Social Capital in Neighborhood Development: Pianura, Naples

Europe’s rapid industrial decline and the prolonged recession that were produced by the oil embargo crises of 1973 and 1979 followed by the painful process of economic restructuring, brought about the decision in 1985 to accelerate the process of European integration and to expand its policy agenda beyond the original nucleus of essentially trade policies. The adoption of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1986 by the member states meant the beginning of the mandate according to which policy decisions at the European and national levels had to take into consideration “who benefits” and “who does not” as part of the process of creating the Single Market and Single Currency. For the European Community,1 this meant the adoption of the policy goal of economic and social cohesion that was inscribed in the SEA and then re-affirmed by the preamble to the Maastricht Treaty of 1993.2 This wide-ranging territorial policy objective has been pursued primarily through the formulation of medium-term development policies implemented over programming cycles of five to seven years each, that are centered on Europe’s less-developed regions and funded by the significant EU budget resources provided by the Structural Funds-European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF) (Nanetti, 2001).