Marginal Centers - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 204

tering the mouth of the tiber prevents the increased river flow during the winter
from discharging into the sea, thereby often pushing water onto the land. on the
left side of fiumara Grande, there is the little peninsula of idroscalo. The name
derives from a seaplane base located there since the 1930s. before the postwar
colonization, fiumara Grande was, and in part still is, a popular fishing spot
and a place for collecting firewood brought to shore by the river and the sea. The
peninsula is public property, which makes idroscalo residents de facto illegal.
The takeover of the area began in 1961 when fishermen from Roman neigh-
borhoods as varied as Garbatella and primavalle built makeshift huts to use at
weekends and in the summer. well aware that the authorities tolerated their
squatting, it did not take long before the colonists converted their huts into
more solid constructions. according to long-time residents, the second phase of
idroscalo's history began in the mid-1970s when a second series of occupations
transformed the site from weekend refuge to year-round community. Residents
explain that this new phase was caused by a housing crisis and foreign immigra-
tion; like other informal communities in Rome, squatting at idroscalo was now
fueled by necessity. to understand how a group of unorganized citizens could
occupy public property without permission, it is necessary to briefly discuss how
the periphery of Rome developed after unification.
patchy urbanization
The Roman periphery occupies what was known as the Campagna Romana, or
agro Romano (Roman Countryside), before Rome became italy's capital in 1871.
This was an enormous territory that was partly abandoned, partly cultivated,
and partly used as grazing ground, surrounding the city which until then was
confined within the aurelian walls of antiquity (Caracciolo and Quilici 1985).
This territory urbanized in parallel with the simultaneous development of Rome
inside the walls (mancini 1982, sanfilippo 1933), through a process which scholars
divide into four main periods: from 1870 to 1914, the interwar period of 1918-1945,
the postwar years until the 1970s, and the contemporary period (Della seta and
Della seta 1988; see also mudu, chapter 4, and Cellamare, chapter 13).
The first period corresponds to the creation of the capital, whose inhabit-
ants grew from 250,000 to 700,000 in less than thirty years. its new buildings
(government offices, theaters, museums, railway stations, and residences for the
emerging bureaucratic class) took the place of villas, gardens, and vineyards that
constituted the so-called uninhabited areas: rural portions of the city located
within the aurelian walls (Krautheimer 1980). The city of the working class,
mainly immigrants from the center and south of italy who relocated in search
of jobs in the burgeoning construction and tertiary business, rose outside the
aurelian walls along the main access roads, near newly created railway stations
and other minor infrastructures such a post offices, police stations, and health