The »Villaggio del Pilastro«. Urban Planning, Social Housing and Grassroots Mobilization in a Suburb of Bologna (1960–1985)

Giovanni Cristina

Introduction

The Villaggio del Pilastro is a housing estate in north-eastern Bologna. It is an interesting case study to measure most of the dynamics that marked the transition from the economic miracle to the seventies in an important Italian city on a relatively small scale. It also represents an anomaly, if compared to the traditional image of Bologna as an innovative and illuminated urban laboratory.271

The first plan of the neighborhood dates back to 1960.²⁷² Although the idea of building the Pilastro was an initiative of the IACP (Istituto autonomo case popolari, the local agency for social housing), which had purchased at an affordable price a »rural area« from a private individual in November 1959,²⁷³ from the early stages the Municipality of Bologna actively collaborated towards its realization. Collaboration between the IACP and the Municipality of Bologna had already started in the post-war period, when the INA-Casa plan allowed the construction of new public housing complexes on the northern, western and eastern fringes of Bologna. Giuseppe Dozza, mayor from 1945 to 1966, conceived of the INA-Casa complexes as »›self-sufficient satellites‹ separated from each other and from the urban core by an agricultural green belt.«²⁷⁴ The logic behind the construction of the Villaggio del Pilastro fitted perfectly into this vision if it is true that Dozza envisaged »three major settlements far from the center: Due Madonne, Borgo Panigale and Pilastro.«²⁷⁵

The transition between the fifties and the sixties was marked by two turning points in Bologna urban history: the coming, in 1960, of the Roman town planner Giuseppe Campos Venuti and the launch of the Economic and Social Housing Program (PEEP), regulated by law 167 of 1962.²⁷⁶ The appointment of Campos Venuti as assessore of city planning showed greater attention to urban planning issues by Bologna’s PCI—until then the planning had been delegated to the municipal technicians.²⁷⁷ At the same time, the change of course in city planning in Bologna took place through a major limitation of the »urban rent«²⁷⁸ by private operators and an increased focus on green areas and public equipment. In essence, a passage from a »quantitative expansion culture« to a new way of designing the city which was more responsive to urban quality, especially in the new suburbs.²⁷⁹ The Municipality of Bologna maximized the potential of law 167: 90 percent of the total requirement of housing for the subsequent 10 years was placed under its aegis.²⁸⁰

Social Mobilization and Right to Housing (1966–1971)

The PEEP of Bologna was adopted on 21 June 1963. The ratification of the inclusion of the Pilastro within the PEEP as the »thirteenth area« took place in May 1964 and was introduced by Campos Venuti during the city council session on the same day:

The neighborhood of the Pilastro at issue consists of a complex of almost 10,000 inhabitants, 9,677 precisely […]. In total, an area of almost half a million square meters with a building area of less than half of the total, with a series of road provisions, school, cinema, church, parking garage, all equipment, in other words, provided by urban standards adopted for the plan in a broad sense and applied for this district in proportion to the area and population.281

The first plan for the Pilastro of 1960 conceived the neighborhood as a »self-sufficient settlement« divided into two residential complexes, among which a public park and sports facilities were collocated. According to this plan, the whole settlement was organized in two symmetrical semicircles, each of which was composed of three concentric areas. The external belt of each semicircle was characterized by blocks of low houses with an irregular and lined up profile. The intermediary belt was comprised of high residential buildings, while the inner semicircle included tower buildings with a mixed use (offices, houses). It also should have held the »community’s social functions, like the church, municipal offices, schools and other commercial and cultural services.«²⁸² Besides, the north side of the settlement continued to an artisan zone, separated from the residential area by a thin green belt.

Architects initially conceived the Pilastro as an autonomous community with precise, although »vaguely idyllic«,²⁸³ identity connotations. Social implications of the plan were strictly connected with both geographic and productive aspects of the neighborhood:

Convinced of the need for an inter-class composition of the village, without insignias and without forced agglomeration of similar interests, a free development of forms and volumes has been devised in which men of every condition can feel at ease and in which the face of things can remain in memory, where finally, the community can gather on Sunday in the churchyard, in leisure, not having lost touch with nature, with the green, with the land.²⁸⁴

The inclusion of an artisan area in the Pilastro was intended to offer »a right model through which these small firms can virtuously fit into residential settlements«, trying to minimize commuting and anticipating decentralization that »out of control would have broken in towns of Bologna’s belt«²⁸⁵ during the sixties and the seventies. According to the intentions of the designers, the neighborhood self-sufficiency depended necessarily on its productive and employment self-sufficiency.

This first plan was devised in the light of housing 15,000 inhabitants, while the cubature of the buildings was estimated at 1,210,000 cubic meters for a density of 2,40 cubic meters/square meters. Nevertheless, it was rejected by the City Planning Department, which asked IACP to draw up an alternative solution. In 1963, the IACP and the Municipality established an agreement on their respective tasks: the agency should build inner roads and buildings, while the Municipality should provide the settlement with main roads, public lighting and services.²⁸⁶ In the same year, the definitive plan for the Pilastro was elaborated: the artisan area was substituted by simple shops; the area to be occupied by the buildings was reduced; and only one typology of building (8-story blocks in a line) composed the two semicircles for a total population reduced to 10,000 inhabitants.

