Counteracting Financial Speculation in Rome: the case of the Metropolitan Precarious Bloc(k)s

Transcription

1 2008 INURA Conference: Non/De/Re- regulation: limits, exclusions and claims Athens, October 3-10/10 Counteracting Financial Speculation in Rome: the case of the Metropolitan Precarious Bloc(k)s Silvia Macchi Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) Irene Di Noto Metropolitan Precarious Bloc(k)s Rome

2 What is regulation? Any urban regulation embodies a certain position of the line of conflict between who looks at the city as a commodity and who looks at it as a place whre to live. This line can go fowards or back in time according to the current balance of forces, but any regulation will never provide an even temporary solution of the conflict. It just makes the point on the state of the conflict.

3 Why to get involved in the public debate on regulation Public debate on regulation can be utilized to bring the conflict center stage in the political arena. This was the aim in the case of the Rome s network for a participatory plan in We never thought that a new Master Plan could solve our problems. The issue of participation in the making of the new plan simply gave us the opportunity to make visible, tangible the conflict to a wider number of Rome e inhabitants

4 What happened in Rome after the new plan adoption inhabitants left Rome to its metropolitan area in the last 5 years Rate of population growth (RED) or decrease (GREEN) in the municipalities of Rome s province

5 2. The amount of new residential units built per year in the Rome s municipality has increased of 30% every year and the number of empty units has increased consequently up to

6 What should we do today Should we now ask for an other New Master Plan? And to whom should we ask for it? To our new right wing mayor?

7 What are Metropolitan Precarious Bloc(k)s BLOC(K)s as: coalition of persons or groups forming a unit with a common interest or purpose (BLOC) obstacle, something that impedes progress or achievement (BLOCK)

8 Which common interest do MPBs share the foundation for a new type of democracy based on the choice to be autonomous facing the old, collapsing system of political representation, and shifting the political arena from the elected councils to the whole city assuming the conflict as language and practice of knowing and transforming the world and putting the rent in the center of present metropolitan conflicts

9 What do MPBs want to impede The urban rent reproduction processes which nowadays are dispossessing most of Rome s inhabitants of the right to imagine and actuate one s own life project, preventing them from having a stable job and a stable place where to live, compelling them to have precarious lives

10 The MPBs strategy: first assumption 1. MPBs are aware that anyone in the city, intentionally or unintentionally, participates in rent reproduction processes. On one hand, it means that anyone is a potential accomplice in those processes. For instance: Squatting non residential buildings to live there entails to facilitate the owner in his claim for changing the planned destination of the building from non-residential to residential Creating spaces for new cultural productions entails to facilitate gentrification processes On the other hand, this also gives anyone the opportunity to interfere with the rent reproduction, by putting his/her sabot in the mechanism.

11 The MPBs strategy: second assumption 2. Only the capacity to elaborate a public discourse on rent reproduction processes could give MPBs the opportunity to open the debate on social rights (income, housing, culture, ) in the city, offering a political alternative to those who voted Alemanno as an answer to their problems to have the chance to succeed in the negotiation with public institutions (first of all the ones in charge of public order, who more and more recognize the lack of affordable housing as a major source of public disorder in the city)

12 Two axis of research and action 1. To build the capacity to interpret the profound structural changes currently occurring in city building. Seminar on THE ART OF RENT AND THE TERRITORIES OF METROPOLITAN CONFLICTS on may To practice creative, concrete (no merely symbolic) actions to boycot the rent. Houses re-appropriation (housing as part of citizenship income ) Autonomous spaces for indipendent cultures Self-organization and self-defence on work places Affordable sport facilities Right to education Self-organization and self-defence of migrants and refugees..

13 MPB counteractions to urban rent May 2007: HORUS OCCUPATO Sept 2008: VIA DEI CASTANI 44

14 June 2007 HorusOccupato May 2008 Seminar on THE ART OF RENT AND THE TERRITORIES OF METROPOLITAN CONFLICTS

15 September 2008 Via dei Castani 44