Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [181]
Against the ineluctable depopulation of the historic center of Rome, De Luca cited the dramatically contrasting case of Naples, with a historic core still heavily populated by working-class families who would rise up in revolt at any attempt at mass eviction. Acknowledging the serious crime problem in Naples,17 he nevertheless described this complex of people and architecture as a "great heritage" (un grande patrimonio~.
Rome, he suggested, provokes concern for two reasons: first, because such radical demographic change "creates a cultural but also a social rupture"; and second, because the 196os building boom that led to the creation of huge new suburbs on the outskirts of Rome created "the death of a [social] style (stillcidio), which got worse again during the last few years and which ... has struck the residential quarters but also the commercial activities and especially the artisanal trades, which are the weakest link. And the historic center has become more of a shop-window for big firms, like the banks, which have all these outlets, to hoard big real estate properties and so on, the very point of which is ultimately not understandable. [It's] more of a shop-window for them. A symbol of power.... No one ever goes there; these are dead offices."
The new speculators rebut such nostalgic visions, claiming instead that they are improving neighborhoods rather than destroying their social fabric. Their argument, however, ignores the class-driven nature of gentrification, the beneficiaries of which have succeeded less in abolishing crime than in getting rid of its ruder or more obvious manifestations. More charitably, it is about replacing an extremely localized working-class culture with a wealthy cosmopolitan lifestyle. The palazzo in Via degli Ibernesi was emblematic, not only as De Luca argued) of class cohabitation, but also of a decidedly ordinary lifestyle that was far from the picturesque imaginings of either the new inhabitants or the media. De Luca elegantly called the erasure of this everyday idiom stylocide (stilicidio); it is the erasure of a decidedly ordinary civil order by a market logic dressed in the guise of a universalizing, globalizing civic ethic.
De Luca tried to get a parliamentary motion tabled, in the hope that this would at least create some media attention. He also proposed investigating whether some of the funds earmarked for the purchase of homes for the destitute might be used to purchase this palazzo. While the residents were certainly not among the truly poor, he argued that they preserved a social fabric of considerable diversity. Paolo frequently played on this theme, recalling, for example, a marchioness who had bought a palazzo in the district in 1969 because she wanted to live among the common people-although, he conceded, she was rather aloof and did not mix with the locals despite a courteous interaction with Paolo himself: "The difference is that she belongs to a social class very different from mine.... There's a family crest, d' you see?"
This lofty lady had in fact, as Paolo acknowledged, contributed to the gentrification now under way, involuntarily though it may have been. There was a "good relationship"-but ... (pero ... )! That familiar old disclaimer says it all; the working-class neighbors were quite put out when, after a burglary at the marchioness's house, it turned out that she had given her keys to a newly arrived American rather than to one of the local neighbors whose terrace gave a good view of the place. These real-life experiences did shed a harsh light on the historical thinness of the nostalgic gloss of class cohabitation.
Fig. 6. Putting up the barricades: rightists as social activists. (Photo by Cornelia Mayer Herzfeld.
De Luca's and others' appeals to that ideal image, moreover, made no more dents in the bank's silence than did the formal protests emanating from the mayor's office. The residents had meanwhile also appealed to the