Informal Rome: rule-bending as housing governance in contemporary Italy - By Isabella Clough Marinato (John Cabot University, Rome)
The meeting is only online and not in presence (due to covid).
Online registration at the link https://polito-it.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qd-Cqrz8pGdNS9DwkFa8sbgkV2KO8z3ZE
The lecture series "Inhabiting the Uninhabitable - Book Talks" is organised by professors
Camillo Boano, Francesco Chiodelli and Michele Lancione
Italy is home to a vast range of housing informalities and its capital is no exception. In fact, much of Rome’s urban development has been driven by informal housing production, motivated both by survival needs and financial speculation. This seminar draws on the recent book Inhabiting Liminal Spaces, published in early 2022 by Routledge, to discuss how ambiguities in housing governance condition the daily lives and tactics of some of the city’s most disadvantaged inhabitants. Focusing on two groups in particular – squatters in a public housing complex and Roma living in camps – the discussion highlights how the lack of sustained public provision of low-cost accommodation, coupled with shifting and contradictory regulations, have impacted residents’ everyday security, stability, and informal self-help strategies. The analysis combines fine-grained ethnography with a political economy lens to question how far informalities are able to reconfigure historically rooted power dynamics and hierarchies. It then opens up a conversation about how to move towards realistic strategies of housing governance that recognize the agency and needs of marginalized groups.
Lecture by Isabella Clough Marinato (John Cabot University, Rome).
Discussants Chiara Caciotti (Politecnico di Torino), Penny Koutrolikou (National Technical University of Athens), Abel Polese (Dublin City University)
(132 KB)