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Tools and indicators to
improve urban life and to promote sustainable consumption in the city of
Padova*
Dario
Padovan**
1. Introduction
The
continuous social, economic and environmental transformations that are a
feature of European cities force us to reflect upon the meaning of the
Quality of Life and on the challenges that will be faced in the future. The
aim of this paper is to analyse the strategies that could be adopted to
improve the quality of life of city and town dwellers in terms of ecological
sustainability and, at the same time, could improve the physical and natural
environment. This report illustrates a study carried out, in the city of
Padova, in which the existing relationships between the quality of the urban
environment, the nature of relations and the consumption patterns in two
different areas of the city where there are public housing estates have been
analysed. The data gathered by means of focus groups that were set up in the
two areas could help in developing a model of sustainable urban living that
is aware of the natural capital inherent in energy resources. This study has
highlighted citizens’ widespread knowledge, on the basis of which the
quality of the natural capital present in the urban environment deeply
influences their own quality of life. Furthermore, the study has been able
to identify the nature of social relations which are a crucial element not
only in ‘living better’ but also in putting strategies that seek to deal
with environmental risks into practise. The concept of social capital, which
has become increasingly important in sociology, becomes a means of
explaining a considerable part of the social actions and transactions of
individuals’ daily lives, which are to a grater or lesser degree oriented
towards ecologically sustainable lifestyles. This study seeks to evaluate
the potential of the social factor, as vector of short term change, in the
behaviour and attitudes of householders seeking a better quality of life and
to do this the study first sought to understand the role of existing
relationships between local residents.
Our research was developed in five stages:
Ø
The first stage checked the social
conditions and the quality of life of residents and their own definitions
and perceptions.
Ø
The second stage analysed and
reconstructed the networks working inside the neighbourhood, identifying
the nature of bonds, the nature of the social capital there and the level
of trust in the neighbourhood.
Ø
The third stage analysed the
environmental risks that people deal with them.
Ø
The fourth stage checked the consumption
patterns they have in common related to
- Energy saving
-
Means
of transport in relation to purchasing activities
- Organic products
- Rubbish recycling
Ø
The fifth stage tried to find some
strategies of improving the quality of consumption, orienting these actors
towards sustainable consumption and transforming them into a means of
diffusing the new consumption patterns.
The
results offered important food for thought and, in particular, made it
possible to define some key indicators such that in tomorrow’s city the idea
of sustainability will no longer be an ideological question but rather will
become the criterion and the method used to develop it. Lastly, a film was
made during this research, a sort of list of grievances, which will be
presented to the press and to local institutions in order to highlight the
needs and desires of the residents of the areas analysed in this study.
Methodology
The research used the “focus
group” methodology. In both of the areas studied, the people who were
invited to become part of the focus group were those who had previously been
identified as “nodes” in the local relationship network. In Via Maroncelli
we identified the subjects who played the role of nodes in the network of
local relationships, simply by asking people who we should speak to in order
to talk about problems in the neighbourhood and turning up at the customary
meeting point for people in the public housing complex. The people who make
these communal spaces work are those who are most active in local social
life, in whom others have trust and who actively seek solutions for others’
problems. In Via Pinelli we met “key” figures by going to a group of
householders/occupiers who habitually play cards in the lobby of one of the
public housing blocks. It is they who play cards, for pleasure and not for
money, who reflect at least in part the sociality of the area. Thanks to
these people who helped to organize the first meeting in which we presented
this research project, we got to know the representatives for each stairway.
Later on we got in touch with another group of householders, who live in two
of the other blocks and who, as we shall see, organise the life of their
blocks in a very intelligent manner.
It was not difficult, in both areas, to identify the
people who played the role of nodes, of hubs, within the network of
resident’s relationships. However, although it was relatively simple to
identify the “key” figures it was much harder to discern and decipher the
relationships between these figures, the “configurations” they were a part
of. (Elias N. and Scotson J.L., 1965, pp. 167-171). Indeed, during the
course of the meetings held in the two areas, the network of relationships
that emerged was far more complex and conflictual than it had seemed at the
outset. This question will be taken up below, in the section dealing with
social relationships in these neighbourhoods.
As regards the method used for
the focus group, we tried to use the backcasting approach as described by
Karl Dreborg (1996). However, we have, to some extent, simplified the
approach. Firstly, participants described their situation by focusing on the
most unpleasant aspects of their neighbourhood. This constituted the largest
part of the focus group work. Subsequently, we developed scenarios which
were suggested by the participants. Often these were not very probable
scenarios but they did show how important social problems could be copied
with and solved. Starting with desirable futures, which in our case did not
often reach a very high level of imagination or complexity, we tried to
outline ways of achieving these goals, usually through political and
institutional measures, but also by means of a shift, a change, in the
quality of social networks and connections.
The Features of the Neighbourhoods
The
urban areas where we set up the focus group are very different one from
another. The urban area, which includes the housing complex in Via
Maroncelli and its neighbourhood called Pio X, also contains a large
settlement, mainly occupied by foreign immigrants, that is usually referred
to as “the ghetto of Padova”. Urban planning models for Italian cities have
always tried to avoid creating “urban ghettos” in order to stop social
groups concentrating in specific areas and to reduce stereotyping and
stigmatisation. Only quite recently, with the growing influx of migrants has
there been a sort of “Americanisation” of urban spaces, with specific areas
being ‘taken over’ by diverse ethnic groups. But to return to the
description of the area around Via Maroncelli, it is a semi-suburban area,
near an area of large commercial structures, shopping centres and offices,
which have little to do with the everyday life of the zone, it is daily
subjected to heavy traffic, many different social classes mingle and there
are few essential services.
The
urban area around Via Pinelli is very different. This is on the southern
outskirts of the city but it is a long way both from major roads and from
shopping centres and other facilities. About 250 families live in the area
distributed among a group of buildings constructed in diverse periods. The
oldest buildings date from the 1970s, the others were built in the early
nineties, while the most recent were put up a few years ago and were
designed and built to meet environment friendly criteria. The zone is
largely cut off from the city itself, and from other urban settlements,
thus, until about one year ago there was neither much pollution not noise.
However, such isolation also means that there will be a lack of accessible
urban services near at hand. Indeed, there are no shops, nor are there
services such as a Post Office, a Chemist’s or efficient Public Transport in
the neighbourhood. But, as we shall see, people prefer to breathe better
quality air than to have shops. However, today, the most pressing problem
for the area is that this relatively privileged environmental well-being is
rapidly changing, and changing for the worse.
2. Sustainable urban life and social capital
What is Social Capital?
In recent years, increasing interest has been shown in
the concept of “social capital”. The term captures the idea that social
bonds and social norms play an important part in sustainable livelihoods.
