Occupied! Spin Time Labs, Scomodo, ACTION, and a Big Building in the City Center

The building's entrance on via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.  Note information boards on both sides.  The banner
reads: "The right to housing is sacrosanct." 

It's an undistinguished building, to say the least. Despite its enormous footprint--occupying the end of a city block on the Esquilino, bounded by via Carlo Emmanuele, via Statilia, and via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (the latter a major thoroughfare running southeast off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele)--it is forgettable, pedestrian architecture of the sort that was all too common in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Read Scomodo" (a basement pillar)

In this case, what matters is what's inside, and fortunately, the building's contents were at least partially suggested by information boards on the via Santa Croce side.  One board revealed that there were all kinds of things going on inside: the ground floor housed a social service center, an afternoon school, and a "mini-basket" facility, where children could learn to play basketball; next floor up, an enoteca (wine shop), a wood-working facility, and something called the "spin beer lab." There's a theater on the 2nd floor and, on the 3rd, a religious center and a place to take lessons in the martial arts. From a personal friend, we also knew that the building housed the offices of "Scomodo" (meaning, roughly, "uncomfortable"), an excellent left-leaning, muck-raking magazine produced and distributed by young Romans, and now mainly online.

Two of the information boards.

Another board provided some background.  The building was once occupied by INPDAP (a government agency responsible for providing assistance to public employees), then for some years abandoned, before being "occupied"--that is, taken over, illegally and informally--in October 2013 by a group known as "ACTION," for housing purposes.  The group began to reclaim some of the floors, went on a hunger strike--for what purpose remains unclear--and obviously (from the right information board), launched a variety of cooperative institutions and services that together constitute an effort to create an alternative community.  There's even an osteria.

Today "ACTION" remains involved. However, as still another board explains, most everything is done under the auspices of the group "Spin Time Labs." The building is now home to 150 families (about 450 people), including immigrants, many of them once homeless or otherwise in need of a place to stay.  And all this has happened in a building the occupants--whether the 150 families or Spin Time Labs--don't own.

Occupied buildings are common in Rome, and oddly (from an American perspective) tolerated--until they're not, which can be a long time. (We wrote in 2011 about the occupation of a theater.) Covering the occupations, the newspaper Il Messaggero noted that a building that once housed the Treasury Ministry was occupied for many years by the right-wing organization, CasaPound. Il Messaggero seemed especially irritated that those occupying the buildings did not pay the appropriate fees.

Our first encounter with the structure was in mid-April, 2019.  By mid-May, the building, and Spin Time Labs, were at the center of a major controversy.  Neighbors of the building were upset--indeed, enraged--that the occupied structure was hosting loud, well-attended late-night (or all-night) parties, featuring a disco, drugs, and heavy drinking. It was impossible to sleep, they said, and in the morning the area was a mess: mounds of trash and hundreds of empty beer bottles.

Late-night, nearly-morning revelers.

One of the most offensive of the parties, "Notte Scomoda," put on in December, 2018 by Scomodo magazine in their basement quarters, was visited by a number of motorcycles (there's a vehicle ramp leading downward, off via Carlo Emanuele), whose riders surely enjoyed revving their engines in that echo-y subterranean space.

The ramp off via Carlo Emanuele

The legendary motorcycle party.  Neighbors not in favor. 

This could be the space used by the motorcycle rally.

Aside from the noise problem, the parties raised once again the issue of whether building occupations were and should be tolerated by the authorities. It was noted that Forte Prenestina had been occupied since 1986, and that another troublesome "entertainment" occupation, at "Strike spa" in Portonaccio (both farther from the city center), had been ongoing since 2002. (See our post here, about Rome's issues with immigration and housing, and here, about Rome "capital of evictions.")

Even the Vatican came in for censure. When Spin Time Labs failed to pay the building's electric bill, the electricity was cut off, then restored through the intercession of one Cardinal Krajewski (who has some sort of official church role in that area of Rome), who apparently did so on the grounds that there were 450 poor people depending on it. In addition, Il Messaggero claimed that Spin Time Labs was exploiting the idea of helping those in need of housing in order to hold enormous social events and makes lots of money: thousands attending every weekend, each paying about $10 to enter, dance, and carouse. 

