Full Description
Living Rome: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Belonging looks beyond the romanticized image of Rome, towards a kaleidoscopic view of the city shaped by inequalities, socio-political challenges, and acts of resistance and solidarity. In the wake of urban developments related to migration, housing shortages, COVID-19, crime, and other social changes, this volume offers a grounded approach, mapping the contemporary realities of Italy's capital from a variety of methodological standpoints. Contributors argue that the unseen fringes, both geographically peripheral and those embedded within the very heart of Rome, are crucial for understanding its social dynamics. These 'hidden' geographies foster vibrant communities, challenge ideas of home and belonging, and act as key sites of creativity, resistance and everyday life.
Bringing together urban sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, demographers, criminologists, decolonizing and feminist scholars, this study contributes to a growing body of research on the city and its social movements, aiming to inform policy and contribute to a more just and sustainable Rome. Using a variety of methods, from quantitative cartography and policy analysis to (auto)ethnography and creative methodologies, this volume speaks well beyond Rome, to wider conversations about cities worldwide.
Contents
Isabella Clough Marinaro and Will Haynes: Introducing the In/visible City
Part 1: Dwellings and Discontent: Chronicles of Inequality, Habitation and Resistance
Ch. 1 Keti Lelo, Salvatore Monni and Federico Tomassi: Changes in the Roman districts: Insights from the censuses 1981-2021
Ch. 2 Barbara Pizzo: The City of Rent. Rome as the capital of rentier capitalism
Ch. 3 Margherita Grazioli: Beyond the housing emergency. Conceptualizing the habitability crisis in Rome's housing squats.
Ch. 4 Chiara Cacciotti: The afterlife of sgomberi in Rome. Political and affective frameworks of evictability in the lives of former and current squatters
Part 2: Navigating Crossroads: Control, Mobility, and Marginalization in Contemporary Rome
Ch. 5 Silvia Antinori: Migration processes and the margins of the urban: The aesthetic-moral governance of bodies and territory at Roma Termini station
Ch. 6 Will Haynes: Closures and control in a Roman train station: Urban change in pandemic times
Ch. 7 Lorenzo Mauloni: 'Tiburtina is like a compass!'. Migrants' spatialities between movement, solidarity and marginalization
Ch. 8 Francesca Conti: Facing the hills, struggling to walk: An auto-ethnographic account of living in Rome with reduced mobility
Part 3. Urban Alchemies: Social Responses and Remaking Rome
Ch. 9 Isabella Clough Marinaro and Federica Nappa: Criminal mosaics: The varied faces of organized crime in Rome
Ch. 10 Edoardo Guerzoni: Inspiring others to inspire themselves: DIY intervention and youth empowerment at the Ponte della Musica Skate Spot
Ch. 11 Raffaella Coletti and Andrea Simone: The geography of mutual aid in contemporary Rome. The experience of Nonna Roma
Ch. 12 Fabiola Fiocco and Anna Gorchakovskaya: How to Inhabit a Space with a Complex Present? Visual Activism and Contemporary Rome
Ch. 13 Helton Levy and Eleonora Diamanti: Spraying inclusion: Graffiti and street art as urban and digital social justice practice in contemporary Rome
Cristiana Panella: Epilogue. Existing against the wind
