CIVILTA' DELL'URBE

CIVILTA' DELL'URBE

"Ho evitato deliberatamente di stabilirmi in piccoli villaggi perché erano pieni di persone molto aggressive e spiacevoli da frequentare. Era il loro modo per compensare la debolezza militare".

YIMBY... TUTTI BUONI A CRITICARE

YIMBY... TUTTI BUONI A CRITICARE

Tutti a criticare i tassisti perché non consentono ad UBER di entrare sul mercato e abbassare le tariffe.

Ma voi acconsentireste a che nel vostro quartiere costruissero una serie di grattacieli in modo da abbassare il costo delle case?

In altre parole, siete pronti ad entrare nel club YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard)?

LA TASSA CHE PIACE AI LIBERTARI

Riccardo Mariani

Adesso · 

LA TASSA CHE PIACE AI LIBERTARI

I libertari odiano le tasse redistributive… ma odiano anche le regole. Per questo motivo le uniche tasse redistributive che tollerano sono quelle realizzate mediante l’abolizione di una regola.

La loro tassa preferita è quella che emerge dall’abolizione dei permessi a costruire.

Vivere con tanta gente accanto è una forma di tassazione, di conseguenza abolire i limiti all’edificabilità fa emergere una tassa vera e propria.

Si tratta, inoltre, di una tassa fortemente redistributiva poiché le zone oggi più spaziose e più ambite sono quelle più prestigiose. Pensate solo al trasferimento di ricchezza dai ricchi verso i poveri che realizzerebbe un “grattacielo popolare” ai Parioli?

BROOKINGS.EDU

Reforming land use regulations

Edward Glaeser looks at how local land use regulation has impacted Americans' decisions across state lines and suggests ways to reform this system.

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Suburbia

What’s Good About Slums? - Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human by Edward Glaeser

***

There are few pleasures simpler or purer than drinking a plastic cup of cool, cheap beer on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro at sunset. Rio’s beaches are among the most hedonistic of urban spaces. The weather is generally sublime. The beach is usually adorned with beautiful people.

Note:ODE A RIO

That space is a mecca for tourists, but the Cariocas usually seem to be having even more fun than the foreigners.

Note:I BRASILIANI SE LA GODONO

If you look from Ipanema Beach into the hills, your eye will be drawn by the vast statue of Christ the Redeemer, the Corcovado. But look carefully, and you’ll spy a blot upon this urban arcadia. The hills surrounding Rio are filled with shantytowns, favelas, that often lack electricity or sewers. Their presence in those hills seems puzzling, incongruous. Rio’s hills have some of the best views in the world,

Note:QUANDO ECCO LA BARACCOPOLI

Plato noted that “any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich.”

Note:LE DUE CITTÀ DI PLATONE

Even in the developed world, cities are disproportionately poor. In America, the poverty rate is 17.7 percent within cities and 9.8 percent in suburbs.

Note:I POVERI VANNO IN CITTÀ

Many urban analysts see a great crisis in the problem of the megacity, which usually means the vast numbers of poor people living in Mumbai or Mexico City. It seems wise to many to limit the growth of these megacities, whose crowds and squalor doom millions to harsh, deadend lives.

Note:FALSA RICETTA: LIMITIAMO L’ ESTENSIONE DELLE CITTÀ, LIMITEREMO LA POVERTÀ.

cozy, homogeneous suburbs can appear far more egalitarian than the extraordinary urban gulfs that separate a Fifth Avenue billionaire from a ghetto child.

Note:L' ILLUSIONE DELLE CITTÀ PIÙ RICCHE

The presence of poverty in cities from Rio to Rotterdam reflects urban strength, not weakness.

Note:UN SEGNO DI FORZA

Limiting their growth would cause significantly more hardship than gain, and urban growth is a great way to reduce rural poverty.

Note:GRANDI CITTÀ MENO POVERTÀ

Cities aren’t full of poor people because cities make people poor, but because cities attract poor people with the prospect of improving their lot in life… The poverty rate among recent arrivals to big cities is higher than the poverty rate of long-term residents,

Note:LA CITTÀ ATTRAE I POVERI, NON LI CREA

Rio’s slums are densely packed because life in a favela beats stultifying rural poverty.

Note:LA FAVELA È UN PROGRESSO RISPETTO ALLA CAMPAGNA

America’s ghettos were filled by immigrants fleeing pogroms or poverty and by African Americans fleeing the hardships of agricultural work in the Jim Crow South.

Note:GHETTI AMERICANI, OASI DI SALVEZZA

we should worry more about places with too little poverty. Why do they fail to attract the least fortunate?

Note:LA DISGRAZIA NASCOSTA DEI SENZA POVERI

A city’s population tells you about what the city offers. Salt Lake City is full of Mormons because it’s a good place to be a Mormon. London has many bankers because it’s a good place to manage money. Cities like Rio have plenty of poor people, because they’re relatively good places to be poor. After all, even without any cash, you can still enjoy Ipanema Beach.

Note:LA POPOLAZIONE DELLA CITTÀ TI DICE COSA OFFRE

The free movement of people means that certain types of urban success can make a place poorer.

Note:SOLO LE CITTÀ DI SUCCESSO SI IMPOVERISCONO

The great urban poverty paradox is that if a city improves life for poor people currently living there by improving public schools or mass transit, that city will attract more poor people.

Note:IL PARADOSSO DELLA POVERTÀ URBANA

When American cities have built new rapid-transit stops over the last thirty years, poverty rates have generally increased near those stops. This doesn’t mean that mass transit was making people poor,

Note:POVERI E STAZIONI

What forces draw the poor to urban areas? Above all, they come for jobs. Urban density makes trade possible; it enables markets. The world’s most important market is the labor market, in which one person rents his human capital to people with financial capital.

