The affair also demonstrates the Mascaro Administration’s inability to listen
Press release
Beyond the strictly legal reasons, the approval of the preparatory agreement for the issuing of the building permit for the construction of the regional Retail Entertainment center in the Stretto area represents, for all that is negative, the image of the Mascaro administration. A certification of arrogance, laziness and urban planning shortsightedness.
It is the most nefarious example of a model of territorial governance aimed at land consumption sealed, with the usual arrogance, by Mayor Mascaro. But what is even more serious is the absolute lack of consideration of the necessary balance between the existing city and the new one to be built.
Then, paradoxical is, for the umpteenth time, the Pilatesque attitude of the Calabria Region which excluded the intervention from the environmental impact assessment procedure, evidently considering irrelevant the circumstance that the area is particularly sensitive due to the presence of aquifers drinking water.
In any case, the inability to listen to the cry of alarm launched by the trade associations (Confcommercio, Confesercenti, Lamezia Shopping and Impresa Calabria), underlines not only the lack of an idea of the city but above all the inability to listen on the part of the the Mascaro administration.
It is not a question of an absolute inability to bring together the interests at stake – technical, social and political
– but not to take due account of the effects on the city of a large-scale intervention: 50,000 square meters of buildings with intended uses which, taken together, will further empty the consolidated city which has already lost its attractiveness, due to an equally nefarious Structural Plan, of which what little remains of the new generations will soon suffer the effects.
The flight of young people will mirror the flight of functions from the city, where there will be no reason to stay, as a result of a continuous emptying of services and overall impoverishment, both in terms of quantity and quality. Nightlife alone will not be enough to make the quality of the city.
We maintain that the severity of the territorial constraints that the approval of the convention will produce should have constituted an element of concern and not been exhibited as the outcome of a success of the Mascaro council. Moderation would have required greater caution and a more careful evaluation, for the good of the city, to be expressed in terms of the ability to negotiate dimensional, functional and social contents.
For the umpteenth time the Mascaro council exercises its muscles but not its political capacity, bringing to a conclusion decades-long procedures initiated (or suffered) by previous administrations without its own dignified imprint, as taught by the equally nefarious affair of the municipal structural plan (adopted by the council Speranza and aseptically approved by the Mascaro Council). Political capacity would have required, also for the Icom affair, a work of critical review with the interested party, bringing together legitimate private interests with those, even more legitimate, of a public nature. And the agreement represents the instrument in which, in terms of absolute equality, the Municipality must demonstrate that it acts in the name and on behalf of the administered, not disadministered, community.
Gennarino Masi
PD citizen secretary
