About mist

Carl Honore
National Post

BRA, Italy -Even on a normal working day, Bra seems like the perfect place to get away from it all. Locals linger over coffee at sidewalk tables, gossiping with friends or watching the world drift by. In the shady, tree-lined squares, where the air smells of lavender and lilacs, old men sit like statues on the stone benches. Everyone has time to say a warm "Buon giorno."

Yet Bra is not just another sleepy Mediterranean backwater. Like 31 other "Slow Cities" in Italy, this town of 28,000 has pledged to turn itself into a haven from the high-speed frenzy of the global economy. Being laid-back is now officially the law of the land.

Founded two years ago, the Slow City movement was inspired by Slow Food, the Bra-based crusade against the Big Mac culture. Despite its culinary roots, though, Slow City is about much more than just the right to a long lunch followed by a siesta. It is an ambitious grassroots movement that aims to reinvent every aspect of urban life, by putting pleasure before profit, human beings before head office, slowness before speed.

From an upstairs window in Bra's city hall, a handsome 17th-century palazzo, Bruna Sibille, the deputy mayor, gazes out across a sea of red terra cotta rooftops. As a young man cycles languidly through the piazza below, her mouth curls into a satisfied smile.

"The Slow movement was first seen as an idea for a few people who liked to eat and drink well but now it is becoming a much broader cultural discussion about the benefits of doing everything in a less frenetic, less homogenized manner," she says. "It is not easy to swim against the tide of globalization, but we think the Slow philosophy is the best way to administer a city."

The Slow City manifesto contains over 50 pledges, such as cutting noise pollution and traffic, increasing green spaces and pedestrian zones, backing farmers who produce local delicacies and the shops and restaurants that sell them, and preserving local aesthetic traditions. Slowly but surely, Bra is working its way through the checklist.

The city has banned cars, as well as supermarkets and lurid neon signs, from parts of its historic core. Small family-run businesses -- think shops selling handwoven fabrics or speciality meats -- are granted the best commercial real estate. City Hall subsidizes building renovations that use the honey-coloured stucco typical of the Piedmont region. In schools, children are served organic fruit and vegetables grown by local producers.

To guard against the evils of overwork, every small food shop in Bra is obliged to close on Thursday and Sunday. City Hall now opens Saturday mornings to allow people to deal with bureaucratic tasks at a more leisurely pace. "We are slowly creating a new climate, a new way of looking at life," says Sibille.

For all their apparent nostalgia, though, Slow City campaigners are not Luddites. Yes, they want to preserve traditional architecture, crafts and cuisine. But they are also keen to use any technology that makes urban life more pleasant. In Orvieto, a Slow City perched on a hilltop in Umbria, electric buses glide silently through the medieval streets. All 32 Slow Cities use the Internet to trumpet the joys of a leisurely life and to share their administrative experiences.

"Let's make one thing very clear: Being a Slow City does not mean stopping everything and turning back the clock," insists Sibille. "We do not want to live in museums; we want to strike a balance between the modern and the traditional that promotes good living."

The people of Bra seem pleased with life in a Slow City. They like the new trees being planted, the pedestrian precincts, the thriving farmers' market.

Even those most prone to living la vida loca -- the young -- are responding to the call for calm. At the local pool hall, the pop music has been turned down in deference to the Slow ethos. Fabrizio Benolli, the 39-year-old owner, thinks his young customers are starting to look beyond the high-octane lifestyle promoted by MTV.

"They are beginning to understand that you can also have fun in a tranquil, slow way," he says. "Instead of gulping down a Coke in a loud bar, they are learning how nice it can be to sip local wine in a place where the music is low."

Being a Slow City pays off economically. Shops selling organic sausages and handmade chocolates, along with regular food festivals, draw hundreds of tourists. On a recent weekend, Bra was clogged with stalls run by speciality cheese-makers from across Europe. Unemployment is down.

To meet the demand for posh food, Bruno Boggetti, 58, expanded his delicatessen. He now sells a wider array of local goodies -- roasted peppers, white truffles, fresh pasta, peppery olive oil -- and has turned his basement into a cellar stocked with regional wines.

"The Slow movement has helped transform my business," he says. "Instead of always grabbing the cheapest and fastest thing, which is what globalization encourages, more people are deciding it is better to slow down, to reflect, to enjoy things made by hand rather than by machine."

People from the big cities are now moving to Bra in search of slowness. Paolo Linotti, a young IT consultant from Turin, the seething industrial centre 50 km north of here, is looking for an apartment in the historic centre. "Everything is rush, rush, rush in Turin, and I'm tired of it," he says. "The Slow vision seems to offer a real alternative."

It's not surprising that Slow City is an Italian invention. The country is, after all, the home of la dolce vita. Italy also takes its traditions, especially the culinary ones, very seriously. Even the Italian language seems more open to the idea of slowness.

"In English, 'slow' can mean stupid or inefficient, but in Italian it does not have that negative connotation," says Sibille. "For us, 'slow' has the positive meaning of living well, indulging the senses, having time to talk to people."

Even so, the Slow City movement is winning converts far from the laid-back Mediterranean. Inquiries are streaming in from Germany, Britain and the rest of northern Europe. Though unlikely ever to sign up to the movement, European metropolises are starting to apply Slow City policies. Traffic calming is all the rage from Rome to Paris. London, the fastest-moving capital on the continent, is moving to charge drivers entering its downtown.

Nevertheless, the Slow City movement still has a long way to go. Even in trailblazing Italy, bad habits are proving hard to break. Efforts to curb noise pollution in Bra are thwarted by the national fondness for chattering on cell-phones. The hiring of five more traffic cops has failed to extinguish that other Italian passion: driving too fast. Cars and Vespas speed through the streets of Bra that are still open to them.

"I am afraid people continue to drive badly here, just like in the rest of Italy," sighs Sibille. "Traffic is one part of life where it will be hard to make Italians slow down."

There are others. Even as life gets sweeter in Bra, many locals still find work too hectic.

Luciana Alessandria owns a leather goods shop in the historic core. She feels as stressed now as she did before Bra decreed itself a Slow City. "It's all very well for politicians to talk about slow this and slow that, but in the real world it is not so easy," she says. "If I want to afford a decent standard of living, I have to run all the time and work very, very hard."

Nevertheless, the war on urban haste is gathering momentum. Italy's Slow City administrators meet once a year to compare notes and come up with new initiatives. The University of Urbino recently signed an accord to become the movement's official think-tank.

At the town hall in Bra, spirits are running high. Sipping coffee in an airy chamber on the second floor, Sibille can already imagine a future where Europe is dotted with Slow Cities.

"It is a long-term process, but bit by bit we are making Bra into a better place to live," she says. "When we are finished, everyone will want to live in a Slow City."

About mist