For two months, every day, the regional press gave wide coverage to the seismic tremors that hit the Campi Flegrei, with reference also to the telluric risk of Vesuvius.
In my press review on bradyseism this year I have already collected 47 articles from various newspapers. Interesting articles and interviews, although some contradict each other, describing the difficult situation with the uncertain forecasts. There is also talk of planning, of evacuation of populations and of repair plans for affected buildings, but no mention of the fact that, since the metropolitan area from the Vesuvian hills to Pozzuoli is now largely exposed to recurring seismic shocks, it is time not to think to an impossible total abandonment of the affected areas, as well as at least to a substantial plan to lighten the housing, production and service settlements.
No reminder, from all the press that follows those seismic emergencies, of the need to finally measure the ability of those difficult soils to withstand the current excessive density of both public and private buildings. It is difficult to realize that, beyond the alarms and calls for calm, the real problem is that today, in that metropolitan area of Naples, approximately 3 million people live on an area of 1,200 square km, that is, 2,500 people per square km: the maximum Italian and European population density. An irrational, very serious situation, which certainly does not cause bradyseism. However, it can represent a strong impediment to organizing any evacuations, as well as dealing with other dangers. Therefore these repeated and repeatable earthquakes and earthquakes should convince us that, especially in certain places, the concentration of settlements of any kind should be avoided.
This applies first and foremost to public buildings such as university buildings. In fact, in the 1970s a debate arose in which I was also involved as a regional councilor, when a vote was taken on the project of the Municipality of Naples for the transfer of the University Faculty of Economics from via Partenope to Monte Sant’Angelo. I was not in favor and I spread the reasons in an article entitled “The choice for internal areas”. Here are some excerpts: ”The inconveniences and dysfunctions resulting from the overcrowding of some Faculties cannot be overcome by rationalizing the survival of that overcrowding and creating the conditions for its further increase, but rather by courageously working to create valid territorial alternatives for new settlements outside the Neapolitan conurbation”.
Today, in 2024, we should remember that the need to lighten those areas was made clear to us sixty years ago by some economists and politicians, who proposed a different territorial structure of our Campania, focusing precisely on the urban and productive rebalancing between the internal areas and the coastal strip. Personally at the time I also spoke about it in an article published in the spring of 1969, in which among other things I wrote: “The territorial structure will therefore have to establish the backbone of the development system of the region, starting from the redistribution demographic in the areaessentially focusing on a broad revitalization of the internal hill and mountain areas”. Demographic redistribution on the regional territory was called for in 1969, on the eve of the birth of the Regional Authority. But in the following years, instead of redistributing the settlements, the concentration of production and housing increased, especially within a few kilometers of the sea coast. Today, the ongoing bradyseism and the danger of eruption are opening our eyes to make us understand that it was a serious mistake not to have listened to those who, 45 years ago, urged us to lighten, and not overload, the metropolitan area.
The emergency of seismic shocks makes us understand that today’s problem, and above all that of future generations, is not only that of organizing “escape routes” – and therefore the return home – but rather that of creating service infrastructures and production structures in the internal areas, to offer, definitively, a safe residence to people who want to live not only without the seismic risk, but also with a good prospect of work and life in the less crowded and safer internal territories of Campania .
ROBERTO COSTANZO