Note:CITTÀ SIGNIFICA LAVORO

If one employer in a city goes belly-up, there’s another one (or two or ten) to take its place. This mixture of employers may not provide insurance against the global collapse of a great depression, but it sure smooths out the ordinary ups and downs

Note:SOSTITUIBILITÀ

The sheer variety of urban jobs also allows people to figure out what they can and can’t do well.

Note:VARIETÀ

As people job-hop, they learn what they like and can do well. How much would the world have lost if Thomas Edison or Henry Ford had been forced to spend all his days farming?

Note:CITTÀ DIVERSITÀ VOCAZIONE

Rio’s Favelas

Rio’s shantytowns began in the late nineteenth century,when Brazil was lurching out of its quasi-feudal past. In the 1870s and 1880s, when other New World countries, like Argentina and the United States, elected their rulers, Brazil was ruled by an emperor, a scion of Portugal’s ancient house of Braganza, and slavery was still legal. By the middle of the nineteenth century, about 40 percent of Rio’s population—eighty thousand people—were slaves.

Note:STORIA DI RIO E DELLE SUE FAVELAS

Runaway slaves in Rio formed shantytowns called quilombos in the nineteenth century, which were the ancestors of favelas.

Note:GLI SCHIAVI LIBERATI FORMARONO LE FAVELAS

The first true favela had its roots not in urban Rio but in the impoverished countryside of northeastern Brazil, where an itinerant preacher and erstwhile abolitionist, Antonio the Counselor, founded a town called Canudos, populated by former slaves, and started a tax rebellion.

Note:LA PRIMA FAVELAS DI LIBERTI

Over the next seventy years, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants, many of them freed slaves, came to Rio. The dilapidated dwellings may not look like much, but they beat working on a plantation for one’s former master.

Note:MEGLIO LA BARACCA DEI CAMPI E DEL PADRONE

The favela’s residents don’t usually have the option of living in Los Angeles, and they should be compared with the people, largely unseen by foreign eyes, living in the poor rural areas of Brazil. Rio has plenty of poverty, but it’s nothing like Brazil’s rural northeast. One recent study reported that while 90 percent of Rio residents earned more than $85 a month in 1996, only 30 percent of people in the rural northeast were above that poverty line.

Note:CONFRONTI COERENTI

Lagos, Nigeria, is often depicted as a place of profound deprivation, but in fact the extreme-poverty rate in Lagos, when corrected for higher prices in the city, is less than half the extreme-poverty rate in rural Nigeria. About three quarters of Lagos residents have access to safe drinking water, a proportion that is horribly low but that is far higher than anyplace else in Nigeria, where the norm is less than 30 percent.

Note:L'ESEMPIO DI LAGOS

In poorer countries, people in cities also say that they are happier. Throughout a sample of twenty-five poorer countries, where per capita GDP levels are below $10,000, where I had access to self-reported happiness surveys for urban and nonurban populations, I found that the share of urban people saying that they were very happy was higher in eighteen countries and lower in seven.

Note:IN CITTÁ PIÙ FELICI

And unlike the hinterlands, urban slums often serve as springboards to middle-class prosperity. The Lower East Side of Manhattan, for example, despite high levels of poverty, produced a string of dazzling successes.

Note:SLUM COME TRAMPOLINO LANCIO

Leila Velez, a janitor’s daughter who grew up in a Rio favela, was working at a McDonald’s when she was fourteen. She and her sister-in-law, a hairdresser, were determined to find a way to make their hair less frizzy. They understood the size of the market for such a product; they were surrounded by people who wanted frizzless hair. The two budding entrepreneurs lacked any scientific background, but Leila’s husband let his hair be used to test many strange concoctions cooked up by his sister and wife. .. Velez patented the concoction and sold her Volkswagen Beetle for $3,000 to get the capital to open a salon. They knew their customers, and the product sold well. From there, she expanded the number of salons, generally hiring former customers as employees. Her firm currently sells $30 million a year of beauty products. …

Note:UN ESEMPIO DI SUCCESSO

Improvements in agricultural productivity typically involve new technology that reduces the number of people working on farms. That fact alone makes it unlikely that better farming will deliver widespread prosperity. …

Note:PERCHÈ NON TORNARE IN CAMPAGNA?

The vast flow of migrants to cities certainly stresses urban infrastructure; that’s one of the familiar arguments against allowing the growth of megacities. But while an influx of new migrants worsens the quality of roads and water for a city’s longtime residents, the new arrivals go from having virtually no infrastructure to enjoying all the advantages that come from access to decent transport and utilities.

Note:INFRASTRUTTURE SOTTO PRESSIONE. STOPPARE  L' AFFLUSSO?

Traditionally, governments have done more—if not always enough—to address urban poverty than rural poverty. This pattern has held true in Brazil for more than a century…. The government began with a vaccination campaign and eventually brought schools and some health care to the favelas. The “City of God” that inspired a movie about Rio’s poverty was a governmental attempt to improve housing quality for favela dwellers. …

Note:INTERVENTI GOVERNATIVI FACILITATI CON LA POVERTÁ URBANA

The ironic result of attempts to improve life for Rio’s poor is that still more poor people come to the favelas, which is the urban poverty paradox in action.

Note:IL PARADOSSO DELLA POVERTÁ URBANA

Moving On Up

Americans who are shocked by the favelas’ squalor have forgotten their own urban past. Such extremes of wealth and poverty were standard in nineteenth-century American cities.

Note:LO SQUALLORE DI RIO È IL NOSTRO DI IERI

The Upper East Side of Manhattan, stretching from Fifty-ninth Street to Ninety-sixth Street between Fifth Avenue and the East River, now includes some pricey real estate, but was also full of Irish shanties in the nineteenth century. The Upper East Side Armory occupies its incongruous location, surrounded by tony apartment buildings on Park Avenue, because its bourgeois soldiers were originally meant to protect urban elites from unruly immigrants.

