Padova
The padova wall

Here goes the story. In the street via Anelli in Padova, the municipal authorities started building new skyscrapers. They were to include student apartments and some leisure facilities. The buildings, however, were not finished. The students actually never lived there. Instead, prostitutes settled in the small skyscraper flats. Immediately, the price of the apartments fell. Consequence: the housing became accessible to immigrants (most of them being illegal in the country). Then, via Anelli turned into criminal paradise - and a threat for the people living in the neighborhood. They were spending their nights informing the police about riots, shootings and robberies. They decided to rebel.
Since the 9th August 2006, there is a metal wall in via Anelli. It is 80 meters long and 3 meters high. The traffic around the wall is forbidden. You can exit and enter only through two police guarded check-points. The five skyscrapers of via Anelli have really become a ghetto. For making the surveillance of the situation, that was no longer controllable,easier, the city authorities began to move people out of the zone. Only two of the five buildings are inhabited now. The entrances of the three others have been walled in.
Interestingly enough, the criminal activity of the zone, that was based mainly on drug deals and prostitution, simply moved to another location in the city the year after the construction of the wall. Which is not to the convenience of the population of the neighborhood: people living around via Manara and via Confalonieri have already asked for their own wall. The most far-sighted have even suggested that a wall be built in Padova to separate the zones where the immigrants live from those where the real Padova inhabitants live. Doesn’t it ring a bell?