The reduction of both the expected population and the building area resulted in an increased building density. In addition, the exclusive residential use of the buildings and the gradual abolition of the artisan area determined the mono-functionality of the Pilastro, which turned into a bedroom suburb on the edge of the city.²⁸⁷

On 9 July 1966 the first 411 apartments of the Villaggio del Pilastro were eventually inaugurated. On that occasion, the new IACP president, Elio Mattioni, affirmed:

The new neighborhood was designed to be both the most convenient from the economic point of view and the most efficient from the urban point of view. […] When all the planned buildings are completed, the village will be divided into contiguous units that constitute centers of authentic social measure, each with its essential services. All the harmony and expressiveness of the new neighborhood are conferred to the reasoned game of volumes and the shrill tones of the plasters. Deep in the green, the village—which nicely integrates with the surrounding countryside—guarantees, with its open spaces and its bright prospects, a comfortable environment for its new inhabitants.²⁸⁸

Fig. 1: Inauguration of the »Villaggio del Pilastro«. 9 July 1966. Authorities stage.

Source: Archive of the photographic exhibition, I vent’anni del Pilastro, mostra antologica retrospettiva, grafici, foto, documenti, 1–18 ottobre 1987, Palazzo Re Enzo, Sala del trecento, Bologna.

The enthusiastic expectations by Mattioni would eventually remain unrealized when looking at a report of December 1970 that describes the actual scenario the first dwellers faced once having arrived in the suburb:

The village of the Pilastro, built years ago, immediately presented major conceptual flaws. Terrible buildings near a continuous source of noise (railway yard), absolute lack of walkable green spaces, lack of primary and secondary schools, kindergarten, nursery, [namely] all social services as essential as the house. Lack of spaces for recreational, cultural, sports and political associations, [for] a community center [and] the parish. High-cost domestic services (heating, elevators, gas, water), or at least not affordable for the family budget of most citizens. Conversely a social stratigraphy, mostly made up of large working-class families. In short, a large urban agglomeration that from day to day is gaining the typical features of suburban districts such as those of Milan, Turin, Rome, Naples, Palermo etc.

Houses designed in a purely speculative way, buildings without terraces, stinking sewers, gutters that, after three years, rot and rain water flowing down the walls. Shops with luxury prices, areas of land left to themselves with various waste piles, narrow and twisted roads, lack of garages promised but not built at the time and very expensive ordinary maintenance paid directly by the tenants—intercoms planned in the project and unrealized.²⁸⁹

In fact, as soon as July 1966, the first inhabitants had »experienced a reality […] mainly characterized by difficulties in housing. First, the lack of health care facilities, schools [and] adequate transport services.«²⁹⁰ Being faced with this situation, a group of tenants decided to form the Comitato Inquilini del Pilastro with the aim of »establish[ing] relations with both the IACP and the Municipality, in order to convey and examine the many structural, organizational and administrative problems that bother all of us inhabitants of the Village.«²⁹¹

As claimed by Mario Zaghi—the secretary of the Comitato in the late seventies—the decision to form a tenants union stemmed from the simple observation that »discussing and uniting«²⁹² together the various problems would be solved more easily and therefore—as stated by another of Comitato’s member, Angiolino Vecchi—»it would be totally useless to go individually to the Institute [IACP] or to the Municipality to reclaim this or that right.«²⁹³

In essence, since its establishment, the Comitato sought to act as the collector of the residents’ requests and claims toward the IACP and the Municipality. To achieve this, the Comitato resorted to a dual strategy from the beginning. On the one hand, its demands followed a strictly institutional path. Thus, through dialogue, consultation, meetings, exchange of correspondence, the Comitato tried to influence the decision-making processes that dealt with various aspects of the village such as rent prices, urban planning and the provision of public services.

On the other hand, especially when its demands were not met or when the red tape or lack of coordination between agencies made some problems particularly urgent—as in the case of the delayed construction of schools—the Comitato resorted to forms of mobilization such as strikes or demonstrations in central Bologna to raise awareness amongst institutions and the public.²⁹⁴

On 26 June 1967, the Comitato Inquilini had formalized its composition. The president was Luigi Spina and the secretary was Oscar De Pauli. For »a better functionality« three ad hoc committees were created. They were respectively dedicated to the relationships with the IACP, those with the Municipality, and the school situation.²⁹⁵

According to its statute, the Comitato Inquilini was »a financially and administratively independent association« aimed at »safeguarding, coordinating and protecting the economical, social and moral collective interests of the inhabitants of the neighborhood.« Its duties were to »regularly inform […] tenants on crucial initiatives affecting the tenants themselves« and »to maintain a non-partisan line« with the aim to avoid that its action »could be characterized as an appendage of any political party.«²⁹⁶

However, the question of the political affiliation of the Comitato was not so linear. Despite claiming to be apolitical, including »citizens with or without any political ideology« motivated »by a spirit of class or Christian solidarity […] or even simply by altruism«,²⁹⁷ the Comitato somewhat strengthened the relationships with the PCI thanks to the foundation of the PCI section »V. Sabatini« at the Pilastro in 1969. From the report of the PCI Comitato di quartiere of the adjacent neighborhood, San Donato, a growing crisis of representation of the organizational apparatus of the PCI at the neighborhood level clearly emerges, in a phase when grassroots positions within the party and especially the action of groups of the extra-parliamentary Left showed itself to be more able to interpret bottom-up protest. The solution to avoid a possible loss of hegemony in the neighborhoods was to empower local sections and, above all, to join those segments of »civil society« that were already operating on the territory. In this sense, the newly formed section of the PCI at the Pilastro was noted as the only center of political initiative in the San Donato district. The »communists« of the Pilastro were particularly active »not only in a section of the PCI, but also in the Comitato Inquilini, in the movement school and society, in the committees for self-management of the school.«²⁹⁸

