The Bassano del Grappa section ITALIA NOSTRA organized Tuesday 23 April 2024 a public meeting with i mayoral candidates in the next municipal elections on the theme “The city I would like”. The event was organized with the historic center neighborhood council and the Bassano Accessibile association which deals with disabilities. The participation of the public – very attentive and present until the end of the debate – there was a very large crowd in the conference room of the Pirani Cremona Foundation.
The landscape is made of icons (and so the country villa identifies the Veneto) but there are many other minimal elements made of sounds, scents, colours, important atmospheres because they express the simple work of men, their daily commitment, their genius…telling the habits and technical level of past generations and social organization (Eugenio Turri, The Italian Landscape, TCI 2002)
The havoc due to the absence of civic sense and deficiencies of a ruling class insensitive and responsible are unforgivable. Builders and deforesters, condoners and condoners, architects, urban planners, surveyors and engineers should examine their consciences (Antonio Cederna, Corriere della Sera 1975)
We must sanctify and defend every little piece of greenery (Giorgio Bassani)
The discussions were conducted by Carmine Abate and Mario Baruchello.
The underlying themes proposed were:
pedestrianization, street furniture, accessibility, real participation in a vision of co-management of problems ,civic use of public spaces (squares, streets, buildings), waste, safety, quality of life
The questions asked directly from Italia Nostra to the five candidates were:
1 – The historic center has a diameter of approximately 500 metres, or 800 steps, in other words it takes approximately 8 minutes to cross it from north to south or from east to west. Along the way we encounter streets and squares, buildings and public spaces, flowerbeds and gardens, courtyards and porticoes, all COMMON GOODS, goods that belong to all of us. The paving, the signage, the street furniture in general has been left to improvisation and sometimes to the good will of the individual administrators who have succeeded one another in almost 40 years, since we talked about “a more tidy, more efficient city, more equipped with services”:
What will be the new, immediate, structural and long-lasting actions for true maintenance and care of the historic center, starting from the single regulation for street furniture and decoration of the city or from the establishment of the long-awaited and repeatedly green consultation promise?
2 – “It is undeniable that cultural heritage constitutes a set of resources inherited from the past, and a community identity is made up of people who attribute value to specific aspects of cultural heritage, in the framework of public action, to support and transmit them to future generations.” (FARO Convention 2005 – Council of Europe)
Ezzelini Castle, Astra Social Theatre, Polo Santa Chiara, Mazzini Elementary School, Parolini Botanical Garden, and also Piazza Libertà, Piazza Garibaldi, Piazzotto Monte Vecchio are some spaces for collective use and for this reason they belong to the entire community, very often they are the object of strange and sometimes extravagant functional proposals:
sometimes spontaneous and improvised parking on the paving of the squares, sometimes imaginative and impromptu museum in urban voids to be filled, sometimes a gigantic restaurant or open-air bar under the light of the street lamps.
What will be the new, immediate, structural and long-lasting actions that will characterize your administration to RETURN the uses of these open and closed places to the entire community?
