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Waste management and local conflicts: a smart city needs a smarter communication strategy by Giuseppe Tipaldo1

Over the past few years, the notion of ‘smart city’ has increasingly

circulated among policy makers and experts, becoming quite fashionable. Among the many dimensions the concept is usually related to, the work focuses the attention on the theme of ‘smart environment’, particularly discussing the social phenomenon of local controversies and conflicts in urban waste management. Moving from some of the results of an on-going research on the incinerator in the city of Turin, Italy, it is argued that plant and infrastructure settlements with a heavy ecological impact represent a highly sophisticated and diverse social phenomenon, to which old-school communication strategies, based on ‘dirigistic’ approaches, seem to have no effect or, worse, a boomerang effect. After a brief critical introduction to the main issues, a proposal for a proactive and more participatory communication strategy is presented. Introduction

Over the last few years, the European Smart Cities project has drawn

the attention of an increasing number of scholars from various disciplines 1 Post-doc researcher, Department of Culture, Politica e Società (formerly Social Sciences Department), University of Turin, Italy. Mailto: giuseppe.tipaldo@unito.it; web: http://unito.academia.edu/GiuseppeTipaldo. I am particularly grateful to prof. Enrico Predazzi for his valuable suggestions.

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such as, for instance, urban studies, economy of ICT, “marketing places” studies, economic sociology, communication studies etc. Among the various dimensions with which the concept of smart city is normally associated, that of smart environment seems to be surprisingly underrepresented at the moment, particularly in Italy, even though the environmental variable has been recognized as a key factor for territorial development for at least two decades (Kotler et al. 1993).

Derived from a wider research project on the social impact and possible NIMBY-effect of an incinerator in the city of Turin (Italy), the paper gathers evidence in the field of local conflicts against large waste treatment facilities to attempt a critical analysis of public communication strategies.

Tremendous challenges are faced by communication experts and scholars who come across issues involving the environment, the quality of life and some kind of protest connected with integrated waste management policies. Negotiation abilities, participatory and deliberative approaches –very remote from the ones customary in company and corporate communication methods – are needed to favour end-users “direct engagement in research and innovation processes”, as repeatedly stated by the new EU Commission’s Horizon 2020 Program (point 1.1 European-Commission 2011).

To this extent, the principal thesis underlying this study is that – without deterministically assuming communication as the unique independent variable in environmental conflicts – it is however not possible to reach one of the objectives underlined by the concept of smart city (namely, smart environment), without adequately rethinking communication strategies on the topic, in order to make them move towards objectives, instruments and good practices just as smart as the cities and the societies we are planning for the next future. What can we learn from the Turin incinerator case?

Having been vaguely discussed since the late Sixties, the settlement of a urban waste incineration facility becomes a concrete possibility only 40 years later, when the Provincia di Torino definitively approves the project submitted by the TRM s.p.a. (Trattamento Rifiuti Metropolitani), the in-house public company in charge for planning, implementing and managing the future plant2.

2 For more details see www.trm.to.it.

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Approximately at the same time, an agreement is signed with the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Turin, to start a wide and intense monitoring program of the local public opinion, briefly called MonVISO Project (Monitoraggio Valutativo Impatto Sociale Opera – Plant Social Impact Evaluation Monitoring). The next paragraph collects longitudinal data from release 1.0 to 4.0 (year 2007-2011), strictly focused on communication and public engagement3. They will be used as an evidence-based starting point for the following critical discussion. A glimpse at the performance of communication activities

As briefly sketched in the graph below (fig. 1), the general situation of communication activities about the Turin incinerator is anything but positive. Firstly, the vast majority of the analyzed sample believes that no adequate form of public engagement has been carried on over the years (82,2%). A second serious weakness is that people don't recall having been addressed by any form of communication (81,6%). Despite the fact that informative material about the incinerator was actually mailed by the Provincia di Torino, almost no one of those interviewed was able to bring it

3 Research activities related to the “MonVISO project” have resulted in a number of papers focused on uncertainty and its effects in Science-Society relationship (Tipaldo forthcoming); risk, scientific literacy and mass media coverage of techno-scientific issues (Tipaldo 2007; Tipaldo 2011a); civicness responsibility and trust (Tipaldo 2011b); critical reviews of communication models in techno-science dissemination activities (Tipaldo 2008). For further details on the MonVISO project data sets and its methodological aspects, see www.trm.to.it.

