Urbanity beyond nostalgia: Discovering public life at the edge of the city of Rome

Abstract

The contemporary city of Rome is being built differently from the expanding post-war peripheries. New, mainly private residential developments are changing our perception of the cityscape. According to the General Plan, these projects are designed to encourage a polycentric metropolitanization, with mixed uses and facilities. But they have been critiqued for producing urbanscapes that ‘discourage urbanity’ because the relevant organizational and functional dimensions of public life have been almost totally neglected: foremost among these are the provision of public goods, services to citizens, high-quality standards of construction and an infrastructure allowing for spatial mobility. The main argument for urbanity emphasizes ‘the way of using the space of the city’ in combination with spontaneous forms of interaction within that urban space. This argument contests the production of the contemporary suburban areas of the city and is based upon a sort of nostalgia for the urbanism inherited in the romantic conceptualization of the modern European city, made visible in the celebrations of historical city places. It gives rise to dissatisfaction with the recently built environment which has been critiqued for its ‘absence of urbanity’.

Citation

Annunziata, S. and Cossu, M. (2010), "Urbanity beyond nostalgia: Discovering public life at the edge of the city of Rome", Clapson, M. and Hutchison, R. (Ed.) Suburbanization in Global Society (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 131-152. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1047-0042(2010)0000010008