Motor Show i tempi della crisi a Bologna times of crisis, the end of a myth
The Chinese and Indian cars in Bologna
When, a few months ago, as the Study Group over Emilia Romagna Bologna where we wrote the book goes the old lady? (Ed. Papers counterparts), our attention was directed to changes in the urban fabric of the city and productive. Noted that the changes described could be the acceleration due to the processes of crisis. The socio-economic changes of territory were obviously pre-crisis, but broadening the scope for change.
A central element in our analysis was the duration of the crisis and temporal consequences. Today we are witnessing a slow but steady decline in production and urban development.
Just scroll through the local newspapers to follow daily different industrial companies in crisis and the difficulty of the services sector to take on jobs the mass of workers laid off by the industry.
What seems to be more and more production is a niche at the expense of large-scale production. This obviously is not synonymous with health, being niche is not only related to a given manufactured product but is the size of that industrial system. We
companies in crisis, which had invested in recent years innovation and production organization Labour, which were also affected by the effects of their crisis. Fini Compressors Predosa Zola was one of the first companies to introduce Kaizen to Bologna, then changed by the industrial system of the German Porsche. Kaizen is an organization of labor based on the dead end of time, as regards the operations of factory work and in parallel with the end of downtime compared to inventories. That was almost ten years ago. Today the image of Fini Compressors is one of a group of workers who asked not to be dead labor.
The crisis brings with it an interrelationship between the urban and productive. We think the recent events linked to the Bologna fair system. Around
at Bologna was built and is building a new urban belt and service, is under completion, the new "Gateway to Europe via Stalingrad, and more generally we see the modification of entire urban areas on the territory of Bologna as the "Bertalia-Lazzaretto and the new residential area" Trilogy "in place of the former market area behind the station of Bologna.
This new volumes of cement, brick and iron, but do not stop the current processes of crisis, indeed in many ways become the emblem of this stagnation. The crisis of trade and the closure of many businesses, within the new complex cities are a confirmation of all this, just think of the turnover of shops in the new complex "Minganti" in via Ferrarese ol'immediata closure of some activities at the headquarters of the new municipality.
The Exhibition Centre, which is already affected in the last few years by the current economic turmoil, now in danger of losing, or at best to see greatly reduced his jewel inside: the Motor Show.
On the one hand we see the withdrawal of most of the car that cut on the promotion of trade fairs, overwhelmingly invested in a general crisis of the production system tied to the automotive sector. The most important car of the western economy have decided not to participate, including the Fiat. Some analysts speak only of the presence of Chinese and Indian car company, this figure would have a prominent historical change, which until a few years ago would have been considered impossible. If the crisis sweeping the globe is important to observe that this produces a different effect in Western economies (Europe, Japan and USA) compared to that of emerging continents (Asia and South America). Even on the "symbolic" as we see a nation considered the "backyard" of the U.S., has been able to get the management of the next Olympics.
other hand we see a management mechanism fair and the service system connected to it unable to develop a public realm where private interests and speculators have accelerated the crisis. In this sense, are the major responsibilities of local and regional administrations that have followed in recent years, including the present one.
on the possible passage of the fair from Bologna to Milan, this does not change the mechanism described above in general terms. It seems more a clumsy attempt to shift the problem in a revival of Mussolini's planes (note 1)
Until a few months ago, entire sections of the left side of this city saw the Motor Show as a Moloch, as the symbol of evil, vulgar glorification market and production of two and four wheels. It 's interesting to note that the economic crisis now is to scale this "circus." And it is on the effects of economic crisis and the timing of this today to play the understanding of this and related proposals for a broken left adequate for this step.
ethical and moral criticism to the current productive assets, social and urban territory, is not only toothless, but was crushed in the mechanisms of the crisis.
As shown in our investigation on the socio-economic changes started in Bologna, the timing of the crisis will be central to the effects of this on popular bands and their changes planning and production.
plants such as local governments have not yet understood the scope of this structural crisis, and many of the founding myths of the past 20 years of relative prosperity are to break.
The purpose of our study and the next job is not to find immediate solutions and new perspectives. Yet even now we do not think that answers are definitely to be found in neo-pauperism of green capitalism, as it offers a vision of this short-sighted and simplistic, and serves only to ensure that those already destroyed the planet has plenty of, and in our small city, to secure a bit 'of oxygen for a new season. The myths of globalization, as well as those localism-Community are now overtaken by the contradictions brought by the current processes of crisis.
task forces will intervene in the political and social contradictions, we want to help in finding a key to effective application of this.
over Emilia Romagna Study Group
of political and class-Bologna
http://politicaeclasse.blogspot.com/
Notes 1 The Fascist regime, to overcome the inability of production of war planes, and not to demoralize the population, moving the same number of warplanes in military trade shows, so 20 aircraft were multiplied by ten or twenty at a time in a week. This is not an urban legend, but was told directly by the workers of Caproni (Reggio) in Reggio Emilia who built these warplanes. During the twenty years the same thing happened with other products, like cattle in the various trade fairs.
