OLTRE IL FETICCIO DELLA COMPETITIVITÀ. COSTRUIRE TERRITORI DESIDERABILI PER LA RIPRESA POSTPANDEMICA

Abstract

BEYOND THE FETISH OF COMPETITIVENESS. BUILDING DESIRABLE TERRITORIES FOR POST-PANDEMIC RECOVERY.

The Covid-19 pandemic started a debate on the relationship between settlement forms and the contagion, which has highlighted a theme that flows like a karst river in the Italian public debate: the gap between North and South, between poles and internal areas. It seemed that one of the possible permanent consequences of the pandemic experience could be a new main role of the South and extra-metropolitan areas. This scenario, far from being remote, can only be achieved within a radical change of the hyper-capitalist paradigm that has dominated the last decades. In this perspective, the paper proposes some reflections on the inadequacy of
the concept of competitiveness of the territories, as result of their commodification. A tentative approach has been proposed. This approach relates on territorial desirability, a concept that is difficult to define but which takes into account various aspects - not only economic - that lead people to choose the place to live. Beyond its intentions, the proposed Italian Recovery Plan uses the same lexicon and confirms the same business-oriented culture that has characterized Italian policies over the last thirty years, thus risking to emphasize
rather than reducing territorial inequalities.
Keywords: Inner areas, Mezzogiorno, Territorial competitiveness