Living on the edge: in-between spaces and urban performances in Rome

The paper draws the preliminary outputs of an empirical investigation concerning the forms of urbanity in recently built urban settlements in Rome. They have been accused of producing spaces that do not encourage urbanity and usually described within the erosion of public space discourse. Despite the envisaged criticism, no empirical investigations have been brought out to understand how urbanity, meaning the art of living together in urban spaces, can be experienced in those places. The paper and the empirical work, done throughout two case studies, suggest to consider those places has “urbanity reserves” in which urbanity is being socially produced over time, although it has changed its linkage with traditional public space. The use of video, as part of the field work, has allowed to open up the meaning of urbanity to a wider range of empirical instances to encompass forms of intersection of different practices that actually produce something new in the urban space.