Rome as a Global City - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 36

the number of bangladeshis compared to the previous year, the Chinese popula-
tion showed an increase of about 2 percent. if we examine these data in light of the
oldest statistics available (2003), we see that their spatial concentration has risen.
at the time, Chinese groups resident in the two boroughs represented about 32
percent of the total Chinese population, while 39 percent of bangladeshis lived
there. The diachronic dynamic of patterns of residence shows that there has been
a progressive move of bangladeshis from the tenth and the eleventh municipi to
the first and sixth and of Chinese from other areas in the sixth and ninth bor-
oughs—where they tended to be concentrated during the 1990s (Campani et al.
1992)—toward the esquilino. The most recent data available (31 December 2010)
seem to confirm this trend: 39.23 percent of bangladeshis and 47.47 percent of
Chinese were resident in the two municipi. 12 The dynamic we have identified was
therefore stable for the bangladeshi population and intensifying for the Chinese.
it is highly significant that this occurred in parallel with a notable rise (of about
60 percent) in the absolute size of both groups between 2006 and 2010 (from 8,927
to 14,466 bangladeshis and from 7,064 to 12,013 Chinese).
This point seems particularly important because it demonstrates how this
progressive concentration has involved both collectivities and how, just as the
massive rise in house prices was beginning to occur in italy and especially in
Rome (an increase of approximately 90 percent between 1991 and 2010 [Nomisma
2010]), both were able to identify and position themselves strategically in the ar-
eas where a rise in real-estate value would be most likely. Their settlement choices
indicate an ability to read the spatial organization of the city on two levels, the
global and the local, based on an understanding of the hierarchies of spaces and
the gaps that these have created. These groups have in fact positioned themselves
with an interstitial logic of compact settlement within the “internal peripher-
ies” in the center of the city, enhancing the value of neighborhoods that italians
considered marginal. indeed, the esquilino neighborhood was intended be one
of the “centers” of post-unification Rome in the late 1800s, accommodating the
class of civil servants who moved to the capital from northern italy. however,
the area was left on the fringes of the political center as it was delineated by the
fascist spatial model (it was one of the hubs of the project of spatial reorganiza-
tion closely tied to the presence of the italian royal house of savoy, which clashed
with mussolini's subsequent plans for the city). Due also to the low quality and
large scale of the buildings, the population had started to diminish in the 1950s
and plummeted further in the 1980s because of its proximity to termini railway
station, which meant that it was frequented by many drug users. torpignattara's
blight was instead due to problems of housing and high levels of crime. Despite
being very close to the city, it was socially separated from it: located in what was
once an industrial district, its population was predominantly working class (to
this day it is in the part of the city that has the lowest proportion of university