Abstract

The paper intends to outline the role that the urbanization process had in the development of the Mezzogiorno of Italy, in the light of the various effects that it has produced in terms of building and housing policies, urban planning, welfare policies, etc. The paper examines three distinct periods: a) Urban growth, construction and land rent (1950-1970). The land rent and the building sector played a role of drivers of the development of the Southern cities and represented the sectors where most capital accumulation took place. Furthermore, construction, as a labor-intensive sector, played a decisive role in the absorption of the workforce leaving the countryside; likewise the political – social role of the so-called «building social block» and the support policies to help home ownership arose. Such a period was characterized by the absence of any urban policy. Investments in Southern cities provided for (minimal) personal services and some mobility infrastructure but did not include advanced tertiary activities to support companies. b) Urban sprawl (1970-1992). The construction of new transport infrastructure, mass motorization, the overall increase in incomes, the remittances of emigrants, in parallel with the crisis in the urban real estate market, due to the new urban planning and building legislation, encouraged sprawl and low-intensity urbanization, largely managed by individual families, through self-construction processes which, in the South, are mainly linked with to illegal housing. Politics replied with tolerance for the phenomenon and a series of building amnesties, designed to get political consensus. It was a «democratic» urbanization of the Southern suburbs that transferring the advantages of urbanization from the building social block to the families. c) Urban redevelopment (1992 to date). Two phenomena have characterized this period: the consolidation of metropolitan growth with a process of decentralization of services and production activities in the more peripheral areas, and above all, the affirmation of interventions in existing city. Urban regeneration policies in the Southern Italy cities have been struggling to establish themselves due to the poor skills of the offices and the absence of an adequate entrepreneurial network. However, thanks to the funding of European and national public programs (PIC Urban, Contratti di quartiere), several municipalities have been able to use the available resources to promote the regeneration and tourist development of their historic centers and to improve the housing and environmental quality of some decayed neighborhoods