ABSTRACT
Palermo is a city in transformation. This chapter looks beyond drug trafficking to an aspect of organized crime in urban settings: its integral relationship to the industries of real estate and construction. Examined from this perspective, Palermo's recovery from the drug mafia is more complex and perhaps less promising than the city's anti-Mafia promoters would have us believe. The construction industry and the industries supplying construction materials together account for a greatly disproportionate share of the Palermo economy—33 per cent of the industrial work force in the 1970s compared with 10 per cent in Milan. To most of the interviewees, Palermo is in an economic crisis due to the abrupt slowdown of construction, which they associated with the anti-Mafia prosecutions or, to quote one, "hysteria" about legality. In Palermo, illnesses and death associated with drug use have been less significant than the noxious effects of a great expansion of illegal money in circulation.
