New Conflicts in the Global City: the “Decorum Battle”

Abstract

Nowadays Urban Transformations are went back to the center of the sociological and historical investigation, after a long interruption in which the study of urban society had been downsized. Within the cities, population have often been differentiated according to social, economic, political and ethnical characters, which generated a mutual hostility extended to rioting and other forms of overt conflict. The article analyses the case study of San Lorenzo, a Roman neighborhood where urban transformations have fostered a conflict between residents and “city users”, attracted by the district’s bohemian atmosphere. The theoretical framework deals with the scientific hypothesis that the dismantling of the “Public City” also occurs through smart labels such as ‘urban regeneration’ and ‘promotion of decorum’. Then, the article critically investigates a plurality of large and tiny events in which the goals of decorum-related groups have been challenged – not helped – by residents’ activism and claims, designing a sort of “short circuit” between the urban vision of a “Clean and Polite City” and the social strategy of a “Slow and Resilient City”.