Rome

The conflict between Rome, the World-City, and Rome, the Modern Capital, is manifest in the many ruins of failed institutional ventures and in the abandoned spaces generated by land revenue and property speculation. These ruins become territories of the possible, where spontaneous forms of renaturation and civil coexistence have found asylum, developing diversity and demonstrating an unpredictable capacity for co-evolving with the environment.

Reinhabiting
Ruins

The city has a unique trait: the demonstrable ability to revitalize itself throughout all periods of history. In this process, which up to now has been cyclical, its regenerations have always started from the spontaneous practices of reusing the ruins of a time that had reached exhaustion. In fact, it is the relics of times past that gave the city gained not only its cultural power but also the material foundation of its urban structure. The ruins that were once a symbol of both change and persistence now prove more and more exhausted—a warning signal for the fragility of a model that is based on the permanent transformation of the old.

Bottom-up

Today’s Rome piques our interest less through planned responses to global challenges and more with the unpredictable and creative reactions to the errors and failures of (public) initiatives. In its struggle for survival, new structures arise from practices of appropriating, reusing and reinventing public and private projects that have ended up in ruins. These improvised landscapes of clandestine natural and social realities give a fragile yet unique perspective of urban regeneration. These spaces marked by diversity and resilience have proven to be places of refuge that generate social and ecological adaptation strategies. Spontaneous reforestation promotes biodiversity; new spaces for the revitalization of civil and democratic coexistence are created. They are indispensable hubs for the regeneration of the city—resilient, creative, and always threatened by external intervention.