The link between the PCI and the tenants union is also demonstrated by a PCI meeting held in April 1969 at the bar Dall’Olio—a usual venue for meetings of the Comitato at that time—where the new secretary of the section »Sabatini«, Aldo Grenzi, was elected. The goal of the PCI was to »be present with more incisiveness at the Pilastro«, with the aim of »reducing the space« of political action for a group of students belonging to the Unione Comunisti d’Italia Marxisti-Leninisti that »had chosen the area of the Pilastro to create a popular base« among its inhabitants. To do this, it was essential, according to the PCI, that »the PCI section secretary [was] not also the Secretary of the Comitato Inquilini.«²⁹⁹ Beyond testifying to the Comitato’s nonpartisanism in the eyes of tenants and, above all, far-left groups, the distinction between the charges of the Comitato and the local PCI would allow the latter to have a local secretary who could deal with the party within the neighborhood full-time. Thus, a continuity between the PCI and the Comitato Inquilini at the Pilastro clearly emerges.

Morever, between 1970 and 1971, the Comitato promoted a campaign to collect signatures for a popular law aimed at reducing rents by 30 percent and initiating the democratization process of the IACPs through the entry of representatives of the tenants into the institutes’ decision-making process. This petition—»launched at the national level from Milan«³⁰⁰—was signed by 1,300 tenants and had a clear left-wing tendency related to union struggles triggered by the Autunno caldo of 1969.

In the same period, however, tenants engaged in other forms of protest against high rents: there were »dozens« of families »that, for months, no longer pay rents to the IACP.«³⁰¹ Groups from the extra-parliamentary Left, such as Lotta Continua and the Maoists of Servire il popolo, attempted to exploit such forms of needs-driven protest but with poor results since they were never able to take root in the neighborhood. According to the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino, the activists of Servire il popolo »[were] convinced to find those underclass conditions capable of sowing the seeds for an Italian-style Maoist revolution, but they found workers involved in a really concrete, and not utopian, terrain of democratic struggle«; and also for Lotta Continua the »Pilastro has become a trap that has defeated and rejected them, isolating them even more by the masses.«³⁰²

Angiolino Vecchi highlighted the different strategy opposing the tenants union and Lotta Continua in this protest against high rents:

Several tenants already turned to us of the Comitato and asked: »Is it true that we do not pay rent?« […] Who invites us not to pay the rent and »to make the rent strike« is not the Comitato Inquilini, but a group from Lotta Continua. [They] are a political movement calling itself »Marxist-Leninist«, but they are not the »communists« as intended by the majority of Italians. They are so-called »Maoists« or »Chinese.« And what do they want? […] Actually, maybe they do not even know it: they just say to want »the revolution«, yes! But since it is a bit difficult today in Italy [to] build barricades, here this small group of »revolutionaries«—who do not even live here at the Pilastro (do not forget it!)—have seen fit to choose our neighborhood, ruling that its population is the most suitable in the city for their own purposes, perhaps because—so they believe—composed of fools and ignorant, so ready to accept their miraculous programs. In fact, it is very easy to say: »you do not pay the rent.« It is quite an appealing program, is not it? But have you tried to ask these types if they pay their rent? I asked them, and you know what I was told? »Yes, I pay the rent because I do not live here and I have another landlord.« Got it now?

[…] We think that the battle for the rents should be conducted, as we are doing now, in the political and trade union field, and that the fighting systems proposed by Lotta Continua are out of touch. Years ago we decided not to pay rents, and many of you will remember it. But you also will remember that it was for a specific purpose: we wanted the IACP to listen to our reasons relating to heating, with the aim of lowering the bills it charged us. And the Institute… lowered costs.³⁰³

This marked distance, or opposition, between the Comitato and the groups of the extra-parliamentary Left can be explained in generational, social, and political terms. In fact, Comitato members were all workers living at the Pilastro and having an average age definitely higher than that of the members of Lotta Continua. Also different were their goals, their methods and their responsibilities: while the Comitato set out to solve the problems of the neighborhood by legal methods and on the basis of a purely tenant union demand platform, the »revolutionary« groups had a strong ideological approach and unrealistically aspired to »raise the level of confrontation« within an allegedly »underclass« neighborhood. But above all, from the Comitato’s standpoint, only those who lived at the Pilastro could fully act for the benefit of its inhabitants: those who did not experience the reality of the village just played at being revolutionaries in an exotic terrain, by assuming a naïvely »pedagogic« attitude.