The value of this concept was identified by Jane Jacobs (1961) when
examining social life in urban neighbourhoods; by Glen Loury (1987) when
studying the labour market; by Pierre Bourdieu (1979) and later given a
clear theoretical framework by James Coleman. As Pierre Bourdieu suggests,
social capital is a network of relationships, which is the product,
intentional or unintentional, of social investment strategies aimed at the
building and reproduction of durable and useful social relationships able to
offer material and symbolic benefits. These relationships enlarge the
individual or collective actors’ action capabilities and, if extended
enough, the social system’s action capabilities too. Because of this, social
capital is a public good. Persons who actively support and strengthen the
structures of reciprocity produce benefits not only for themselves but also
for all individuals who are bound to these structures. From the point of
view of Coleman, “social capital inheres in the structure of relations
between actors and among actors. It is not lodged either in the actors
themselves or in physical implements of production” (Coleman J, 1988). In
short, social capital is different from physical capital and human capital,
it is a public good shared by a number of individuals. Robert Putnam (1993)
and Francis Fukuyama (1995) have also stressed the role of civic
participation in implementing democracy and social cohesion, and applied the
concept at both the national and the regional level.
Social capital is characterised
by a plurality of forms, because it can emerge both at the individual and
the collective levels. It is a contingent result of interactions among
actors with different aims, which are shaped by the institutional context in
terms of opportunities and constraints. Social capital is featured by those
social relationships which persist for a certain long term period, which
individuals have, partly an ascribed way (kinship and cetual relationships),
and partly actively built during their lifespan (friend or professional
relationships). However, social capital is not the amount of properties a
certain individual possesses, neither is it found in tools or other goods
nor in individuals themselves. Rather it is inherent to structural
relationships between people. These relationships are a form of capital
because they produce material and symbolic values. For the social actor they
are both resources and strengths. Trusting relationships (strong or weak,
variably extended and interlocked), which act to improve the social
understanding, information exchanging, reciprocity and co-operation for
common goals, that characterize social capital. In short, social capital is
formed by informal or formal reciprocal relationships, ruled by norms and
which define the forms, contents and boundaries of social exchanges in a
flexible manner.
Social capital is formed by a
special category of social relations, in which durable mutual identification
of participants, reiteration, and some form of reciprocity and trust is
possible. Exchange relationships do not generate social capital except when
the quality of commodities is not immediately ascertainable, when, for
instance there is hostility, conflict, exploitation or a simple meeting.
Many people benefit from the contribution made, by an individual or by a
group, to the social capital. Nevertheless, it runs the risk of being
exploited by those that do not gain adequate benefits from it (Coleman,
1990).
Social
capital is the raw material of civil society. It is created from the myriad
of everyday interactions between people. It is not located within the
individual person or within the social structure, but in the spaces between
people. It is not the property of the organization, the market or the state,
though everyone can work to produce it. Social capital is a “bottom-up”
phenomenon. It originates with people forming social connections and
networks based on principle of trust, mutual reciprocity and norms of
action. Social capital refers to the processes between people, which
establish networks, norms, and social trust and facilitate co-ordination and
co-operation for mutual benefit. We increase social capital by working
voluntarily in egalitarian organizations. Learning some of the rough and
tumble of group processes also has the advantage of connecting us with
others. We gossip and relate and, in so doing, create the closeness that
comes from trusting. Accumulated social trust allows groups and
organizations, and even nations, to develop that tolerance that is sometime
needed to cope with conflicts and differing interests.
Forms of Social Capital and Networks
The idea of social capital is
associated with that of “network of relations”. Each of us holds social
capital because each of us is embedded in networks. In all this activity we
make choices, every day we decide whether to see people or to avoid them, to
help or not, to ask or not. But these are hardly free choices; rather, we
are forced to make them. Living inside networks, we are constrained by the
pool of people available to us. We are also constrained by the available
information, by our own personalities, by society’s rules and by social
pressure (Fischer, 1982). Once we have initiated a relationship in a social
context, we face the task of maintaining it. People feel that bonds require
time, expense and attention, as well as being required by social capital.
There may be high social
capital within a group (“bonding” social capital) which helps members, but
they may be excluded from other groups because they lack “bridging” social
capital. Cross-cutting ties between groups open up different opportunities
to all members. They also build social cohesion, which requires not only
high social capital within groups but abundant “weak” cross-cutting ties
among groups. Several writes have pointed out the importance of ties outside
the primary network as a means of getting access to resources and power
outside the group. Mark Granovetter (1973) emphasised the “strength of weak
ties”, highlighting the importance of those ties which run beyond the
immediate circle of small family or neighbourhood dwellers, giving actors
richer resources to achieve a better quality of life. For certain
individuals or groups, these kinds of networks can create a competitive
advantage in pursuing their ends. Ronald Burt has drawn attention to the
fact that actors who bridge between subgroups have access to unique
resources and information that makes them powerful brokers in a system
(Burt, 1992).
Three basic forms of social
capital have been identified: social bonds, bridges and linkages (Woolcock,
1999).
Ø
Bonding social capital refers to the
relations between family members and members of ethnic groups.
Ø
Bridging social capital refers to relations
with distant friends, associates and colleagues.
Ø
Linking social capital refers to relations
between different social strata in a hierarchy where power, social status
and wealth, are accessed by different groups. Woolcock relates linking
social capital to the capacity of individuals and communities to control
resources, ideas and information from formal institutions beyond the
immediate community radius (Woolcock, 2001).
Although
strong bonding ties give particular communities or groups a sense of
identity and common purpose, without “bridging” ties that transcend various
social divides (i.e. religion, socio-economic status…), bonding ties can
became a basis for the pursuit of narrow interests and can actively exclude
outsiders. Relatively homogeneous groups may be characterised by strong
trust and co-operative norms within the group and by low trust and
co-operation with the rest of society. Thus some forms of exclusive bonding
can constitute a barrier to social cohesion and personal development. These
are examples of weak bridging but strong bonding. A restricted radius of
trust within a tightly knit group, such as family members or closed circles
of friends, can promote forms of social interaction that are inward-seeking
and less orientated to trust and co-operation at the wider community level (Portes
and Landolt, 1996). An exclusive focus on group interests, to the neglect of
wider public interests, can promote socially destructive “rent-seeking”
activities. Thus, particular forms of social capital have the potential to
impede social cohesion in certain circumstances. In this respect, social
capital is no different from other forms of capital: it may be used to serve
different ends, not all necessarily desirable for the community at large.
Sources of social capital
The social capital
is characterised by different kinds of social conditions. We have identified
the following:
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Participation in networks and groups
Key to all uses of the concept
of “social capital” is the notion of more or less interlocking networks of
relationships between individuals and groups. People engage with others
through a variety of lateral associations. These associations must be both
voluntary and equal. Individuals acting on their own cannot generate social
capital. It depends on a propensity for sociability, a capacity to form new
associations and networks. Connectedness, networks, and groups and the
nature of relationships are a vital aspect of social capital. There may be
many different types of connection between groups (trading goods, exchange
of information, mutual help, provision of loans, common celebrations).
Connectedness manifests itself in different types of groups at the local
level – from guilds and mutual aid societies, to sports clubs and credit
groups, to foster, fishery or pest management groups, and to literary
societies and mother and toddler groups. It also implies connections to
other groups in society, at both micro and macro levels.
b.
