The Self-Made City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 196

joined together or supported various consortia for self-regeneration. These orga-
nizations have given greater powers to the consortia and have provided important
technical and logistical support for the individual units that are unquestionably
weaker. They have become the preferential interlocutors of Rome's administra-
tion and have come to constitute an intermediate level of micropower in the huge
panorama of the outer suburbs. The city council benefits from the reduction of
interlocutors and conflicts, but the participatory dimension aimed at the creation
of the common good seems clearly to have faded away. in truth, the participatory
processes relating to consortia of self-regeneration differ greatly from one to an-
other, and the processes offer a huge variety according to the specific individuals
involved and the particular conditions on the ground.
it should be noted that within these areas, many committees have sprung
up, characterized by varied relationships with the consortia; thus distinctions
emerge between the people who look after the landowners' interests and those
who concern themselves with the regeneration of the urban area around their
homes, often fighting important battles.
forms of housing
The most common form of living accommodation is the private house: This be-
comes a microcosm that is a home not only for oneself and one's own family but
often for the families of one's children (although most of these tend today to leave
home and seek a place somewhere else that is more like “living in a city”). but
especially within one's own plot, there is room for a garden or a swimming pool
as well as a kitchen garden and other installations that complete a style of living
based on self-sufficiency and a microcosm that induces a sense of the family nu-
cleus, even if it is extended. The person who can afford it will seek to enlarge and
smarten up their own space; the person who cannot will settle for simply hav-
ing their own house. people show no great interest in what happens beyond the
boundary of their own plot, or they expect others to see to those spaces. That is
why anything to do with roads, pavements, initial town planning, public spaces,
minimal services, and parks is in effect absent, or completely neglected if it exists.
The maximization of land exploitation by division into plots and unautho-
rized construction nullifies the chance of creating public spaces of any type. liv-
ing is pared down to the minimum. The public dimension is likewise minimal,
since it manifests itself only occasionally. This is even more the case in recent in-
stances of speculative unauthorized building, while it was less in evidence in the
initial phases when illegal building stemmed from necessity. in the latter case,
the collaboration between informal builders brought about the creation of a com-
munity spirit, implanted a sociability based on solidarity and stabilized personal
and social relationships that stood the test of time and became stronger. from
this derived a perceptible public dimension, although it did not always mani-