If we read the information boards correctly, those involved in the occupation have long been interested in the re-use of materials, and with good reason. When INPDAP moved out, they left behind enormous amounts of stuff.  We know this because when we visited the building--by invitation of our Scomodo friend--we were witness to the ongoing cleanup required to clear space for Scomodo's offices and social events.

A basement area that needs to be cleaned up, contents sorted.  Dianne is holding up a sign from one of the parties.  Note that beer is more expensive than wine--the norm in Italy. 

A very old film projector.

Some rooms--including one (above) that resembles the newspaper photo featuring the motorcycles--have been emptied and cleaned.

Graffiti on the basement walls would suggest that housing remains a high priority for those occupying the building.

"Too many people without houses.  Too many houses without people." 

Italy has some 50,000 people without housing,

We've never been on the building's upper floors, never seen the osteria or the enoteca or the areas where families live.  Maybe next year.

Bill

"Love Nests"/Exploitation in the Woods: Rome Prostitution

Get a few miles outside Rome's center, on any of a hundred country roads, and you'll see young ladies in very short shorts, trolling for business.  Sometimes there's a couch where the work gets done.  In this case, the love - or sex -  bed, which admittedly seems a bit too close to the traffic for privacy, has been covered with wide strips of blue fabric.

These photos were taken on via di Castel di Guido, between the town of Castel di Guido and via Aurelia, west of Rome.  A few hundred yards down the road, we found the women who might have made use of this spot, soliciting motorists as they came off the eastbound exit ramp. 

We probably see more evidence of prostitutes than most Romans, since we are often hiking near these only-barely-remote spots.  We've chatted with some of these women, but not about their jobs.  They've offered to - and have - protected our scooter while we go exploring.

The issue of prostitution in Italy is a difficult one.

The European Union categorizes prostitution as completely legal in Italy and other European states, including Spain, Portugal and the UK. But it’s street prostitution that’s legal in Italy. Brothels are not. The 1958 Merlin law (named for Lina Merlin, the first woman elected to Italy’s Senate) banned brothels (known as case di tolleranza, "houses of tolerance") and imposed a new offense, “exploitation of prostitution,” aimed at pimps and clients.

In Italy, police use laws based on obscenity, including dressing in revealing and suggestive clothing, to move prostitutes out of an area or neighborhood. Current Italian law punishes obscene acts committed in the vicinity of places frequented by children and young people. According to a Rome prosecutor, these are parks, schools, day-care centers and athletic facilities. The result is women who ply their trade on the roadsides we frequent - far from the city center.

In Italy immigrant sex workers are a particularly vulnerable group. The International Organization for Migration estimated that 80 percent of the 11,000 Nigerian women who entered Sicily in 2016 would end up trafficked into the sex trade. These women — as well as undocumented women in the U.S. sex trade — face deportation if they attempt to report their circumstances.

There's more discussion of the pros and cons of legalization of prostitution in Dianne's article in TheAmerican/inItalia.

Bill and Dianne

The Rome Mini Market: Suddenly Controversial

It's after midnight in your corner of Rome, and you need a bottle of wine, cookies, milk for your morning cereal, some cheese and fruit.  There is no 24-hour supermarket.  One small chain grocery closed at 10, another at 8.  Where do you go?  To the MINI MARKET, of course.

There are lots of mini markets in Rome, and the numbers are up.  In 2016 there were 1432 mini markets.  In 2017, 1622. 

The prices are higher than at the grocery stores--you can expect to pay E9./10 for your Ribolla Gialla (white wine), rather than E7.  But at 12:25 a.m., convenience is everything.  The mini market it is.

Mini Market, Salario

We're not sure why mini markets are flourishing.  We know that Rome has become a late-night (or later-night) city.  A decade ago, one could wander the Centro at 10 p.m. and not find a place to get a plate of pasta ("abbiamo buttato l'acqua per pasta" - "we've thrown out the pasta water," we heard at 10 p.m.).

