Overview
- Presents a deep, ethnographic analysis of Metropoliz in Rome, a landmark case in the practice of urban squatting
- Poised to stimulate discussions around ethnographic practice in relation to contested social phenomena, such as homelessness and squatting
- Contributes to not only anthropology and ethnography, bus also urban geography, sociology, and political sciences, where reflections on social movements, urban spaces, and the commons intersect
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About this book
This book tells the story of Metropoliz, a vacant salami factory located in the Eastern periphery of Rome (Italy) that was squatted in 2009 by homeless households with the cooperation of the Housing Rights Movement Blocchi Precari Metropolitani, and progressively reconverted into the house and museum spaces that form the Città Meticcia (the mestizo city). Through a vivid activist-ethnographic account, Margherita Grazioli suggests that Metropoliz exemplifies a practice of grassroots urban regeneration that speaks to the conflicted reconfiguration of real estate urban regimes in a post-crisis, post-neoliberal scenario. Using the contentious reappropriation of housing as a point of departure for claiming manifold rights, Metropoliz represents an alternative model of urbanity and habitation that will inspire contemporary urban social movements concerned with the demand of the ‘right to the city’, as well as those concerned with the ontology of the urban commons.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
Grazioli's nuanced and contextualised accounts of the 'housing squat' Metropoliz provide an illuminating discussion of the political value that concepts such as 'the right to the city' and 'urban commons' hold for contemporary anti-capitalist struggles. In addition, this book outstandingly shows how fruitful an activist-research approach is to reveal the dynamics and challenges of squatting and housing movements in the Italian context and elsewhere. (Miguel A. Martínez, author of Squatters in the Capitalist City, Uppsala University, Sweden)
Metropoliz is an 'out-of-place' affirmation: a praxis of inhabiting the city for and of the many. With her beautiful and powerful prose, Margherita not only offers a grounded analysis of the meaning and makings of liberatory forms of housing, but she also shows what it means to research spaces like Metropoliz embodying and reverberating their broader urban politics. This book is a quintessential read for anyone concerned with the future of cities well beyond Rome. (Michele Lancione, Urban Institute - University of Sheffield, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Margherita Grazioli is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Regional Sciences & Economic Geography at the Social Sciences Area of the Gran Sasso Science Institute in L'Aquila, Italy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Housing, Urban Commons and the Right to the City in Post-Crisis Rome
Book Subtitle: Metropoliz, The Squatted Città Meticcia
Authors: Margherita Grazioli
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70849-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70848-1Published: 23 April 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-70849-8Published: 22 April 2021
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 166
Number of Illustrations: 22 illustrations in colour
Topics: Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Ethnography, Urban Studies/Sociology, Social Structure, Social Inequality