Resilience in a Town Plagued By Heavy Industry Presence: The Case of Taranto

In this paper we illustrate an extensive social survey (about 1.200 questionnaires) that we are conducting  in these months in the Taranto area. The purpose of the research is to know how much people know about issues related to sustainability in a place plagued by heavy industry presence having a strong environmental impact. The research question is also about what type of resilience has the population, with reference to the variables proposed by Robert Merton’s structural-functional theory of deviance and anomie.

This work is part of a bigger project of the Italian Government aiming at environment reclaiming and regeneration. The promotion and implementation of patterns with the purpose of building the type of development that is really sustainable and responsible, are proportionally efficient to citizens’ involvement. This level of empowerment is more important where environment emergencies are evident and even more so in those places where these are accompanied by a clear social, economic, labour, educational and value crisis. The city of Taranto is undoubtedly a good example of an emergency situation: it is always more clear that there is an urgent need for the implementation of actions aimed at, on the one hand, cleaning air, water and soil and, on the other hand, at social rehabilitation.