Plan b - Aliens , year XI, No. 90 \\ 91 December 2007-January 2008, pp. 43-48
"The flying acrobats (those of the Turin Olympics) hanging from the ceiling wearing blue overalls, while the music evokes the sounds of the machines of the past [...]. The acrobats were replicated four times the show because people with the nose was a crowd for the entire day. "Thus, a local newspaper described the day of the March 26, 2006, the day of the" Re-opening of the Workshops Minganti " the first, and finora unico, grande insediamento industriale dismesso della Bolognina ad aver subìto un processo di riconversione: da fabbrica a centro commerciale. Queste poche righe restituiscono la portata del cambiamento che ha interessato l'edificio, la sua destinazione, l'immaginario a cui è legato e, inevitabilmente, le ricadute che questo processo ha sul territorio circostante.
Oggi le Officine Minganti sono un centro commerciale distribuito su tre piani balconati che si affacciano su una piazza coperta, creando l'ambiente di una galleria commerciale. I pannelli informativi ci dicono che al piano terra, “la piazza dello shopping”, si trovano un supermercato Coop, un negozio Unieuro, boutiques, gioiellerie, mentre al primo piano, "Food for thought", there are Coop's Library, an Apple Center and the large dining area. The second and last floor, "Body Care", is entirely occupied by a gym, Fitness Center of Virginia. Large areas of a neighboring building of the shopping center and office buildings are home to the headquarters of a major banking group.
Bolognina We are one of the historical strongholds of working-class city, the district related to the dissolution of the PCI Occhetto announced here in 1989. Officine Minganti are here since 1919, in an intermediate position between the station and the fairground. The factory produced precision machine tools (such as lathes, milling or drilling) and it became after World War II one of the productive point of view of the city. Here we produce machines for the aerospace industry Soviet still remember with pride as some workers who worked in the fifties and sixties. That place, along with other industrial establishments in the city, was then in the boom years, a symbol of economic and social progress, "a man who worked in Minganti was as if he went to university," recalls a former factory worker.
The building, as we see it today, was rebuilt after the war with special attention, investing significant resources, so it is one of the best national examples of industrial architecture. After closing plant has been empty and abandoned for some years, until it was bought by a consortium of two known manufacturers of Bologna (COGE Coop and Construction). At the conversion project and its implementation - by the same consortium, and Coop Cogea construction - and then followed a strategy of hype for the most part played on the history of the building, on what was and what became . Leave this name, but added a tail to the new destination, "Officine Minganti, a factory of charms," \u200b\u200bthe evocation of a symbol of the city's industrial past identity and the neighborhood is reduced a slogan for the desirability of goods and services. The entire mall is littered with traces of the industrial past turned into a refined decorative objects: like the old lathes and milling machines on display in glass cases or cranes still suspended near the roof and visible from the escalators.
The revival of the works of the imagination - of course cleaned up by all that the most socially undesirable aspects of the work in the workshop and the social and political conflict that has passed through this place for decades - takes on an appearance evocative to enhance the present and the its wonders. In the "about us" Site of the workshops are only Minganti few significant lines of presentation: "Open to the future with a new way of shopping in a structure that combines innovation with reference to the past. A newly developed shopping center where the person is at the center of interest. All this in two steps from Old Town. "
Bolognina The district has grown around the numerous industrial plants found here at home since the twenties of the last century. Today almost all the industrial areas are abandoned, the neighborhood is littered with abandoned warehouses and vast empty spaces have become a temporary shelter for homeless foreigners, petty crime, drug addicts looking for a place to "shoot up". The closure of factories led to an abandonment of the area and its slow decay, resulting in low cost houses. Today the Bolognina lies the largest number of foreigners from all over the city are concentrated virtually all Chinese living in Bologna (who have taken over most of the businesses also abandoned after the closure of industrial plants), a large North African community and an Eritrean. There are also many elderly people, many of whom are former workers who still live in the neighborhood and have seen it change radically, struggling now to recognize it and understand it. These features make the Bolognina a working class neighborhood, but the big empty spaces available within walking distance center and strategic location between the station and the fairgrounds make the area an attractive morsel for real estate transactions. Here it will be based management major new buildings on the road near Stalingrad rise the imposing "Gate of Europe", the prestigious office of the international projection that suggests that the city wishes to play, train station, with the arrival of 'high speed, will be expanded and completely redesigned and will be linked by a train at the airport pending (People Mover) and the rest of the city by subway, and the whole area that extends between the Bolognina and the airport will be built, hosting a business center and a new university. Of all these works will be the vast achievements of housing, creation of high value, high costs and are intended for customers with good financial resources or able to take on mortgages exuberant decade.
