choice but to negotiate the narrow sidewalks with parked cars and scooters even as they filled their lungs with exhaust gases. Once the renovation was completed in 2001, the newly pedestrianized Via San Lorenzo became a haven for a plurality of practices at the hands of locals (a category which includes both Genoese and immigrants) as well as visitors.
On most days, the street hosts an intense foot traffic; some passersby walk purposefully, seemingly intent on reaching a specific destination. Others, instead, wander aimlessly, taking it all in. Part of the street is lined up with coffee shops and small stores selling antiques, books, prints and posters, ice cream, regional specialty foods, South Asian exotica, herbal preparations, pastry, eyeglasses, and cheap Chinese apparel. A smattering of peddlers sell hand-made jewelry, crafts, and paintings from booths lined up against the side of the San Lorenzo cathedral; street musicians perform for passersby, and, on the first weekend of every month, the flea and antique market hosted in the Palazzo Ducale spills into the San Lorenzo area, adding additional fodder for the visual and tactile pleasures of passersby. The steps of the magnificent gothic cathedral provide popular accommodation for tourists and locals alike, who often share them—though not without discomfort—with the punkabbestia: anarchist-inspired homeless youth who have selected this area as a hangout for themselves and their large-breed dogs. Gypsy women and small groups of children blend in with the crowd, panhandling visitors. The social life of San Lorenzo is punctuated by grand public events, too. One of these is the yearly historical parade of San Giovanni Battista, during which the local Cardinal walks the ornate sixteenth-century silver arc containing the local patron saint’s ashes all the way to the waterfront to bless the sea as the city’s traditional source of livelihood. A highly spectacular event that has been held for centuries for the sake of fostering vertical solidarity and instilling both local pride and pious sentiments in the populace (Garibbo 2000: 67), the procession features medieval and Renaissance costumes as well as the portacristi: members of Catholic confraternities who carry large and extremely heavy ancient crosses decorated with a profusion of silver leaves. Yet Via San Lorenzo is also an occasional route for protesters, who saturate it with their chants, their whistles, and their banners as they march from one end to the other to ensure an adequate outreach to their grievances. Overall, many of Genoa’s renovated and largely pedestrianized downtown areas do not cater exclusively to middle- to upper-class individuals keen on consuming the city (Zukin 1996). Instead, they provide a vibrant arena that condenses the three historically predominant forms of the Italian piazza—the religious plaza, the political space, and the market place (Isnenghi 2004, in Dines 2012: 108)—to accommodate a plethora of urban publics (Gazzola 2013).
Figure 3. Catholic procession in San Lorenzo. Photo by author.
GeNova—The New Genoa
In the years that immediately preceded the Group of Eight summit of 2001, Genoa’s downtown underwent large-scale renovations meant to valorize its historical heritage and increase its visitability; for many Genoese, this meant an opportunity to start small businesses that would earn them a living in the face of consistently high unemployment rates. Their hopes, however, were to be met only partially. The G8 summit, to which I devote a chapter in this book, turned its promise of showcasing the new Genoa to international audiences into a globally visible display of state repression. Shocked by what had happened under their eyes, many a Genoese resented how their city had been hijacked from them by a political performance, reduced to a battlefield, and then memorialized as nothing else but a dramatic event. Yet even in the aftermath of this disaster, many Genoese still had something to be hopeful for: namely the promise that, upon becoming Capital of European Culture for all of 2004, Genoa would conquer its own place in the sun as part of Italy’s profitable tourist circuit. Even the 7.5 percent demographic increment reported between 2001 and 2005 pointed to an increased confidence among this city’s residents, many of whom, instead of migrating, stayed on and started families (Arvati n.d.: 29).
The year 2004 was a special time for many Genoese, whose legendary propensity toward pessimism and despondency was, yet again, replaced by hopefulness. As indicated by its GeNova (New Genoa) logo, the city that welcomed visitors that year had changed remarkably. A considerable injection of national and EU funds helped establish a beautified cityscape that hosted a wide assortment of festivals, symposia, events, and exhibitions on topics ranging from ancient history to modernity, from art to folklore, from science and technology to industry, and from migrations to sports. By the summer of 2004, tourist flows had grown considerably; the number of museum visitors had increased from 163,000 in 1999 to 410,000 (Hillman 2008: 312), and at all times of the day groups of visitors could be spotted striding through Genoa’s downtown, its centro storico, and the Porto Antico. Revenues for local businesses went up, and the excitement among the residents was palpable. More than once, while wandering about in areas of the centro storico that had previously been off the beaten track, I was stopped by elderly residents who, taking me for a tourist, proudly volunteered directions to freshly renovated historical landmarks. Some of these were in the very same area where, in the late 1970s, locals had pelted my schoolmates with stones during an art history field trip.
While the success of Genoa’s tenure as Capital of European Culture had many hope for the best, the hardship was not over. The following year, Genoa experienced a sharp decline in tourist presences and revenues; with no great event in sight, hope dwindled. Many started wondering if anything would ever change after all. In 2002 the introduction of the Euro, the unified European currency, had brought about a 100 percent price hike that took place almost overnight: due to speculations that went unchecked, all of a sudden what had previously cost 1,000 lire was worth one euro—that is, about 2,000 lire. Unfortunately, salaries, pensions, and savings remained unchanged. If the maneuver reduced Italy’s public debt by half, it also delivered a formidable blow to the financial stability and the well-being of Italy’s middle and working classes. To make things worse, the financial crisis that had begun in the United States in 2008 soon spread to Italy; this country’s large public debt, its lack of growth, and the limited credibility of its government turned the crisis into a full-fledged recession that affected already vulnerable Genoa even more than other Northern cities. For years, ever since the onset of the recession, hardly a week went by without a protest taking place in downtown Genoa. In 2011, massive layoffs were announced by Fincantieri, Genoa’s foremost shipyard. Months of convulsive street protests ensued, during which workers placed a large excavator in front of the prefecture with the implicit threat they would launch it against the sixteenth-century building if their grievances were not to be heard. In 2013, employees of the local public transportation company went on a five-day strike against the privatization of their firm, thus bringing the whole city to a standstill. In the meantime, the escalation of property taxes (IMU) meant to help stem the public debt brought about a steep increase in rents for already struggling small business owners, estimated in the range of 70.1 percent for centro storico properties and 48.1 percent for the rest of the city.13 Combined with the difficulty in obtaining credit and the collapse of consumer spending at the hands of a citizenry bogged down by high unemployment rates, low salaries, and record high taxation (Guano 2010a), these rent hikes caused many a small business to close, thus contributing to the impoverishment of a large section of the local middle class that had been a protagonist of Genoa’s hopefulness.
The Uneven Distribution of Hope
Keen on escaping their predicament through strategies that ranged from installing a tiny dehors in front of one’s hole-in-the-wall coffee shop to taking advantage of a municipality’s subsidized loans by opening a small business for selling one’s own handmade crafts, local small business owners had contributed with their poiesis to making the city from the bottom up (Calhoun, Sennett, and Shapira 2013: 197). Indeed, the promise of progress and the capitalist mobilization of hope brought about by affective urbanism (Anderson and Fenton 2008; Lashaw 2008) may, under certain circumstances, foster the rise of creative classes (Florida 2012 [2002]) endowed at the very least with cultural and social capital; however, processes of urban revitalization also bring about a deepening of existing inequalities.
