Evicting Rome’s Undesirables - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 100

protests before drinkable water was provided (see iowa state university Rome
architecture studio 2008). social projects as complex and costly as those pro-
vided in vicolo savini were activated in the new camp, but these were further
hampered by the large distance between the site and the ostiense neighborhood
to which children had to be shuttled in order to maintain continuity in their
schooling. The equally severe isolation from health services became a critical
barrier in the possibility of many people, particularly the elderly and women,
accessing health care. This distance from the city and the lack of public trans-
port led many Roma, especially children and adolescents, to lose all the oppor-
tunities for interaction and social contact which they had developed in their old
neighborhood, restricting their possibilities for employment or leisure activities
to the very few resources available within the camp. Despite these problems, city
governments have since continuously increased the camp's population by trans-
ferring to it Roma evicted from other encampments around Rome. by 2011, over
one thousand people in Castel Romano were experiencing the city's new model
for managing and “integrating” Roma: a policy which focuses on concentrating
them in increasingly invisible spaces detached from the rest of the city.
meanwhile, vicolo savini has been entirely transformed. The road once lined
with caravans and wooden shacks is now paved with a perfect strip of asphalt
which ends at the entrance to a state-of-the-art sports complex containing olym-
pic-sized swimming pools, lodgings, and a large car park. its glass walls and
wavy roof gardens are the most noticeable and paradoxical signs of the latest of
Rome's monumental public works projects, an initiative which originally aimed
to utilize the 2009 world aquatics Championship as a catalyst for urban renewal
of the entire surrounding area. The complex was never completed, though, as
construction was blocked by judicial investigations concerning corruption in the
public sector (see martin, chapter 10). Nevertheless, every saturday and sunday
morning, the inhabitants of Castel Romano as well as many other Roma from
former Yugoslavia and Romania return to the street to set up the last remaining
trace of their history in this fragment of Rome, the pijats romanò, a market for
secondhand and recycled goods run by Roma who used to live on vicolo savini.
it attracts many of the neighborhood's residents, both italian and foreign, who
seek bargains among the salvaged and recycled objects, and is also a space for the
Roma to socialize, as men and children catch up with friends and family while
the women manage the stalls.
The creation of this pijats followed the same pattern as others which have
sprung up in Rome in recent years and which were triggered by a common cause:
the forced exclusion of Roma from another of the city's social and commercial
hubs. at least since 2003, most Roma families had sold their goods in a marginal
section of Rome's largest and most famous flea market, porta portese. Not only
was their presence in the market extensive but, as De angelis (2007) emphasizes,