Reciprocity and exchanges
Social capital does not imply
the immediate and formally accounted exchange of the legal or business
contract, but a combination of short-term altruism and long-term
self-interest. The individual provides a service to others, or acts for the
benefit of others at a personal cost, but in the general expectation that
this kindness will be returned at some undefined time in the future when
he/she a service. In a community where reciprocity is strong, people look
after each other’s interests. Reciprocity and exchanges increase trust.
Usually, there are two types of reciprocity. “Specific reciprocity” refers
to simultaneous exchanges of items of roughly equal value; and “diffuse
reciprocity” refers to a continuing relationship of exchange that at any
given time may be unrequited, but over time is repaid and balanced.
Reciprocity contributes to the development of long-term obligations between
people, which can be an important aspect of achieving positive environmental
outcomes.
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Relations of trust and safety
Trust entails a willingness to take risks in a social
context based on a sense of confidence that others will respond as expected
and will act in mutually supportive ways, or at least that others do not
intend harm. Trust lubricates co-operation. It reduces the transaction costs
between people, and so liberates resources. Instead of having to invest in
monitoring others, individuals are able to trust them to act as expected. It
can also create a social obligation – trusting someone engenders reciprocal
trust. Three different dimensions form the concept of trust: the trust we
have in individuals whom we know very well (parents/family, colleagues,
neighbours); the trust we have in others (strangers and unknown) we do not
know or inter-subjective trust; the trust we have in the institutions or
systemic trust. The combination of these three elements provides a concept
of trust, which fits into social capital. Trust means that in a condition of
uncertainty an actor will expect to have positive experiences, with a
cognitive sense by means of which he/she can go beyond the threshold of mere
hope. Trust is, at the same time, both the source and the outcome of social
capital. Trust take times to build up, and it is easily broken. When a
society is pervaded by distrust, cooperative arrangements and agreements are
unlikely to emerge. The presence of the norm of trusting reduces the
uncertainties present in social life. In this way, safety becomes an
indicator of sustainability, because it ensures the maintenance of a given
social order, and provides changes that can improve the situation. Safety is
not in this perspective only the absence of crime, but it rather is a
condition that makes sure the individual and social equilibrium when we are
facing the everyday risks.
d. Social Norms
Common rules and social norms are the mutually agreed
norms of behaviour that place group interests above those of individuals.
They give individuals the confidence to invest in collective or group
activities, knowing that others will do so too. Individuals can take
responsibility and can ensure their rights are not infringed. Social norms
are sometimes called the rules of the game, or the internal morality of a
social system, the cement of society. They reflect the degree to which
individuals agree to mediate or to control their own behaviour. Formal rules
are those set out by authorities, such as laws and regulations, while
informal ones are those individuals use to shape their own everyday
behaviour. Social norms usually provide a form of informal social control
that obviates the necessity for more formal, institutionalized legal
sanctions. Social norms are usually unwritten but commonly understood
formulae for both determining what patterns of behaviour are expected in a
given social context, and for defining what forms of behaviour are valued or
socially approved. Some argue that where social capital is high there is
little crime, and little need for formal policing. A high social capital
implies high “internal morality”, with individuals balancing individual
rights with collective responsibilities. Where there is a low level of trust
and few social norms, people will cooperate in joint action only under a
system of formal rules.
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The Commons and Pro-activity
The combined effect of trust, networks, norms and
reciprocity creates a good community, with shared ownership over resource
known as the “commons”. The commons refers to the creation of a pooled
community resource, owned by no-one, but used by all (Hardin, 1968; Ostrom,
1990; Goldman, 1998). The short-term self-interest of each, if unchecked,
would render the common resource overused, and in the long term it would be
destroyed. Only where there is a strong ethos of trust, mutuality and
effective informal sanctions against “free-riders” can the commons be
maintained indefinitely and to the mutual advantage of all. To maintain the
commons the presence of a sense of personal and collective efficacy is
needed. The development of social capital requires the active and willing
engagement of citizens within a participative community action. This is
quite different from the receipt of services, though these are
unquestionably important. Social capital refers to people as creators, not
as victims.
|
Conditions for increasing
social capital |
|
·
Participation
in networks and groups |
·
Reciprocity and exchanges |
·
Relations of
trust and safety |
·
Social Norms
|
·
The commons
and pro-activity |
|
Social
capital indicators |
|
1.
Participation in local society |
2.
Pro-activity in a social context |
3.
Feelings of trust and safety |
4.
Reciprocity and obligations |
5.
Neighbourhood connections |
|
6.
Family and friends connections |
7.
Tolerance of diversity |
8.
Environmental values |
9.
Common goods
|
10.
Personal empowerment |
3. Outcomes of the focus groups: social services, social networks and the
Quality of Life
Social
services, housing and the Quality of Life in the area of Via Maroncelli
The
discussion started with an examination of the quality of life in the area in
relation to the existence, or absence, of urban social services. Most of the
participants focussed on the absence of such services or, more specifically,
on the lack of five types of services:
Ø
Structural social services, such as a
Chemist’s, a Post Office, more efficient public transport.
Ø
Services concerned with looking after
people, caring, again elderly people are often alone, looking after
themselves or dependent on care from outside or within their family, or
services for youth, as groups of young people are often seem wandering
around the area with nothing to do. Social mediation was requested in order
to resolve some local conflicts.
Ø
Services designed to improve the quality of
urban life, such as green areas, parks, traffic reduction, street cleaning
and general maintenance of public places and areas.
Ø
Services concerned with law and order, city
police, who are not able to control anti-social behaviour in the area.
Participants complained about the lack of any consistent police presence in
the area and also criticised the use of the so-called “vigile di
quartiere” (neighbourhood policeman), who were considered to be useless
and inefficient.
Ø
Spaces for local residents to socialise in.
Whether there are or are not meeting points available in a neighbourhood is
really important for the quality of life of the people living there. Most
housing projects were designed in order to minimize, or even prevent, any
chance of communication between residents, to stop informal, unsanctioned
meetings and to provide minimum facilities for formal gatherings of people.
The way these complexes are designed also limits the type of activities that
can be carried on outside or around the housing blocks. People begin their
life in a housing project as an aggregation of strangers with diverse
habits, cultures, and backgrounds. Ideally housing complex design should
help this group of strangers to become less ‘strange’, more familiar, help
them to get to know each other and trust each other. Luckily, in this public
housing complex there is a meeting point which has and is working, over
time, to bring residents together, but outside the settlement there is
nothing like it.
Social services, housing and Quality of Life in the area of Via Pinelli
Unlike the former, residents in Via Pinelli felt that the overall quality of
life in their neighbourhood was relatively good, mainly thanks to the low
density of housing in the area, to the fact that there are green spaces and
very little traffic pollution. Unlike the residents of Via Maroncelli (who
were on average older), people in Via Pinelli are willing to go without the
convenience of having certain services and facilities “close by” (shops,
schools, offices, means of transport) in order to benefit from “silence”,
“clean air” and a traffic free life. The main problem that residents in Via
Pinelli are becoming more and more concerned about is the increasingly fast
and unregulated process of urbanisation they see around them. Many
buildings, including a huge shopping centre are currently being built very
near to their neighbourhood, thousands of cubic metres of concrete which do
more to satisfy speculators than to meet real social needs.
