ITALY – La Dolce Vita

ABC

July 2001

With a remarkable push to work less in an increasingly competitive world, France has to date been the spiritual home of the resistance of globalisation. Just say Non! to one homogenised world.

Now, over the border the Italians are joining in. As the world speeds up, they're slowing down, that way they've got a better chance of rediscovering a cherished national pursuit - the good life.

Chris Clark and the villages pulling down the shutters on time and a tearaway outside world.

Positano beach scenes

Clark: Think of Italy and think of pleasure. The weather, the food, the wine, the music, yes, the music.

02:07

Music

Clark: Overly romantic notions of all things Italian are hardly new, and however rose-coloured our impressions might be, you don't have to look far to see Italians enjoying life – but things are not always as they seem.

02:26

Map

Music

02:47

Rome traffic

Clark: La Dolce Vita remains as much aspiration as reality because of much of the real Italy verges on the unlivable. Take Rome, many Romans would happily leave it.

03:01

A city where the car rules and where crossing the road is a test of faith.

03:15

Rome is too crowded, too noisy, just too plain fast, which is why some Italians have begun a campaign to make the pace of life in their towns and cities just a little bit slower.

03:23

Clark to camera

Clark: The slow cities idea follows directly in the footsteps of slow food, a sort of gastronomic back to basics movement which began in Italy 15 years ago. Whereas slow food makes a very direct appeal to the inner Italian, slow cities is a slightly broader concept and it taps into a widespread belief that when it comes to actually living the good life, Italy has lost the plot.

03:39

Montefalco

Music

04:07

Clark: But Montefalco in Umbria was a slow city long before the term was coined.

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Gianpiero

Gianpiero: In Italy, unfortunately, for too long we've paid very little attention to our heritage.

04:26

Montefalco

Clark: Montefalco is gloriously peaceful. You can hear the silence.

04:44

Music

Clark: There are no cars for most of the day, but it's much more than that. In Montefalco you have to get permission to do just about anything. Want a television aerial then you'll need planning approval, want a window box, it's the same deal. All of this is aimed at making sure Montefalco retains its picture postcard status.

Music

Pietro with Gianpiero

Clark: This is no joke as Pietro Fiordelmondo discovered to his cost. He put the wrong window frames in his store. Gianpiero Bea who runs the city planning office, fined him and told him to fix it. All up, it's cost a couple of million lire, two thousand odd dollars. Pietro's furious.

05:08

Pietro

Pietro: I'm fed up with it. If you do this to me, I'll sell the lot. I don't give a shit.

05:27

Gianpiero

Gianpiero: He was meant to do the job in timber but when we inspected it he hadn't done it properly so we fined him and made him put it right.

05:37

Montefalco plaza

Clark: In Montefalco, Gianpiero Bea and the council have used their planning laws to shape the sort of town they want. No traffic means peace and quiet, it also means no McDonalds, no supermarket, encouraging people to buy local.

05:53

Gianpiero: In the old city centre you can't have a supermarket but it's great to be able to buy

06:11

Gianpiero

the salami from Norcia and the handmade ham from Montefalco… something unique that you wouldn't get in the supermarket.

06:18

Tourists on street

Clark: Preserving the old buildings and keeping cars out has brought tourists, prosperity and a rare quality of life.

06:38

Gianpiero: Preserving the cultural heritage of the town is our main objective here.

06:47

Gianpiero

As a side effect, you get more tourists but that's not why we did it.

06:58

Religious parade

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07:07

Clark: Tradition, heritage, these are words which come up time and time again when discussing slow cities, and in Montefalco it actually means something to the people who live here. Hundreds turn out for the annual saint's day procession

07:19

So does Montefalco belong to the past or to the future?

07:41

Music

Gianpiero

Gianpiero: Montefalco and this part of Umbria live in the new economy with the internet – but there are very strong traditions here which are very important. What we're trying to do is live with both.

07:50

Vineyard

Birdsong

08:16

Clark: Much of Italy has escaped ruinous development. The freeways didn't come to the vineyards of Chianti. What seemed a disaster at the time, is now thought a blessing.

Clark: So, what exactly does the wine of Chianti have to do with slow cities? Well the answer is everything.

08:34

Paolo

Paolo: Wine is culture. What's in the bottle is more than just the red liquid – there's the story of the region, the people, the beauty of the countryside, the colours, everything. It's the history of the world.

08:44

Clark and Paolo in cellar

Clark: Paolo Saturnini is Mayor of Greve in Chianti and the founder of the slow cities movement. Greve is a town in transition.

