Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
at the end of the 1990s, the camp again became the focus of political and
media attention since its population had swollen to close to a thousand residents,
a large proportion of which were young children. The maintenance work car-
ried out by the municipal authorities had done little to improve conditions in the
camp: The toilet facilities were often broken and many areas of the compound
were constantly flooded. This situation generated various internal tensions be-
tween young people and elders who had grown up in very different contexts,
among neighbors who were now sharing even more restricted spaces, in rela-
tions with the institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGos) whose
resources were never sufficient to meet the inhabitants' desire for long-term
improvements. moreover, shortly before 2000, the administration, faculty, and
students of the nearby Roma tre university began protesting about the camp's
presence, claiming that the Roma were carrying out petty thefts in the car parks
and entering the university's premises to use the toilets. The proximity and con-
tact with the camp led to high-ranking members of the academic community
demanding a much stronger division between the two areas, declaring that the
Roma's cultural identity was “difficult to reconcile with our own” and that the
camp was producing “a closeness that is impossible to manage” (Gubbini 2000).
The tangible outcome of the demonstrations was the construction of a wall block-
ing access to the university from the camp; however, the protests also marked a
turning point in perceptions of the camp as a problem not only for the people
living in it but also for its incompatibility with the projects for postindustrial
renewal of the whole neighborhood that the municipality and the university were
beginning to develop.
five years of demonstrations and meetings between Roma, local authorities,
and NGos followed until, in september 2005, a definitive solution was found; the
city government moved approximately eight hundred people from vicolo savini
to a site near the town of pomezia, 25 km outside the ring road which serves as
Rome's symbolic boundary. The new camp, known as Castel Romano, was de-
fined by the left-wing mayor at the time, walter Veltroni, and by his right-wing
successor, as a “solidarity village,” a model solution for the problematic presence
of Roma in the city. The camp is bordered on three sides by the malafede nature
reserve, while the fourth side lies directly on the Via pontina, a high-speed road
which is also the camp's only point of entry. beyond the fast traffic and the dense
vegetation of the nature reserve, the only nearby buildings are a high-end shop-
ping mall and industrial complexes, while the nearest residential neighborhood
is more than 5 km away and accessible only by car.
initially, Roma were housed on the site in large tents where they spent the
winter, but these were replaced after various months by “containers,” prefabri-
cated huts made of plastic and metal that were designed for temporary residence.
electricity was installed immediately, whereas it took a number of years of vocal
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