Pug of Piacenza: question and answer. After the criticisms on the participatory path to the drafting of the general urban plan by Legambiente and 11 other associations, comes the answer in favor of the Municipality. A note from the leaders of Palazzo Mercanti which we present to you in full.
“There is to clarify what is meant by participation. And to do this, once again, numbers help: 100 associations participated in the workshop last February 25, 2023 at the “Casa del Piano” or at Palazzo Farnese. And all these associations have brought requests that must find answers in the drafting of the Plan and, consequently, the work of an Administration is to mediate by trying to achieve various objectives that must necessarily coexist: environmental sustainability, but also social and economic sustainability. In other words, the Administration cannot work by taking into account only some requests while ignoring others. In even simpler words: the Administration certainly cannot write the Plan under the dictation of some. This is not participation.
Coming back to the participatory path, the “Towards the Pug” phase included a number of completely extraordinary events, activities and opportunities for participation, and all this before the adoption of the Plan proposal. Furthermore, a questionnaire was submitted to citizens which had an exceptional response compared to the size of our city: 910 responses. Consider, as a point of comparison, that a similar questionnaire in Bologna, a regional capital city with four times the population of Piacenza, collected 500 responses.
In scope of this process, the “Let’s light up the Pug” phase made it possible to open the doors of abandoned places, not only owned by the Municipality but also by the State Property and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti: on the one hand a unique opportunity for citizens who have participated and, on the other hand, an operation that was certainly not easy to organize for the municipal offices which had to interface with other bodies, whose availability made it possible to plan the seven guided tours of the past months.
Nowjust to close the circle of what the complex participatory process in question provides, the “Let’s share the Pug” phase opens. A phase that includes a meeting already scheduled for next July 3 in Sant’Ilario with the presentation of the socio-demographic data and the housing offer in the Piacenza area, and a further and fundamental meeting that will be scheduled shortly and that will see the presentation of the Pug proposal by the consultants who have worked in these months and in the presence of the mayor Katia Tarasconi and the Town Planning Councilor Adriana Fantini. A meeting that will represent a moment of sharing and debate and which, it should be specified, will take place in the phase even before the adoption of the Plan proposal by the Council and will be a further opportunity for participation in which those present will be able to attend the illustration of the contents and strategies of the new Pug which will outline the development of Piacenza until 2050.
All this, as already underlined, before the Plan proposal is adopted by the Council. Which will happen by the end of July. After which the law provides that the same proposal be published in the Burert (the official bulletin of the Emilia-Romagna Region) and remain there for 60 days during which anyone with observations can present them. And in this regard, it should be noted that the Administration, precisely to encourage the widest participation, has already decided that after the acceptance of Pug’s proposal by the end of July, it will publish the proposal itself on Burert in September (and not immediately , as he could do); this is to also allow those who may be on holiday in August to have the time necessary to read, study and subsequently submit observations».
