District authorities in the system of municipal decen- tralization, known in many Italian cities as Consigli di cir- coscrizione (Cdc), have been established to make the local government closer to citizens, and to promote, at the same time, the participation of the latter in the administration of the former. [...] The set up of such district councils between the end of the ‘70s and the early ‘80s was also a move aiming to give real answers to the many questions raised by the ur- ban social movements active in the big metropolitan areas of the Country.1 This article, starting from the results of some recent studies on the experience of the decentralization process in the city of Genova (Massa 2005, 2011, 201. [...] The decentralization of power from the nation-State to the Regions, for instance, from the Regions to the cities, from the cities to their districts, has been consid- ered as an opening of the institutional system of bottom-up social pressures (Cotta et Al. [...] The kind of a relationship they decide to establish with them depends on the kind of a relationship that they decide to set with the institutions exercising real power, such as the Mayor and the City council, the Region or the State and its administrative branches. [...] With respect to relevant problems of the territory, therefore, such as for instance the building of large infrastructures, Dis- trict councils themselves can be caught between the hammer of the Municipality and the anvil of the committees, between two loyalties, one political and one related to the territory.
- Pages
- 108
- Published in
- Poland