Note:ESEMPIO NY

Boston’s fame as an Irish-American city is particularly associated with a single family, the Kennedys, whose story shows how urban poverty can beget opportunity. Patrick Kennedy was born in 1823 in Ireland’s County Wexford. He got little schooling. Poor rural areas have generally offered little education, and when he was born, rules preventing Catholic education in Ireland were still in force. Young Kennedy worked on his older brother’s farm, planting potatoes and harvesting grain. The one nonagricultural skill he acquired came from a more urban friend, Patrick Barron, who worked in a brewery and taught him how to make barrels. The potato famine hit the Kennedys’meager farm hard. Facing the prospect of starvation, Patrick Kennedy followed Barron to Boston, where Barron got him a job as a cooper in East Boston. Boston offered economic opportunity, because it had a market where Kennedy could sell his labor to an employer who had capital. Boston provided a ready market for barrels because of its role as a center for transportation, and of course brewing. Just as in Rio’s favelas, in East Boston the density that enabled poor people to sell their labor enabled bacteria to flow, and Patrick Kennedy died of cholera. Kennedy’s son, however, also named Patrick, thrived. He started off working on the docks and saved enough to buy a saloon. He soon owned a second and then a third drinking establishment, catering increasingly to wealthier Bostonians.

Note:I KENNEDY

Just as cities are good for immigrants, immigrants are good for cities. Boston owes much to the Kennedys, as New York does to immigrants ranging from Andrew Carnegie to Al Jolson to Zubin Mehta. Indeed, for all but 12 of the 118 years between 1891 and 2009, the New York Philharmonic has depended on foreign-born music directors. Needless to say, more populist elements of New York culture, like bagels and pizza and Kung Pao chicken, are also the gifts of immigrants.

Note:GLI IMMGRATI FANNO BENE ALLA CITTÀ

Capitalists and workers are often seen as enemies, as they are, for example, during a strike. But more generally, capital increases the returns to labor, and it is urban capital that made cities such magnets for the poor. Cities don’t just connect capital-less workers with capital-rich employers; they offer a huge variety of job opportunities that allow poor people (indeed, everybody) to find talents they might otherwise never know they had. The great University of Chicago economist George Stigler once wrote that “in a regime of ignorance, Enrico Fermi would have been a gardener, von Neumann a checkout clerk in a drugstore.” Stigler’s vision of two of the finest minds of the twentieth century working dead-end jobs is frightening. Luckily, both men grew up in large cities and came from relatively privileged backgrounds, and their mathematical and scientific talents were spotted at a young age. Similarly, Boston brought forth Patrick Kennedy’s talents in a way that rural Ireland could not.

Note:L' INCONTRO DI CAPITALISTI E LAVORATORI

Richard Wright’s Urban Exodus

The great swaths of America’s cities that are almost entirely African American and almost entirely poor illustrate what can go wrong when neighborhoods get cut off from the economic heart of their cities. But even those neighborhoods should be viewed in light of the even worse conditions endured in the rural South.

Note:IL GHETTO NERO. MEGLIO DEL SUD

The great African-American writer Richard Wright was born in Natchez, Mississippi. He and his mother moved north, first to Memphis and then to Chicago, seeking to escape Jim Crow laws as much as to find economic opportunity… “I headed north full of a hazy notion that life could be lived with dignity, … In Chicago, he started off working as a porter, then an errand boy and a dishwasher. … malnutrition had left him 15 pounds below the government’s 125-pound minimum. Finally, in the spring of 1929, he made weight and got a full-time job working the night shift at Chicago’s central post office, then the world’s largest. The job was a good one that allowed him to do some writing. Even more important, it connected him with a left-wing literary salon. … His first book, a collection of stories called Uncle Tom’s Children, was published by Harper and Company. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship to write Native Son, and with that, he became a literary lion. …

Note:IL CASO DI RICHARD WRIGHT

The economic advantages that came from moving north were immense. A Southern sharecropper in the 1920s would be lucky to earn $445 a year. A black worker in one of Henry Ford’s plants would earn $5 a day, more than three times that income. Yet like Richard Wright, the African Americans who came north found more than just higher incomes. They found freedom.

Note:CFR MEZZADRO E OPERAIO.

Rise and Fall of the American Ghetto

In the early twentieth century, African Americans were rare in Northern cities. Only 2 percent of New York’s population and 1.8 percent of Chicago’s population were African American in 1900. Decade after decade, these percentages grew as blacks chose urban opportunity.

Note:LA GRANDE MIGRAZIONE

George W. F. McMechen would seem to be the ultimate upwardly mobile African American at the start of the last century. He graduated from Morgan College and Yale Law School and came to Baltimore, where he formed a successful legal practice with another African American, W. Ashbie Hawkins. McMechen wanted to live in one of Baltimore’s more affluent neighborhoods, which were in those days overwhelmingly white… This formerly all-white neighborhood rose up in arms. Local kids threw bricks through McMechen’s windows. … McMechen’s neighbors was an attorney—“eminent” according to the New York Times, “briefless” according to Hawkins—who dug up a copy of Baltimore’s city charter and decided that it was well within the city’s rights to pass a race-based zoning ordinance. He drafted such a law and had no problem getting it passed … Similar measures were soon passed in Richmond, Atlanta, Louisville, and other Southern cities. … in 1917, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) achieved its first great triumph when the Supreme Court made zoning by race illegal, …

Note:LA STORIA DI MCMECHEN. DISCRIMINAZIONE LEGALIZZATA

a study by economists John Kain and John Quigley found that blacks paid more than whites for comparable housing in St. Louis.

Note:I NERI PAGANO DI PIÙ LA LORO CASA

But cities also produced the legal champions who slowly brought down the ghetto walls. Two Baltimore attorneys, Thurgood Marshall and Philip Perl-man, one black and one white, one representing the NAACP and the other representing the U.S. government, came together to fight restrictive covenants.