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Fig. 1 – Overlook of communication results (mean values, N =1006 for years 2007-2009; 873 for 2011).

Fig. 2 – Attitudes towards the plant and public interest in informative meetings about the project across the years. back to memory (82%). Then, more than 96% never visited the TRM website, where a large and accurate section on the Turin incinerator is provided and constantly updated.

A second order of problems refers to what people express about their keenness on participating to informative meetings. Partially contradicting what one would have expected from the alleged lack of communication just presented above, citizens prefer not to attend meetings about the project, except in 2009. Why? Because 2009 immediately follows the waste crisis in Naples and Campania, covered by the media as a “new Chernobyl”, whose sole solution was the incineration with energy recovery, without giving enough space to alternatives. By making the local emergency in Naples a sort of Hirschman’s “catalytic event” nation-wide, mass media have strongly influenced the public opinion in a short term perspective and increased the number of people in agreement with the solution waste-to-energy, particularly those with a low cultural profile. Disorientation and loss of cognitive references followed however with the new Berlusconi government when the media interest on the topic suddenly ceased. This hypothesis, indeed, seems to be corroborated by the trend of “don’t know” answers (dk), which drops considerably in 2008 before rising just as fast the subsequent year.

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A final aspect to be pointed out comes from a cross-reading of longitudinal data collected in the graph above (fig. 2). No significant correlation can be observed between the willingness to participate in informative public meetings and the attitude towards the plant. However, as this is becoming increasingly critical over the years, it seems now urgent to understand on what communication tools to rely on, given the inadequacy of the traditional ones. The limits of traditional communication strategies

The Turin case-study succinctly presented above is eloquent, from the

point of view of the communication, for what was missing from the beginning of the project: an effective participatory and deliberative-oriented strategy of actions shared by all stakeholders (policy makers, industry, local associations and citizens).

Unfortunately, as with many other environmental conflicts, also the Turin project stems from a single and, let’s say, outdated and rudimental pattern of communication: the so-called theory of information. Historically, the advent of this theory marks a significant semantic change in the term "communication". From a linguistic usage close to the meaning of "to share" (coming from the latin communis mittere, to place in common), the word becomes a synonym for the verb "to transmit" (Wolf 2001: 112; McQuail 2005). In this case, the main problem lies in the simplistic assumption of a semantic continuity between the processes (many of which are problematic) of encoding and decoding the message, to say it with the words of cultural theorists and University of Birmingham Cultural Studies representative Stuart Hall (1980). A second relevant point is that in models based on the theory of information the process is always activated by the sender, whereas the receiver is usually considered static and passive. At this time, innumerable studies exist that discuss the deep limits of strategies based on such assumptions but a large part of communication protocols in Italian institutions and public utilities still strongly draws inspiration from them.

To the contrary, the paradigm lying at the basis of more evolved studies sets the focus of communicative analysis on the process of interaction whereby the addressee is conceived as an active and rather autonomous subject in message reception and interpretation (fig. 3). Differences in cultural codes between senders and receivers are not an exception meant to be held within a tolerance threshold so that they cannot compromise the

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proper development of the communicative process, but rather represent the rule, or, to say with semiotics, the problem of signification. Indeed,

Fig. 3 Example of Communication model based on the idea of interaction. Source: Author’s mix of Eco and Fabbri’s semiotic-informational model (Eco et al. 1965) and Hall’s encoding-decoding model (Hall 1980). communication itself can be thought of as a constant negotiation of symbols and meanings attributed to portions of reality on the basis of an active choice – although social actors may not always be fully aware of the profound motivations for their actions. In this regard, experts in communication science should seriously keep into consideration that people’s processes of semiosis are mediated by important social and cultural variables (sub-codes), such as past experiences, trust, cultural background, personal preferences, values and social circles, to cite the most remarkable.

How can a smart city deal with local conflicts?

According to the 6th Survey of the Italian NIMBY Forum Association (year 2011), public opinion in Italy is currently challenging 320 infrastructure and plant programs, the great majority of which in the category of urban waste management4. The expression “NIMBY syndrome” has been applied to what is considered to be self-serving local interests that motivate this opposition. “NIMBY” (an acronym for Not In My Backyard) “is a malevolent tag reflecting the viewpoint of the stakeholders on the

4 http://www.nimbyforum.it, January 2012.

