Ways of Living in the Market City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 133

ing is strongly connected with sociability, communal life, the direct appropria-
tion, and shared dimension of common spaces. bufalotta is one of the new resi-
dential districts of the market city; today it marks the “frontier” of middle-class
housing. The housing is mostly private and of good quality, a form of expression
and acknowledgement of its own social status. The entire area affected by the
project and the bufalotta-porta di Roma complex is organized in housing units
that differ from each other, but certain common features can be traced. flats are
generally very small (sizes range from 20, 40, or 60 m2 to—sometimes—90 m2,
obviously for small families), but they have large balconies that compensate for
the limited space indoors (thus many of the household appliances are put on the
balcony). They are clearly aimed at single people, young couples, and nuclear
families without small children (or at the most one small child). The availability
of spacious balconies and especially the finishing touches and high quality of
building, however, tend to compensate for the limited space and to replicate the
models of more luxurious housing. This is the concept of residential accommoda-
tion that is promoted by the construction companies' marketing and publicity.
similarly, the small blocks of flats are often grouped in complexes with their
own swimming pool, an internal garden, a playground for children, and security
systems to control access. some of them are true residential complexes that can
be described as luxurious. in others, everything (including the swimming pool
and playground) is on a smaller scale and tends to replicate residential models for
the less affluent classes. a further difference is that the larger and smaller blocks
of flats can be regarded as “rabbit warrens” that are no different from other blocks
in Rome's outer suburbs.11 Residing in bufalotta-porta di Roma is no more than
an imitation of good living.
The large shopping center around which the new district is constructed ab-
sorbs all the other functions of living. it trivializes the collective dimension of
residing in a place and reduces it to a sum of separate functions. although there
are a few “squares” inside the neighborhood, some of them with colonnades and
a few shops, people seldom make use of these public spaces and they are reduced
to serving as car parks. The few shops there are those that cannot find a place in
the shopping center: bars selling slices of pizza, some restaurants, services such
as drycleaners and plumbers. They are not enough to liven up these places. like-
wise, the shops envisaged in other areas remain empty, creating—already at this
early stage—an atmosphere of desolation. and the schools, already constructed
to a high architectural standard, are isolated complexes, far from the residential
areas and barely integrated with them: The children have to be taken to school
by car.
it is also interesting to note how some of the new residents in bufalotta-
porta di Roma perceive the big shopping center, an inescapable presence in the
cityscape and daily life: a “nightmare,” an “octopus,” a “black hole” that swal-
lows up all life, especially during leisure time. That is what many residents think,