The Self-Made City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 193

and even immigrants to whom people sublet their former cattle sheds and hen-
houses, these being in a very worrying state of decay and social exclusion. There
was also naturally a change in the relationship of these various residents and
workers with their own territory and their willingness to invest in its regenera-
tion. The growing presence of immigrants (coming mainly from eastern europe)
brought about a further local effect of globalization but one that invariably kept
a low profile.
policies toward unauthorized building in Rome:
involving Residents in management
unlike what happened in most central and southern italian cities, there have
been attempts in Rome in recent years to confront the problem by trying out
feasible and innovative courses of action through town planning and urban re-
generation policies. Rome is thus an interesting case, if a problematic one. The
attitude of Rome's administrations over the years has certainly been equivocal.
on the one hand, unlawful building is illegal and should be prosecuted; on the
other hand, local government was not in a position to respond to the growing
demand for housing and unlawful building; therefore, it acted as a safety valve.
The weakness of control mechanisms, inadequacy of public housing policies, lack
of planning, absence of genuine political will, and an inadequate culture of ad-
ministration and government made the problem ever more intractable, the more
so as it grew and turned into speculation.
it was only at the end of the 1970s, and in particular with the advent of the
center-left administrations, that policies were adopted for the regeneration of un-
authorized housing in the suburbs. This was done in particular through a process
of negotiation and consultation with the interested parties in order to bring the
problem under public control. from this emerged the experiment of plans for the
rehabilitation of the unauthorized areas, designated as the “o Zones” in a variant
of the 1962 urban master plan (Rossi 2000). This was a very demanding and long,
drawn-out operation that in the end did not deliver the hoped-for results. after
much foot-dragging by the government, it was not until the 1990s, with the new
center-left municipal governments, that new courses of action were developed
both at the planning level and from the management perspective.
The city authorities introduced an innovative procedure permitted by region-
al legislation that was the only one of its kind in italy: such urbanization works
could also be carried out by a consortium of landowners in the area, known as
a consortium of self-regeneration. The members paid in their own agreed share
that included not only a minimum subscription for the functioning and manage-
ment of the consortium but also the expenses that the proprietors would have
had to pay to the city government to rectify the situation and for the works of ur-
banization envisaged. leaving aside the specific mechanisms that were features