Can Rome halt the decline and degradation into which, day after day, it seems ineluctably sinking? It is the question that, with a certain anguish, Roman citizens ask themselves every day and to which this book attempts to give an answer. First of all, doing justice to a series of slogans and clichés often repeated by analysts and politicians and which tend to sound self-consoling: Rome: "an international city", "a non-industrial city but with a strong scientific-technological district", "a city 'open and supportive'”, “a city of culture”. Commonplaces that perhaps want to indicate frustrated aspirations, what Rome could have been (and perhaps still could become) but which in reality was not or was only for short periods. Which happened, like Alfredo Macchiati explains very well, due to the absence of public policies capable of developing visions and strategies and consolidating the potential vocations of the city.
But Rome, in order to regain livable conditions and project itself into modernity, must overcome some historical handicaps that have conditioned its growth, its morphology, its social structure, its way of being capital. These are ancient problems that have their roots in the history of Italy and its capital. Because the Italian state, unlike the other great national states that arose in Europe starting from the Middle Ages, did not have the capital as a point of reference for the identity and unity of the nation. Rome's papal legacies have marked the backward productive structure of the city and the character of its inhabitants and have prevented the formation of a modern and dynamic productive bourgeoisie and the birth of that civic and community spirit which, on the contrary, had taken root in the Italy of the Communes and lordships since the XNUMXth century. It is a weakness which, moreover, concerns the Capital as a projection of a weak state, which remained fragmented until one hundred and fifty years ago and whose unification process has yet to be completed.
The federalist reforms of the XNUMXs certainly did not help in this sense, just as the acceptance of a leadership from Rome met with resistance, deaf but profound, even if, as stated by Cavour in the speech he gave in Turin in March 1861, in front of the newborn Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, “Rome alone can be the capital of Italy”. But originally, in the republican Constitution, there was no mention of Rome as the capital. Constitutional recognition arrived only in 2001 with the reform of Title V even if, in fact, the original commitment, implicit in the provision inserted in article 114 of the Constitution, to give Rome greater powers and resources, has remained a dead letter. Because that acknowledgment, more than the outcome of a collective process of joining Rome's role, represented the patched up political compromise between the real and strong thrust of Northern League-brand federalism and the weak and not deeply rooted will of a reaffirmation of national unity of which only President Ciampi at the time had the courage to make a flag, without fearing accusations of rhetoric or nationalism, hesitations which instead were of the left which in fact, in the republican era, always left the theme to the right of national identity.
And today here we go again: in Parliament we are discussing again a possible special Statute of Rome Capital, or an institutional structure that brings Rome closer to the other capitals of Europe. But it is always and only discussed among Roman parliamentarians as if it were a parochial claim and not, instead, a question that concerns the entire country, the entire state structure. On the other hand, this doesn't even seem like the best time to re-propose the theme given that Rome is currently experiencing one of the lowest moments in its history as a capital and for the citizens, certainly for non-Roman citizens but also for Roman ones, it is particularly difficult to feel Rome as an expression of their national identity. Leadership, even the institutional one, is conquered on the field and today the Capital is unable to claim it.
That the problem of its crisis - economic, social, cultural, infrastructural - does not depend on the absence of strengthened powers but on the persistent absence of a political leadership and a ruling class who are bearers of a strategic vision and have the determination to pursue it with coherence and continuity emerge from this book with sometimes rough clarity. Just as it emerges that for Rome the best periods in terms of administrative quality and overall growth of the city - periods that Macchiati identifies in the trade unions Nathan, Argan-Petroselli and Rutelli – have always coincided with phases in which, at a national level, politics has expressed its capacity for innovation and a reformist culture which has driven the emergence, even in the capital, of a new ruling class.
From this point of view, the next union could benefit from a similar phenomenon. But it is not obvious that this will happen, because the condition that in the past made Rome take a leap of pride and relaunch seems to be missing: that is, that even in the city a profound political and social renewal. But in Rome (as in the other cities where electoral consultation is imminent) new dynamic and innovative ruling classes do not seem to be emerging, capable of regenerating the capital's prospects; the cities called to vote seem rather to have become the field into which the political forces whose foolishness and lack of international credibility led to the arrival of Mario Draghi's government have withdrawn.
Therefore, those who are candidates for city government will have to be very clear about the objectives they intend to achieve and also about the ways in which they propose to achieve them, because in order to achieve real and profound change, maximum autonomy will be needed from the Roman parties which in recent years they held back, putting partisan interests, corporate interests (or other sometimes unmentionable interests) before those of the city. Macchiati's book indicates an agenda, essential but unavoidable, which it will have to be a compass for candidates who are preparing to define their programs, but it will also be a very useful tool for voters who want to make informed choices. Because the next five years will be decisive for understanding whether Rome can still be counted among the modern European capitals or whether it will have become a capital of the southern Mediterranean.
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Here is the link to buy the book 2021: miracle in Rome by Alfredo Macchiati: https://www.goware-apps.com/2021-miracolo-a-roma-eredita-e-futuro-possibile-della-capitale-alfredo-macchiati/
