“A densely populated urban area characterized by overcrowding, housing below acceptable standards, inadequate access to pure drinking water and sanitation, uncertainty of tenure, squalor”.
This is the common definition of a slum accepted by the United Nations.
On the planet, a human being out of six lives in a slum. In Italy there are some thousands, perhaps tens of thousands. A number that, in the words of Istat, the Central Institute for Statistics, registered “a dramatic increase” in the past seven years, due to the economic crisis. Slums are everywhere: in the underdeveloped Southern regions as well as in large industrial cities in the Center and the North. Some of these shantytowns have been there for decades, one – in Messina, Sicily – for over a century: a paradox, in a country that has the highest overbuilding rate in Europe. The inhabitants are Italian citizens, but not even Istat knows exactly how many.
The reason is simple: after a while, for the rest of the country those who live in a shack cease to exist. Yet, exist they do, and no matter how abandoned they feel by the State, most of them would say: “I’m still an Italian”.
