Red Rule in Fiat City

In the baroque council chamber of Turin's city hall--known as the Sala Rossa (Red Room) because of its lavish crimson brocade--Councilman Diego Novelli last week presided over an unusual ceremony. Because he amassed a higher vote total than Turin's 79 other councilmen in recent municipal elections, Novelli won the privilege of supervising the selection of a new mayor from among them for Italy's second largest (after Milan) industrial city. The outcome was preordained. When all 80 votes had been tallied, Novelli, the nervous, chain-smoking Turin editor of the Communist newspaper L'Unita, announced: "In keeping with the requirement for an absolute majority, I hereby proclaim the elected mayor of the city of Turin to be Councilman Diego Novelli." Thus amid pomp and glitter Novelli became the Piedmont city's first Communist mayor in 25 years, and Turin became the biggest city in Western Europe (pop. 1.2 million) under Red control.

Notable Gains. Novelli's election was the most notable of the Communist gains--made largely at the expense of the Christian Democrats--in Italy's regional and municipal elections last month (TIME, June 30). Last week also, Liguria joined the three regions of Italy's longtime "Red Belt"--Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria--when a Communist-led coalition took control of the regional council. Red-dominated coalition governments are also expected to win power in the Piedmont region, Venice and possibly Naples.

The shift alarms the Christian Democrats, who fear that the Turin pattern is spreading across Italy like an oil stain and could even undermine the shaky national government's center-left coalition. Few citizens of the affected cities and regions appear to be concerned. One reason is that the new Communist officials could scarcely be more inept than the bumbling moderates they will replace. In Turin, for instance, one official of a previous Christian Democratic administration spent large sums to lay down a set of streetcar tracks; they were immediately paved over when another official declared the street one-way.

By contrast, the Communists have built up a surprisingly good record as conscientious, honest administrators in running such Red Belt towns as Ferrara, Modena, Perugia, Siena and Pisa. In keeping with Communist practice, Novelli will turn over his mayor's salary to the party and receive back a stipend equivalent to the wages of a skilled factory worker.

The most famous example of competent Communist government is Bologna (pop. 500,000), which has been party-run for 30 years. Under Mayor Renato Zangheri, 50, a onetime economics professor who last month was overwhelmingly elected to a second term, Bologna has almost become a model city. The town's historic center has been preserved by renovating housing with public funds and subsidizing rents to persuade people to live there. Draconian traffic controls ban automobiles from large sectors of the inner city; free rush-hour transit service further persuades people to leave automobiles at home. To aid working mothers, Bologna has built 300 nursery schools, which are maintained with municipal funds. "That Zangheri," says Novelli admiringly, "is a golden monster when it comes to administration."

Orderly Growth. Turin's new mayor can only hope to be equally effective in revitalizing his city. In his inaugural speech last week, Novelli called on fellow citizens of all political hues to join him in "a great experiment in urban reconstruction." It will not be an easy chore. In Bologna, growth was orderly and the population remained homogeneous. Turin, on the other hand, was barely able to cope with Italy's postwar economic miracle. As southern migrants rushed to Turin's factory jobs, the city grew by half a million people in the years between 1951 and 1971. This explosion stretched the city's facilities and services to the limit, dissolved neighborhoods, mottled the city's appearance with cheaply built, unimposing buildings and mutilated any sense of community.

The city grew haphazardly as speculators, darting through loopholes in the zoning laws, did most of the building. Classrooms are so scarce that some city schools operate on triple shifts. Traffic is so chaotic that it takes some workers five hours to get to and from their jobs. Novelli intends to streamline and reduce the municipal bureaucracy; he also wants to add 2,000 new classrooms and improve housing. Financing all this will be hard because recession hit Turin heavily. Today unemployment is up 25% from a year ago and is still rising as further cutbacks loom. Transportation will be especially difficult. The mayor wants to give streetcars and buses priority over automobiles, a heretical idea in the Detroit of Italy--Fiat is by far the city's dominant employer. Even Novelli admits that "in Turin, the automobile is like a pagan god."

Chaotic Sameness. He concedes that it is impossible to tear down all the jerry-built construction and start anew. But he hopes to "give the city back its face and character." The mayor, who still lives in the working-class quarter of Borgo San Paolo, remembers his youth: "My parents used to take me to the Piazza Sabotino for ice cream. They met their friends; I saw my schoolmates. There was a hedge row we called the Vialle dei Sederi ["Bottom Boulevard"] because of the great row of buttocks of people sitting there talking. Nowadays Piazza Sabotino looks like the track at Le Mans--no trees, no benches, just traffic and the chaotic sameness of the rest of the city." Someday Novelli, in what may be his most radical plan, also wants to expropriate idle land across the Po from Turin and convert it into a massive municipal park.

Turin's capitalists have been cautiously neutral toward the new administration. Former Christian Democratic Mayor Giovanni Porcellana, who looks forward to leading a "regenerative opposition," admits that "so far [the Communists] sound like Northern European Social Democrats." A lot of Italians will put the emphasis on that "so far."

For his part, Novelli insists that "we're not out to Bolshevize Turin." He describes himself primarily as a concerned Torinese rather than a dogmatic Marxist. "I've been to Moscow several times," he says. "With all our problems here, I'd still rather live in Turin."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.