09:01

Paolo: Where there's still genuine quality of life we want to stop it falling victim to the globalisation of economics and culture – though that's a real David and Goliath struggle.

09:09

Bell

Bells ringing

09:31

Greve

Clark: Greve is popular with tourists, too popular. The town square is clogged with traffic. You can't get a park so Mayor Saturnini has taken to declaring car-free days.

09:39

And when he does, the transformation is instantaneous and stunning. Greve reveals its charms easily.

09:55

Clark: But how is a popularly elected mayor going to hang on to his job if he starts telling people they can't park their cars in the street or paint their houses purple?

Paolo: If local people don't get involved you can't achieve anything. I'm talking about everything from garbage… traffic… pollution… noise. People have to change their behaviour because laws on their own are not enough.

10:18

Procession in Greve

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10:38

Clark: What, though, does slow cities mean to the town that doesn't want to ban cars or become just another tourist trap?

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Clark: In the little town of Tolfa, just a couple of hours outside Rome, they're grappling with this very problem. They're rather proud of their horses down this way. It's cattle country. The cowboys are the genuine article.

10:58

Pietro

Pietro: I wouldn't want us to be so taken up with the slow cities idea that we think of Tolfa as just a tourist attraction. We should concentrate on the real culture that's behind the town. We're not in it for the publicity.

11:16

Clark: The mayor, Pietro Lucidi, likes Tolfa pretty much the way it is. He doesn't want their small rodeo to become some sort of tourist circus.

11:39

Pietro: Instead of building big hotels which would have changed Tolfa's character we’ve concentrated on our history and converted the stables – a central part of the town's history – into weekend accommodation… for weekend tourism.

11:50

Tolfa streets

Clark: Tolfa is a town that's neither slow nor fast. It's sort of resting. If slow cities is to really work, then it needs to save towns like Tolfa from a lingering death.

12:20

Adolfo: We could create satisfying work for people here --

12:32

Adolfo

there are truffles… there's hunting – people could pay to hunt. Others could breed pigs. Then you need people to see all these products. It could be a solution for this town which will otherwise die.

12:40

Adolfo's shop

Clark: This is the home of the meanest pork sausage in Tolfa.

13:02

Adolfo Sgriscia's shop is a shrine to the pig.

13:08

Adolfo: Our products have a different taste because we work the old-fashioned way. The pigs eat lots of different things – chestnuts… maize… fruit and vegetables… scraps from shops.

13:15

Woman cooking meat

Clark: Adolfo's family has been doing this for a long while but their kind of business is an endangered species in the age of the supermarket.

13:40

Adolfo's free range approach also means his hams and sausages cost more and because they don't meet Europe-wide regulations, he can't export them.

Adolfo: I can see that we need European-wide regulations so things are done properly. But regulators don't spend their day dealing with the public. They don't understand the consumer. They're interested in marketing and multi-national companies, not what the public wants.

13:59

Procession

Music

14:36

Clark: Slow cities means different things for different places. Montefalco's no traffic policy means no supermarket and a better chance for smaller shops specialising in local products.

14:50

Music

Clark: And when it's time to dress up, which in Montefalco seems to be a daily affair, you can at least walk the streets in peace.

15:11

Gianpiero's building inspections won't win him a popularity contest but it's given Montefalco a tourist industry without turning it into toy-town.

15:21

Gianpiero

Gianpiero: Policies like slow food and slow cities actually result in a kind of fast politics to directly represent people's interests. It means faster implementation and politics which is closer to the people in contrast to the old system.

15:31

Paolo on street

Paolo: The town hall is 500 years old and the piazza goes back five thousand years.

15:58

Clark: For Paolo Saturnini slow cities is a chance to transform not just his own town of Greve, but the way many Italians live.

Paolo: It's the way people live in their town and their relationship with all levels of government. It's a wider concept, that starts with food and wine but touches every aspect of people's lives.

16:17

Vineyards

Music

16:37

Clark to camera

Clark: At its simplest level of course, slow cities like slow food is about the ordinary, everyday quality of life, but it's also a rallying point for issues ranging from globalisation to Italy's recent political failures. Millions and millions of tourists come to this country every year to marvel at its glorious history. The challenge for Italians of course is to try to create some sort of future which does justice to that heritage.

16:49

And since slow cities really brings together the twin Italian passions of food and politics, there's sure to be some enthusiasm for the task.

17:15

Music

Credits:

Reporter: Chris Clark

Camera: Geoff Clegg

Sound: Kate Graham

Editor: Garth Thomas