Note:LOTTA AI PATTI PER NON VENDERE AI NERI

Between 1970 and 2000, segregation declined almost everywhere in America, primarily because formerly lily-white areas acquired a few mostly well-off African Americans. Between 1970 and 1990, the segregation level of African-American college graduates declined by about 25 percent, while the segregation level of high school dropouts declined by less than 10 percent.

Note:SEGREGAZIONE 1970-2000

Studies in the 1960s and 1970s found little difference in outcomes between African Americans who grew up in more segregated cities and those who lived in less segregated areas. That changed as more prosperous African Americans left the ghetto. By 1990, blacks between the ages of twenty and twenty-four who grew up in more segregated cities were 5.5 percent less likely than similarly aged African Americans in less segregated areas to have a high school degree and 6.2 percent more likely to be out of school and out of work.

Note:OGGI MENO SEGREGAZIONE MA PIÙ PERICOLOSA

The Inner City

There is a hidden logic behind the concentrated poverty that results from the tendency of the poor to live at the physical center of American cities. That tendency reflects, in part, the power of transportation to shape cities. All forms of travel involve two types of cost: money and time. The cash cost of commuting is the same for rich and poor, but rich people with higher wages give up more income when they spend more time commuting and less time working. As a result the rich are generally willing to pay more for faster trips to work.

Note:LA LOGICA DEI TRASPORTI E IL COSTO DEL TEMPO

When a single transportation mode, like driving or taking the subway, dominates, then the rich live closer to the city center and the poor live farther away. But when there are multiple modes of transit, then the poor often live closer in order to gain access to public transit. The U.S. poverty line for a four-person household in 2009 is $22,050. In 2008, a typical nonurban household spent $9,000 on car-related transportation. How in the world could a two-adult family with $22,000 of income afford two cars?

Note:PERCHÈ I POVERI VIVONO IN CENTRO?

Paris likewise has excellent public transportation and consequently has an inner zone where the rich use the Métro or walk. The next zone has the poor living in more distant areas that are still connected to the city by train.

Note:PARIGI

Central areas are often historic, and as a result they usually have older homes that have depreciated in quality and in price. Just as richer people buy new cars and then sell them to less wealthy people, typically new housing is built for more prosperous people and then as the housing depreciates, it comes to house the less fortunate.

Note:LE VECCHIE CASE DEL CENTRO

How Policy Magnifies Poverty

One line of attack offers businesses tax breaks for locating in disadvantaged areas, called Empowerment Zones

Note:EMPOWERMENT ZONE

An alternative view argues that such approaches are just “gilding the ghetto,” as my former colleague John Kain once wrote. In this view, only greater mobility, such as that created by housing vouchers, can relieve the suffering of segregation.

Note:HOUSING VOUCHER

sometimes social entrepreneurs can do great good by focusing on just one place. For almost forty years, the Harlem Children’s Zone has fought for the children of Manhattan’s best-known African-American community. They’ve created a dense web of social activities, such as the Baby College, which teaches parenting skills, aimed at improving academic outcomes and reducing crime. In one sense, they may be “gilding the ghetto,” but in another sense, they are giving Harlem’s children the skills they need to thrive and even leave Harlem if they want to.

Note:GLI ASILI DI HARLEM: MIGLIORARE SENZA SPOSTARE

The Harlem Children’s Zone proves that investing in segregated areas can work, as long as that investment targets children, not stadiums or monorails.

Note:INVESTIRE SUI BIMBI

Can other cities attract the same remarkable pool of leaders, teachers, and benefactors that came to the zone in New York, especially if they have to play by rules laid down in Washington? I hope so, but I fear that the success of the zone and the relative failure of most nationwide interventions suggest that the solution to urban problems is more likely to come from local initiative than from federal policy.

Note:INIZIATIVE NON STANDARDIZZABILI

The case for federal action is strongest when that action is reducing the artificial separation of rich and poor created by the government itself. Whenever public services are radically different in two adjacent areas, those differences will influence where people choose to live. .. differences in school quality lead to the isolation of the poor. …

Note:SERVIZI DIFFERENTI SEGREGAZIONE NATURALE 

East St. Louis provides an extreme example of the urban poverty paradox, whereby public policy that helps the poor in one area can lead to a massive concentration of poverty. East St. Louis lies across the Mississippi River, in Illinois, from St. Louis, Missouri. In 1989, the annual Aid to Families with Dependent Children payment was 20 percent higher in Illinois than in Missouri. If you were out of work, it made sense to move to Illinois, and so in 1990 the poverty rate in East St. Louis was 43 percent—higher than in St. Louis or Buffalo or Detroit or any other declining Rust Belt city.

Note:ST. LOUIS: AIUTI CHE CONCENTRANO I POVERI

Welfare disparities have diminished, but differences in school quality remain, and they help explain why some central cities, like Detroit, are poor while others, like Paris, are not. Paris has some of the best public high schools in the world, and prosperous Parisian parents dream of getting their children into lycées like Henri-IV and Louis le Grand. But in the United States, public school monopolies have ensured that central cities often have poorly functioning school districts. Suburbs are smaller and more competitive, attracting more prosperous parents.

Note:DISPARITÀ TRA SCUOLE

state authorities started requiring busing among districts to achieve a constant proportion of blacks and whites within each school district. Proponents of busing saw it as a means of breaking down the intellectual isolation of the ghetto and improving opportunity for African Americans. Enemies of busing, and that included more than 90 percent of America, saw it as an intrusion that destroyed neighborhood schools and forced kids to travel long distances. .. White neighborhoods abandoned cities like Boston en masse for suburbs like Scituate outside the boundaries of the school district. They didn’t want their children to be bused, and the Supreme Court had set things up so that they could avoid the whole thing just by leaving the city. The result isolated the urban poor even more. …

Note:BUSING 

The odd fact is that America’s school system could decrease segregation if it moved either to the socialist left or to the free-market right. If America imitated the best aspect of European socialism and invested enough in public schools so that they were all good, then there would be little reason for the rich to leave cities to get better schooling. If America allowed vouchers or charter schools that would foster more competition in urban school districts, then their quality would rise and might even become a draw for prosperous parents.

