Roma has been for decades—if not centuries—a invisible trench where the past and the speculation They fight for every square meter of cobblestone. Living today in its streets, avoiding the stagnant traffic helllegions of motorcycles and the moon traps on the sidewalks, is the daily torture of 2.7 million of inhabitants. A city that receives nearly 50 million tourists every year and that, however, has not been able to resolve the contradictions that suffocate it from within: the public transport lotterythe proliferation of tourist flats and one bureaucracy which often turns any paperwork into an expedition to the Arctic. For this reason, this week’s announcement that the Board of the Italian capital has approved the package of measures to design the new Technical Standards of Action (NTA) of the city’s General Regulatory Plan is not a mere window procedure.
It will be, if everything goes well, the first step towards the end of almost two decades in which the capital has changed skin, vices and mayors – from Walter Veltroni to Gianni Alemanno, from Ignazio Marino to Virginia Raggi and the current Roberto Gualtieri – but whose rules of the game seemed mummified. Since 2008, the map on which the real estate destiny of this chaotic model it was not touched. He The goal is for it not to be like that anymore..
The dam
The approved text, which now begins its slow pilgrimage through the 15 districts (Municipality) and the Urban Planning Commission before running aground or flowering in the Aula Giulio Cesare for final approval, intends function as a dam. In Rome, the agricultural land of the periphery has always been a perennial temptation for cement and speculation. The Italian capital has one of the lower urban densities among the large European metropolises—barely 2,200 inhabitants per square kilometer, compared to more than 20,000 in Paris intramuros—, which for decades has fueled horizontal expansion, the sprawl uncontrolled urbanization that swallow the Roman Farm without a metro or bus network that connects them with the center.
Sunset in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, with rental scooters and bicycles on a sidewalk. / LAURA PUIG
For this reason, the reform now solemnly proclaims the “blocking land consumption”a declaration that in practice seeks to force builders to look in: to the open wound of the abandoned industrial estates, the obsolete warehouses and the concrete skeletons that mark the ring road. Urban regenerationthey call it in Roman offices, a fetish word that sounds clean but implies put the scalpel into interests very settled. Only in the eastern quadrant of the city, between Tor Cervara and Pietralata, are dozens of hectares of industrial land disused that have been waiting for years for a reconversion that never ends up coming.
World Heritage
For his part, the historic center -declared UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 along with the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See—has become in recent years a themed decoration. an amusement park emptying of Romans by pressure of mass tourism and short-term rentals. Platforms like Airbnb manage in the city more than 30,000 active adsaccording to sector estimates, largely concentrated in the districts historical buildings of Trastevere, Monti and the surroundings of the Pantheon, where the average price of residential rent it shoots up to 25-30 euros per square meter per month, figures that 10 years ago were unthinkable. That front has also been put in the spotlight. The new rules ensure that they will try to force their way back: favor “residentiality” and the development of public or social housing (housing sociale). The music sounds good, but anyone who suffers from minimal city services knows that the distance between the standard and the asphalt It is measured by courts and resources. It will be one of the toughest obstacles to overcome. But not the only one.
Moving around Rome today requires a fundamental resignation. The metro system has just three lines for a city of 1,285 square kilometers – the largest in area in the European Union – and the works on line C, partially inaugurated in 2014, have accumulated delays and cost overruns that already exceed several times the initial budget. Into that void have slipped the 400.000 engine (scooters and motorcycles), which turn any traffic light into a tacit negotiation and bike lanes, where they exist, in a Russian roulette. Added to them are the thousands of rental scooters and bicycles that proliferated after the pandemic and that now lie overturned on the sidewalks like remains of an urban shipwreck poorly managed.
A steep street in the Monteverde neighborhood of Rome. / LAURA PUIG
Avalanche of amendments
Perhaps that is why, to build this regulatory shield, the municipal technicians have had to digest an avalanche of 1,075 observations submitted by neighborhood committees, professional associations, opposition parties and ordinary citizens. Everyone wanted their amendment piece on the map. The starting point is not good, nor an exaggerated perception: the latest socioeconomic balance of the prestigious classification Quality of life from the economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore places the capital in a mediocre average position at the national level, dramatically sunk in the caboose—98th out of 107 provinces—when specifically measuring the well-being and opportunities of its young citizens.
Still, before the street skepticismthe authorities have said they are convinced of their decision. This is how the mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, explained it. “We have built a strategic project capable of reconciling economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. Rome will have more urban tools to regenerate“, he said. With even more pomp, the Councilor for Urban Planning, Maurizio Veloccia, has sent the same message ensuring that there is “a decisive step to approve the new rules of urban development”. It is, according to him, “the result of a long, complex and fruitful work to demonstrate that it is possible to combine the development of the city with the protection of your priceless assets historical, landscape and archaeological”. It will be necessary to see if the Romans also survive this time to the potholes.
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