We can all protect urban greenery

HOW TO DEFEND URBAN GREEN SPACES

Seeing singer Francesco De Gregori as a street cleaner isn't a commercial image. On the contrary. It's the perfect testimonial for a campaign we all should be supporting: the one to defend cleanliness, decorum, the green, in a word: the life of our citiesDe Gregori, along with other residents of Rome's Prati neighborhood, all united in a local association, doesn't limit himself to criticizing and nitpicking the city administration—an activity we're all excellent at. He goes further. He takes to the streets, broom in hand, and cleans his own street. Fortunately, these initiatives are multiplying not only in Rome (the dirtiest capital in Europe)., and help to wake up local administrators and isolate the many, too many indifferent people who often become uncivilized, who are part of our communities of citizens.

CITIZENS' INITIATIVES TO PROTECT URBAN GREEN SPACES

We are the greenery in the city. We have a hundred, a thousand, good reasons to complain about how the municipal offices that manage public services, and in particular the areas designated for trees and children's play areas, function (or don't), but we must face the truth: the first destroyers of this common heritage, wasteful devourers of a good that we should instead cultivate like a sacred relic, are us, the citizensAnd we often use the total incompetence of politicians as an alibi, a convenient alibi, for our own individual and collective sins.

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VANDALISM IN PUBLIC PARKS

The facts speak for themselves. A Roma, for example, there is not a single neighborhood, I repeat, where citizens have learned to look after their greenery. Rubbish everywhere on the floor, furniture debris in the house, from furniture to the washing machine, chewing gum and butts of cigarettes on the sidewalks and under the trees. A basic question: would you ever do something like this in your homes? So why do we do it in everyone's home, our city? Take a look at this. video As for how Romans treat the capital's largest urban park, I'm talking about Villa Dora Pamphili, and you'll have mathematical proof of what I'm telling you.

Rome is not an isolated case. In the very civilised Turin in 2016 alone, 200 episodes of vandalism were counted in the approximately two hundred green areas, with games for children, managed by the municipalityThe result was that half of the municipal budget for green maintenance in Turin was eaten up by the incivility of citizens. And then, obviously, there is a lack of money to prevent the death of the trees, until we get to cutting them to simplify the lives of municipalities. In Varese, another city with a good tradition in terms of civic sense, in the last year 600 trees were cut down, 2 per day. Don't you see in these data the scandal of an immense waste, where we are both the culprits and the victims?

TO LEARN MORE: Mapping city trees to encourage governments to do more

WE ARE THE GREEN IN THE CITY

The Milan, where there is no shortage of municipal investments to create new green spaces, Ordinary expenditure on playgrounds and repairs for swings and flowerbeds reserved for children amounts to 630 thousand euros each year.This is precious money, taken away from the very maintenance and management of urban greenery, which all municipalities are struggling to meet. In Rome, there are approximately 5 acts of vandalism on green spaces and play areas each year.. Far from Rome caput mundi, it seems like the capital of the new barbarians! And also the municipality of Bologna to tackle urban vandalism, it has budgeted half a million euros for 2017.

The paradox, which cries out for even more vengeance, is that millions of Italians, in their homes, do thegarden, they arrange the garden, the balcony, the terraceThey take care of the greenery and show off their green thumb. Then, however, when it comes to everyone's home, the city, they change face, they transfigure, and become other people.Barbarians, indeed. Protecting urban greenery is now the primary duty of any citizen with even a modicum of civic duty, and we, the residents, are the ones called upon to be the primary custodians of public greenery. We shouldn't be the usual Italian-style crooks who shift the blame onto others, namely incompetent administrators. We should do exactly the opposite of what happens so frequently: that is, move forward and become, perhaps with associations and neighbourhood groups, the managers of public greenery in the streets where we live, receiving in exchange a reduction in cups localThis is the future of cities where well-being and quality of life are shared priorities. And it's a future that begins with the understanding that we, and not others, are the green ones.

(In the cover image: Francesco De Gregori(Source: Repubblica)

HOW MUCH IS GREEN SPACE IN THE CITY WORTH TO OUR HEALTH?

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