Ways of Living in the Market City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 125

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ways of living in the market City

Bufalotta and the Porta di Roma
Shopping Center

Carlo Cellamare
(translated by Jennifer Radice)

a in important and entirely new feature of recent urban development in Rome
is the creation of several large conglomerations, mostly placed along the GRa
(the Grande Raccordo anulare or ring road) or near the main roads and motor-
ways. These conglomerations have come into being primarily with the creation of
large shopping complexes, often connected to extensive residential areas. There
are now more than twenty-eight large malls (centri commerciali), some of them
the largest in europe, which have had a marked impact on the present layout of
the city and, indeed, on living conditions in entire urban districts. for the most
part, the conglomerations correspond to the so-called centralities envisaged by
the new urban master plan.1 The purpose of this plan was among other things to
regenerate the outer suburbs, but its consequences were very different: They took
the form primarily of real-estate and financial transactions that benefited private
promoters. This type of process seems to symbolize the current phase of develop-
ment in Rome and the public policies that support it, a phase characterized by a
quest for modernization, often in emulation of other “advanced” capital cities but
without having undergone the maturing process of a “modernity” based on the
riches and potential of the city aiming to have its own “high” profile.
This chapter is an analysis and appraisal of one of these “centralities,” situ-
ated in the city's northeast quadrant near the ring road and comprising the bu-
falotta district and the adjacent porta di Roma shopping mall. it illustrates the
characteristics of this new “market city,” its effects on overall urban structure,
including changes in types of housing and forms of dwelling. it focuses on the

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