Dispossession of rights through development policies: inequalities in Siracusa from industrialization to new urban paradises

Siracusa and its area present a dual economic vocation: industrial, with its petrochemical pole, and as a tourist resort with its astounding archaeological heritage. My research provides an economic account of the fractures and inequalities inside society, traced in an ongoing dialogue with other social scientists. Those fractures inside society reveal different forms of inequality between a small élite and the large majority of the population (inequalities of opportunities, of political agency, of entitlement to some basic goods such as health or the integrity of the natural and historical landscape – all of which are powerful ingredients for self-identity - and those minimum rights that qualify citizens for democratic life; primary education and employment). Inequalities also persist because of the dominant narrative of the development model (Escobar 1995, Akbulut et. al 2015,) which has been defined neo-colonial by social scientists (Saitta 2010, 2011, Benadusi, 2018a, 2018b, Benadusi - Ruggiero 2021) and which I interpret via an extractionist paradigm (Galeano, 1971, Cardoso and Faletto, 1979, Acosta, 2013), operating at the expense of the human and environmental resources of the locals. Disproportionate profits are earned by coalitions of interests of foreign companies and local élites with a relatively scarce distribution of benefits to the local community which bears, the burden of “development”. This article focuses on the relation between the crises of the industrial model in the 1980’s and new policies adopted in Siracusa (Ruggiero, 1995, Ruggiero - Lutri 2020). It is suggested that from the late 40’s until the recent case of urban tourism models, the same extractionist paradigm has been operating. Firstly, it will be argued that the industrialization process did not affect the unequal structures of society, specifically in the rights of participating in collective decisions regarding the destination of common goods. The transition towards the post-industrial development model will then be considered. The paper will consider cartographic evidence of land use which has no respect for the human right to landscape (European Landscape Convention 2000), or for the natural and archaeological heritage. Once again, in an atmosphere of emergency à la Klein (2007), the population is called upon to abdicate its rights to nature and landscape in exchange for new jobs (Rizza 2018). A final focus, on the controversial case of the nature Reserve of Penisola della Maddalena, is the case study chosen to describe the process of private accumulation of wealth by dispossession of human rights (the right to landscape, Harvey 2012, Ciervo-Cerreto 2020, Zanotelli – Tallè 2020).