Via Pinelli residents talked a lot about the quality of their housing,
perhaps because the buildings they live in are all fairly new and were built
according to the norms of bio-architecture where housing needs are met in an
environmentally sustainable, eco-friendly manner. These houses, built by
Edilizia Residenziale, are considered to be aesthetically pleasing and
even the way in which the individual buildings are laid out is appreciated.
However, even though they recognise the aesthetic qualities of the Via
Pinelli housing development, residents still list a series of problems that
the houses have, four years after they were built. The most consistent
problems cited are: damp inside the houses, the poor quality, hence
degradation, of the materials used, the fact that some of the houses get too
much sun and rooms are badly insulated, the fact that there are no balconies
and there are architectural barriers that affect elderly and disabled
people. Indeed, when it comes to the crunch, people would choose functional
buildings rather than aesthetically pleasing ones. As well as the structural
problems, there are also problems of organising both Municipal services
(grass cutting, rubbish collection, etc.) and of managing public spaces and
areas, for example, the tale of the public meeting areas on the ground
floor, which is told below.
Unsafety and insecurity
In both the neighbourhoods some of the participants claimed the lack of
personal safety in the area due to the fact that there is a low level of
social control exercised by the police there. But there were considerable
differences between the two groups of people.
Our witnesses from Via Maroncelli complained of the fact that bands of drug
dealers (usually foreigners) operated in the area; that there are
prostitutes on the streets, groups of youths who behave in an anti-social
manner and show little respect for other people, and bands of petty
criminals who commit various kinds of crimes. They also complained about the
lack of any official agencies, methods or concrete action taken to control
these situations, particularly as they were increasingly aware of the
powerlessness of any private attempts to enforce some sort of social
control. There was a general feeling of being abandoned by the institutions.
The problem of security and of personal safety seems to have become one of
the main themes in the context of the quality of life in the city in
general, and this was confirmed by people’s reactions here too. We have
already examined this problem in an earlier piece of research which showed
that concern about personal and social safety is relatively high. The
problem is, however, how that feeling of not being safe should be
interpreted. Often it is neither related to any specific crime that may have
taken place within the area, nor to any episodes of victimisation or attacks
undergone by the residents. Rather, as we shall see when analysing other
opinions, the roots of this feeling of non-safety can be found in the types
of relationships in the area and in the poor quality of the environment.
Basically the theme of security/non-security lies at the heart of the worry
and concern expressed during the discussion, fears which, as can be seen
from the video enclosed with this paper, can only partly be connected to the
fact that a large group of immigrants lives nearby. Even though images
referring to “conquering the area”, to “invasion” by groups of foreigners
did emerge from the focus group, such fears are only partly attributable to
the problem of the “other”. Here is what one group member said:
·
“If I don’t think, I could say that I live well here, but in reality there
is always the problem of security: I can meet either foreign
immigrants or Italians round here and I am equally afraid of both. If I
think about Via Anelli, where they (immigrants) are concentrated I am
afraid too because I think that if they have taken over there, then they
could, little by little, take over here in this area also. And nobody
checks on these things. I don’t entirely trust even the people I do know,
there’s an underlying distance. Because of this we tend not to support each
other. Security isn’t only being protected against threats but also feeling
secure with others”.
These fears show, on the one hand, that a sense of belonging may develop as
a reaction to the arrival of outsiders and, on the other, that this identity
tends to blame the “other” for all the social frustrations of the absence of
institutions and unsatisfactory, or non-existent, social relationships.
People feel that they have been left to fend for themselves and this is the
main cause of existential uncertainty and personal insecurity. As a witness
said:
·
“If the institutions don’t look after us then we begin to feel abandoned,
frustrated and insecure. Fear doesn’t arise out of nothing, but it develops
in this type of situation”.
·
“…fear is a problem of solitude…… because here the other is the other!”
The people who live in Via
Pinelli are less concerned about insecurity and unsafety. This is probably
due to the fact that the neighbourhood is fairly isolated, cut off, from
other areas, that people do know each other and that the terraced houses,
built according to bio-architecture standards, are mainly occupied by
professional security workers (policemen and policewomen, prison warders,
tax police). Only a couple of focus group members expressed some doubts
about security:
·
People come from
outside and cause problems; they even stole a park bench!
·
All that is needed is for a Police patrol car to pass by regularly.
However, apart from these generic complaints, criminal activity is
considered to be a minor problem by residents in the area, certainly not one
of their main worries. There was some concern expressed about crime but this
seemed to depend more on the fears stirred up by the alarmism of the mass
media than on perceived criminal activity in the neighbourhood.
Neighbourhood social networks
What is
interesting in the outcomes from the focus group of Via Maroncelli is that
there are no prevalent social networks in the neighbourhood. Both weak and
strong connections are at work there. Using the former classification we can
identify both “bonding” relations among members of local groups or between
residents in the housing complex and “bridging” relations among neighbours
and distant friends, associates and colleagues. What is weak is the “linking
social capital” or, in other words, the capacity of both
individuals and the community to control resources, ideas and information
from formal institutions beyond the immediate area of the community. This
weakness is the result of a low level of participation in common local
issues. What could be very useful for the people living within a public
housing complex, and in places nearby, are networks with weak connections.
These ties cut across the boundaries of the public housing complex, reaching
people who live in other social and urban spaces or, simply, outside the
public housing area. These weak ties serve to connect different groups,
allowing these latter to pursue professional, economic, political and
cultural goals. They also increase the social cohesion within the
neighbourhood, reinforcing collective action and opening up new horizons for
public housing tenants (Granovetter, 1973). When discussing the quality of
the social relationships in the area, participants showed three distinct
types of attitudes.
Firstly they complained about the limited nature of their social bonds,
revealing a sense of spatial isolation which may well be partly due to the
way the area was initially laid out: it is bounded, cut off, on at least
three sides by busy roads and by big commercial and industrial buildings. As
one of the focus group said:
·
“As regards the feeling of identity in the area in relation to its
boundaries, here we sometimes feel like prisoners”.
·
“In my opinion it is not the case of someone from the outside who wants to
break us up or damage things, rather it’s something that happens within,
something that comes loose, disconnects, inside, because it has been forced
on us. In a small area if someone wants to cut loose then they tend to be
put on one side; here you can’t do that because that person is inside.
However, I can’t say that my life here is all that bad”.
Thus it would seem that there is the desire to set up a large network of
people who would be able to develop joint, communal actions for the good of
the local inhabitants and, furthermore, that the links formed could then be
loosened or broken so as to exclude those who neither fit in nor inspire
trust.
Secondly, the group members had noted how weak links, for instance those
marked by indifference, sometimes create awkward situations and social
distance for some categories of people, especially the elderly and children.
As one participant said:
·
“The ease with which one can live is very important because we are on the
outskirts of a city: you don’t know everyone and it is easy to lose contact
with those who move away. Even young people today don’t spend their lives in
the area, but go to other areas to meet up. Thus it becomes very difficult
to get together. And elderly people, if they are lucky enough to live to a
good age, shut themselves up in their homes. And some of the young people do
meet in the Church Hall, but why should everyone have to go and meet on
Church premises?”
