It’s a graduation exam for a city with record numbers of tourist presences: the new regulation for the occupation of public land for tables and dehors. There is no development without certain rules, without safety and decorum of the streets and the regulation that has been awaited for ten years should bring order to the activities that have multiplied freely in the post-pandemic period. We reached a guard level in chaos and anarchywhich needs a leap in quality that only certain rules can provide.
Anarchy has multiplied since May 2020, when the central government authorized free-for-all to overcome the economic crisis linked to Covid and all that was needed was a simple communication of the start of business without any other authorizations to place all kinds of tables and platforms in streets, on pavements, at shop entrances without paying the relevant public land occupation tax.
All tolerated, with the alibi of helping food businesses affected by Covid restrictions. From 2020 to 2022, with subsequent extensions by the central government, everyone was able to do what they wanted. In this legitimate anarchy, the Municipalities gained since the money lost for the occupations of public land was reimbursed by the State. Relevant sums, if the central governments have allocated 464.4 million for these refreshments in two years.
The Court of Auditors detected an increase in non-tax municipal revenue of 15.3 percent in 2021, due to “refreshments on exemptions (first) and suspensions (then) from the payments of specific taxes such as Tosap and Cosap”.
The Municipalities didn’t lose out and didn’t have to worry about sanctioning those who didn’t pay. In 2022, the libero tutti returned and the tourism boom, which produces 21 percent of the GDP in Naples, now makes it essential to regulate proliferated activities also thanks to flexible rules. Blocking entire streets, as in the Spanish Quarter where the tables made it impossible for an ambulance to pass, or making the lives of residents impossible, also offending aesthetic common sense with saving tables and platforms, they make it clear how much regulation is needed. The first news of the rules approved by the municipal council gives rise to hope. Limiting indiscriminate land occupations in increasingly restricted spaces in the historic centre, in the Spanish Quarter, but also in Chiaia, is a defensible objective. So too is the reference to aesthetic homogeneity based on the areas of tables and terraces, in compliance with a definition that now seems obsolete in the city: “urban decor”. Still to be applauded is the provision that the table cannot be the frame of monuments or historic buildings and its location cannot prevent essential security access.
Fair rules, on which it is hoped that the City Council will respond quickly. But then, once the regulations are in place, the main problem remains: who and how checks that the rules are respected? Do we have a sufficient number of municipal police officers on the streets? And again, on weekends and holidays, when there are almost no checks for rest, permits and other things, will free everyone return to reign supreme in defiance of the new regulation? In the post-pandemic period, chaos is among us, tourism risks becoming a problem from a resource to be solved. Only respected rules can help, hoping that political fears of losing consensus in the food and leisure sector, which has become one of the most powerful in the world, will cease. Tourist Naples.
In the past, it seems prehistory, before the Bersani law than in the creed of free competition it eliminated activity restrictions in streets and neighborhoods, it was impossible to open chip shops, pubs, take-away pizzerias in every corner. Today it is possible, by canceling historic traditional shops in favor of even improvised food. It is a tempting sector and, as judicial investigations demonstrate, also at risk of money laundering of dubious origin, which requires rules and controls. In the past, the activities of catering they had to demonstrate possession of an internal space with toilets proportionate to the external space granted. It was a good rule, if today small rooms with a skimpy kitchen can welcome customers thanks only to the external tables. The outside, the street, the sidewalk have become an indispensable part of the non-existent, at least for internal spaces, local. In the multi-year budget of the Municipality it was expected to have to recover twelve million in 2022, nine in 2023 and seven and a half million this year for public land occupation fees, Cosap. Revenues that would be very useful to an administration that, to implement the «pact for Naples», had to apply one of the municipal income taxes with the highest percentages in Italy. The increasing GDP and the record-breaking image of Naples for tourism require certain rules and controls. The leap in quality of the tourist city is based on this bet. And this is why the new regulation on tables and terraces should be applauded, hoping that it does not become a piece of paper with beautiful rules that no one respects and, above all, no one enforces.
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