Note:VIA SOCIALISTA E VIA DI MERCATO

there is a reason why people promote the myth that cities are bad for the poor. The flow of millions of poor people into cities may be a hopeful sign for those migrants, but it won’t necessarily improve the quality of life for the middle-income people who are already living in those areas.

PERCHÈ ESISTE IL MITO CHE LA CITTÀ FA MALE AI POVERI?

Com'è bella la città

Siamo in troppi a questo mondo?

No, in fondo ci stiamo tutti in Texas.

Ma staremmo un po’ strettini?

L’uomo più sta stretto più prospera: ha inventato una roba che si chiama città per ottenere questo straordinario risultato.

Le aeree più produttive del pianeta sono quelle in cui l’uomo è più ammassato. La più produttiva, per esempio, è Tokyo che con i suoi dintorni arriva a 36M di persone. Non male.

Più facile è viaggiare, più ci si stipa vicini. Curioso enigma. Come risolverlo?

Ecco una risposta: laddove l’innovazione conta il contagio è essenziale, e la città lo favoriscono. Da sempre, da Atene che ci ha regalato la filosofia più raffinata a Firenze che ci ha regalato il rinascimento delle arti.

I grandi innovatori non si formano a scuola ma nella prossimità fisica con chi agisce concretamente. Valeva per le arti rinascimentali come vale per la finanza contemporanea.

La domanda di città nasce dal nostro bisogno di contatto fisico. E’ incredibile come un tale bene resti prezioso anche nell’epoca del virtuale. Ma è così, inutile negarlo.

Nei paesi poveri le città si espandono in modo tentacolare, questo perché la città è la porta della prosperità.

Non si puo’ negare un certo squallore urbano, specie nelle periferie, ma ricordiamoci sempre che le città sono zeppe di poveri non perché creano povertà ma perché l’attraggono, visto che sono il mezzo più pratico per uscirne.

Non c’è posto al mondo in cui ricchi e poveri vivano tanto incollati. La cosa scatena l’indignazione di molti che sono presi da un soprassalto pensando alle favelas che circondano il centro commerciale di Rio. Probabilmente confinerebbero volentieri quei poveri nelle campagne a crepare non visti.

In realtà, c’è una correlazione quasi perfetta tra urbanizzazione e ricchezza, e nei paesi con più città le persone si dicono più felici e realizzati.

Teatri, musei, ristoranti… tutta roba resa possibile dalle economie di scala della città. Cultura e bella vita fioriscono nei centri urbani più che altrove.

Chi lavora in città guadagna mediamente il 30% in più di chi lavora in campagna.

Certo, quando la domanda di case cresce e non crescono le licenze edili i prezzi s’impennano, e questo è un guaio per chi ha meno. Parigi, per esempio, tiene molto alla sua ordinata bellezza, il che fa di lei un resort di lusso che esclude chi ha pochi mezzi.

I veri nemici dei poveri: il sovrintendente alle belle arti e il pasdaran in guerra contro la cementificazione.

 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdjMhkgEePA]

Ci sono anche città fallite come Detroit.

Una città fallisce quando non sa cambiare, quando punta tutto su un business, quando mette tutte le uova in un paniere. Detroit è fallita per “colpa” di Ford, Torino rischia per colpa di “Agnelli”.

Una città fallisce quando non capisce cos’è. Una città non è il suo paesaggio o le sue case. Una città è le sue persone e deve poter cambiare quando cambiano loro, quando hanno un’idea diversa, quando prendono strade differenti.

Una città fallita ha un contrassegno inequivocabile: troppe infrastrutture per fare cose vecchie. Ma anche troppe infrastrutture per fare cose nuove che l’economia reale non è in grado di fare. E’ bello inaugurare l’ autostrada telematica, ma se latitano i pc o la capacità di usarli al sindaco frega qualcosa?

L’infrastruttura segue sempre, non precede mai. E’ diversificata, aperta a soluzioni differenti e a retromarce. A New York la potenza reticolare della borsa e i cavi scoperti del negozietto cinese convivono.

In questo senso il nemico sono i progetti faraonici. Se l’Expo è stato un successo dipenderà da cosa diventerà dopo non da cosa è stato.

I grattacieli sono i nuovi villaggi. Svilupparsi verso l’alto rende possibile la vita senza auto. I negozietti da basso prosperano con il vai e vieni della gente che gira la città a piedi vivendola in prima persona. Il fascino di New York deriva anche da questo.

Il rivale dei grattacieli è l’auto. Le città fondate sull’auto non hanno marciapiedi ma hanno consentito al ceto medio di farsi la villetta (a schiera) e ai comodi centri commerciali di nascere come funghi.

Grattacielo contro auto. E’ questa la cruciale guerra urbanistica.

In molti odiano le città. Non solo Celentano ma anche Gandhi e Thomas Jefferson. Deducibilità degli interessi sul mutuo, agevolazioni prima casa e sussidio delle autostrade sono un invito implicito ad abbandonare le città.

Ma la convivenza fondata sull’auto impone dei costi ambientali notevoli.

I veri alleati dei verdi sono Manhattan, Londra (downtown) e Shangai.

Gli amanti della natura che vivono circondati da alberi e prati consumano il pianeta molto più avidamente dell’inurbato. L’impronta ecologica della casa di campagna sovrasta quella dell’appartamento nel grattacielo.

Costruire in città è una delle politiche ambientali più sagge. Distruggere il “basso” e rimpiazzarlo con l’ “alto”, questo fa l’amico della terra.