·
“…you can live quite contentedly here but you never really get to know your
neighbours, if you are prepared to ignore things then you can indeed be
quite happy here …”.
Usually, distance in relationships does not produce interpersonal trust, it
does not involve actors in common activities, rather it allows for a limited
degree of reciprocity, an accumulation of “chits” which the actors hope will
permit such reciprocity. The possibility that actions might be repaid in
some way is encouraged both by the norm of reciprocity which is part of
moderately dense social bonds, and by the actors’ hopes that they will
create a feeling of being indebted in the person who has been helped. But
this type of relation based on a “utilitarian” exchange was not enough for
our witnesses who wanted bonds based on deeper shared meanings and values.
·
“If you give something you don’t necessarily have to have something back in
exchange, if you give something you give it freely. To expect
reciprocity is dangerous: the spaces are narrowed because
for anything you give there must needs be a personal repayment or
compensation.”.
It is easy to identify the desire to exchange freely without forming
“debts”, something, which is always associated with commerce and trading,
and to limit the “utilitarianism” and the opportunism that social exchanges
may entail. Rather, witnesses would like to see a more widespread, general
reciprocity, one which allows for a continuous series of exchanges. In this
latter case, the favour does not have to be repaid immediately or the debt
instantly paid off. We could call this behaviour as “something for nothing”
(Gouldner, 1975). Friendship, kindness and tact are aspects of relations
that imply long term, widespread reciprocity, they do not have to be
immediately repaid but work, over time, to create a situation which will
benefit all the actors involved. This type of reciprocity serves to
reconcile the two opposites of individualism and solidarity and makes it
possible to control any opportunistic behaviour that may develop within
collective action.
The third, and perhaps most commonly held attitude that emerged during the
focus group meeting, concerns participants’ overall satisfaction with their
existing social relations. This satisfaction would suggest that the general,
widespread, reciprocity described above does, to some extent, already exist:
·
“For example, I always leave the keys with a neighbour when I go away”.
·
“Relations between us are excellent, so long as someone behaves then there
is nothing to say. I have a lot of friends both here in the area and
outside. Sometimes we invite each other to dinner”.
·
“I could say that we are a happy enclave. I live in a block with six other
families, we get on well together and I certainly cannot complain about a
lack of socialisation.”
·
“It is difficult to cultivate social relations when you work. Thus I have
few, but important, relationships”.
What is clear from the above is that most people think that they do have
good social relations. To a certain extent they do trust their neighbours
and acquaintances, they do help each other, leave keys with each other, and
meet up, but these interpersonal links do not necessarily develop into
social activities which require a certain degree of willingness to take part
in actions for the public good: But we will return to this later.
Basically, people’s experiences of relationships in the area show that there
are both close and distant relations, both familiarity and non-relations and
that these experiences simultaneously feed the desire for closeness and for
distance. On the other hand, the existence of, or the desire to develop, a
plurality of relations can create the conditions for strategic action which
would be able to modify the negative aspects of local society. We can add
other pairs of dichotomies to these, for example, “individualism/sociality”,
“trust/diffidence”, “isolation/participation”, opposites which highlight and
describe very clearly, the reality of the existential and relationship
tensions that the actors experience every day.
In Via Pinelli the relationship model at work is different from that of Via
Maroncelli. In Via Pinelli there are two groups of tenants each of which are
based on rather different relations, bonds of friendship and collaboration.
The two groups have formed around the key persons on the estate who we
identified and then invited to the focus groups. The two groups are also
physically separated in two different sets of buildings. If one were to
describe the style adopted by the two groups one could say that one group is
characterised by the spontaneity of its relations, Rabelaisian type
friendships, while the other is marked by a far more rational, or better
“reasonable” conception of rights and duties, as in the reciprocity found in
common action. In Weberian terms one could say that the first group
privileges values of friendship and solidarity, reinforced by specific and
declared class membership (the members of this group declare themselves to
be left wing and workers), while the second group is closer to the
rationality of the aims where the aims and the results are more important
and not shared values. The members of the group
are held together by a minimal and negotiated link. Bonds based on such
negotiation mean that living in the community does not require the
individual to belong or to make any emotional investment in relations;
rather the community is merely a space for supporting social interactions
and resolving common problems.
The “rationalist” group is made up of 19 family nuclei all of whom live in
the same block and who are united by their common efforts to manage and run
the block. Because there is no formally appointed administration for the
block the tenants have organised themselves by allocating agreed, set roles
to each person. This means not only that they have organised the maintenance
of common areas (cleaning stairs and corridors, seeing to lighting on the
stairs, landings and in the entrance hall, garden maintenance) but also that
they have agreed upon common rules regarding how common spaces should be
used (times when noise is permitted and when it is not, time and place for
other work and managing the heating system). This system of rules covers
almost everything and offers the basis for mediating the conflicts that used
to arise before the code of behaviour was agreed on. The system also means
that maintenance costs less in the long run and certain forms of energy are
being used more rationally. As some of this group said:
·
We set up a kitty to pay for maintenance which otherwise would be far more
expensive if we did it individually, things like changing light bulbs or
cleaning the stairs.
·
We agreed that 40W bulbs were adequate on the stairs and there was no need
to use 60W bulbs.
·
We worked out when people were at home and set the timer programme for
heating accordingly.
Even though it may seem
somewhat exaggerated at times, this detailed, precise and responsible
co-operative approach to block management has meant that the diverse needs
of the families living there have largely been met. The absence of the
institutions both triggered this self-management approach which has created
a model of participation that is seeking a non-conflict way of managing
problems linked to living alongside others:
·
The most important thing is that from the outset we all had a common aim: to
be well.
·
We began to take decisions together and to look for the best way to organise
ourselves: there were some disagreements but in the end our efforts to
mediate were successful.
·
Those who hadn’t wanted to join in at the start soon did, once they realised
the advantages of managing things together.
This relationship model which seeks to ensure functionality for each
individual is built up by a series of monads that interact with each other
in order to achieve a specific objective: that of ensuring the good
functioning of the system. There are not emotional or ideological elements,
no inter-personal likes and dislikes between the members of this group.
Participation is based on exchange relations and on rationally evaluated and
weighted pooling of personal time, very ascetic relations that seek to
guarantee the well being of everyone, individually. In other words, don’t
cause problems for your neighbours.
On the other hand, as we have said, the relationship model developed within
the other group aims to create the situation where people live well
together, that is, it is based on sharing and on the consolidation of
inter-personal relationships. In this latter case there is no specific
allocation of tasks and duties, nor are there explicit rules. One of the
most usual ways of meeting is over a hand of cards, which is, however, only
an excuse for meeting:
·
It is true that some people don’t even play cards, but they still come and
meet others, it’s a way of having a chat.
The differences in these two models of sociality reflect the social origins
and position of the members of the two groups. In the first case, the group
is made up of employed people who spend much of their day at work, outside
the neighbourhood, and only return home in the evening, after work. As
explained above, their social references and relations are mainly outside
the housing development. They are office or white collar workers who find it
hard to come to terms with the idea of living in council housing. Sometimes
they implicitly let it be known that they are better educated or have higher
social standing, something that emerges from their attitudes and from their
life-style (they do not use dialect, they emphasise the fact that they are
white-collar workers or are busy studying or involved in cultural activities
and they have both a healthier personal lifestyle and respect the
environment to a greater extent). They do not wish to be assimilated into,
or be identified with, the other group of residents.
