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VICENZA AND ITS DISTRICTS

Vicenza changed its aspect quite a lot between 1957 and 1980. Residential and working-class suburbs stretched out along the areas outside the medieval city walls, providing a rather good property asset. Some of the neighbouring villages have been turned into dormitory towns, in so pushing Vicenza towards the population of 200.000 inhabitants. Anyway its actual population is still about 110.000 people, a population burdened by heavy traffic problems after a 20% increase in 5 years. (Il Giornale di Vicenza. Dec, 23, 2001).

In Italy 70% families own the house they live in. There are steady building improvement schemes, which create new problems like migration from the centre to the outskirts, so that the old town is now flourishing with banks, offices and coffee bars, while only a few families still live there. In Vicenza the cost of rents became very high after the American Headquarters settled there in the 1960s and the University opened new faculties in the 1990s.

Nowadays in Vicenza there is also the problem of a large number of Eastern and coloured immigrants who are living in uninhabited and desolate buildings. Since home improvements require a permission from the Civil Service and are ruled by very strict laws, the needy, the old, the poor, the weak are severely penalized in this respect. In this perspective, ATER, a new social territorial structure for residential housing, has lately been set up in order to control prices and favour improvements in popular buildings.

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