ZEN (Palermo)

ZEN, acronym for Zona Espansione Nord ("North Expansion Area"), is a social housing district in the northern outskirts of Palermo, in the autonomous region of Sicily, Southern Italy. It is included in the 7th municipal division of the city. It was renamed San Filippo Neri ("Saint Philip Neri") in 1997.

The district is one of the last public housing neighborhoods built to deal with the housing emergency that Palermo was facing after World War II, during which much of the city center had been destroyed or severely damaged by bombings. It is divided in two residential areas with different building characteristics, called ZEN 1 and ZEN 2. The latter, designed by the architect Vittorio Gregotti in 1969, is infamously known for the political and social events that made it a symbol of urban decay. It is often associated with numerous low-income housing blocks built in Italy between the 60s and 80s, like Scampia in Naples or Quarto Oggiaro in Milan.

In the 70s, due to bureaucratic delays in assigning homes and political carelessness, the vast majority of houses under construction at ZEN 2 were occupied with the complicity of the Sicilian Mafia, who in actual fact exploited the poverty of the weakest social classes to take control of the area. The squatting phenomenon, which still affects the neighborhood today and is still controlled by mafia clans (or families), stopped the construction of many infrastructure works. ZEN 2 has remained an economically deprived area ever since.

Over time, the Sicilian Mafia took advantage of the isolation and degradation of the area for drug and firearms trafficking, the coordination of racketeering, as well as to hide fugitives from the authorities. For this reason, it began to be considered one of the main Mafia strongholds in the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The Italian law enforcement still considers it a hot zone for anti-drug and anti-racketeering operations.

ZEN has frequently been depicted by the media as one of the worst neighborhoods in the country for quality of life and has been repeatedly associated with images of social decay. To this day, despite the work of numerous associations for its redevelopment, the district lacks adequate infrastructure and continues to present social problems due to the extreme marginalization from the rest of the city territory. For this reason, in 2015 the architect Massimiliano Fuksas proposed its demolition, together with other similar blocks in Italy.

Italian director Marco Risi used ZEN as the setting for his 1990 drama film Ragazzi fuori (Boys on the Outside), which depicted the social problems and lack of opportunities faced by the unemployed youth of ZEN.