The second group is largely made up of pensioners, blue-collar workers and
people, often disabled, who receive assistance from Social Services. Their
day revolves around life within the confines of the neighbourhood, as many
of them are unable to move around unaided (either because they have no means
of doing so, no driving license, or for reasons of age or invalidity).
Contacts within this group are based on interpersonal relationships and
people find many reasons for meeting: whether it be for a game of cards, for
dinner, just to chat, or to help those who need moral of personal support
for some reason, they’ll find a reason to meet:
·
We often invite our neighbours to eat with us; sometimes we have even spent
Christmas day or Easter together, just like relatives do.
To use the Rabelaisian metaphor again, if one were to ask these people what
sort of life they long for they might well wish to live in the Abbey of
Théleme: “Their lives [that of the members of the Abbey] were not dictated
by laws, statutes or rules but unfolded according to each one’s desires and
free choices. They would get up when they decided to or felt like it; they
eat, drink, work or sleep whenever they want: no one wakes them; no one
forces them to eat or drink or to do even the slightest thing. Gargantua had
established this”.
But leaving aside 16th century burlesque literature, we could say that the
two lifestyles expressed in the two groups do produce different habitus,
that is, different “systems of generating models that are likely to be
applied, by simple transference, to very different practical situations”. As
Pierre Bourdieu argued, life-styles are the systematic products of diverse
habitus that, perceived through their reciprocal relationships, on
the basis of habitus models, become the system of signals based on
social position. The dialectic between conditions and habitus is the
catalyst for the alchemy that transforms the distribution of capital, the
result of a power relation, into a system of perceived differences, with
discrete features, that is, into the distribution of symbolic capital (Bourdieu
P., 1983, pp. 118-139).
Indeed,
disparity of lifestyles is not simply a given fact, but often expresses more
as it establishes both the identity of the person and their social and
individual representation. The fact of belonging to one group and not to
another is not an accident and it becomes especially clear in this case
where a lot of energy is put into highlighting the “differential distances”.
As when making any choice, the object chosen is always the product of an
identification operation. Goods (including forms of sociality) should be
seen as “distinguishing marks”, as the visible parts of the iceberg
of global social processes. Goods are used to identify others by, that is,
they serve to classify into categories: marking is the right word in
this case. Identification can be done privately, but here we are concerned
with public identification. Goods are evaluated on the basis of an agreement
between consumers” (Douglas M., Isherwood B., 1984, pp.79-89). This clearly
reveals the social nature of consumers’ actions; indeed consumer choices
acquire a meaning and a social function that, contemporaneously, both
defines differences within the social hierarchy and confirms that the
subject belongs within a wider context and is integrated within the dominant
values.
Given the differences we found,
it is not hard to see why, in Via Pinelli, there is no Residents committee
like that in Via Maroncelli: setting up a committee means electing
representatives who are able to mediate and find ways of getting residents
to agree. The fact that in Via Pinelli there a variety of different points
of view, which we have simplified into two main models, makes such unity
impossible, or rather, it is not seen a priority by the residents concerned.
Lastly, it should be remembered that the Public Authorities do not encourage
Residents to set up committees. Institutional inefficiency and the fear that
people will set up groups that are really strong enough to demand their
rights, only exacerbate this situation of division and ongoing conflict
between the groups of tenants, quite apart from the diverse lifestyles and
priorities they have.
Systemic and interpersonal trust
Another
aspect which emerged from the discussion in both of the neighbourhoods is
that of trust and diffidence. There are two types of trust: “institutional
or systemic trust” and “interpersonal trust” (A. Mutti, 1998, p. 38). By
“institutional trust” we mean the trust that citizens have in social
institutions for as long as these institutions continue to offer concrete
responses to their demands, to take decisions and, to put such decisions
into practise so as to guarantee a certain degree of existential stability,
A lack of institutional or systemic trust reveals the instability of the
natural or social order subjects are involved in and, obviously, implies
that there is a certain degree of uncertainty about the routine events of
daily life. Interpersonal trust corresponds to the expectation that Alter
(the other) will not manipulate communication, will give a real, and not
biased, representation of their own role and behaviour and of their real
identity. Basically, the expectations of Ego
concern the sincerity and credibility of Alter, that is, expectations
of transparency and abstention from lying, fraud and trickery (Goffman,
1971).
Trust, as Harold Garfinkel
suggests, is “a person’s compliance with the expectancies of attitude of
daily life as a morality”. Acting in accordance with a rule of doubt
directed to the correspondence between appearances and the objects that
appearances are appearances of, is only one way of specifying “distrust”.”
Doubts about the identity offered by either an institution or a person means
losing trust in that institution or person and, consequently, feeling
irritated, angry, frustrated and, even, hatred. Trust ensures that the
routine elements of a situation are confirmed, which permits the “rational
action” of the actor. If there is no trust then this social resource breaks
down, revealing the uncertainties of the rules of the social game and
putting the regularity and the stability of the world with which the actor
daily interacts in crisis. Thus the lack of systemic trust weakens the
elements of our daily life that we “take for granted”, creating confusion,
anomie and neurotic aggressive and discriminatory attitudes (Garfinkel,
1967, pp. 50-51 and p. 173; Garfinkel, 1963, p. 219).
The existence of systemic and
interpersonal trust in an area is a basic requirement for a better quality
of life, but it is relatively rare in the neighbourhood. As some of our
witnesses said:
·
“Apart from a few
exceptions there is a certain harmony within our neighbourhood. But
there are people who come in from outside. When they began to bring
“bad apples” in, the atmosphere that had been created was destroyed. Because
building the houses doesn’t mean that they construct the tenants too. And
the people who arrived created a bad atmosphere, they began to throw
their weight about and people began to be afraid. And this doesn’t help
relations between residents”.
·
“If there is only
one “negative person”, they can be isolated and he/she will either
conform (to the norms of the group) or cut themselves off; but when
there are two they support and help each other and they don’t fit in
with the other people. Indeed they think that the others should conform to
their needs”.
The type of situation described
by the focus group is not unusual in public housing complexes because there
is always the possibility that a new occupant will arrive who will upset the
existing social balance in the neighbourhood. Distrust and diffidence
develop when people begin to fear others, who try to dominate or are
violent. Such fear develops when the “others” come to live in, or visit, the
neighbourhood. Such people, who do not fit in, indeed often do not accept,
indeed even resist, the existing tacitly shared norms of the previous
residents. Distrust also develops between people; they begin to fear
strangers, foreigners, or, more generally the “other”, or when communication
breaks down:
·
“There is
communication between people but there is always someone who will try to
break up such unity”.
·
“There are people
who just want to take over places… Even though it is true that here there is
nowhere to meet, except in the Church Hall. Any meetings are between local
yobs”.
From this point of view, one
could say that “all actions as perceived events may have a constitutive
structure, and that perhaps it is the threat to the normative order of
events as such, that is the critical variable in evoking indignation, and
not the breach of the “sacredness” of the rules” [Garfinkel H., 1963, p.
