L'organisation capitaliste du territoire et le problème du logement en Italie

The capitalistic organization of territory and the housing problem in Italy.This paper provides the first results of a research programme regarding the selective and spatially differentiated use of the Italian territory by private capital in the housing sector.According to the 1971 census, in Italy there were 63,8 million rooms for 53,2 million inhabitants. As regards the 1951 census the increase of rooms has been of 26,5 million, i.e. of 70.9%, as against an increase of 15,6% of the population. In this period the investment in dwelling-houses has represented about 30% of total fixed investments which is more than in the other E.E.C. countries.The Italian building stock (with a medium average of 1.2 rooms per inhabitant), is theoretically sufficient to satisfy the population needs. This ratio, however, drops to 1.06 if we exclude the 7.6 million rooms in non-inhabited houses (“holiday houses”, new unsold houses, abandoned homes because of emigration or because of their poor conditions).Moreover, more than one third of the Italian population lives in overcrowded conditions (less than one room per person) and poor standard houses are 40% of the total.This is not only due to the fact that public investments in the housing sector have been insignificant (6% in the last ten years), or to the unequal social distribution of revenue, but also, moreover, to the speculative character of the building activity.The economic analysis shows that between 1951 and 1971, in the expansive stages of housing production, net incomes of the building and land sector have increased more rapidly than the total earned incomes and that they have been higher than the amount of investments in the sector. So, building and land estate rent have been among the main components of the Italian capitalistic accumulation through the exporpriation of a prominent share of wages. At the same time, the ever increasing growth in housing prices both for sale and for rent has forbidden the fulfilment of the needs of the lower classes, extending in an abnormal way the production of luxury and “holiday houses” to satisfy the requirements of the higher classes. This is the cause of the above mentioned contradiction between the amount of the unused or subused building stock and the existence of a large number of sub-standard and/or overcrowded houses.This mechanism of accumulation-expropriation worked because of a specific spatial structure. Its main character consists in a strong geographical concentration of the basic activities and of the population. 53.3% of 1960–1971 housing production has concentrated in 4.7% of the Italian communes with more than 20,000 inhabitants.The analysis carried out on a stratified sample including 1,524 communes allowed us to reach the following results: 1. We find situations of greater unsatisfaction of the needs in the largest industrial metropolitan north-western areas and in the underdeveloped southern communes with strong emigrations. 2. We have had the highest offer for houses, as regards the needs, in the communes with less than 5,000 inhabitants, in the communes with less than 250,000 inhabitants, with prevalently tertiary functions, and in the districts where development is more equilibrated, from a territorial point of view (i.e.: north-eastern Italy). 3. The mechanism of accumulation-expropriation worked mainly in the industrial areas and it grows at the ever increasing growth of agglomerations and urban overcrowding, determined by strong migratory flows. 4. Building activity of tertiary communes has been led, mainly, by the higher-class expansion of consumptions. 5. The same kind of demand has given rise to the strong increase of “holiday houses” which interests large periurban, coastal and Alpine areas. 6. The housing sector becomes in this way a component of territorial disequilibriums, caused by the industrial and tertiary polarization and it is inclined to enlarge them by the artful increase of urban rent. 7. This use of territory has the aim to encourage incomes removal among different social classes and to contribute in this way, to the process of capitalistic accumulation. But, by doing this, it causes a kind of growth, in the housing sector, which is unable to satisfy lower-class needs for houses. 8. The attainment of this last purpose would, therefore, mean an efficient regional planning and the elimination of urban rent, conditions which are in opposition to the maintenance of the present economic and social structure of the Italian economy, of which speculative building and rent sectors are, nowadays, essential components.