Harsh criticism, however, also followed the opposite direction. In a leaflet of January 1969 the Gruppo per la formazione del comitato di lotta del Pilastro, the first far-left group that tried to take root in the neighborhood, described the Comitato as the »faithful servant« of the IACP: according to this group, the committee pretended to »advance the interests of workers« but in fact »it was made up of employees and policemen whose sole task was that of keeping the tenants-workers under control in the interests of the Institute.«³⁰⁴

Instead, the contrasts between the PCI and Lotta Continua at the Pilastro became apparent in July 1971. On 3 July, eleven families occupied some newly built apartments owned by the IACP. »Within a few days the families became 42«,³⁰⁵ occupying an entire building in via Frati. These were »workers, laborers, truck drivers,« who mainly came from southern Italy and already lived in dilapidated houses in other outlying areas of Bologna, such as Borre, Noce and Beverara outside Porta Lame.³⁰⁶ The families were led by Lotta Continua activists, but the distribution of apartments among the occupants, the line to follow in dealing with the IACP and, in general, all stages of the protest were managed by an assembly of heads of household. The occupation lasted one week, during which the assembly of heads of household tried unsuccessfully to achieve a compromise with the IACP. The PCI sought a dialogue with the occupiers, but despite some communist grassroots members supporting the reasons for the protest, the official line of the party condemned the occupation. According to the PCI Comitato cittadino, occupations generated a dangerous conflict between occupants and recipients, while Lotta Continua demonstrated irresponsible exploitation »of desperate situations for actions for their own sake.«³⁰⁷ The Comitato Inquilini responded along the same lines while not releasing an official statement on the matter.³⁰⁸

For its part, the IACP claimed that, contrary to what the Resto del Carlino stated, the occupied apartments were not intended for rental-purchase, but were already allocated for rent to »workers, the disabled and the elderly currently residing in unsanitary or totally inadequate housing, or subject to eviction.«³⁰⁹ Lotta Continua, however, extolled the organizational capacity of the occupants with emphatic tones, pointing its finger at the PCI, the Municipality and the IACP at the same time. It saw them as responsible for »isolating the struggle« and leaving the field open to the »repression« by that police that evicted the occupied apartments on 10 July. Lotta Continua stressed the fact that »for the first time in Bologna the PCI had remained on the defensive« and that even in that city that was »propagandized throughout Italy as a ›city on a human scale‹ […] ghettos and social degradation« existed.³¹⁰ The activity of Lotta Continua at the Pilastro ended with this, all in all, unsuccessful experience.

However, although the methods of the Comitato were certainly more moderate than those of far-left groups, its relations with the IACP were not always idyllic. As seen above, in December 1970, the president of the tenants union, Luigi Spina, defined IACP’s apartments as built »in a purely speculative way«, highlighting their poor quality. He also associated the Pilastro to the reality of other Italian cities where much more large-scale migration, or less attention of local governments toward public housing, had resulted in slums or a structural shortage of affordable housing for the working classes.

In fact, the Pilastro could be seen as an anomaly compared to other districts of the so-called Third Bologna since it lacked the high standards of equipped green, public services and shopping centers characterizing this new city belt, which basically coincided with the PEEP areas built up during the sixties. One of the reasons for this lay in the fact that the Pilastro was designed as an INA-Casa village of the fifties³¹¹ at a time when that social-housing scheme was replaced by the »PEEP paradigm«. In addition, municipal technicians progressively distorted the original idea of the village as a self-sufficient neighborhood as regards work and production. According to other interpretations, the marginality of the rural areas acquired by the IACP in 1959—located outside the urbanized fabric—represented the »original sin« that heavily influenced the Pilastro’s future developments.

Besides, while the first buildings of the Pilastro, in the sixties, were funded under laws 17 and 1460 of 1963,³¹² the PEEP variance of 1968 was instead launched to coincide with the legge Ponte of 1967,³¹³ while finally the PEEP variance of 1975 was designed to harness public financing offered by laws 865 of 1971 and 166 of 1975.³¹⁴ These continual regulatory and funding changes entailed a differentiated rents policy by the IACP even within the same village. In particular, if the rent of the first apartments delivered in 1966 amounted to 11,300 lire per month for houses consisting of two rooms and a kitchenette, and 23,032 lire per month for five-room apartments, the rent for those built in 1970 rose to 19,690 lire per month for homes with three rooms and a kitchen and 29,500 lire per month for apartments of five rooms and a kitchen.³¹⁵

The gap is huge if compared to other areas of the »public city«: in the Barca estate, for instance, the rents ranged from 5,500 lire a month for a flat with five rooms to 6,650 lire for a house with six rooms still in 1970. At the Pilastro, rent prices were even higher than those charged by private landlords in the adjacent San Donato district.³¹⁶ Unlike Barca, where housing had been built thanks to state contributions of GESCAL (i. e. the continuation of the INA-Casa program), at the Pilastro the laws financing the construction of housing only granted the IACP a small state contribution oscillating between two and four percent of the total expenses. In the virtual absence of state financings, the IACP was then forced to take out loans with the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (a state financial bank) and, thus, to fix above-average rents to repay its debts.

This kept rent strikes continuing also in March 1972. The lack of state resources covering law 865 of 1971—which was meant to finance social housing—did not allow the IACP to accept the Comitato’s proposal of reducing monthly rents by 30 percent, thus inducing the latter to organize a full rent strike, although only limited to that month. However, some dwellers fought high rents in more drastic ways if the Comitato invited the newly arrived tenants not to confuse its own initiative with that of the »group that proposes the systematic selfreduction of half of the rental fee each month«.³¹⁷ Nevertheless, despite high rents, at the Pilastro the percentage of delinquent tenants was in line with that of other IACP-managed social housing estates.³¹⁸

Building up a Participative Community: School and Public Services

The dual character of the Comitato’s political strategy, between institutional dialogue and protest, has already been mentioned. But its role within the Pilastro was also dual. On the one hand, the Comitato aimed to break the isolation of the neighborhood from the rest of the city through the implementation of essential public services that were missing in the village. On the other hand, by encouraging dwellers to participate in the »ordinary management« of the neighborhood, it aimed at creating an active citizenship with the goal of combating the inhabitants’ isolation not only against the rest of the city, but also in neighborly relations.