198].
As people begin to feel more
and more abandoned by institutions, so do distrust and diffidence gradually
develop between them. Once it has taken root, it is very difficult to
eradicate distrust because it stops people becoming involved in certain
activities or, worse, it generates behaviour that confirms the advisability
of not trusting. As focus group members said:
·
“And even the
people who should be responsible for the green areas, the roads the local
police, etc. You never see them, they are just not there and at a certain
point you say: “I have been abandoned”.
·
“And then there
is the problem that the political institutions don’t do anything
unless there’s something in it for them. So the politicians must stop doing
things only for themselves and start doing things for the citizens”.
·
“If there is
trust in the institutions then there is trust between the citizens, because
the institutions are made up of citizens”.
Residents from Via Pinelli said much the same about the degree of trust they
felt in institutions. During the focus group a number of strongly held and
felt opinions were expressed about the institutions, statements which bear
witness to the widespread feeling among residents that they have been
abandoned by the authorities and which complained about the inconsistencies
of any action taken by City Officials.
·
When they built these houses they created a jewel, but since then they have
not looked after them.
·
It is easy to see that the Public Authorities just don’t really care: it
took them four years before they finally got around to doing some necessary
work on the houses requested by the residents, and people were already
living there.
·
The institutions spent a lot of money building here but, after three years,
they still haven’t done any maintenance work. What private company could or
would behave like this? This means that there are no checks and controls, no
assumption of responsibility when contracts and sub-contracts are handed out
for building work on housing.
The lack of trust in institutions, as expressed by Via Pinelli residents,
could be the result of confusion about whose duty/task it is to act, a
confusion which has arisen between ATER and some sectors of the Commune.
This mess arose after the administrative tasks that should be carried out by
the municipality were redistributed. As a result of this re-organisation,
residents and citizens no longer know who to turn to. This problem, which is
indicative of serious deterioration in the quality of public services,
affects communication between the parties and exacerbates the tensions
between residents and institutions. Hence we are faced with a situation in
which citizens, even though they are willing to do voluntary social work,
something which is encouraged by the institutions themselves, reap no
benefits from their efforts or, worse, meet with indifference and
disinterest on the part of the official organs which should be able to offer
clear answers to legitimate demands. As some members of the Via Pinelli
focus group said:
·
It is not that we don’t care, that we can’t be bothered: we notify the
Public Administration about any problems, but it is really hard to set up
any sort of relationship with them, even on the telephone. They always try
to pass the buck and won’t take responsibility.
·
Only because we put pressure on them through the newspapers, did the Commune
finally come and cut the grass, we had been forgotten.
Thus the situation that emerged was somewhat worrying. In order to finally
get the grass cut and publicise the shortcomings of the City administration,
residents in Via Pinelli had to enlist the help of the local newspaper and
of local politicians from the opposition. The fact that they turned to the
mass media for help serves to highlight, once again, the lack of trust
citizens have in public institutions. And in many areas such protest,
voice as Hirschmann would say, is becoming the only way citizens can ask
for public interventions that will improve the quality of urban life, as
happened in Via Maroncelli. This lack of systemic trust creates a sense of
frustration in those actors who would otherwise be willing to cooperate with
the Public Administration in order to guarantee rational management of
“common” spaces for public use. Thus self- organisation is necessary, not so
that social subjects can cooperate better with the institutions, but rather
it becomes the only way in which these same actors can find meaning in some
segments of collective, everyday life. On the other hand, the poor
performance of institutions does not help to reduce local and neighbourhood
conflicts. Local institutions often seem to act ambiguously, concentrating
on first one then another group of local residents. Sometimes the local
institutions represent one interest group, sometimes they listen to
another’s protests, but they never manage to set up a strategy aimed at
negotiating about the needs and aims of the parties involved.
The subject of trust in
institutions has been examined in depth in both sociological and political
literature, and all agree that such trust is fundamental for the success of
both local and national society. The part played by social capital is
crucial for the effective functioning of institutions. Social organisation
is more efficient when there is trust, norms that regulate communal living,
networks of associations, that is when there is a positive stock of social
capital. These sources of social capital are “moral resources” which cut
down on the betrayals and behaviours of “free riders”, behaviour
which according to game theory are not uncommon between individuals.
Consequently, trust in the institutions of social life, such as, unions,
political parties, local and state administration, the public companies that
manage the many urban and social services and in the elites that control
them is essential. This is because these institutions not only forge the
politics but also the identity of citizens, their public and private
behaviour and the norms of communal living. Furthermore, the institutions
are directly responsible for many aspects of social and public life.
Institutions regulate and control economic life, the environment (e.g.
traffic) technological innovation, the general culture and education or
training. These institutions are perhaps the main public good on which
actors depend in order to delineate their life plans (Donolo, 1997). If they
are, or appear to be, structurally unsound and the actors involved do not
trust them then both economic and social life will be inefficient, the
quality of life will decline and uncertainties about the future will
increase.
Another problem, which should
be studied in depth, is the development of a new type of asymmetry of power
relations in society. The perception of environmental risk is a social
construction that influences the way in which responsibility and blame for
the increase in pollution are attributed: an increase that threatens the
well-being of the collectivity, which latter must react and organise in
order to protect itself. The concept of environmental risk encourages a
critical approach to assessing the way in which society functions
highlighting the fact that corporate actors (firms, Nation States,
industrial groups, local institutions) are largely responsible for the
ecological problems that threaten the planet and the daily life of its
inhabitants. To be conscious of ecological risks means underlining the role,
the responsibility, of the big corporate actors in creating many of the
dangers faced by natural persons, by single individuals. The increase in
social awareness of environmental risks depends on the asymmetry of the
power relations between corporate actors and natural persons within society
[Coleman, 1982, 88 pp.].
The attitudes and opinions
expressed during the course of the focus group made us reflect on the impact
such ideas will have on the way in which public goods are consumed - here
public goods includes spaces for “common” use and the management of
collective resources. The sense of responsibility shown spontaneously,
autonomously, by tenants is neither recognised nor appreciated by the public
institutions involved. However, the degree of attention and responsibility
residents show as regards public goods is, interestingly, reflected in the
level of responsibility, of awareness, they show in relation to the
consumption of energy resources. The same care and attention they pay to
cultural resources, to public spaces and to their sociality is reflected in
their responsible management of energy resources used heating, of water
consumption, of rubbish recycling and of electricity in stairwells and
entrances. We looked further into this question during the second focus
group held in Via Pinelli.
4. Environmental risks and
strategies for facing them
During the first part of the
focus groups more social questions, such as trust, the quality of
relationships, political participation, satisfaction with the services
provided were taken up. In the second part the aspects were related to
environmental risks and the discussion centred on the individual and
collective strategies that could be adopted to face such environmental
questions.