Dobbiamo combattere l’idea che vivere rispettando l’ambiente coincida con il vivere in campagna circondati dagli alberi, oppure con il preservare l’esistente. Tutto il contrario!

 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlIjTECarkg]

La collaborazione tra gli uomini è la forza della civiltà e anche la prima ragione per cui esistono le città. Impariamo allora ad amarle e a rispettarle.

Un libro per approfondire: Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human di Edward Glaeser

INTRO -------------- Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human by Edward Glaeser

Triumph of the City: How Urban Spaces Make Us Human by Edward Glaeser

You have 88 highlighted passages

You have 83 notes

Last annotated on June 23, 2016

INTRODUCTION: Our Urban SpeciesRead more at location 116

Note: Siamo in troppi? Domanda assurda dopo l'invenzione della città: tutta l'umanità potrebbe stare comodamente in Texas, ogni famiglia col suo comodo e spazioso appartamento. Il problema nn è dunque il numero delle xsone... L'innovatore impara x contatto e prossimità prima che x istruzione. Il talento è contagioso. Il talento x esprimersi deve verificare che può farlo, nemmeno lui crede alle sue potenzialità pratiche, da qui l'importanza di vivere dove il ghiaccio è già stato rotto... Paradosso: quanto + si è connessi, tanto più conta la prossimità fisica. Perchè? E si torna alla centralità delle idee... In città c'è poco spazio x cui si producono quei beni che occupano poco spazio: le idee nn ne occupano nessuno. Le idee fanno incontrare sviluppo e cultura in un mix stimolante... O-ring production: la concentrazione dei talenti consente ai migliori di lavorare insieme e quindi di nn sprecare i prodotti del genio con la rottura di anelli deboli... Quanto più un paese è "urbanizzato" tanto + è ricco e felice... L'arte rinsscimentale sarebbe stata concepibile senza una città come Firenze dove i geni erano a stretto contatto e si insegnavano a vicenda?... Torino, Detroit e il declino delle città. Una città rischia se si affida ad un unico progetto e declina con esso. Allo stesso modo nn può essere resuscitata con le grandi opere. È il pluralismo che vivifica una città xchè solo le diversità esaltano le interconnessioni... Qual è il marchio della città fallita? avere troppe infrastrutture (rispetto alla domanda) nn troppo poche. I grandi progetti sono rischiosi. Dopo una castrofe meglio dare aiuti alle persone che progettare a tavolino la ricostruzione (vedi Katrina)... Una città nn è fatta da case o infrastrutture ma da xsone: nn doniamo case o infrastrutture ma soldi ed education alle xsone più bisognose affinchè spendano indirizzando gli investimenti... E la povertà delle xiferie? La City attrae i poveri, nn li crea. Il povero di città è un ricco rispetto al povero di campagna. Contro i crimini e le malattie contagios il ruolo dello stato è decisivo, nn illudiamoci col libero mercato... Le ec. di scala della città favoriscono la cultura: musei, teatri... Limitare le costruzioni è una politica anti poveri che alza solo i prezzi, altro che "consumo del territorio". Le mille restrizioni sono anche fonte di corruzione. Ieri parigi ospitava la bohem, che ha dato lustro alla città, oggi è talmente "preservata" che un fenomeno del genere nn potrà più darsi... Un duello inatteso: grattacielo vs auto. Nel primo caso si va a piedi e la città è densa, popolata, viva - vedi Manhattan. Noi abbiamo scelto l'auto e le case basse. Forse era meglio limitare la circolazione piuttosto che l'edificabilità... Un' altra tendenza da combattere: la proprietà. È una tendenza che favorisve la villetta rispetto all'appartamento... Grattacielo verde. Basta con l'idea che l'ambientalista viva tra gli albrri. Gli abitanti delle grandi città sono i veri ambientalisti: vivere ammasssti fa risparmiare risorse. Vivere nella cintura o in campagna incide molto di + sull' ambiente. Preghiamo che India e Cina optino x grattacieli e città ad alta densità abitativa... Vuok preservare l'ambiente stoppando nuove costruzioni in città. Bene, stai solo inquinando di più il pianeta incentivando costruzioni in periferia Edit

Note: 1@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit

Thirty-six million people live in and around Tokyo, the most productive metropolitan area in the world.Read more at location 118

Note: 36M A TOKYO Edit

On a planet with vast amounts of space (all of humanity could fit in Texas—each of us with a personal townhouse),Read more at location 120

Note: TUTTI IN TEXAS Edit

Although it has become cheaper to travel long distances, or to telecommute from the Ozarks to Azerbaijan, more and more people are clustering closerRead more at location 121

Note: TRASPORTI INUTILI Edit

Cities, the dense agglomerations that dot the globe, have been engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace. The streets of Florence gave us the Renaissance, and the streets of Birmingham gave us the Industrial Revolution.Read more at location 123

Note: INNOVAZIONE Edit

In the world’s poorer places, cities are expanding enormously because urban density provides the clearest path from poverty to prosperity.Read more at location 128

Note: SVILUPPO E URBANIZZAZIONE Edit

For every Fifth Avenue, there’s a Mumbai slum; for every Sorbonne, there’s a D.C. high school guarded by metal detectors.Read more at location 133

Note: IL BENE E IL MALE Edit

Indeed, for many Americans, the latter half of the twentieth century—the end of the industrial age—was an education not in urban splendor but in urban squalor.Read more at location 134

Note: SQUALLORE Edit

My passion for the urban world began with the New York of Ed Koch, Thurman Munson, and Leonard Bernstein.Read more at location 137

Note: AUTOBIO Edit

Why do the richest and poorest people in the world so often live cheek by jowl?Read more at location 141

Note: RICCHI E POVERI INCOLLATI Edit

Thirty years ago, New York City’s future looked far less bright. Like almost every colder, older city, Gotham seemed to be a dinosaur.Read more at location 152

