a slow but constant decline which brings the inhabitants to a historic low of 91,298 units in 1995 (4) . A decline due both to the worsening of the demographic balance and, starting from 1975, to the negative sign that occurred in the migratory balance. The latter is a consequence of the reduced employment capacity of the area. It should also be considered that the number of current inhabitants (91,936 as of 12/31/2023) is also maintained thanks to a significant presence of foreign citizens (13,850 in 2022 equal to 15.2%) who, in general, have an income and a lower spending capacity than other inhabitants.
The railway yard and the University: poles of a new development
After the war, the city of Alessandria was reported not only as “at the center of the industrial triangle”, but as a “first-rate railway hub, second only to that of Bologna”. And the “Sorting” employed a thousand people. In just a few years, the shift in freight logistics from iron to road and the choice, at the beginning of the 2000s, of the high-speed railway route on the Turin-Milan-Rome route led to the marginalization of the port and increased the difficulties of Alexandria railway connection. Increasing its isolation and determining, together with the downsizing of the industry, a second and fundamental element of its decline.
Five years ago, when few believed in it, to counter this trend the “Città Futura” association and the provincial Chamber of Labor promoted a conference for the recovery and relaunch of the “Alessandria Smistamento” freight yard. Recently, due to the growing problems linked to the mobility of goods almost exclusively by road, rail transport has become competitive again and, also due to the constant commitment of Slala, with the support of administrations and parliamentarians, RFI presented a detailed reorganization and relaunch plan for the large area of the Alessandria airport. The implementation times have been indicated and the investments quantified.
A technologically advanced structure, a reference point for the production of a vast territory and for logistics aimed also at the processing of products and not only at their dislocation. In hoping that the resistance and opposition which, in the past, have prevented the realization of similar projects will not be repeated, we must be aware that the innovative recovery of the historic “Sorting” area and the new jobs that will be created will lead to one of the fundamental elements capable ofcounteract the decline of the Alessandria territory.
A reality which, in the absence of interventions, would potentially be among the worst due to the lack of people of working age (15-64 years). (5)
Over the years, however, there has been no lack, even in new fields, of opportunities to reverse the decline and return to developing the city and its territory. The conquest, after a bitter confrontation with Turin, of the autonomy of the tripolar University of Eastern Piedmont in 1998 represented the achievement of an objective long pursued by local institutions. For various reasons, including an initial greater propensity of the city’s economic forces for the decentralized location of the Polytechnic, this important opportunity has not, up to now, been fully seized. The city of Novara has been active with greater commitment, its headquarters, equipped with the main services (canteen, accommodation, campus) has double the number of students of Alessandria.
In fairness it must be said that, in this, the choices of the Rectors of the university had a considerable influence as they directed the greatest resources towards that reality, from which almost all of them came and come. In any case, the objective of qualifying and strengthening the Alexandria headquarters of the Upo, defending, qualifying and enhancing all its departments and its current settlements, must be strongly pursued. Claiming with greater determination the resources for those services: library, canteen, accommodation, study spaces, which students still lack. From this point of view, the confirmation of Palazzo Borsalino as the seat of the humanities faculties was a wise decision. In fact, we need a University that is not isolated from the urban context, but is able to relate and connect to the other educational and cultural institutions of the city, with the ambition of becoming, increasingly, the University of reference point for young people in the entire province. Representing another fundamental useful element for the relaunch of the capital.
While work has begun for the recovery of the Municipal Theater and it is hoped, with full conservation, the return to functional use of the “Cittadella” fortress, it remains, at the moment, unresolved, the future of the industrial sector which traditionally represented the high moments of Alexandria’s development. Naturally in new fields characterized by strong innovation.
The answer on whether or not there is a concrete possibility of recovery can only come, first and foremost, from business associations. To this end it would certainly help, as happened in the past thanks to the CEDRESa research, a study on the trend of industrial employment in different sectors in recent decades.
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.1. The publication of the “Quaderno” was edited by Mario Bruno, on behalf of the Institution’s Research Office and by Dario Fornaro, of the Provincial Industrial Union’s Research Office.
.2. CEDRES: Economic-Social Documentation and Research Center of the Province of Alessandria managed by the Director Carlo Beltrame
.3. Guido Barberis and Giancarlo Subrero: “The Alexandrian economic family”. Isral Le Mani, 2008
.4. ibid
.5. Radiogold.it: “Demographic recession of the working population: Alessandria the fourth worst”. !5 April 2024 – Data from the CGIA Research Office
Alexandria, 16 April 2024
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