No more.  The Movida--that late-night gathering of young drinkers/partiers, once concentrated in Campo de' Fiori, Ponte Milvio, and Trastevere, has spread to Ostiense, middle-class Piazza Bologna, and other locales.  Grocery store hours failed to meet the growing demand for late-night drinks and food.  Mini markets filled the void.  Similar growth has occurred in frutterie--small stores selling fruits and vegetables, and sometimes wine.

The rapid rise of the mini market has not been universally accepted. Indeed, the department of Rome's city government that regulates this sort of commerce recently passed a regulation freezing for 3 years the number of mini markets, frutterie, and other small shops, including self-service laundries, places that roast chickens, gold-buying centers, and massage parlors. 

Mini market app for Rome

What's going on?  One theory is that the authorities dislike the late-night drinking that these small businesses encourage, or abet.  That's certainly a factor. It's well known that young folks, especially, buy their late-night alcohol at mini markets. Best evidence for this interpretation: there's actually an app for Rome's late night mini markets, one apparently designed to help thirsty youth find the closest one.  Appropriately, the app takes its name from the Bangladeshi, the largest mini-market ownership group after native Italians. At right a screenshot of the app, "Bangladino" [just type "bangladino" in the App Store search blank].  It shows you the mini markets around your location, when they close, and the price of a beer (in this case E1.5) for comparison shopping.

But you can't get a beer while selling your gold, or at a massage parlor, at a laundry, or at some of the frutterie we've frequented.

The real story has to do with who owns the mini markets and other small shops. Of Rome's active mini markets in 2018, the majority are owned by Italians (1,473); Bangladeshi own 664; Egyptians own 48; and Romanians 40.  It makes sense that new immigrant groups would be active in mini markets and related businesses; these small stores require minimal capital, allow new owners to profit from extended hours (involving the whole family) that long-established, Italian-owned businesses are unwilling to sustain; and they would seem to be an obvious place to begin the process of achieving middle-class status.

in della Vittoria

Even so, it seems clear that the inroads made by new immigrant groups in these businesses are disturbing to Italians, some of whom see themselves as wrongly displaced, victims of globalization and immigration.

Anxieties about immigrants and the Italians they presumably displace: that's the reason for the 3-year moratorium on mini markets, et. al.

Bill

Best Posters of 2016

"Best" Posters has become a yearly feature of RST, and here we are once again, offering the "best" of 2016, all found in Rome in April, May and June.  Though the internet has doubtless eroded the presence and influence of posters in Italian culture, they nonetheless have a role here that they don't have in the U.S.--except perhaps in times of political upheaval like the late 1960s.  I am tempted to claim that postering is more common in societies with a significant leftist heritage--they were a significant feature of the visual landscape in China in 1979, for example, when we were there--but I can't say for sure that's true.

Postering also appears to aggregate in specific places.  Some locales in Rome--especially outlying suburbs--are more likely than others (e.g. the Centro) to have large numbers of posters.  We found an especially rich lode in Serenissima, on Rome's outer eastern side.

What makes a poster "best"?  Design.  A compelling message.  A story we haven't heard, or, if we do know the story, the sense that the poster reveals something quintessentially Italian or Roman.  In 2016, as was true in 2015, some of the best posters are those done by the far-right fringe.  They're angrier, and that can make for more compelling posters.  And most of the centrist political posters--ubiquitous during the run-up to the Rome mayoral election--are pedestrian.

Still, the left can produce some decent posters.  The one below at least goes beyond Vota Communista ("vote Communist").  It's both weird and refreshing to see that Italian Communism still exists; it all goes back to the important role played by Communists in the Partisan movement that battled the German occupation during World War II.  Today, according to the poster below, the enemies of the Communists are petty politicians (politicanti), the European Union, NATO, and the banks.

Enough! (vote Communist Party).

