Ricerc@Sapienza

Identity and Current Dynamics of the Borgate and the Roman Suburbs · The housing
question and the social, material and symbolic production of the suburbs represented a constitutive
factor of the identity and structure of the city of Rome. The fascist borgate are the
emblem of this dynamic. They have had and still have a role characterizing the city of Rome,
both from the material and the symbolic point of view, as they have a significant role in the
collective imagination, too. The term is used to represent different phenomena, from the
slums in the strict sense to the rural villages and the ‘poor’ houses of the fascist era, from the
official fascist borgate to the public housing neighborhoods, to the various forms of illegal
housing that characterized the city from the post-war period until today. The story of the borgate
illustrates well some recurring themes of Roman urbanism, in particular of its inability
to give adequate answers to the problems of the city, involving an institutionalization of
degradation, a renunciation of programming, a mainly emergency and of low quality approach,
a naturalization of urban unease, a progressive disappearance of politics and institutions.
Today the city is profoundly different, the periphery is its substantial part and the ways
of living change. The borgate paradoxically become, even if of poor building quality, a point
of reference in the urban fabric and a place where there are still spaces for living related to
s ociality and the public dimension.