Ways of Living in the Market City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 129

master plan then being drawn up, to provide details of the location and planning
of porta di Roma, the new centrality of bufalotta.
The construction work began at the end of the 1990s, starting with the new
branch of iKea and the shopping center, which opened in July 2007. The residen-
tial buildings came next. work on the housing estates was nearing completion
in December 2011 (although the project will not be finished for some years), as
was work on a large hotel. This way of proceeding was entirely in keeping with
the economic and financial focus of the project. The completion of the shopping
area was a priority, since there were buyers lined up and shopkeepers waiting
to start trading. The whole shopping center is a huge economic and financial
machine. The main infrastructure, especially the link with the ring road (which
was built with public money), was also given priority so as to allow the shopping
center to function. The capital accrued during this first stage was then invested in
the gradual construction of the residential areas (in accordance with market de-
mand), which increased returns and allowed investments to be capitalized. pub-
lic services were provided next (especially schools, which were completed very
quickly), while the green spaces are not yet finished.
The interior of the shopping center also functions like a big machine. its
strength lies in the “magnets”: iKea, auchan, Decathlon, leroy merlin, fNaC,
Zara, mediaworld, and other attractions such as the multiplex cinema and food
courts. There are 220 shops in the center; many of them are franchises of italian,
european, or multinational chains, but there are also (though fewer) local Ro-
man brand names, chosen because they were well placed in relation to the Roman
shopping scene and therefore in a position to meet the cost of rent. The presence
of global commercial organizations is a sign of both the local economic effects of
globalization and the transition toward globalized and standardized tastes and
social behavior. furthermore, the layout of the shops corresponds to the func-
tional demands of the machine. The magnets are located at the ends of the main
routes through the center while less popular businesses are located in the shop-
ping galleries along the routes. This overview shows how we are faced with a very
weighty and complex economic, housing, and financial operation that has little
to do with the regeneration of the outer suburbs, one of the fundamental objec-
tives of the centralities envisaged. a more important aspect to be emphasized is
that the public authorities are in charge of an initiative that is of most benefit to
private operators.
The policy of the Centralities and the Regeneration of the outer suburbs
according to Rome's new urban master plan, the centralities were to play an
important (if not exclusive) role in the regeneration of the outer suburbs. The
creation of bufalotta-porta di Roma seems manifestly to fail this objective, even
though the planners paid particular attention to the neighboring district and the
relationship between district and shopping center8—and porta di Roma is one