ABSTRACT
The elegant, preserved Sassi reflects the identities, values, and aspirations of their current, upper-middle-class occupants more than their previous, poorer ones. David Harvey presents them in a yinyang relationship that he portrays at the core of modernity, a vacillation between embracing modernization and rejecting it. Also, if people looks at reform and development as integral to modernization, then they see preservation as having development built into it, even if not ideologically present in the intentions of preservationists. Giovannoni extended the discussion of values described to individual works to encompass entire urban complexes. As it is seen, handsome nineteenth century flourmills, which brought Matera fame, fortune, and jobs, have been torn down to make room for shopping malls and apartments not that space is tight in Piccinato's expansive city. The chapter focuses on preservation and views it within a context even broader than a site and its global socioeconomic influence, as it has done here with the Sassi.
