Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
22
Symbolic Policies and Citizenship: The Case of Naples
1
Paola De Vivo
(University of Naples Federico II)
Drawing on the theoretical framework of territorial and urban governance, this paper focuses on changes in
urban policies in Naples. Based on the analysis of three policies, it argues that: 1) the City government uses the
rhetoric of urban change in the city to build political consensus; 2) the construction of such rhetoric is based on
the involvement of the citizens through various tools and forms of participation, in order to create legitimacy
around the work of the local administration;
3) the weight of citizens’ participation in the governance networks
and the substantive effects of this participation is minimal; 4) the shift from the rhetoric of the announcements to
the implementation of the projects and measures leads to symbolic policies that do not improve the conditions of
life of the population. Three urban policies will be compared. The first policy (the Bagnoli district) was started
more than twenty years ago; the second (Historical Centre) started about fifteen years ago; the third (Free Trade
Zone) never started but has fuelled a very lively and interesting public debate. These are three of the most
important policies adopted by the City Council, and they have all had the same outcome: a difficult
implementation that has
thwarted their potentiality to contribute substantially to urban change.
Keywords:
territorial governance, urban policies, symbolic policies, citizenship.
Introduction
Drawing on the theoretical framework of territorial and urban governance, this article focuses
on changes in urban policies in Naples. Based on the analysis of three urban policies, it
argues that: 1) the City government uses the rhetoric of urban change to build political
consensus; 2) the construction of such rhetoric is based on the involvement of the citizens,
through various forms of participation, in order to create legitimacy around the work of the
local administration;
3) the weight of citizens’ participation in the governance networks and
the substantive effects of this participation is minimal; 4) the shift from the rhetoric of the
1
A first version of this work was presented at the International and Interdisciplinary Conference on
‘Issues
of Legitimacy: Entrepreneurial Culture, Corporate Responsibility and Urban Development’
(Naples, Italy, 12-14 September 2012).
This article benefits from discussion and comments at the
conference and from the peer-review process and feedback from this journal’s Editorial Board.
The
discussion is based on the results of a research programme that I have carried out on urban changes in
Naples over the last ten years. The first research was on a Variation on the Regulatory Plan of the city
approved by the City Council in 1998. It was based on 330 interviews carried out with residents in
Bagnoli (a quarter at the periphery of Naples) concerning their expectations and levels of information
about the project of urban regeneration (De Vivo 2000). I also draw on the analysis of three urban
policies that I have studied over the last four years with the aim of understanding the differences
between them. The research was based on the use of secondary data and documents and on thirty-five
in-depth interviews with mayors, public officials and citizens.