Oral testimonies collected in the nineties bring out the initial difficulties of integration of the first families to arrive in the newly built neighborhood: the Pilastro »was born bad [also] because all the people [were] unknown [and] did not know each other.« So, »where people do not know each other, it becomes more difficult to live, and then everyone is more afraid of other people.«319

The difficulty in creating relationships between the residents was also dictated by the fact that about 38 percent of the tenants came from southern Italy, a proportion that far exceeded the average of the other suburbs of Bologna. In the memories of some residents, different origins were a divisive factor which certainly did not favor integration. For example, a Bolognese ten-year-old girl who had moved to the Pilastro at the beginning of the seventies stated that in school »it became difficult to understand each other« because there were »a lot of people [who] did not speak Italian«; during »the first new year« at the Pilastro she was particularly struck by the fact that »at midnight [some people] began to throw down everything from the windows,« as it was »customary in southern Italy and in Rome.«³²⁰

In fact, beyond the »myth of the Pilastro as a southern neighborhood«,³²¹ other PEEP suburbs of Bologna, such as Barca and the adjacent Filanda, registered »a lack of community life, in both interpersonal neighborly relationships« during the seventies, and »with regard to initiatives […] able to define community spaces and moments.«³²² In the case of Barca and Filanda, buildings constructed thanks to PEEP legislation had been built by housing cooperatives and included housing sold as divided ownership, and therefore not for rent like those of the Pilastro managed by the IACP. These PEEP settlements stood in the same area where there were complexes of public housing of a different legal regime, such as the CEP. This different social composition—i. e. PEEP houses intended for working and middle-class ownership versus affordable CEP housing for lower classes—also generated, on the part of the PEEP accommodation owners of Barca and Filanda, a sense of »defense of proprietary privileges.«³²³ Therefore, the owners tended to isolate themselves from the rest of the neighborhood and to adopt a NIMBY attitude against the construction of public spaces and services. This was particularly evident when the inhabitants of PEEP housing petitioned to move a primary school by fifty meters, because they did not want an adjoining rink that could attract children who were considered »outsiders« to the property apartments.

Between the sixties and the seventies, the reasons for the relatively low participation of the Pilastro’s inhabitants in community life were not so much dictated by a desire for social and physical distinction of different parts of the neighborhood,³²⁴ but rather from a difficult integration between the inhabitants of different geographical backgrounds who found themselves living in an isolated neighborhood with no common areas or collective services. So, while at Barca »the inhabitants of the PEEP area [had] found already made structures (areas, urbanization, a private garden)« and, therefore, they did not feel compelled to »participa[te] in the life of the community«,³²⁵ at the Pilastro, instead, the bottom-up demand of public services and the gradual construction of aggregation spaces and associations by organized dwellers had definitely set the foundation for a social life and for building a sense of community.

Indeed, since the beginning the task of the Comitato Inquilini was not easy. In 1970, dweller participation was still low according to a sociological survey of the IACP which measured the percentages of trust the people interviewed placed in the various institutions »to get aid.« In the lead were the »local authorities and the IACP« (which inspired confidence in 40 percent of respondents), then the Comitato Inquilini (16.7 percent), followed by the grassroots actions of the dwellers and the Consiglio di Quartiere (5.7),³²⁶ the State and the Government (2.7) and the parties, unions and extra-parliamentary forces (1.6). Finally, 2.8 percent indicated »other institutions«, while 10.4 percent of the respondents did not trust any institution and 19.9 percent did not answer. The survey also asked householders to indicate their main activities outside the workplace. 52.2 percent of the respondents spent their free time watching television or cultivating a private hobby, 18.1 percent spent it at home, in the bar or with friends, 8.6 percent playing football or going hunting, 5.5 percent did chores at home, 5.2 percent had time only to eat and sleep, while only 4.6 percent of the respondents attended cultural activities or meetings. Finally, the remaining 5.8 percent did not answer.³²⁷

Despite an overwhelming preponderance of private behavior in the use of leisure time and very low confidence in political parties and central institutions, the electoral preferences of the inhabitants of the Pilastro were oriented decisively towards Left parties, as demonstrated during the general elections of 1968 and 1972.³²⁸

The scarcity of state resources for public housing during the seventies did not affect only the price of rents: it was also the main factor in the non-completion of public services provided by the plans. The situation of the schools in the neighborhood was a priority for the Comitato. Following its pressure put on the Municipality and the IACP, a kindergarten was built in 1967, while on 7 January 1969 the elementary school was made accessible to pupils who previously were constrained to attend other schools in the San Donato district through inconvenient afternoon shifts.

Fig. 2: Kindergarten groundbreaking ceremony. 10 June 1967. Public.

Source: Biblioteca »Luigi Spina«, Historical Archive of the Pilastro.

