The first time I heard Renzo Piano exhorting us to mend this Italy which is falling apart, as he did today after the tragedy of Ischia, he had just become a life senator. It was 2013. Then there was an earthquake, and the prime minister at the time gave him the task of helping to design the reconstruction of the buildings. Then a bridge collapsed in his city, Genoa, and he designed another one that was built in record time.[[ge:rep-locali:content-hub:375787075]]
Almost ten years have passed and every time there is a disaster – and by now they are increasingly frequent due to climate change and hydrogeological instability, a big word to say that we have wreaked havoc on the territory with illegal building – every time there is a disaster we go to Renzo Piano and the great architect repeats the same exhortation to us: to mend Italy, as was once done with socks and jackets, when the virus of consumerism had not yet caught us and throw away everything that is not new and a patch on the sleeves was a source of pride, because it meant that the fabric was good.
Italy is like a jacket with a beautiful fabric but very poorly maintained. We just can’t throw it away. It’s our country. So why isn’t it done? Why don’t we mend it? Because unfortunately for politics, but also for the newspapers let’s be honest, large works work better than a few thousand small insignificant construction sites to repair the territory and make it safe. How many? Where is it? We know it. At least since 2018 when the Climate Change Adaptation Plan, approved by a group of scientists in charge, was placed in a drawer of the Ministry of the Environment, and there it remained gathering dust. Not a priority, we were told when we asked about it. It’s time to get it out. Now, because in a couple of days of Ischia, like all the previous tragedies, we won’t be talking anymore.