![How sad to witness the decline of a city How sad to witness the decline of a city](https://media.famigliacristiana.it/2024/5/generica-621986large_3416038.jpg)
A nice vocabulary, to begin with, under the heading “city”. It is an agglomeration of buildings, houses and factories, arranged in a certain order. It’s not enough: there must be services, transport, schools, hospitals, churches, everything needed to make citizens’ lives dignified. Who, to be such, must be able to express a culture, an idea of themselves and their community. I would add: a network of ties and relationships, a fundamental mutual solidarity. And more.
But it is enough to exclude that the city is only made of walls, bricks, concrete, bridges, tunnels, dams; and to affirm that those who govern it must be aware of all this and cannot limit themselves to building materially. The city has its own history, a feeling of its present and an idea of the future. It holds traditions and knows how to renew itself. However, it can get lost and go through seasons of decline, which mean a decline in the life of the inhabitants, even unknowingly deprived of the full status of citizens. Here health care is worsening, poverty and inequality are increasing; meeting places are reduced, shop signs go out, to the point of sharply reducing the birth rate, increasing the flight of young people, exacerbating the loneliness of the old. The best people remain on the sidelines, the mediocre ones come to the fore, and then the unscrupulous, the fixers, the corrupt. We almost forget the times of civil and social fervor, we bend towards resignation. Inhabitants, residents, no longer citizens, perhaps capable of managing individually, the women, the men, the few young people slowly withdraw. But there is still time, some time, before skills, experiences and activities that are still very much alive are lost. There is still much, in industries, in universities, in research, in tourism, in transport, that survives and is projected into the future. So it can be done, associations and communities of young people don’t give up. Words matter: we often say “yet”, and that’s it. An impulse can arise from this, the courageous urgency of finding ourselves fully returned to the rank of citizens, courageous, generous, welcoming; administered and represented worthily. But we need to start again, soon, together.