This poster (below), which appears to be part of the student mainstream at one of Rome's great universities--La Sapienza--strategically links the current generation of anti-fascists with the partisan wartime resistance:

Yesterday partisans, today anti-fascists.
What's with the German?

Resistance is also the theme of the poster below, authored by an organization (we presume) called Partizan.  Although the poster would seem to be appealing to thoughtful people ("Thinking people must resist"), the gas-masked figure looks anything but thoughtful.

Casa Pound, a right-wing bad-boys organization named after the American poet, Ezra Pound, who cozied up to the Mussolini regime in the early 1940s, is perhaps the most frequent posterer in Rome, helping to keep the form alive.  The Casa Pound folks are opposed to immigration, and beyond that they're big on not surrendering to the powers that be.  They appear to relish physicality and to locate their heroic heritage in ancient Rome.

Alcuni Italiani Non Si Arrendono!
"Some Italians Don't Surrender!"

"What is written with the blood of the fathers is not erased with the saliva of the politicians."

A close-up of the upper left portion of the above poster:

Scary dudes

The Blocco Studentesco ("Student Block"), responsible for the poster below, is a 2006 offshoot of Casa Pound, focusing on school issues.

Not quite sure what's doing on here.  "They Aassault/We Laugh!" Joyous resistance.

Once in a while the poster left gets its act together and posters against Casa Pound.  This poster grounds its opposition in an open immigration ideal--in Italian multiculturalism.

And mostly in English

As in the United States and England, there's strong opposition in Italy to international trade agreements that presumably cost workers jobs.  The message below is significant: No al TTIP refers to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed trade agreement between the EU and the United States that's been in the works since 2014.  The anti-TTIP folks are concerned that the nation states of Europe will be victimized by transnational corporations--especially, according to the poster's graphic, American companies

"Let's liberate ourselves from the 'Liberators'"

 Also under attack are austerity measures advocated by wealthy, creditor countries (like Germany) and imposed on poor, debtor countries (like Greece, Spain, and, to some extent, Italy). A decent graphic here (Piano B [Plan B]), but the poster's too busy to be visually arresting.

One of our design favorites is this poster, of uncertain political ideology.  It reads Roma non si vende"--"Rome is not for sale."  And it communicates this message with a delightful image of the Coliseum in a shopping cart.

Another top-design candidate is this anti-immigrant political poster ("We'll Stop the Alien Invasion"):

The poster below is austerely anti-design.  And yet its message--Siamo Già Tra Voi ("We are already among you") and signed "(hashtag) Enemies of the City," is compelling in its mystery and threatening tone.

The "What Happened to Dino?" poster that we found near Porta Metronia was mysterious, too, because we had no idea who Dino was.

Do you know what happened to Dino?

The most common poster in April was, understandably, the one below, announcing Liberation Day: 25 April.  It's not obvious why the date April 25 was chosen in 1946.  Although Liberation Day in general celebrates Italy's liberation from the horrific German occupation--and honors the resistance to the occupation--the country was not actually entirely free of the Nazis until May 1, 1945.  According to some sources, April 25 is important because on that date the National Liberation Committee of Upper Italy (CLNAI) proclaimed in a radio annoucement the death sentence for all Fascist leaders (Mussolini was killed 3 days later).  Others note that April 25 was the day Turin and Milan were liberated from the Nazis.  More than you needed to know.

Bill
For the best of... 2014 and 2012, check the links.

The Walls of Rome: 4 Hours in the Life of a Poster

Not all posters dealing with immigration are negative.  This one, found
in the immigrant-heavy (mostly Bangladeshi) suburb of Torpignattara, is critical of the
local government for its failure to make documents available to immigrants.

It's no secret that many Italians are concerned about immigration; under EU rules, the country where an immigrant first makes land must make provision for that immigrant.  There is no plan for dividing up immigrants equally.  This is a particular problem for Italy, which has a long and vulnerable coastline and is a short (but often deadly) boat ride from troubled Tunisia. As elsewhere in Europe, there are those in Italy who identify immigration with terrorism--and, those who don't.

