I am in Genoa’s Acquasola Park. I have never bothered a little bit about my city because I have to live here. But this is something that is sort of strange: all the greenery on the hillside around Genoa is burning and here, where there’s a park, a green lung inside the city, they want to restructure, to redo the park with underneath 400 car parking spaces and on top some blowholes, a little supermarket and then they want to restore the ancient park.
They are taking us for a ride. You don’t restore an ancient park: the ancient park exists now! There’s the odd plant that is sick, that can be cut down and that can be replaced, you don’t do a platform of cement with 400 car parking spaces.
They are all projects that are nonsenses, or the only purpose is that of getting future generations into debt to make money. These contracts done by politicians first, with penalty clauses that the citizens have to pay now, are crimes against humanity.
What should be done? Get all the companies and say: gentlemen, this thing must not be done because the citizens don’t want it to be done. Here people want to walk, to breathe, to play. Here let’s put back the little lake …. There was a little lake with swans. They have wrung the necks of the swans to put “Pandas” here. But do you realise what’s happening? Here restore it to how it was. Put in wifi, create a place to play “bocce”. People can come here and as they are connected to the world, they can work here. It’s something marvellous!
The issue is political: you start a discussion. You get the companies together. The ones that have already started work and that have been stopped with a guarantee from the citizens and you say to these companies: gentlemen, we will give you the same amount of money to do something different. Perhaps not a car park but the restoration of the “Carlini” – in Genoa they know what that is - it’s an athletics stadium. There are already plans. There are other things. There’s so much choice!
Let’s get together. Let’s ignore the Town Hall. If the Town hall doesn’t want to bother with this, I’m making this appeal: let’s get together with the entrepreneurs, we’ll sit down at the table, there’ll be entrepreneurs and together we’ll decide to substitute this thing because it is an emeritus fuck up.
The great architects, like Renzo Piano, all the great architects in the world are removing car parks from the cities. Los Angeles is taking down the car parks from the city centre. Renzo Piano is building skyscrapers in the centre of London without car parks. We are really the biggest suckers!
Those who created them, did them twenty years ago, planning something else: here we have to go back to making a city that people can live in. With these administrations, PD, PDL, PDminusL …. they are all the same thing. Over there, there’s Impregilo, on the other side there are the red co-operatives. It is GDP and continue doing GDP with cement.
We are the top producers of cement in the world. It’s time to say “enough”! To start reasoning in a different way. To put citizens into key positions and not the top bods in the political parties. We need to place the citizens with grassroots movements.
I implore you, please, don’t take this Park in Genoa lightly. Because they have also done this in Milan: Parco Gioia has disappeared. Ancient parks are disappearing under our very eyes. They put up the barriers. You can’t see anything with the climbing plants. They do the work. People go by and they say “What’s up? What’s up?” After they have understood “What’s up?” they find they’ve got horrendous things.
I implore the people of Genoa to keep looking at these facts, to put pressure on the administration not to give in on these issues and to start political negotiations. This is political: not jurisprudence, it’s political!
Good 168 to you all!