Background ====
Post-war period and Palermo housing emergency ==== The
bombing of Palermo in the
Second World War razed to the ground much of its city centre, causing a total of 227,149 displaced persons compared to the mere 400,000 inhabitants that the city had at the outbreak of the conflict (from which 2,123 officially registered civilian casualties must be subtracted, even if the number could be much higher given the unreliability of the data collected during the war by the
fascist authorities). According to statistical surveys promoted by the
AMGOT - the
Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories installed in Sicily after its
conquest in 1943 - more than half of the 285,000 residential buildings existing in Palermo in 1940 were destroyed or made uninhabitable, making it one of the most affected cities by the Anglo-American strategy of
carpet bombing during the
Italian campaign. In the post-war period, the housing shortage crisis caused by wartime destruction was amplified by demographic growth and the significant rural exodus to the city. The same problem affected the entire Italian territory; according to the Census of 1951, the country could provide only 241 dwellings for each 1,000 inhabitants, less housing per person than any country in
Western Europe except
West Germany and the
Netherlands. To deal with the Palermo housing emergency, starting in the 1950s the city council promoted the construction of entire new districts in what were once peripheral areas compared to the old centre. However, the urban expansion was marked by the infiltration of
Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) into the
public administration; mafia clans managed to enter the Sicilian bureaucratic machine for the first time between 1943 and 1945, by exploiting the administrative needs of the Anglo-American military government, and in the following decades they continued to sabotage the political life of the island to increase their power (the race for political representation by mafia families was the main cause of the
First Mafia War fought between 1962 and 1963).
The Mafia's building speculation During the
Italian economic miracle (1950s – 1960s), traditional mafias (the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the
Campanian Camorra, the
Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, and other Italian regional mafias), until then characterized by a parasitic relationship with the companies operating in their territory (e.g. through the imposition of
protection money), became commercial enterprises themselves through infiltration of public procurement system and the illicit management of contracts. This activity led the clans to accumulate an enormous amount of wealth and to intensify their dominion over certain areas. Starting from 1948, the Sicilian Mafia chose to support the
Christian Democracy party, which won the Palermo municipal elections in 1958 and 1965 thanks above all to corruption and the subjugation of the weakest social classes. Politicians and mafiosi
Salvo Lima and
Vito Ciancimino, respectively mayor and assessor for public works of the elected council, allowed Cosa Nostra and the construction companies linked to it to profit from the need to expand the building surface of the city. Mafia speculation on
planning permissions between the 1950s and the 1970s altered the urban landscape forever, and also damaged the city's environmental and historical heritage; this event took the name of
Sack of Palermo. In this context, tons of concrete were poured into rich countryside areas in order to build new neighborhoods, often destroying or reducing the aristocratic resorts built in the 18th century, other noticeable buildings, and even naturalistic sites.
The public housing neighborhoods In 1949 the
Italian government approved the first national plan for working class housing, the INA-Casa Plan conceived by the Minister of Labor
Amintore Fanfani, which had at its disposal the funds managed by a specific organisation of the
National Insurance Institute. The project aimed to uplift the classes most impoverished by the war, and in the first seven years it created about 355,000 homes in over 5,000 Italian municipalities (or
comuni). The INA-Casa Plan was soon joined by numerous other social housing projects promoted by various institutes. One of these was the Autonomous Institute of Public Housing or IACP (Italian:
Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari), with branches in the main Italian cities. In Palermo, the large investments in public housing promoted by the central government were in many cases intercepted by the mafia, which, thanks to the political support it enjoyed at the time through institutional infiltration and corruption, already had decision-making power over the building permissions.
Founding of the ZEN district The ZEN district project was approved in 1966, as part of a public housing plan presented by the IACP Palermo office. The city council agreed to place the new neighborhood in the center of Hills Plain (Italian:
Piana dei Colli), a vast valley in the northernmost area of Palermo, which until then had represented one of the most flourishing countrysides in the entire Palermo area.