These issues were brought home forcefully on the day we "landed" in Monteverde Vecchio, an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the hill above what is commonly thought of as Trastevere.  Here's the poster we found:

Stop Terrorism, Stop Immigration..  Not sure what "Fdl" is.
 There is an anti-immigration Facebook group known as Patria e Liberta

Four hours later, when we passed that way again, the poster looked like this:

  In the weeks that followed, we found other posters dealing with immigration:

This political poster was part of the 2016 mayoral election.  "Let's Stop
the Alien Invasion" 

CasaPound's poster, in Casal Bertone: Defend Rome/Enough Immigration, Enough "Welcoming"

Lessons in Rome Politics: Iorio's Alien Invasion

Rome is gearing up for a mayoral election in June.  At the moment there is no mayor (sindaco), the last one, Ignazio Marino, having resigned in disgrace.

One of the fringe candidates is Alfredo Iorio.  He doesn't have a chance to be mayor, but his poster ads reveal how one segment of the population imagines solving the city's problems, which are legion--or not solving them.  

                                                  "I don't want to see the death of Rome"
 

                                   "Are You Unemployed?  Become an Immigrant"
                                       (below) "Enough Humiliation for Romans"

The most creative effort of the Iorio campaign is the poster below.  It works two ways.  On the one hand, the outer-space-like creature stands for unwanted immigrants and aliens:  "Let's stop the Alien Invasion."  On the other hand, the poster accuses other mayoral candidates, including two who have a chance of winning, as well as the former mayor (who isn't running, of course), of being aliens:  "They come from another planet/They want to conquer Rome."

Invaders everywhere! Welcome to sophisticated Rome politics!

Bill

Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City. Book Review.

Foro Italico, one site of the 1960
Olympic Games

Is Rome a global city?  That's one of the claims--it's right there in title, Global Rome--made in this edited collection of 17 essays, subtitled Changing Faces of the Eternal City.  As Bjorn Thomassen and Piero Vereni point out in the first of the essays, it's certainly not a global financial city, or a global industrial city, but it is, arguably, the most "imagined" city in the world.

And, as the editors, Thomassen and Isabella Clough Marinaro emphasize, it's global in its tourism, as a locus of international diplomacy and, especially, in its growing number of immigrants, who now make up about 1/8 of the city's population.

Moreover, as Simon Martin's essay makes clear, Rome has been, and to some extent remains, a global sporting city, hosting the 1960 Olympic Games and the 2009 World Swimming Championships (in contrast, Mark Dyal's essay on romanità argues that the term's application to soccer was part of a larger effort to hold on to an older, traditional Rome threatened by multiculturalism, modernization--and globalization).

In a new shop near Piazza Vittorio, an Asian
family eats lunch

Curiously, there isn't much in the book about tourism or diplomacy or the imagining of Rome, and Michael Herzfeld's contribution makes the point that despite its increasingly global population, Rome as an immigration center is also characterized by "extreme localism"; Romans resent the newcomers.  Still, treatments of immigration are the focus of at least six of the essays.  Pierluigi Cervelli looks at several groups of new arrivals and at what he calls their "spatial practices."  The Chinese have prospered by buying property in the Esqulino--the area surrounding Piazza Vittorio--where they predicted property values would rise over time.  Bangladeshi settled a bit further out, in the near suburb of Torpignattara.  Romanians and Albanians occupy areas even farther outside the center, near and beyond the GRA to the north.  And the Roma have survived by being "invisible" to the authorities, living in underpasses and along river banks--and moving often.

Cinema Impero closed in 1983, before
the Bangladeshi arrived in Tor Pignattara

We were particularly interested in the experience of the Bangladeshi in Torpignattara, because we "discovered" and wrote about the area a few years ago and have since returned several times to explore its art galleries and its substantial array of graffiti.  Alessandra Broccolini presents the community as a "frontier," where over two decades the Italian population has been partly displaced and forced to accommodate an influx of Bangladeshi---about 5,000, most living in what is known to older residents as the  Marranella--that has led some to call the place "Banglatown."  As of 2007 about 25% of shops were run by the newcomers.  Lest one assume that the new immigrants led to the decline of the area, Broccolini points out that the area was hardly prospering before the Bangladeshi arrived--the striking, modernist movie house, the Cinema Impero, closed in 1983.  After the population influx, the crime rate declined and the crime rate declined and the street lighting improved.

