Marginal Centers - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 206

type situations, both located at the margin of the legal city: slums built on squat-
ted public land and single-family homes or apartment buildings on private land
which was divided into lots and sold on the market. slum residents were progres-
sively relocated to mass-produced apartment buildings in the borgate, while the
second type of dwellers' homes were regularized in 1935 (Cazzola 2005).
The third wave of urban development started immediately after world war
ii and has continued into the present. This renewed expansion includes legal and
self-made, uncontrolled urbanism which increases urban density and reduces
public space. The new development was left in private hands, which shifted the
burden of primary urbanization—infrastructures such as roads, sewers, electric-
ity, public transportation—to the state. from grottoes to ruins, and from shacks
to cellars, the 1958 census counted about 13,000 illegal housing situations (ol-
ivieri 1983). Contrary to the past, however, this form of spontaneous self-made
urbanism was not provisional and transitional in character; it was a real alterna-
tive housing production. along the Via Casilina, Via prenestina, Via boccea, and
around ostia, pre-existing, illegal, and later legalized urban nuclei provided the
basis for further illegal agglomerations that eventually covered about 4,000 ha
of prime agricultural land just outside the city walls. from 1949 to 1962, about
162,000 ha fell prey to land speculation, contributing to widening the city limits
by about 80 percent. such irrational urbanism, which continues unabashedly to-
day, has not occurred covertly or overnight (olivieri 1983). in fact, it is the result
of conscious political choices that have sacrificed the legal and rational develop-
ment of the city in favor of party and personal gain. idroscalo is but one egre-
gious example of the modern urbanization of italy's capital.
living at the edge: fighting for Visibility
following this background to the origins of places like idroscalo, the next ques-
tion concerns what type of relations exist between low-income residents of il-
legal, self-made communities and public institutions. i argue that such relations
are of dependency and subordination on the part of the residents and of benign
neglect on the part of city officials. The first is motivated by the fact that the
residents depend on the goodwill of the city government for the provision of wa-
ter, sewers, electricity, mail, and public transportation. Knowing the residents'
needs, and aware that no court would legitimate squatting on public land, the
authorities can keep them on a tight leash for decades, providing services in bits
and pieces as long as they do not create too much trouble. benign neglect allows
the authorities to achieve several objectives: to delay or forgo the construction of
low-income housing; to reserve the right to use public land according to political
advantages of the moment; to keep at its disposal a reservoir of votes that can be
utilized (bought and exchanged) at election time. This, in short, is the story of
idroscalo: always on the verge of becoming legitimate and always on the verge