Note: NY E GOTHAM Edit

It was a trading village where a hodgepodge of adventurers came to make fortunes swapping beads for furs. Those mercantile Dutch settlers clustered together because proximity made it easier to exchange goods and ideas and because there was safety behind the town’s protective wall (now Wall Street).Read more at location 157

Note: NY: PROTEZIONE E COMMERCIO Edit

Just as globalization killed off New York’s advantages as a manufacturing hub, it increased the city’s edge in producing ideas.Read more at location 185

Note: DALLE MANIFATTURE ALLE IDEE Edit

While there isn’t much sewing left in New York, there are still plenty of Calvin Kleins and Donna Karans, producing designs that will often be made on the other side of the planet.Read more at location 186

Note: MODA E DESIGN ESTETICA Edit

New York reinvented itself during the bleak years of the 1970s when a cluster of financial innovators learned from each other and produced a chain of interconnected ideas. Academic knowledge about trading off risk and return made it easier to evaluate and sell riskier assets,Read more at location 189

Note: FINANZA E IDEE Edit

Many of the biggest innovators acquired their knowledge not through formal training but by being close to the action,Read more at location 192

Note: CLOSE TO ACTION X IMPARARE Edit

Today, 40 percent of Manhattan’s payroll is in the financial servicesRead more at location 194

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New York introduces us to the central paradox of the modern metropolis—proximity has become ever more valuable as the cost of connecting across long distances has fallen.Read more at location 199

Note: PARADOSSO Edit

In this book, we’ll look closely at what makes cities our species’ greatest invention.Read more at location 202

Note: SCOPO Edit

They enable us to work and play together, and their success depends on the demand for physical connection.Read more at location 206

Note: CONNESSIONE FISICA Edit

Within the United States, workers in metropolitan areas with big cities earn 30 percent more than workers who aren’t in metropolitan areas.Read more at location 210

Note: REDDITO METROPOLITANO Edit

In America and Europe, cities speed innovation by connecting their smart inhabitants to each other, but cities play an even more critical role in the developing world: They are gateways between markets and cultures.Read more at location 216

Note: I CANCELLI Edit

By concentrating so much talent in one place, Bangalore makes it easier for that talent to teach itself and for outsiders, whether from Singapore or Silicon Valley, to connect easily with Indian human capital.Read more at location 223

Note: CONTAGIO DEL TALENTO Edit

Echoing antiurbanites throughout the ages, Mahatma Gandhi said that “the true India is to be found not in its few cities, but in its 700,000 villages” and “the growth of the nation depends not on cities, but [on] its villages.”Read more at location 224

Note: L ERRORE DI GAHNDI Edit

There is a near-perfect correlation between urbanization and prosperity across nations.Read more at location 227

Note: PROSPERITÀ Edit

But people report being happier in those countries that are more urban.Read more at location 230

Note: FELICITÀ Edit

Across countries, reported life satisfaction rises with the share of the population that lives in cities, even when controlling for the countries’ income and education.Read more at location 233

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An explosion of artistic genius during the Florentine Renaissance began when Brunelleschi figured out the geometry of linear perspective.Read more at location 237

Note: FIRENZE Edit

Their friend Masaccio then brought the innovation into painting. The artistic innovations of Florence were glorious side effects of urban concentration;Read more at location 239

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Today, however, Bangalore and New York and London all depend on their ability to innovate. The spread of knowledge from engineer to engineer, from designer to designer, from trader to trader is the same as the flight of ideas from painter to painter, and urban density has long been at the heart of that process.Read more at location 240

Note: SPREAD Edit

DetroitRead more at location 243

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The failure of Detroit and so many other industrial towns doesn’t reflect any weakness of cities as a whole, but rather the sterility of those cities that lost touch with the essential ingredients of urban reinvention.Read more at location 245

Note: I FALLIMENTI Edit

inventors—Henry Ford was just one among many gifted entrepreneurs. But the extravagant success of Ford’s big idea destroyed that older, more innovative city.Read more at location 248

Note: TUTTE LE UOVA IN UN PANIERE Edit

hundreds of thousands of less-well-educated workers to vast factories, which became fortresses apart from the city and the world. While industrial diversity, entrepreneurship, and education lead to innovation, the Detroit model led to urban decline.Read more at location 249

Note: DIVERSITÀ E FLESSIBILITÀ Edit

Too many officials in troubled cities wrongly imagine that they can lead their city back to its former glories with some massive construction project—a new stadium or light rail system, a convention center, or a housing project.Read more at location 252

Note: MEGA PROGETTI Edit

no public policy can stem the tidal forces of urban change.Read more at location 253

Note: CAMBIAMENTO. IL FARAONICO RESISTE AL Edit

help poor people, not poor places.Read more at location 254

Note: AIUTO! Edit

The hallmark of declining cities is that they have too much housing and infrastructure relative to the strength of their economies.Read more at location 256

Note: L INFRASTRUTTURA SEGUE NN PRECEDE Edit

cities aren’t structures; cities are people.Read more at location 258

Note: GENTE E STRUTTURA Edit

New Orleans’ greatness always came from its people, not from its buildings.Read more at location 262

Note: NEW ORLEANS Edit

Ultimately, the job of urban government isn’t to fund buildings or rail lines that can’t possibly cover their costs, but to care for the city’s citizens. A mayor who can better educate a city’s children so that they can find opportunity on the other side of the globe is succeeding, even if his city is getting smaller.Read more at location 263

Note: DOVERI DEL SINDACO Edit

not all urban poverty is bad. It’s easy to understand why a visitor to a Kolkata slum might join Gandhi in wondering about the wisdom of massive urbanization, but there’s a lot to like about urban poverty. Cities don’t make people poor; they attract poor people.Read more at location 266