The shopping center "Shops Minganti is open for more than a year, but so far do not seem to have had a great success: there are few people who decide to spend Saturday or Sunday afternoon, the environment is often a bit 'desolate and deserted, except for lunch and one appetizer, when hundreds of employees are poured from the offices of the banking group in the local restaurants. The only store that has a good turnout is the Coop supermarket. It is not hard to guess why: the boutiques and shops of designer labels are little reflected in the population of the district, which has a rather limited economic means. In addition, large dealers in the area, the Chinese have been deliberately excluded from commercial activities, although many were interested in renting the shops inside. A mall like this is aiming to intercept a target, which enjoys a good spending power, which wants to have lunch in a bar fashion, the Macintosh computer you buy, who spends every month large numbers to attend gyms and saunas . And now at a similar target Bolognina does not exist. At the 2005 Cannes Film
Mapic, an important exhibition dedicated to real estate, the project for the conversion of Officine Minganti won the award reserved for new commercial developments on the ground to provide "an important contribution to the redevelopment and revitalization of urban centers, demonstrating sustainable development, respect for the surrounding tissue and sufficient flexibility to respond in time to change patterns of demand. " Now you can understand what idea of \u200b\u200b"upgrading" can be glimpsed behind the operation Minganti: the mall appears to be a "bridgehead" of the process of "gentrification" that will affect an important area and a large city in the coming years.
The mall is not now a significant place in the area, pending the Bolognina seems to be, but making a clean sweep of what is, and revised in consumption (of goods and land) that was.
Just trying to broaden our vision to the broader processes can leave the trap for a public debate on the long flat "or against" Cofferati, a dichotomy that prevents understanding of the direction the city is changing and what are the actors at stake.
The urban transformations taking place to glimpse some of the processes. First of all transformations the urban fabric (of which the Bolognina is just the best example, but not the only) also point to a host of social and economic actors are absent from public debate, but that will have a major say in the future of the city: groups old and new properties (some of which appeared on the local scene for the first time), major banking groups and their foundations (some of them owners of large areas that will be affected by important achievements), entrepreneurs interested in getting rid of production activities in exchange succulent real estate investments. No coincidence that Bologna was third, behind Milan and Rome, in research conducted this year by Nomisma on competitiveness real estate markets, showing a positive trend compared to previous years and past cities such as Florence, Padua and Verona.
In this new scenario, what is the role of the junta Cofferati? Since the search for Nomisma read: "In an increasingly competitive cities are also competing among themselves to attract people, activities and financial resources. Each city is characterized by "attractiveness" that comes from the clever exploitation of the strengths of each situation in order to provide a favorable environment for investors or users. Better than other cities that are able to interpret the needs and requirements of different markets are di conseguenza più attraenti per chi è alla ricerca di luoghi dove ubicare i propri investimenti immobiliari o dove insediarsi”. Bologna ha quindi dimostrato determinazione nel perseguire questi obiettivi, tanto da eccellere rispetto alle altre città italiane. Un ruolo importante ha certamente avuto l'amministrazione comunale (compresa quella guidata Guazzaloca): la determinazione dimostrata nel potenziare la dotazione infrastrutturale della città (metropolitana, people mover, alta velocità) e l'importanza di alcune operazioni immobiliari fortemente incentivate dal Comune (lo studio di Nomisma cita l'edificazione del comparto Lazzaretto-Bertalia, il potenziamento della Fiera e la riqualificazione dell'ex mercato ortofrutticolo) were important factors in strengthening the housing market and the growth and development of the city.
While the administration has set Cofferati immediately in continuity with this line of real estate and commercial expansion and upgrading of the city, claiming the project to redesign Bologna and its economic and social role at national and international, from 'else - and here is what is new, the alleged line break with previous administrations - has put together initiatives to try to make them more open and participatory macro-processes: this attempt is given to participatory planning workshops with the ad hoc' aim to involve, at least in part, the resident population in the decisions to be taken on those areas where action is taken. The first experiment (the laboratory of the former fruit and vegetable market) has succeeded, at least in part, in this endeavor, thanks to a network of associations and social realities in the area who actively participated in and has achieved important results. But in most of the city there is so active social fabric and the first signs that can be seen leaving it clear that the inhabitants of Bolognina (but also in other districts) call for an intervention but it may be, the important thing is that the phenomena which they feel "under siege" (foreign nationals, urban decay, youth distress) vengano allontanati il più possibile.. Non importa se da un nuovo complesso residenziale o da un centro commerciale: l'importante è riempire il vuoto urbano e sociale delle fabbriche. Non a caso da tutti i progetti di urbanistica partecipata sono stati finora esclusi gli stranieri, che pure rappresentano una fetta importante della popolazione residente nelle aree interessate.
L'impressione è che la riqualificazione urbana, intesa come processo di riqualificazione economica e commerciale e come fenomeno di “gentrification”, di difesa, sia un orizzonte culturale più o meno condiviso da tutti gli attori in gioco: dai pubblici poteri (interessati a difendere il bene primario della sicurezza e ad accrescere il ruolo economico della città during their administration), by real estate agents (who derive huge profits from commercial achievements and prestige of high quality residential sectors) and the citizens of Bologna, determined to defend their good standard of living and lost to urban environments where you do not recognize and most of them are afraid.
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