Quarticciolo, a historic and working-class district of Rome, is undergoing significant transformation. While the Italian government promotes the Caivano emergency decree—focused on security, control, and militarisation—the neighbourhood is positioning itself as a hub of active citizenship and self-management. Residents, activists, and social movements reject criminalisation and gentrification, instead advocating for solidarity and grassroots participation. Their mobilisation seeks to defend the neighbourhood’s identity and counter the government’s punitive approach, striving to create a space dedicated to community, culture, and self-organisation—an alternative to an exclusionary and repressive urban model.
Quarticciolo, a historic and working-class district of Rome, is undergoing a period of transformation. Amid concerns over increasing urbanisation and the growing criminalisation of socially fragile areas, the neighbourhood has become the focal point of a significant struggle between competing visions of the city.
Italy’s right-wing government’s urban strategy emphasises strict control, the militarisation of public spaces, and the repression of those living in the suburbs. The district has been included in the six-city project, where the Caivano model—introduced by the Meloni government—will be tested. This model envisions interventions in Italian suburbs through measures such as evictions, militarisation, and an intensified police presence. Framed as a response to neighbourhood security issues, the plan lacks any structural interventions. Already applied in other neighbourhoods, this approach prioritises superficial and punitive measures while disregarding the social and economic needs of the population.
Quarticciolo has built a network of social enterprises offering vital community services. These include a brewery providing employment for former inmates, a print shop training young artists, a women-led catering business, an energy community tackling rising energy costs, a market and solidarity purchasing group promoting healthy and sustainable food consumption, as well as a community gym, medical clinic, and after-school programme that ensure accessible grassroots services. These initiatives not only enhance the quality of life in the neighbourhood but also serve as a replicable model for other urban areas—the Quarticciolo model.
At the same time, Quarticciolo is emerging as an alternative laboratory where residents, activists, and social movements are striving to create a different model for the neighbourhood—one that resists fear and division and instead prioritises the right to the city, solidarity, and self-management.
In fact, it could serve as a successful example of urban regeneration driven by an innovative model of social and solidarity-based economy. The neighbourhood has developed a resilient ecosystem of initiatives that create job opportunities, provide essential services to the community, and foster a renewed sense of social belonging.
To defend the work built over the years, activists under the Quarticciolo Ribelle movement have embarked on a mobilisation and political campaign aimed at sparking debate and drawing attention to what is happening in Quarticciolo. This effort began on 18 January with a large and well-attended assembly that brought together diverse groups, from social organisations to institutional representatives, united in a struggle that extends beyond the neighbourhood to the entire city. Their goal is to prevent the Caivano model from being exported to other districts. The meeting demonstrated Quarticciolo’s organisational strength and the credibility it has built over time, thanks to the many individuals committed to the project.
They made it clear: they will not stand by and watch. That same evening, they announced a mobilisation for 1 March 2025, when a demonstration will take place through the neighbourhood streets. Now is not the time for inaction or fear. Activists call for collective participation in patrolling the neighbourhood—not by halting ongoing projects and activities, but by intensifying them to further challenge the government’s repressive approach.
In this context, collaboration with the local energy community is also expanding. Together with Quarticciolo Ribelle, they plan to organise a series of citizen workshops aimed at raising awareness of the issues that the implementation of the Caivano model will create.
Quarticciolo is just one example of the many urban peripheries on the edge of Rome’s historic centre that, despite their adjacent location, have never been marginal in the city’s social and political history.
Since the 1940s, when the first public housing projects were built, the district has been a battleground for labour, cultural, and political struggles. Though today’s challenges differ, the tension remains. Quarticciolo encapsulates a broader contradiction facing many Italian suburbs: on one hand, marginalisation; on the other, a push for urban regeneration that risks erasing the area’s identity.
In recent years, the neighbourhood has faced growing issues related to security, an increase in crime rates, and a lack of public resources. The urban model proposed by the Italian right treats the city as a space to be rigidly controlled, focusing on security, social regulation, and the criminalisation of the suburbs. This vision ignores the underlying causes of poverty, inequality, and social distress, opting instead for repressive methods. However, those living in these areas have begun to resist, reclaiming control over their own future.
Just as in Caivano, Naples, where the community pushed back against a criminalising narrative and the state’s failure to address real social needs, Quarticciolo is shaping a response that places people and their rights at the centre.
A key pillar of this resistance is the self-management of spaces, cultural initiatives, and social activities
The current mobilisation in Quarticciolo, as in other similar contexts, is driven by the awareness that the only way to counter the neoliberal and securitarian model of the city is through solidarity and collective efforts to create shared living spaces. As local activists recently declared, Quarticciolo is not merely a place to be “governed” or controlled but a “wide space” (spazio largo) where solutions emerge from the grassroots, allowing residents to become protagonists of their own destiny.
This concept of a “wide space” represents an area for encounter, dialogue, resistance, and community building—a direct rejection of policies based on security and division.
It stands as a response to increasing gentrification, the misallocation of public resources for unnecessary or harmful projects, and the criminalisation of vulnerable communities. As emphasised in the neighbourhood’s mobilisation manifesto, the fight for a wide space is not just a battle against the right-wing government but a broader challenge to a system that denies people the right to live with dignity and without fear.
Quarticciolo’s experience highlights the true strength of communities: their ability to unite and create tangible alternatives. These efforts go beyond protest, implementing solidarity-based models that generate real change. In Quarticciolo, for instance, cultural events, workshops, and social initiatives help break down barriers between residents and outsiders, fostering a network of mutual support and solidarity. Culture, art, and social engagement have become essential tools for building a cohesive community capable of responding to imposed transformations.
At this moment, the goal is not merely to demand change but to actively implement it, proving that a different kind of city—more inclusive and participatory—is possible. The idea of a “wide space” thus becomes a symbol of this new urban vision: one that does not shy away from difficulties but instead finds in them the motivation to renew and improve.
Quarticciolo is demonstrating that there is an alternative to the right-wing vision of the city—one based not on fear and control but on solidarity, participation, and self-management. The struggles unfolding in these neighbourhoods teach us that a city is not just a collection of buildings; it is a living space where people, through organisation and mobilisation, can reclaim their future. The urban model imposed by the right—centred on division, control, and repression—is revealing its limits. Meanwhile, the resistance emerging from places like Quarticciolo presents a concrete alternative, one that is reshaping the very concept of the city itself.
Article by Aurora Jacob and Stefanija Hrle Aiello.