Note: LA BELLA POVERTÀ Edit

Urban poverty should be judged not relative to urban wealth but relative to rural poverty.Read more at location 271

Note: I GIUSTI CONFRONTI Edit

Proximity makes it easier to exchange ideas or goods but also easier to exchange bacteria or purloin a purse. All of the world’s older cities have suffered the great scourges of urban life: disease, crime, congestion.Read more at location 275

Note: MALATTIA CRIMINE CONGESTIONE Edit

American cities became much healthier in the early twentieth century because they were spending as much on water as the federal government spent on everything except the military and the postal service.Read more at location 278

Note: ACQUA Edit

Urban scale makes it possible to support the fixed costs of theaters, museums, and restaurants.Read more at location 282

Note: CULTURA E BELLA VITA Edit

Many of the ideas in this book draw on the wisdom of the great urbanist Jane Jacobs, who knew that you need to walk a city’s streets to see its soul.Read more at location 300

Note: JACOBS Edit

When the demand for a city rises, prices will rise unless more homes are built. When cities restrict new construction, they become more expensive.Read more at location 304

Note: NUOVE CASE Edit

Think of the ordered beauty of Paris.Read more at location 306

Note: IL NEMICO DEI POVERI: IL SOVRINTENDENTE Edit

A big reason for those sight lines is that any attempt to build in Paris must go through a byzantine process that puts preservation first.Read more at location 307

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Paris—once famously hospitable to starving artists—is now affordable only to the wealthy.Read more at location 309

Note: UNA CITTÀ X SOLI RICCHI Edit

Like Paris, London has a strong attachment to its nineteenth-century edifices. The Prince of Wales himself took a strong stand against tall, modernist buildingsRead more at location 309

Note: LONDRA Edit

This self-destructive behavior practically ensures prices that are too high,Read more at location 314

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Brilliant architects, like William Van Alen, designed great skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building, and others, like Le Corbusier, planned a world built at staggering heights. But twentieth-century urban America didn’t belong to the skyscraper; it belonged to the car. Transportation technologies have always determined urban form. In walking cities, like central Florence or Jerusalem’s old city, the streets are narrow, winding, and crammed with shops. When people had to use their legs to get around, they tried to get as close as possible to each other and to the waterways that provided the fastest way into or out of the city.Read more at location 318

Note: GRATTACIELI O AUTO? Edit

Cities built around the car, like much of Los Angeles and Phoenix and Houston, have enormous, gently curving roads and often lack sidewalks. In those places, shops and pedestrians retreat from the streets into malls.Read more at location 324

Note: AUTO E CENTRI COMMERCIALI. GRATTACIELI E NEGOZIETTI Edit

While older cities usually have an obvious center, dictated by an erstwhile port or a rail station, car cities do not.Read more at location 326

Note: CITTÀ SENZA CENTRO Edit

the rise of car-based living was bad for many older cities, it wasn’t bad for everyone.Read more at location 330

Note: L AUTO E LA SUBURBIA Edit

Speed and space are the two big advantages of car-based living. The average commute by public transportation in the United States is forty-eight minutes; the average commute by car is twenty-four minutes. Cars enable mass-produced housing at moderate densities that give ordinary Americans a lifestyle that is extraordinarily opulent by world standards.Read more at location 332

Note: I VANTAGGI DELL AUTO Edit

Note: I QUARTIERI RESIDENZIALI. IMPOSSIBILI SENZA L AUTO Edit

The spirit of Thomas Jefferson, who liked cities no more than Gandhi did, lives on in policies that subsidize home ownership and highways, implicitly encouraging Americans to abandon cities.Read more at location 337

Note: CONTRO LA CITTÀ: AUTOSTRADE E MUTUI AGEVOLATI Edit

One problem with policies that subsidize sprawl is that car-based living imposes environmental costs on the entire planet.Read more at location 338

Note: I COSTI AMBIENTALI DELLO SPRAWL Edit

Manhattan and downtown London and Shanghai, not suburbia, are the real friends of the environment.Read more at location 343

Add a note

Nature lovers who live surrounded by trees and grass consume much more energy than their urban counterparts,Read more at location 344

Note: LA CITTÀ E I GRATTCIELU: GREENFRIENDLY Edit

If the environmental footprint of the average suburban home is a size 15 hiking boot, the environmental footprint of a New York apartment is a stiletto-heel size 6 Jimmy Choo.Read more at location 345

Note: IMPRONTA ECOLOGICA Edit

Good environmentalism requires a worldwide perspective and global action, not the narrow outlook of a single neighborhood trying to keep out builders. We must recognize that if we try to make one neighborhood greener by stopping new building, we can easily make the world browner, by pushing new development to someplace far less environmentally friendly.Read more at location 351

Note: COSTRUIRE IN CITÀ È GIÀ POLITICA AMBIENTALE Edit

But as India and China get richer, their people will face a choice that could dramatically affect all our lives. Will they follow America and move toward car-based exurbs or stick with denser urban settings that are far more environmentally friendly?Read more at location 359

Note: INDIA E CINA Edit

we must be more tolerant of tearing down the short buildings in cities in order to build tall ones,Read more at location 365

Note: DEMOLUZIONE+GRATTACIELO Edit

The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilization’s success and the primary reason why cities exist.Read more at location 368

Note: COOPERAZIONE Edit

We must discard the view that environmentalism means living around trees and that urbanites should always fight to preserve a city’s physical past. We must stop idolizing home ownership, which favors suburban tract homes over high-rise apartments, and stop romanticizing rural villages.Read more at location 370

Note: I MITI DA SFATARE Edit

We should eschew the simplistic view that better long-distance communication will reduce our desire and need to be near one another.Read more at location 372

Note: VIRTUALE E REALE Edit

Above all, we must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings,Read more at location 373

Note: LA CITTÀ NN SONO CASE Edit