If letters of request or formal appeals to institutions got no feedback, the Comitato Inquilini resorted to street protests and demonstrations. Like on 7 March 1970, when children and parents from the Pilastro demonstrated in Piazza Maggiore to sensitize the Municipality, the IACP and the Provincial Education Agency to the situation of the schools, which were more and more inadequate for a growing neighborhood that by then had reached 3,000 inhabitants and would shortly thereafter have to accommodate another 400 families.³²⁹

Demonstrations organized by the tenants union and other associations linked to the school continued even when, in 1974, the Pilastro could count on two kindergartens, two elementary schools and a middle school. At that time, however, the problems concerned the excessive mobility of teachers which did not ensure continuity in teaching, the overcrowding of classes for the available classrooms that obligated students to double shifts, and incomplete full-time application which would allow the pupils to stay at school in the afternoon and to follow other courses. For these reasons, on 26 January 1974, the Comitato Inquilini and the Collettivo genitori-insegnanti organized a strike outside the headquarters of the Provincial Education Agency of Bologna in Piazza Rossini.³³⁰

Fig. 3: School protest in Piazza Rossini, Bologna. 26 January 1974. Pupils protesting against teachers mobility. Source: Biblioteca »Luigi Spina«, Historical Archive of the Pilastro.

The school represented at the same time a public service essential to the social life of the neighborhood and also, especially thanks to the decreti delegati of 1974, a place where the participation of the inhabitants-parents could take place in a very direct way. The enthusiasm generated by the creation of school governing bodies which were open to parental representatives was manifested during the school elections in 1975. At the Pilastro, in the absence of institutional elective representative bodies,³³¹ the Consigli di plesso represented a new space of political participation in a field considered essential to building a true »democratic society«, namely education. On the occasion of the election of the neighborhood elementary school councils, in January of 1975, three different lists were created. Besides witnessing participatory turmoil in the district, the propaganda leaflets reproduced, in a small scale, the relationships between political forces in Italy during the period. While in January 1974 the Collettivo genitori-insegnanti had participated in the strike along with the Comitato Inquilini, on this occasion the former presented a separate list because it did not agree with the entry of DC representatives onto the list. The Comitato instead joined other political parties, such as the DC, the PSI and the PCI, in a united list witnessing the Compromesso storico climate which was aimed at uniting all the democratic and anti-fascist forces.³³² The proximity of the Comitato to parties was a further sign of its progressive »institutionalization«.

In addition to housing struggles and access to school, a third fundamental issue for the claims of the Comitato was the physical layout of the neighborhood. In particular, since 1968, the action of the Comitato both focused on changing the PEEP of 1964 and on a more participatory management of the heating system for the entire district aimed at reducing its cost.

Regarding the first aspect, taking advantage of the legge Ponte of 1967 which gave municipalities the right to modify their urban plans, the Comitato worked to change the PEEP of the Pilastro with the goal of increasing the green area and reducing the building density in the neighborhood. In June 1968, the Comitato sent a memorandum to the IACP and other bodies of the City. It proposed designing a variance of the PEEP in order to »avert a type of building in direct conflict with the new, and so much proclaimed, town planning concepts.«³³³ In particular, the Comitato asked for the completion of the building of the rest of the neighborhood according to the criteria of the PEEP of 1964 to be stopped, thus reserving the space provided for the construction of two plots between Via Svevo and Via Gozzano for equipped public green space. That of the Comitato was a »grassroots« attempt aimed at bringing the dictates of Campos Venuti’s »urban quality« also to the Pilastro. However, although it was built in the middle of the sixties, the Pilastro remained immune to these new concepts in building urban peripheries: in fact, in its claim the Comitato lamented »the proximity of the buildings to the roads and the exaggerated closeness between them«³³⁴ that had reduced the space reserved for parks drastically.

The Municipality upheld the claims of the Comitato: in October 1968, the variance of the PEEP was presented first to the San Donato Consiglio di quartiere and then to an assembly of citizens of the Pilastro. The new plan increased the surface of the urbanized area from 49.1 to 78.8 hectares with a significant reduction in the population density, which in the PEEP of 1964 amounted to 200 inhabitants per hectare. The new plan also increased the services provided, reaching a standard of 45 square meters per capita.³³⁵ Public services were concentrated in a central area of 25,000 square meters, officially defined as the centro lineare, more informally called la piastra, which was to include a civic center, the auditorium, the parish, the shopping center, a school and a kindergarten. The failure to implement the plan of 1968 contributed to the provocation of the protests of the early seventies. This version of the PEEP went nowhere because the national financing on social housing was discontinuous and fragmented.

Meanwhile, the failure to apply law 865 of 1971 made the housing issue more acute. This emerged by an »open letter to the citizens of the Pilastro« of March 1974, signed jointly by the Comitato Inquilini, the local sections of the PCI, the PSI and the DC, the cultural club »Don Minzoni« and the Unione Sportiva del Pilastro. An apartment already assigned to a family composed of six children without parents had been illegally occupied by another family. As a result the legitimate recipients were forced to live separately in different civic institutions. The letter was in defense of the children and was intended »not to touch the citizens […] nor incite hatred«, but »to draw the attention of everyone to the need to potentiate the action and joint mobilization to achieve the right to housing.«³³⁶ Besides, in August 1974 a delegation of the Comitato Inquilini went to Rome³³⁷ in an attempt to support the three-year funding for social housing proposed by Christian-Democrat minister Lauricella in 1973 and finally shelved.³³⁸ At the same time, and almost in the same years, a »more complex [demand for housing], more interested in gaining advantages in addition to relying on rights, with significant differences in the individual aspirations of groups«³³⁹ emerged.

