Roads invaded by wild car parks, ignored pedestrians, impracticable sidewalks: urban incivility grows while the municipalities collect millions in fines but offer less and less services. An appeal for compliance with the rules and the rebirth of civil life in our cities.
I know, there are more serious problems: the war in Ukraine, for example. The one in progress in Gaza for a year and a half. And then the duties, the work, the low salaries, the poverty rate, the waiting lists for a visit to the hospital, etc. If desired, you make a list that no longer ends. But allow me to continue my small battle against urban degradation, the increase in city incivilitythe disappearance of good education.
On these pages a few months ago I criticized the owners of dogs who do not collect the dejections of their four -legged friends. I didn’t have it with the Labrador, the German shepherds and poodes: wonderful quadrupeds. I had it with those who dirty the sidewalks without taking care to clean them. I keep not understanding why, if you love an animal, you don’t deal with avoiding discomfort for pedestrians. In the same way, I wonder why there are motorists who cannot park their car without hindering others. Also in this case they are not against the use of four wheels.
I like cars and, unlike the latest generation type environmentalistsdo not consider them to be the cause of any worsening of the air in the metropolis, believing that much more do the old heating systems. Nor do I hate the SUVs, like certain green, who go around deflating the tires of large -size vehicles, believing that they consume and pollute too much. However, although he has no prejudice against the machines, I wonder why there are motorists who park everywhere, even where it would be prohibited. I don’t just talk about the seats reserved for people with a handicap, whose occupation deserve drastic measures, such as removal and seizure. I think of those cars parked in the middle of the road, or on the pedestrian crossings, on the sidewalks, on the slides that serve the people in a wheelchair.
Every now and then, in my urban walks, I observe how the way of stopping is changing. Once, the majority of people resigned themselves to endless laps to find a place. Now not. Now the habit of putting the car in the middle of the road, on the line line, between one lane and the other, making the transit from one and on the other side is invaded. A truck, for example firefighters, obviously would not be able to pass.
When it does not park in the middle of the street, there are those who in pairing to put their vehicle on the sidewalkforcing pedestrians to real slalom, or side of the outdoors sprouted after Covid wherever there are bars and restaurants, also in this case with a reduction in the roadway. As if that were not enough, there are those who, in order not to pay a car park or to make a few hundred meters on foot, leave the car on the pedestrian crossings or on the crossings for disabled people, with total carelessness of the neighbor.
I repeat: there is worse, like war and the impossibility of obtaining care quickly. But the chaos that register in the city streets every day seems to me the signal of a slow decay that makes our streets seem similar to those of a Middle Eastern country, where the rules do not exist and pedestrians are forced to dodge the cars or to crawl between one and the other. The Municipalities have long given the rules respecting the rules, preferring to let the cameras do in the ZTL: with the minimum of commitment, the maximum of the collections is obtained. In Milanin 2024, the revenues exceeded 200 million euros, much for the access in Area C and Area B, and for the current year, fines for 275 million were budget. Just to understand, in a short time the figure has almost tripled, with annual increases close to 40 percent. In Rome, the sums for automotive infringements touch 150 million and to Florence exceed 60, with numbers obviously growing: in the capital of 5 percent, in the Tuscan capital of 14.
All this while the patrols of the police in the street decrease. And then I wonder: it is okay to pay taxes and also fines, but the relationship between public administration and citizen is based on a pact that should provide services in exchange for what is paid. Instead, now, the rates are released from what the Municipality delivers.
As for the urban cleanness: you pay but the retreat of the garbage is not guaranteed. The day will come when the simple citizen will be able to claim his own pedestrian, motorist and even simple Italian rights that must take charge of the Tari every year? Will the day come when you can court an inefficient mayor, without having to wait to judge him in the urn? I believe that this would contribute to making administrations more attentive to people’s needs, and in citizens would return some trust, feeling respected.
