Torpignattara/Banglatown - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 66

doors and today lies idle like a crumbling “monument,” waiting to be converted
into a shopping center or flats. from 1971 to 2005, the area that now makes up
the sixth borough lost around 57,000 inhabitants.3 at the beginning of 2000, the
number of migrants in the area seemed to be constantly increasing, while the
number of original inhabitants continued to fall.4 according to data collected by
the osservatorio Romano on migration into torpignattara (Caritas Roma 2009,
408ff), 49,117 people lived there in 2005, but by the end of 2009, the number had
fallen to 47,500 inhabitants.5 according to recent, informed estimates from with-
in the bangladeshi community, there are now about five thousand bangladeshis
in the neighborhood (more than 10 percent of all residents).
This repopulation of a rundown district has had considerable repercussions
not only on social behavior, between people of different origins, but has also giv-
en the district a “multicultural image”; this has opened a range of scenarios of ac-
ceptance, narrow-mindedness, social anxiety, and forms of peaceful coexistence.
most of the employed in the bangladeshi community are male, with a grad-
ual increase in recent years of nuclear families. This is a community that for the
most part engages in trade, as street sellers or in services such as bartenders,
chefs, and pastry-cooks.6 The majority—mostly males—consists of the “invis-
ibles,” young new arrivals who do not speak italian and who work illegally as
street sellers. Then there are a lot of workers and regular employees who work
in restaurant kitchens, bars, and workshops. finally there is self-employment,
signifying the achievement of a life objective.
living in the banglatown of the Borghetti:
torpignattara on a local and Global scale
one of the most apt expressions coined by urban sociology to define certain “hy-
brid” urban spaces was introduced by Giovanni laino, who, when speaking in
the 1980s about the historic center of Naples, defined it from the social perspec-
tive as an area that was “as spotted as a leopard” (laino 1984, 50).
The phrase “as spotted as a leopard” conjures up a picture of spaces that are
very mixed not only from the social but also the architectural, urban planning,
and above all cultural perspectives, owing to the presence of migrants who try
to insert themselves into pre-existing social groups.7 at a first glance, the urban
space characterizing the neighborhood is highly stratified; many “instant” build-
ings stand next to 1970s conversions into enormous blocks of flats, with uneven
pavements and fragments here and there of the urban villages that were inhab-
ited in the postwar years by the lower working classes.8 in the district, there are
four borghetti or urban villages, areas with spontaneous and unauthorized build-
ings (small single-story houses with a patch of garden) that sprang up between
the wars.9 around these areas, like the leopard's spots, is a scattering of early
twentieth-century working-class housing consisting of small but smarter apart-