Carlo Pisacane elementary school--the site of conflict
between Italians and Bangladeshi

Herzfeld's "extreme localism" appeared in Torpignattara in the form of the "Piscane Affair," a series of events swirling around the Carlo Pisacane School, attended by Bangaldeshi, Chinese, and Egyptian students--together, 115 of 140 students in one survey. The change led school authorities to cap foreign enrollment at Pisacane at 30% of the total.  As author Piero Vereni notes, the assignation "foreign" applied even to children born in Rome and fluent in Italian.  The Pisacane affair, he concludes, was about what it meant to be "Italian."

Via Boccea, one of the areas where Roma "settled".

The Roma are doubtless Rome's most despised immigrant group.  Tourists protect their wallets when they approach, and to most Italians they seem incapable of the hard work and community-building that would bring them into the mainstream.  They come off somewhat differently in two essays in this collection.  Marco Solimene presents the Xoraxanè Roma, immigrants from Yugoslavia beginning in the 1960s, as a determined and responsible group, one that cultivated relationships with the Italians who offered services the Roma needed: bars, Internet points, tobacconists, and the Trastevere train station, which served as a meeting place.  Some settled in the via Boccea area to the northwest, others out via Nomentana to the north, and the largest number in Rome's southwest, in Trullo, Corviale, Tor di Valle, Muratella, and especially Magliana, with its concentration of scrap iron dealers to whom Roma scavengers could sell.

Trullo's self-managed community center, "Ricomincio
dal Faro," operated by squatters.  Once a movie house.

In our more innocent days, we explored the massive housing project at Corviale and, more recently, spent an afternoon in Trullo, watching trash cans burn and admiring what we learned--from this book--was a self-managed community center created by squatting (occupato) in an abandoned movie theater.

And, having lived in the Marconi district and across the river in San Paolo, we were eager to learn

Squatters still live tucked away on the grounds
of the now-defunct Testaccio slaughterhouse.  

more about the Roma who had been living nearby.  Ulderico Daniele and editor Marinaro tell two stories involving the Roma, both about evictions.  One features Roma living under Ponte Marconi and on vicolo Savini in Ostiense, both evicted and moved by the city to Pomezia, 25 km away and far from their closest community settlement.  Another group, evicted from an unauthorized camp in 2011, took refuge in the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura--and, for several days, refused to leave.  That group ended up at an authorized camp in via Salaria, on the other side of the city.

For Daniele and Marinaro, these episodes are typical of authorities' efforts to clear areas deemed valuable--such as vicolo Savini and the Testaccio slaughterhouse--and give them over
to private developers.  Cristina Lombardi-Diop tells a similar story, and a similarly depressing one, of some 2,000 Senegalese immigrants, happily and productively renting apartments in 5 buildings in "Residence Roma" near Forte Bravetta, yet forced to relocate--to Ladispoli, Pomezia, Centocelle, and Torpignattara--to make way for single-family villas.  The mayor at the time was left-center Walter Veltroni, who wrote the foreword to our first book.

This account of evictions is one of several in the collection that deal interestingly with the ugly Rome politics of housing and homelessness.  One the one hand, the city's interest in cultural heritage protection--argues Valerie Higgins--has emptied central Rome of Italians (only 100,000 live in the Centro Storico, a term that didn't exist until 1960), marginalizing locals and making the core "more like a museum" than a living community.  To find an authentic Rome--that is, areas inhabited by Romans--she adds, you have to go the suburbs and even the periphery--the subject, we self-servingly add, of Rome the Second Time and Modern Rome and, especially, of this blog.

