To pave or not to pave?

The apartment I live in is located on the outskirts of Bologna, in Calderara di Reno, which is a wonderful place to relax after a stressful day. You can run or bike in less trafficked roads but you are only 15 minutes from a vibrant downtown - full of osterie, bars and university students.

The apartment complex is made up of 4 building blocks each with 5 floors. Two on each side and other two in the middle. The two blocks on the sides curve at a point, making them perpendicular.

The construction of the external areas was still going on when I moved in October 2004. Not much time after the last construction worker vanished from sight, I noticed a very curious thing. The ramp for the external area in the back on my block was paved with some nice bricks, but the same ramp for the middle block wasn't paved, it was bubbling with nature - rocks, dust and some plants already conquering back their territory.


Since the construction company was the same that did the apartment complex I wonder why they had paved one side of the ramp and not the other. I couldn't come up with an answer myself and I was getting quite obsessed with the matter. I usually get obsessed by things I don't have an answer for.

One day I found a neighbor in the garage and I ask him the question that had been tormenting me for months. He mention that the reason was that since each building in the town of Calderara needs to have a certain percentage of green space (until here I was very impressed!), the construction company found out that the originally planed green area for the 2 middle blocks wasn't fulfilling city rules. So to resolve their legal problems they didn't pave the ramp, so that it counts as 'green' area! Can you believe this?!

Satelite photo of the apartment complex taken from Google Earth
(It was still under construction. I guess circa 2003)

In the above photo you can see a simulation of the green area of the two blocks. You can see that the proportion of the green area vs the block area is much bigger on the right block than on the left one.

I wonder where the problem originated and who was the smart &$% that came up with the brilliant 'solution'. Who in the Calderara comune accepted that as a valid way out? It's better to be paved and get the construction company pay some kind of violation ticket for breaking the law.