Marginal Opportunities: The Old Town Center in Palermo

I call a ‘tactic’, on the other hand, a calculus which cannot count on a “proper” (a spatial or institutional localization), not thus on a border-line distinguishing the other as visible totality. The place of tactic belongs to the other. A tactic insinuates itself into the other’s place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance. It has its disposal no base where it can capitalize on its advantages, prepare its expansions, and secure independence with respect to circumstances […]. Many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking, etc.) are tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many ‘ways of operating’: victories of the ‘weak’ over the ‘strong’ (whether the strength be that of powerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.), clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things, “hunter’s cunning” maneuvers, polymorphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as a warlike […]. In our societies, as local stability break-down, it is as if, no longer fixed by a circumscribed community, tactics wander out of orbit, making consumers into immigrants in a system too vast to be their own, too tightly woven for them to escape from it. But these tactics introduce a Brownian movement into the system. They also show the extent to which intelligence is inseparable from the everyday struggles and pleasures that it articulates.

According to the Italian legislation (DPCM 25/05/2015 pursuant to and implementing subsections 974–978 of the Italian financial act for the year 2016 and the DPCM 15/10/2015), a degraded urban area is a territory that presents: a social disadvantage index (IDS) greater than or equal to 1. The index is a weighted average of the deviations of the values of the following indicators compared to the respective national averages, as measured in the 2011 ISTAT census of, according to the formula:

IDS ZFU = 0.40 * (DIS (i) − DISNAZ) + 0.30 * (OCCNAZ − OCC (i)) + 0.15 * (GIOV (i) − GIOVNAZ) + 0.15 * (SCOLNAZ − SCOL (s)).

Where: DIS (i)] unemployment rate; OCC (i)] employment rate; GIOV (i) youth concentration ratio; SCOL (s) schooling rate reported for the six months prior to the year of the survey, and a housing discomfort index (IDE) equal to or greater than 1.

The index compares the state of conservation of the urban area degraded buildings with the national average according to the following formula:

IDE = [(ERP + ERM)/ Tot ER]/0.168.

Where the weighting coefficient is the national percentage of residential buildings in “bad” or “mediocre” conditions and where: ERP = degraded urban residential buildings in poor condition; MRF = residential urban degraded buildings in poor condition; Tot ER = residential buildings urban Total degraded.

The indicators are also accepted at infra-municipality level, aggregating census particles according to data collected by the 2011 Census.

The social distress index (IDS) and the housing discomfort index (IDE) of the degraded urban area must always be higher than the average of the two indices calculated for the whole municipality.

The Pact of Amsterdam foresees a cohesion policy of the European community requiring each member country to adopt a “national urban agenda” to identify integrated actions for sustainable development.

Financing is expected to be provided through Urban Innovative Actions: priority is given to innovative aspects and processes favoring research. Results are to be anticipated, identified, described and replicable. The evaluation will be based on the innovation, quality of partnership, measurability, transferability and operational quality of the project.