ZEN, acronym for Zona Espansione Nord (North Expansion Area in English), is a social housing district in the northern outskirts of Palermo, in the autonomous region of Sicily, Southern Italy.

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 the urban decay associated with numerous low-income housing blocks built in Italy between the 60s and 80s, like Scampia in Naples or Quarto Oggiaro in Milan.

[1][2] 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.

[10][11] 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.

[13][14] According to statistical surveys promoted by the AMGOT - the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories installed in Sicily after its conquest in 1943[15][16] - more than half of the 285,000 residential buildings existing in Palermo in 1940 were destroyed or made uninhabitable, making it one of the most affected cities by the Anglo-American strategy of carpet bombing during the Italian campaign.

[23] Starting from 1948, the Sicilian Mafia chose to support the Christian Democracy party, which won the Palermo municipal elections in 1958 and 1965 thanks above all to corruption and the subjugation of the weakest social classes.

[24] Politicians and mafiosi Salvo Lima and Vito Ciancimino, respectively mayor and assessor for public works of the elected council, allowed Cosa Nostra and the construction companies linked to it to profit from the need to expand the building surface of the city.

In Palermo, the large investments in public housing promoted by the central government were in many cases intercepted by the mafia, which, thanks to the political support it enjoyed at the time through institutional infiltration and corruption, already had decision-making power over the building permissions.

[30] To provide enough dwellings for the working class, the IACP Palermo office promoted the expansion of the ZEN neighborhood through a competition announcement, which was won by the architect Vittorio Gregotti, Neo-Avant Guarde exponent from Novara, in 1969.

[32] The difficulties of this large peripheral area are attributable to the following causes; the exclusion of the design group in the executive phase of the construction site, the failure to create services, equipment, and for a long time also primary urbanization works, as well as the illegal occupation of a good part of the housing.