‘CONSERVING THE HU After 25 years of Communist government in Bologna, Italy AN ASPECTS OF URBAN LIFE A B.C. reader sends along ma- terials on how a Communist city government in Bologna, Italy func- tions to protect and extend the rights and needs of the city’s peo- ple. In his covering letter, our reader also offers some comments: “This example,” he writes, “shows there is much capitalism can be forced to do. | believe capitalism is doomed to extinction, but by forcing this system to do what is being done in Bologna, the even- tual bankruptcy of capitalist ideo- ogy is made more apparent...” The article our reader sent along’ originally appeared in the Man- chester Guardian Weekly by George Armstrong, its correspon- dent in Italy and was reprinted in the Vancouver Sun. We. are reprinting the main points. Some day someone will write ill of Bologna, but this is not that day. When- ever there is an urban or social conflict elsewhere in Italy, and the national press is pulsating with polemics, a report is bound to be heard from Bo- logna that they order the same things better there. Bologna, a city of half a million, has been a national point of comparison for more than 25 years. The fact that it has been governed by Communists (who get about 49 per cent of the vote) and socialists obviously is something which interests foreigners. more than Italians—otherwise, citizens in corrupt and collapsing Rome, Naples, and Pa- lermo would have switched their voting allegiances. se Bologna belongs to the past when a city-state’s problems of security and wellbeing were everyone’s concern. An exhibition -held in Rome recently show- ed that Rome’s historic centre was (lo and behold) being gutted of its interior walls and its natural inhabitants. They are being replaced by offices - and posh dwellings, designed for kept wo- ment and dreamy-eyed foreigners. Ar- tisan’s homes and shops were now four-tracked stereo pads and hippy trinket bazaars. : THEY TALK WITH BRICKS There is talk in Venice of restoring the lower-income dwellings to keep that city alive, but the talk, though less feverish, is about as convincing as the talk heard now from South Africa of the whites giving the blacks a fair share. In Venice’s case, the talk is be- ing made by Christian Democrat poli- ticians and it will remain just talk. In Bologna, they talk with bricks. They are actually restoring poor homes ~ in the city’s centre. One of these, in via San Leonardo, is almost completed and scon will house 21 families. Most of the families now live next door, in a seemingly identical row of houses, complete with the arcaded front which is one of Bologna’s: typical as- pects, endearing and practical at the - Same time. The new structure replaces one which was bombed during the war, or just fell down. Some of the flats have only one rcom, and are meant-for pen- sioners or students (Bologna University © has 30,000 students from other cities). Other flats have one or two bedrooms. All have central heating, private baths, and toilets — things which the new tenants, now next door, do not have. When they move down the road their own building will be similarly re- stored. They have the right to return to their old homes or remain where _ they are. In the next two years, Bologna plans to have 450 people living in ~ “new” homes in the old centre. GREENERY AS A RIGHT The real savings to the city is in pub- lic services, which already exist in the: centre and only need improving. The cost to the ratepayer for one citizen in a new flat in the suburbs is about £5,300. For the restaration of a home in the centre allowing 30 square metres for. a person it costs between £3,000 and £4,000 per inhabitant. (One U.K. pound=$2.40 Can.) Both the new and the old blocks of flats I saw in via San Leonardo had their own gardens, or “orchards” as they call them, at the back. The garden of the still-occupied block contdins a ccmmunal toilet and various sheds and one splendidly florid banana tree. Every Bolognese is to have eight square met- res of greenery soon (or twice as much as Milanese and eight times as much as a Neapolitan) andthe city’s long-range plan will be to’ give each citizen 40-square metres. NEIGHBORHOOD ™ COMMITTEES At present Bologna is working on re- storing 30 of the 845 acres which lie within the old city walls. Plans are well advanced for the restoration of 120 flats and 40 shops or places of work. Landlords interested in restoring their rented flats can obtain bank loans, for which the city pays the interest, ccevering up to 80% of the restoration costs. The original tenant must be fe- turned to the restored flat, or the land- lord must accept another tenant at the same rent. He will have to be approved by the city and the committee of that quartiere. Nothing, it seems, is done without the consultation of these 18 neighborhcod committees. Bologna holds the national record for the number of pre-school children it cares for each day in nurseries. Bologna also is the first city to open a “day hos- pital” (they call it by the English name, there being no Italian equivalent as yet) for the elderly. In a country where part of the hospi- tal’s inefficiency is due to overcrowding by the elderly, whose families dump them in the hospitals whenever they can, this is a great innovation. The day hospital now can care for about 45 people, to whom it offers medical atten- tion, therapy, and above -all central heating and fuss, from 8 a.m. until sunset. : VACATIONS FOR ; PENSIONERS Even those elderly who stay at home are not forgotten. Each quartiere has one doctor, one nurse, and two or three -cost nothing, they would deserve ™ cleaning women who visit the elderly | in their homes. Eleven of the 18 quar” ee tieres also have a visiting pedicurist, 9 _. person who can be as important as a dcctor, or a bather, to the elderly. Last year Bologna sent 1,250 old ag. pensioners on paid holidays of 15 days to the Adriatic or Ligurian rivieras, 0 to the mountains, putting them up i” out-of-season, resort hotels. The holi- dayers were selected by the quartier® committees “on the basis of theif poverty and solitude,” not, it seems, on their politics. When one is a very old burden, being away from one’s family is itself good therapy. < —— FREE BUS TRANSPORT _ | While Rome and other Italian cities are planning to double their bus fares, t. Bologna continues to be alone in its own vanguard, offering free bus trans port to everyone from five to nine 1 | the mornings and from five to eight m the evening. Students can travel _at : other hours on a monthly pass costing — 35p (75 cents). Pensioners can go for nothing at any hour. Bologna’s main square, piazza Mag- giore, and its adjoining piazza Nettuno, is the only pedestrian mall of that vast- : ness (outside of Venice’s St. Mark's Square) where one can safely walk without fear of being chased by a‘rouge | motorist. ‘CONSERVATION IS “REVOLUTION’ Se - Even if Bologna’s Communists had done nothing more than liberate the main square from motor Cars, ae ; highest praise (and re-election) in aS country where efforts to restore am conserve the human aspects of urba life are unknown or half-baked. : That, in Italy, the Communists should be the conservationists and the Catho- lics the demolitionists seems to me quite natural. The official slogan in Bologna is “Conservation means the social reappropriation of the city — conservation is revolution.”