Turin, Italy

The industrial decline facing parts of Europe is represented in Turin, home to Europe’s oldest car factory, where automakers must cope with the rising costs to electrify, dwindling demand, and fierce competition from China. Turin, located at the base of the Alps in northwestern Italy, was the birthplace of Fiat, whose history began 125 years ago when the Agnelli family launched the company. Today, the city has reeled from the effects of an earlier such industry, as automotive plants like the Mirafiori plant show.

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The Fiat 500 electric city car and various Maserati sports cars are produced at the Mirafiori factory, but production has been halted for significant periods of the year because of low demand, leaving 2,800 workers on furlough with reduced pay. FIOM Cgil trade union official Giacomo Zulianello says: 'Mirafiori has already closed.' Nevertheless, sometimes it reopens."

Fiat adapted by diluting its Italian identity through a series of mergers and acquisitions, including a 2014 merger with Chrysler and the creation of Stellantis in 2021 with PSA, which owns Peugeot. The iconic theme that has run through Turin in the past 40 years is marked by four closed car plants, starting with the Lingotto in 1982, famed for its roof test track that was used in the famous film 'The Italian Job' and Grugliasco's closure in 2012.

It was once a symbol of Fiat's strength, where 60,000 people, shifted around on wheels, would manufacture up to a million cars a year, but Mirafiori has been a shadow of it. "There is a taboo word in Turin, it is 'decline', and it is a pretty obvious fact," says Luca Davico, an urban sociologist at Turin’s Polytechnic.

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Turin has an approximated population of around 2.2 million people and has been trying to become a tourism center, suggesting its cultural values, its museums and its closeness to the Alps. It is also the birthplace of a burgeoning aerospace sector as well as Juventus, Italy's most successful soccer club. There remain 50,000 to 60,000 jobs linked to the automotive industry, so uncertainty remains. Workers at Stellantis get ready for a national strike and march in Rome as worries of tension remain high with the government and the company over securing jobs for the future.