Fig. 4: »Festa degli alberi« (i. e. Arbor day). 21 November 1971. Little boy and the Pilastro in the background. Source: Archive of the photographic exhibition, I vent’anni del Pilastro, mostra antologica retrospettiva, grafici, foto, documenti, 1–18 ottobre 1987, Palazzo Re Enzo, Sala del trecento, Bologna.

Participation Diversifies, the Pilastro Changes (1974–1986)

A more diversified demand and the decreased availability of resources for social housing coincided with a fragmentation in the construction of the public city, marked by the entry of cooperatives as a productive actor which was less dependent on public funding for the construction of housing. In the seventies, the cooperation between the City Planning Department and cooperatives intensified and spread to many building operations of the period, which were also favored by laws 865 of 1971 and 166 of 1975—laws which provided state funding to cooperatives. This legislation had prompted the Bolognese administrators to launch a second variance of the PEEP for the Pilastro, in order to complete the construction of the neighborhood by including divided and undivided housing ownership built by cooperatives, as an integration of rented houses owned by the IACP.

However, the transition from the sixties to the seventies also marked a change of construction techniques for the complexes of public housing. No longer scattered blocks were built, but »unitary and large buildings, intended for social and cheap accommodation.« Parallelly, »the large size of the interventions and the target of a reduction of costs had as a consequence the adoption of prefabrication systems«,340 such as that of the coffrage tunnel.

In the suburbs the choices of the City Planning Department regarding housing fell on large buildings and the containment of costs, but in the historic center things were different. In 1973 the PEEP for the historic center came into force.³⁴¹ The international attention aroused by the plan, however, was more due to a model of restoration of the historic town stemming from a public program which provided the use of compulsory purchase by individuals rather than to the social aspects of the initiative. The PEEP for the historic center helped to fuel the rhetoric of the »red Bologna« as a powerful example of good administration. The different ways of implementing the same PEEP legislation in the historic center and at the Pilastro indeed contribute to making this suburb even more atypical in relation to the Bolognese context.

For the PEEP office and the assessor Pier Luigi Cervellati, the PEEP variance of 1975 represented a turning point that marked the final completion of the Pilastro through the introduction of a strong »social regeneration factor«.³⁴² Instead, according to the socialist councilor Giovanni Crocioni, the construction of new buildings marked »a certain hegemony of production and work on housing,« as a result »of a Leninist-oriented dirigisme.«³⁴³

The new plan envisaged the construction of four 18-floor towers, built by Edilter and Edilcoop cooperatives between 1976 and 1984, and a curvilinear building—later renamed the Virgolone—which enclosed the neighborhood in the north-east. The controversial judgment about the urban and architectural choice of the Virgolone best expresses all the contradictions of Pilastro’s planning history. On the one hand, Cervellati, in a 1997 interview, said that »at that time [in which] neighborhoods [were planned as] projected to infinity« the PEEP technical office had come up »with something that constituted a kind of fence, a hug, like, forgive improper comparison, a Bernini’s colonnade.« In essence, according to the planner’s judgment, the Virgolone was characterized by »good materials, fine houses, facilities.«³⁴⁴ On the other hand, the Virgolone was considered »an eight-story barracks inevitably destined to the unhappy fate of [being] a human hive.«³⁴⁵ It was also defined as »a dégagé reinterpretation of Weimarian Siedlungen«³⁴⁶ that according to »some would become the second negative symbol of the Pilastro: more than three thousand families, a true country in the great country of the ›disaster‹, the ›ghetto‹, the city.«³⁴⁷

Compared to the variance of 1968, the Comitato played a marginal role as regards the PEEP variance of 1975. On this occasion the will to draw a new plan came from the City Planning Department and was not a request of the dwellers. The Comitato merely expressed a favorable opinion about the decision to build the curvilinear building that allowed for the allocation of a very large space as a public green area. The alternative to the Virgolone would have been a complex of row houses situated on the opposite side to the oldest settlement of the Pilastro.³⁴⁸ Unlike in 1968, when the PEEP technical office presented the new plan to the citizens of the Pilastro, the assembly went almost totally deserted.³⁴⁹

This loss of interest on the part of the Pilastro dwellers in the decisions concerning the future »shape« of the neighborhood probably stemmed from the previous experience of the 1968 variance which was eventually unrealized. The failure to implement that plan had provoked a certain mistrust of the procedures of Campos Venuti’s urbanistica partecipata which turned into non-participation by the dwellers of the Pilastro six years later. Moreover, probably the progressive bureaucratization of the Comitato Inquilini, which had joined the provincial network of the National union of tenants and renters (SUNIA) with the goal of playing a greater role in the consultations with the IACP in 1974,³⁵⁰ had helped to make its action less »spontaneous« and more institutionalized, resulting in a loss of appeal among the inhabitants of the Pilastro.

