Palermo Mayor Roberto Lagalla tells us about the city administration’s new initiatives aimed at transforming the city into a hub of digital innovation. Between new spaces, strategic investments and collaborations with major entities, Palermo aims to become one of the leading destinations for remote work and technological innovation in the Mediterranean.
– Questa intervista fa parte del terzo numero cartaceo de IlNewyorkese: ACQUISTALO QUI
Mayor, Palermo is investing heavily in new spaces for digital innovation. Where did this initiative come from?
“The action of the new administration has focused a great deal on putting back on its feet an entity, the City of Palermo, that had several critical issues. We have worked hard to get the administration’s accounts back on track so that we can return to investing, something that had not happened for more than three years due to blocked budgets, in citizen services and infrastructure. But an administration must also look to the future, and the intention is to make the most of the city’s potential, which is considered by National Geographic to be the fifth best city in the world for south working and where you can do smart working. This is the new frontier, and this is what the new city government is investing in, also gathering the interest of large companies that want to create meeting places and that represent the change in Palermo.”
How can the city foster this change?
“The administration must make efforts to encourage and facilitate the creation of new spaces. For example, the Cantieri Culturali della Zisa, which has always been a place of culture and creativity, is now also looking at innovation, and for a few months the incubator promoted by Invitalia has been operating. This is a heritage that the administration does not want to disperse, and it is precisely at the Cantieri that a new incubator is planned to be opened with a €1 million grant. In addition, multinationals such as Italtel or Bip, which in the Sicilian capital has created the first innovation hub in southern Italy, have settled in Palermo, while last May, thanks to the collaboration between the Metropolitan City of Palermo and Invitalia, Invitalia’s desk was born in the former Palace of the Railways, with the intention of strengthening the entrepreneurial system already existing throughout the territory and support the birth and development of entrepreneurial realities. These and other factors have led Palermo, as noted in a recent study by the Tagliacarne Institute, published in Il Sole 24 Ore, to be in third place in the Italian rankings for ability to recruit digital skills. But we do not want to stop here.”
What are the upcoming projects?
“Our big goal is the creation of the Palermo City Council’s Innovation Hub inside the former Tirrenia warehouses, made available by the Port Authority. A major project on which the administration wants to invest 10 million euros. It will be a place for joint and collegial work of companies and individuals working in digital and information technologies, so that we can further strengthen that activity that is well present in Palermo, that is, of working remotely on commissions from foreign companies.”
What is the goal of these initiatives?
“In the perspective of that change of the city I have been talking about, on the one hand the goal is to make Palermo more and more the hub of digital innovation in the Mediterranean where to concentrate new companies and advanced professionalism, and on the other hand that of giving the possibility to future generations that are born and trained in our territory not to leave Palermo and Sicily, but to work from us also on behalf of foreign companies. Following this path, perhaps, one day it will be instead professionalism from other cities and other countries that will want to move to Palermo to work.”
And perhaps someone will be able to return from the United States and New York, where there is a large Italian community with Sicilian origins.
“An extraordinary community that I had the opportunity to meet recently, when I was in New York last April. On that occasion I was in the United States to promote the 400th edition of the Festino di Santa Rosalia, the Patroness of Palermo. I really received a warm and special welcome, a sign of the great attachment that the Italian-American community has with its territory. This is a connection that should not be broken and that can be cultivated precisely through these initiatives that can bring Italian-American entrepreneurs to invest in Palermo.”
The article Mayor Roberto Lagalla: Palermo toward digital innovation comes from TheNewyorker.
