Conflicting citizenship and (re)active zones in the urban areas; confronting the cases of Berlin and Rome

This dissertation tries to present a critical analysis of conflicts over contested forms of urban transformation and urban policies in the metropolitan area of Rome and Berlin (comparative analysis developed in co-tutoring research thesis). In particular it focuses on the reclaiming of the “right to the city” debate that is witnessing a renewed interest, among urban social movements and academics, due to what happened in the streets, among the urban social movements, in the “rebel cities” (Harvey, 2012), in the last decade. The conflicts selected for the two compared city contexts took place over contested “indeterminate territories” and “urban voids.” As yet “indeterminate,” these places allow unveiling the generative conflict on different meanings of the city. In these processes the “urban void” plays a key role because, according to Borret (2009), the “empty” can be seen as a productive element in the urban public space, as it is not tied to a single interpretation or intention. The bottom-up and grassroots practices proposed, experimented, developed over these spaces are intended as strategy of resistance/opposition to not-negotiated politics in a framework of economic crisis and urban austerity increasingly producing side effects including gentrification and social exclusion and the welfare state crisis. In response to this the movements of insurgent citizenship are organized in many forms: from tenants’ organizations activists, who oppose gentrification and evictions in former working class neighbourhoods of Berlin (Holm, 2010) and calling for more public policies capable to combat speculation and address disinvestment in the subsidized housing sector; to movements of housing struggle in Rome claiming the access to more affordable places in the context of the strong housing crisis; to autonomous movements subtracting spaces from the capitalist logic of the market competitiveness and the speculation (in the case of Berlin and Rome) for living and for social, political, artistic and recreational activities (Membretti, 2003; Holm, Kuhn, 2011; Pruijt, 2012); to urban social movements trying to oppose the privatization of parts of the city considered a “common good”, using various state-driven mechanisms to advance their causes against civic policies, projects, and regulatory measures, that are considered detrimental to the city's public space, such as the groups of citizens reclaiming co-/self-managed public spaces and services (e.g. Gualini, Majoor, 2007, for Amsterdam; Gualini, 2008, for Berlin; Pask, 2010 in the case of Vancouver; Teatro Valle, 2012, in the case of Rome; Vitale, 2007 and Gualini 2014 several cases). In summary, the limits of urbanism based on competitive growth and profit have been emphasized by numerous critical and theoretical practices that have developed theories capable of analysing the issue to a higher level of argumentations, including systemic and ideological aspects, from the point of view of all the actors involved. These intellectual resources, can be useful «for those institutions, movements and actors aiming [...] to promote alternative forms of urbanism, radically democratic, socially just and sustainable» (Brenner, Marcuse, Mayer, 2009). The interesting element is the capacity of these communities to propose, experiment and develop, through forms of social struggles and collective/cooperative action, alternatives to what are considered as unsustainable strategies of urban transformations (mostly based on the substitution/reduction of public resources), analysing power relationships, negotiation of conflicts and participation in institutional planning practice. Doing so, some of these forms of spatial contestation, such as the “transitional reappropriated spaces” (Growth and Corijn, 2005) –on which the research focus- have shown in recent years a programmatic capacity and a proactive potential in suggesting and implementing “Public Policies from the Bottom” (Paba, 2010): e.g. “banking and financial policies” through the activation of forms of microcredit; “training and educational policies” offering a wide range of free or very affordable courses; “policies of management and recycling of waste, housing policies, policies to support youth and women entrepreneurship, policies addressing the problems of immigration, cultural and sports policies”; “architectural heritage renewal policies”, and others. These two European cities have faced so a renewed interest in the phenomenon of “reclaiming” of urban physical spaces that was carried on by social movements and wilfully appropriated by citizens using “appropriation” as a legitimate tactic of protest. Moreover, these radical participated practices have been a tool that enables experimentation and implementation of grassroots alternatives embodying a series of dynamics of “insurgent (re)appropriation” of urban space and self-production and provision of collective resources. Doing so, these informal actors and grassroots groups, organized in new forms of urban social movements, experimenting more progressive understanding of the mechanisms of space and social reproduction, started reclaiming the idea of “commons” and together with it the role that a third subject, a collective subject (different from a single private investor or the State and public institutions), could play in a direct management of what are intended to be collective properties/resources. In the two cities contexts analysed citizens have implemented a set of new strategies. Among them: new forms of self-help collective housing, self-/co-managed public spaces and the definition of urban commons. The research analyse some relevant cases of insurgent reappropriation/reclaiming of urban public spaces making a comparison between two cities historically characterized by organized forms of social struggle and grassroots transitional space reappropriations. Which is the value of such alternative experiences? Can these grass-root experiments of self-management and DIY renovation contribute to the production of new operative strategies for: public housing stock; heritage management; alternative forms of welfare; the development of more sustainable urban transformation practices and public space management? Analysing the evolution of the same pattern in forms of contestation, it permits to investigate how/if these practices have stand the chance to be facilitated, hampered, or co-opted, during the time and how each of these have had/can have an impact upon contemporary policymaking in political economy and if they have been/can be able to influence a change in the welfare policies and urban agenda.

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