The climate of austerity that followed the 1973 oil crisis also affected the management of the heating system of the whole neighborhood, which depended on a collective diesel oil power plant owned and controlled by the IACP. In 1974, the IACP concluded an agreement with the Comitato. This sanctioned the »co-management« of the Pilastro heating system through the creation of a Joint Commission and a Management Committee of the plant including representatives of the IACP, the Comitato Inquilini and the Bologna section of SUNIA. The Joint Commission had to deal with the administrative management of the system, deciding fuel purchase plans and criteria for charges to users, while the Management Committee intervened on the accounting and technical aspect of the plant, establishing the procedures for the supply of heating.³⁵¹ The entrance of the Comitato in the management of the heating system allowed greater involvement and responsibility of the inhabitants in controlling individually power consumption levels through their private behavior inside houses.³⁵²

Indeed, the Comitato urged the tenants to have a more rational management of the heating system within their own homes through an »accurate cleaning of radiators« and avoiding »tampering with hot water inlet valves« leading to energy losses »that would be paid by all, even by those who are less wealthy.« The »active and constant participation of tenants in […] technical and administrative management of the service« implied an »assumption of rights and […] duties« of the tenant, resulting in their »greater social maturation«: if the co-management entailed »a certain cost to the tenants«,³⁵³ who had to pay a small monthly fee for the technical monitoring of the system, on the other hand, the individual tenants were asked to avoid wasting energy by reducing heat in their houses. This system of co-management came into effect from the winter of 1974 and continued up to the mid-eighties.

By this kind of measures the Comitato attempted to make the inhabitants of the Pilastro more responsible and to involve them in the social life of the neighborhood, while also trying to reduce the episodes of deviance and crime that were quite widespread in the neighborhood during the seventies, especially by groups of young people. Vandalism and damage greatly fueled the stereotype of the Pilastro as a dangerous neighborhood. The most serious incident was the unresolved murder of a fourteen-year old boy with a small-caliber rifle. Despite the presence of numerous associations such as the Unione Sportiva Pilastro led since 1970 by Oscar De Pauli, the Catholic cultural club »Don Minzoni« which was founded in 1973, the parish of Santa Caterina and political parties, incidents of petty crime continued. In April 1975, some unknown person burned the car of De Pauli following a meeting that the various associations had had with the local press in order to give a more balanced and less sensationalist picture of the district. Vandalism escalated when the apartment owners of the new buildings planned by the PEEP variance of 1975 began to arrive in the neighborhood with the intention of making it clear to newcomers who was in charge and imposing customs unfortunately rooted in the neighborhood yet always stigmatized by the majority of residents.³⁵⁴

Meanwhile, other public services arrived at the Pilastro such as the health center, which also included a family counseling center and opened in May 1975.³⁵⁵ In 1976, the staff of the Comitato was renewed: its first animators, such as Oscar De Pauli and Luigi Spina, were replaced by other members, Mario Zaghi and Angiolino Vecchi.³⁵⁶ The activities of the Comitato continued during the second half of the seventies, with meetings that still saw broad public participation, as on the occasion of the adoption of a minimum threshold of rent provided by law 513 of 1977.³⁵⁷ Nevertheless, its experience was gradually coming to an end.

Conclusions

A document of the Pilastro PCI section from 1980—the very year that marks the beginning of the so-called riflusso (i. e. retreat from public participation to private life), with the famous »March of the 40,000« white collars in Turin—analyzes the causes of the failure to change out the staff of the Comitato Inquilini. According to it, the »fall of [the Comitato’s] presence as a social force capable of intervening on issues related to urban management« was attributable at the same time to the emergence of other spaces and other associations for political participation in the neighborhood and to the »reverse process of narrowing participation that [affected] almost all sectors of society.« In addition, »the changes that have occurred in recent years in the village with the presence of a type of housing different from the previous one and then [the] expression of interests of the inhabitants that can no longer be included in the only area of relations with the IACP and public housing«358 had made the Comitato’s presence less influential and weakened its appeal among the inhabitants. So, the PCI proposed replacing the Comitato with a Delegazione di zona.

This can be seen as an example of a »downward movement«—i. e. a top-down establishment, by the institutions, »of a series of more or less formal devices for the direct participation of citizens in local politics«—subsequent to the phase of »upward movement« in which »the dwellers self-organized at a neighborhood level.«³⁵⁹ However, the PCI’s proposal could hardly be effective: participation in the neighborhood was progressively following more segmented and individual directions (i. e. temporary single-issue committees or cultural and social activities), and the conditions for the grassroots collective politics of the sixties and the seventies no longer existed.

During the eighties, the Pilastro was finally completed with the construction of the last two towers (1984–1986), the shopping center (1986) and the church. At the same time, the rift between the two parts of the Pilastro—i. e. the first buildings and part of the Virgolone managed by IACP versus the new buildings in property—grew during the eighties and nineties, when new migration from the Balkans contributed to the renewal of the social heterogeneity of the neighborhood. In addition, during the eighties the presence of criminals in forced confinement in the IACP housing had brought investigators to theorize the existence of a »fifth mafia« at the Pilastro, especially after the massacre of January 1991 when three carabinieri were killed by the Uno Bianca gang, then still undiscovered. Moreover, the presence of a Roma settlement and refugees from the Yugoslav wars who were hosted in the neighborhood schools had helped to fuel racism and xenophobia in the district.

Despite all the hardships that included the isolated location, the troubled project history, its mono-functionality, the lack of public services, the lack of state funding for social housing, the social composition of the neighborhood and its exceptional nature when compared to the civic tradition of Bologna, and thanks »to the commitment and determination of its dwellers and the collaboration of the [city] administration«,³⁶⁰ the Pilastro remained strongly anchored to the rest of the city and actually never became an isolated ghetto. This was despite both its external and internal representations. The subtitle of the photographic exhibition of 1987 reads: »The Pilastro is born bad, it could be worse; it was not so for the commitment of its inhabitants.«³⁶¹ Perhaps this expression, even in its simplicity, accurately sums up the first twenty years of this Bolognese public housing estate.