The
concept of environmental risk is used to refer to risks to human health and
ecosystems posed by the use of certain technologies which lead, more or less
directly, to deterioration of the environment and an increase in natural
disasters (Beck, 2000; Schwarz and Thompson, 1993; Lupton, 1999; De Marchi,
Pellizzoni, Ungaro, 2001). From the greenhouse effect to the loss of
biodiversity, from desertification to floods, the list of the phenomena that
threaten our lives is getting longer and longer all the time. In this
research we have looked in particular at the way in which people and local
society deal with environmental risks. The way in which they take up the
problem depends, obviously, on a complex set of inextricably linked factors,
but what is certain is that the quality of social relationships, cultural
awareness, the ability to mobilise and put political pressure on policy
makers, radically affect behaviour in the face of any risks. A
sociological approach to the question of environmental risk and the actions
taken to reduce such risks, suggests that it is both the overall social
system and, above all, the local social systems that mediate “physical” and
“natural” events both amplifying them and containing the consequences.
The
theme of global environmental risks such as air and water pollution is
usually accessed through consumption. Maintaining the prevalent lifestyle in
today’s industrialised world requires a massive use of technology and,
consequently massive use of energy resources. When we eat, travel, work or
heat our buildings we use products and thus are part of “energy laden”
processes that generate garbage, waste, toxic substances, polluting gases
and continuous waste of energy. As consumers we are part of these polluting
activities and as actors we are also part of the social system. Strategies
to limit the impact of our consumption activities on the environment could
be, indeed are, dependent on our actions as consumers.
Eivind Stø, Harald Throne-Holst and Gunnar Vittersø Eivind have suggested
that, in this post-modern period, individuals play an important part in the
measures and goals of environmental policy, whether it be in their role as
citizens, employees or consumers. This is not unlike the situation as
regards policies on health, nutrition and alcohol. Here too, Governments can
make laws and emit directives, they can tax production and consumption of
some products and subsidise others. But it is the individuals themselves who
have the last word. It is an individual, personal matter whether to start or
stop jogging, drinking alcohol or make a consumer choice in the food market
e.g. in order to reduce individual consumption of fat. In short, consumers
can choose between individual and collective strategies, and individuals can
act strictly as a consumer in the market or also tackle the questions that
go beyond markets: into politics (Stø, Throne-Holst and Vittersø, 2001).
We do broadly agree with this argument even though the
problem of institutions is, in part, ignored. On the basis of the data
gathered through the focus groups, it would seem that if individuals are to
modify their attitudes in such a way as to promote environmental
sustainability then they must be put into a position whereby they will be
able to act in a suitable manner. As we have seen, individual actions depend
on the one hand, on the quality of the inter-subject relations in which
people are embedded and, on the other, on the degree of trust they have in
institutional actions. Basically, there must be certain types of social
capital available in order to predict and direct sustainable behaviour. One
could say that different types of sustainable behaviour are guided by
different actors. In some cases, certain attitudes depend, to a large
extent, on institutional actions, in other cases they depend on the quality
of relationships and on social position, in yet others, they are the result
of more personal, individual choices. When trust in institutions, or in
others, is limited, or when people are too closed and cut off, then
decisions about what to consume and how to consume it are often seen as
unimportant and thus neglected. When, however, individual action is
perceived as part of a broader collective action which decides about the
quality and the way in which “commons” will be used, in this case any
decision taken will have a moral force which makes it efficacious and a
source of inspiration to others. We will return to this problem when we deal
with individual environmental risks and the strategies actors adopt in order
to face them.
Residents in Via Maroncelli felt that reducing environmental risks should
largely be the task of, and indeed depend on the actions of the
institutions. However, people from Via Pinelli argued that successful action
on environmental risks depends on the culture, attitudes and beliefs held by
individuals themselves, on their willingness to do something to improve the
situation and to contribute to caring for the environment, thus they do not
put responsibility onto others. When discussing factors and actions that are
seen as environmental risks, our focus groups’ participants concentrated on
the following problems:
Water pollution
Most people of Via Maroncelli
are aware of the problem of water pollution even though some think that this
type of problem is rather unlikely and impossible to control. However, one
thing is clear, none of our focus group members think of water as being a
resource that is, planet-wide, becoming more and more scarce, especially in
complex urban environments such as cities. During the discussion, focus
group members did seem to be becoming more aware of the fact that not
wasting water is important both for the environment and for people, because
it is a precious and increasingly scarce good, as the current drought that
is now affecting North Italy is showing in a remarkable way.
In Via Pinelli the problem of
water is mostly perceived in terms of the amount of Chlorine in it which
makes it taste unpleasant. People did not complain about the risk of
polluted water, rather of its unpleasantness, the taste of chlorine and the
high calcium content.
Traffic pollution
The
question of air pollution is one of the most pressing and most widely
perceived environmental risks. It is usually associated with traffic.
According to Via Maroncelli witnesses, air pollution is largely an urban
problem and is seen as a threat to health.
Traffic is probably the biggest
problem in Padova from the point of view of environmental sustainability. In
the decade 1981-1991 overall mobility in Padova rose. However, while the use
of private means of transport increased dramatically, public transport
provision decreased to a large extent. In recent years it would seem that
people’s attitudes have begun to change as they are becoming more aware of
the hazards traffic poses for the environment. Indeed, people seem to blame
traffic above all else for air pollution and this is now one of the hottest
ongoing debates between environmental associations and the City Council
administration.
In Via Pinelli the problem of
traffic and pollution hardly exists because, as has been said, the area is
fairly isolated and a long way from main roads.
The spread of buildings and uncontrolled urbanisation
The question of uncontrolled
building and urbanisation is, in the eyes of the focus group members of both
the neighbourhoods, another important risk factor for the environment. In
Padova, there are already very few green areas, such as public gardens,
rivers areas and green play/sports areas and even these constantly under
threat. Only 2% of the entire urban territory is destined for green areas,
this effectively means that Padovans have only 9.5 square metres per capita
of green space. Focus group members of Via Maroncelli think that
uncontrolled urbanization is one of the most serious threats to
environmental sustainability. They are also conscious of it because the City
Council is planning to increase the overall level of urbanization (the
so-called Peep blueprint) in many neighbourhoods. This means that the few
green areas still in existence will soon disappear under new buildings,
houses and apartments, which are to be provided for thousands of potential
occupiers.
The idea of creating green areas brings with it problems of a social nature.
Creating a park in this neighbourhood, and it has already been planned for
in the urban master plan, does not only mean that considerable preparatory
work has to be carried out on the land itself, as the area designated was
formerly used by an industry which has left behind it a high level of
pollution in the soil, but also requires some form of collective management
should be developed for the new public space. The members of the focus group
expressed the fear that the park would soon be neglected, abandoned, or
little used, and could become a refuge for undesirable social elements. Here
once again the dilemma of collective action/responsibility raises its head:
when there is public space this must be managed and maintained through the
collective efforts of the citizens, of local associations and public bodies.
If these three “parties” do not work together, if their actions are not
integrated, then the only result will be to create further scepticism and
fears among the people who live in the neighbourhood where the public space
is. The question of good public park/space management is thus directly
linked to the fact that there is social capital available in the area
itself, the sort of social capital that is both able and willing to manage
the resources provided by the City administration efficiently and able,
also, to ensure that this type of public resource will be used by the
collectivity.
In Via Pinelli the problem of urbanisation, and of uncontro |
