“Away with the five-a-side football and basketball fields: better a square and a park named after Emanuela Loi”. The request comes from the inhabitants of the area of via Castiglione, who put down on paper a petition opposing the sports spaces in via Monsignor della Casa (between via Bembo, via Serra and via Stampa), declaring instead in favor of the creation of a green area to named in memory of the policewoman killed by the mafia in the attack on Via D’Amelio in Palermo which cost the life of judge Paolo Borsellino.
The inhabitants of the area ask the Municipality of Cagliari to rethink “the space in via Monsignor della Casa, a wrong project as the pitches are set between the buildings” and ask for a conversion “as happened with the Cima field… transformed into the Music Park” .
This is because the pitches in via della Casa “are a duplicate, there is already a basketball pitch 200 meters away in via Castiglione, the Sigma football pitches which will hopefully be redeveloped and a third five-a-side pitch in the area of the church to be renovate. The public park will increase the value of the neighborhood, while the soccer/basketball field will lead to a real estate devaluation of the apartments overlooking the area in question, worsening the quality of life of the residents (noise pollution)”.
Furthermore, “the lighting of a sports facility such as a regulation soccer/basketball field could generate negative effects on residents. The excessive proximity of the field to the houses would have a strong impact in terms of the acoustic noise that the residents would be forced to suffer. Many elderly people live in the buildings with health problems and in some cases with difficulty walking. It would be unfair to harm these people, who have every right to peace and quiet. This bourgeois neighborhood has its peculiarity in its tranquility, with the project of the soccer/basketball field the neighborhood would be distorted. This neighborhood is the nerve center for residents of other areas, such as the inhabitants of via Salvator Rosa, the people who live in the villas behind via Biasi, Cep, Quartiere Europeo, via Machiavelli, via Cattaneo, via Sarpi and via Paruta. A central point without a center, a square or a park, is perhaps a unique case in Cagliari. The Municipality”, we read in the document, “cannot allow the homes of hundreds of families who have paid for mortgages and renovation work to be devalued in order to satisfy the wishes of a few, therefore they would have the sacrosanct right not to risk to see their investment squandered. The alternative project of a small park with an enlarged multipurpose field would also be a visually disfiguring work.
Residents in the 90s of the last century have already demonstrated their opposition to having an intensive sports area under their homes. An explanatory example of this desire is represented by the demolition, carried out by the Municipality, at the request of the residents, of the stands that were present in front of the basketball court.
The inhabitants are asking for a local square/park, given the absence of social and aggregation spaces for residents. “It would become the heart of the neighbourhood, a space experienced by citizens” with benches to guarantee the elderly the possibility “of relating, even just to read the newspaper or sunbathe”. The signatories of the petition ask that the area should have a play area that meets the needs of the large presence of children in the neighborhood where there are seven schools (2 nursery schools, 2 elementary schools, 2 middle schools + surveyors) and the strengthening of the area fitness. A green lawn for sports associations (example: yoga, dance, tai chi, gentle gymnastics, etc.) and a climbing wall for children. Also yes to a contest between students and muralists to create works of street art inside the park, on the perimeter walls of the adjacent buildings (with the authorization of the residents, many are in favor of the idea of the park, so it won’t be a problem, and respecting the municipal procedure of the case).