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project. It does in fact imply that opposition groups are animated by the self-centred philosophy of those who do not want a particular (industrial) plant near their house, but also those would not do anything if such plant was to be built near someone else’s house” (Bobbio e Zeppetella 1999: 186). The variant called “LULU” (Locally Unwanted Land Use) is somewhat more neutral (Schively 2007), whereas the acronym “BANANA” (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody) is probably more suitable for describing a relatively new trend in oppositions, extending beyond local community interests and refusing altogether facilities settlements.

No matter what tag is applied, there is a very strong temptation to recognize these types of social conflict as the product of irrational and ascientific attitudes and beliefs, or (and not much better) as an egotistical reaction. Thus, and not infrequently, negative tags are hastily pasted onto adverse individual reactions: egoism, lack of civicness, familism, irrationality and ignorance are just few from a long list. The result is that stakeholders, falling prey to reciprocal diffidence and communicative ineptitudes, rarely succeed in opening a solid communication channel.

On the one hand, the consequences exposed by similar close-minded readings of local conflicts can be seen by everyone: rediscovering Luigi Bobbio’s biblical metaphor (Bobbio e Zeppetella 1999), David, the local opposition, although seemingly politically, legally and economically the weaker, often succeeds in winning over project proponents, supposedly as strong as Goliath.

On the other hand, it would be unrealistic and naive to imagine that a city has to be totally lacking in dissent to be "smart": given the heterogeneity of the interests involved, discussions on public issues (such as urban spaces organization, waste and transport management, energy supply, and so on and so forth) will always come with tension and differences in opinion, some of which could potentially coagulate and even explode in social conflicts. The "smart" attribute, therefore, should not be associated in the slightest with an absence of dialectics between the various components of a local community, as much as with the capacity of local governments and institutions to identify and adequately manage latent physiological tensions and to prevent critical situations from occurring.

To this end, participatory and deliberative communication programs are likely to become a central asset in designing a smart city, yet rejecting a mystical view of strategic communication as a sort of Harry Potter’s magic wand through which everything is possible if wrapped up sufficiently well. Obviously a well-organized local government, capable of issuing effective policies, is a fundamental precondition.

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Towards smarter communication strategies

To adequately address challenging social relations in turbulent times such as those we are experiencing, it seems inevitable to submit to a deep critical scrutiny visions, roles, methods and instruments born decades ago in the field of institutional and company public relations. To make waste management communication a "smarter" form of communication, two fundamental premises, among the many possible ones, will be presented and discussed here: a reliable auditing program to understand which are the main informational and communicational needs among the citizens and a multilevel consistency for minimizing noise and distortions when implementing activities. A reliable auditing

A smart communication model demands knowing meticulously your audience and opening a solid and trustworthy channel for a constant interaction among peers. In communication science, this operation goes under the name of auditing. To be more precise, the term auditing is the sum of two addendums: the audit practice, which is used to know the existing communicational and informational demand (what are the most relevant issues which communication should focus on) and the social context where the work will be settled (Invernizzi 2001, vol. I: 277); and monitoring, a kind of feedback from which to evaluate the results obtained.

But what does "auditing" mean concretely? If well-performed, the auditing is the communicative action with which the sender shows the receiver the "availability to converse, to review the project and to reformulate the problem" (Bobbio e Zeppetella 1999: 209). This would strongly require a new cognitive disposition from the part of public institutions and proponents: to reject, as the case may be, the “zero hypothesis” that their projects are just whatever, while admitting that alternative grassroots proposals may be possible, or even better. Missing this step, will preclude trust to generate. And without trust no solid communication channel can be opened. Yet another episode in a long list of local conflicts mismanagements is likely to come.

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Multilevel consistency for minimizing the noise Reducing the noise that physiologically afflicts each communicative

process can be of vital importance especially in the case of thorny and highly controversial themes. But how is it possible to concretely minimize noise in waste management communication? A first tip – very relevant but as yet scarcely recognized in local conflicts studies – is about consistency. Even though this is far from being the only point of a very complex process, we will focus on it for the rest of this section.