ZEN 2 The
1968 Belice earthquake increased the housing emergency in Palermo, as a tragic number of residential areas throughout western Sicily collapsed or were severely damaged by the seismic sequence; 4 towns in the
Belice Valley were destroyed completely, 4 others had 70 to 80% of their buildings gutted, and 6 others suffered extensive damage, for a total amount of 14 towns devastated by the natural disaster and about 100,000 displaced people. This intensified the already underway exodus process from rural areas to the regional capital city. To provide enough dwellings for the working class, the IACP Palermo office promoted the expansion of the ZEN neighborhood through a competition announcement, which was won by the architect
Vittorio Gregotti,
Neo-Avant Guarde exponent from
Novara, in 1969. He designed the new housing complex, later renamed ZEN 2, with the collaboration of other architects and urban planners, namely
Franco Purini, Salvatore Bisogni, Franco Amoroso, and Hiromichi Matsui. The project, after having aroused considerable interest within the national and international architectural debate, was subjected to several variations that betrayed the intentions of the designers, never reaching complete realization. The difficulties of this large peripheral area are attributable to the following causes; the exclusion of the design group in the executive phase of the construction site, the failure to create services, equipment, and for a long time also primary urbanization works, as well as the illegal occupation of a good part of the housing. Identified as a bad example of a "dormitory neighborhood", it is classified as a place where crime, illegal building and degradation coexist. Furthermore, it is isolated from the context that surrounds it, not only ideally but also physically, due to the road artery that circumscribes its entire edge.
ZEN today While ZEN 1 developed as one of the many peripheral working-class neighborhoods, ZEN 2 is still marked today by significant phenomena of urban and social degradation, as well as by the presence of organized crime, and is considered one of the residential areas with the most critical conditions in Palermo. Despite the fight against criminal activities in the neighborhood conducted over time by the municipal administration, several police investigations have revealed how ZEN 2 is still a nerve centre for the Sicilian Mafia, which continues to hinder the presence of State institutions in the area through both coercion of residents and exploitation of their state of need. In the reports carried out by law enforcement agencies, the new clans have been described as more exuberant and out of control, as evidenced by some incidents of gang warfare that occurred in broad daylight in the ZEN neighborhood. They also planned robberies of armored vehicles and petrol stations with automatic firearms and plastic explosives. Home occupation continues to be a major concern in ZEN 2; data collected up to 2017 by the municipal administration and associations in the area reported that more than 8,000 residents were still occupying properties without authorization. The city council has authorized clearing operations on several occasions, but the problem has never found a definitive solution due to multiple factors, including humanitarian issues. Another critical aspect of ZEN 2 still today is the high amount of thefts of running water and electric current. Squatters, who often occupy apartments that were never completed and therefore do not have functioning plumbing and electrical systems, make illegal connections to public networks to ensure their access to water and electricity. In most cases, illegal energy management has been linked to mafia clans. In 2018, the
Sicilian Regional Assembly granted those who occupied a public apartment by the end of the previous year the possibility of regularizing their position. The measure affected approximately 3,700 families. In 2025, the neighborhood returned to the news following the massacre committed by a group of young residents, who killed three young people and wounded two others with numerous gunshots while they were in the town of
Monreale, on the border of Palermo, on the night between April 26th and 27th. The first two culprits identified by police, aged 18 and 19, refused to provide details about their accomplices and the origin of the guns they used. A third 19-year-old culprit has been identified after days of investigation, however the murder weapons were never delivered nor found by the police. According to reconstructions, the shooters attacked the victims after having provoked them for trivial reasons, not hesitating to open fire even though the place was full of people due to the
patronal festival, and eyewitnesses also reported that they were cheering after killing their targets. The event has shaken public opinion and has once again brought to light the culture of violence and code of silence that still exists today in the poorest strata of ZEN. == Demography ==