On the other hand, failure of the city authorities to develop a reasonable and coherent housing policy has led to something of a frontier mentality in areas distant from the center and has played into the hands of unscrupulous or short-sighted developers.  Carlo Cellamare labels Rome "The Self-Made City" because so much of its periphery has undergone "development by improvisation"--housing made by squatters in abandoned buildings or on public land, or just plain illegal building, sometimes on a grand scale.  The Valle Borghesiana, between via Prenestina and via Casilina and about 7 km beyond the GRA, is typical: a lot of building but no public space and minimal services--a few bars that take on a quasi-public function as meeting places.  Young people have only the mall.

Miles away on the coast sits the tiny community of Idroscalo, in recent years a symbol of Rome's dysfunctional housing policy.  Located just around the corner from the memorial to Pier Paolo

We've never been to Idrascalo, but it's just a stone's
throw from this small park, a memorial to Pier
Paolo Pasolini.

Pasolini (see our post, which has directions), this illegal, unauthorized "town" of 300 homes, all built on public land, continues to vex authorities, who have both allowed it to exist and expand and yet regularly threaten its residents with expulsion--presumably so that this valuable property could be "developed."  In the meantime, as Ferruccio Trabalzi writes, Idroscalo plugs along, its residents pleased to be on the sea, enjoying the sunsets, yet lacking shops, a library, city offices, a community center--even a piazza. In his essay on the Porta di Roma shopping center on Rome's periphery, Cellamare offers another case of service-deprivation, describing the enormous mall as a "black hole," sucking the life out of nearby housing areas.

Pierpaolo Mudu is equally critical of Rome's housing history, arguing that the failure to build housing--and better housing--is a matter of policy.  He dates the problem to l924, when the term "borgate" was coined and Acilia was built, far from the center.  Housing developers became key players  in the postwar era, building projects that were poorly constructed and, again, lacked services--like  Magliana, constructed along the Tevere in the 1960s.  A

The shopping center  in Torbellamonaca, a suburb
constructed as an "episode."

1962 housing law--housing law 167--produced Spinaceto, Corviale, Laurentino 38, and
Torbellamonaca--all constructed, writes Mudu, as "episodes," rather than as integrated parts  of Rome.  With the withdrawal of the public sector from the housing market after 1970, illegal (abusive) housing became common.  Rent controls were abolished in 1998.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Tufello, San Basilio, and Trullo became sites of resistance to these policies and practices, resistance to the "refusal of the political class to take on any responsibility."

Rome's dysfunctional policies on housing and land use have likely contributed to the inclination of Romans to abandon the public sphere for an insular retreat to the private sphere and family life.  Nonetheless, there have been

An occupied social center in Ostiense.  The facade is now
fully painted--by street artist Blu..  Inside, a cafe serves
tea, apertifs, and snacks.  

counter-developments, efforts to fashion a community experience.  Beginning in the 1970s, young people began to create social centers, many of them by occupying--that is, squatting in--unoccupied buildings.  As Mudu explains, most of these were created by the left (Angelo Mai, Garage, and Rialto), but a few--notably Casa Pound--were established by the right.  Today, some 34 social centers exist in Rome, and about half are legal.

Likely an illegal private garden, in the Parco della Cafferella--
that is, on public land.  

Other Romans have taken to farming without permission on public land; in 2011, there were
70 public gardens in Rome, and many communal gardens--all created in the absence of a coherent city policy.  Not to make money, as Ferruccio Trabalzi notes, but to foster community. 

Global Rome is a remarkable collection, a complex yet accessible mix that sheds light on little-understood aspects of a city whose cultural patrimony can overwhelm efforts to appreciate and understand its nuances.  It will have special appeal for scholars of modern Rome and for those interested in exploring beyond the historic center, and beyond the suburbs into the periphery.  Rome the third time, perhaps.

Bill  

Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City, ed. Isabella Clough Marinaro and Bjorn Thomassen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), is available through Indiana University Press [$32 paper, $27.99 eBook] and amazon [$27.56 paper, $16.40 eBook].