Communicative consistency involves two distinct but complementary levels. The first, is actually close to traditional corporate communication and image, about which much has been written over the years, thus will not be detailed here.

The second level calls for process consistency and it’s certainly the most interesting for the purposes of this study. Here I use the term with reference to the degree of cohesion and self-coherence of a long term strategic communication plan. Two phenomena appear to undermine the foundations of process consistency, one of which is political and the other organizational. As for the first point, an important role has been played in Italy’s recent history by the direct political election of representatives for the local governments (L.81/93). From a purely communicational point of view, this change produced a phenomenon known in political communication as leaderization. Briefly, the voter doesn’t vote on the basis of a simple unconditional adhesion, usually motivated by rigid ideological settings. (S)he’s first of all attracted by a name and a face with strong electoral draw and a concrete program of initiatives. In order to survive this kind of electoral market liberalization, therefore, public administrators have nothing left other than to devise strategies to gain and increase visibility. For this reason, in many public administration sectors, it is a common practice for each new administration to give a sign of discontinuity with a sort of “tabula rasa” affecting the projects brought forward by the previous administrators. This practice, besides exposing political elites to economic and ethical criticism, cannot be easily reconciled with continuity and coherence needs that are physiologically imposed by any communicative action striving to produce concrete results in a long term perspective.

The second critical key, as mentioned above, is posed on a purely organizational level and questions the excessive atomization of those involved in various ways with waste management. Each player – whatever be his link of the waste management chain – produces his communication

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activities as a free rider. The aggregate effect is that hundreds of initiatives try to raise awareness each year without realizing that such sporadic, disorganized and not infrequently small efforts are not only incapable of modifying long-rooted behaviours but are even not able to attract the attention of the public. From 1997 (when the Ronchi Decree was issued), integrated waste management (from source to disposal) was debated with increasing frequency. So now, the moment has arrived to note that integrated waste management cannot take place without effective integrated communication, and act accordingly. In this connection, a strong choice would help, a choice casting off the rope tying politics, administration and project management to the same moorage. A step in that direction would certainly stimulate confidence for project management organization based on meritocracy and professional criteria, in contrast to what is seen in the Italian context, where merit is normally a by-product of authority.

In the end, be actually smart

This article has attempted to shed light in the field of strategic

communication planning to deal with local controversies and conflicts. Using the Turin waste incinerator as an empirical case-study, two main critical themes have been put into question: the almost total ineffectiveness of tools framed into traditional corporate communication models and the low predisposition of people interviewed to attend informative meetings about the incinerator project.

Accompanied by a thorough critical review of traditional communication approaches, these two apparently contradictory aspects have been interpreted as significant evidence of the need for a paradigm shift towards participatory and deliberative approaches.

From problem definition and evaluation of alternatives, everything regarding facility or infrastructure programs should be adequately shared and openly discussed among the whole group of different stakeholders, with special emphasis on including citizens. The goal is evident: to create a virtuous climate of collaboration and engagement. The purpose is noble, but it would be ingenuous to think that doing it would be as easy as writing about it. In fact, there are at least five obstacles along the path of such a "smarter" waste management communication: - a general complexity affecting the entire process; - a medium-long term ROI (return on investments); - the incompatibility of an open, transparent and participatory strategy

with propagandistic communication, whose vision typically

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concentrates on the short term (i.e. the electoral market); - risks of unexpected or perverse communication effects (disorientation,

cognitive dissonance, annoying irritations) stemming from incomplete, vague or opportunistic messages that pretend to be true;

- the risk of a rapid and irreversible dissipation of acquired credibility and trustworthiness in case of poor process management or anticipated breakdowns. As far as these aspects represent risks that communication experts are

expected to know thoroughly and weigh carefully, they do not seem in measure to bring the participatory turn in communication strategies into discussion. In a social context increasingly weakened by a severe crisis of trust in its own social systems, the entrenching of new dialogical forms between (local) political power and the citizens, on the one hand, and the promotion of actions to engage individuals and groups in singling out of solutions to public issues, on the other, might be not only socially desirable because they are coherent with a culture of civicness (Tipaldo 2011b), but could also represent a valid antidote to the definitive disintegration of the social fabric of contemporary democracy.

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