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No. 2 (2024)

Beyond the housing emergency. Habitability crisis and the case study of Rome

  • Marcherita Grazioli
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa2-2024oa17807
Submitted
maggio 10, 2024
Published
2024-05-31

Abstract

The article draws on studies and methodological debates in critical human geography around the contemporary housing crisis. In doing so, the article proposes to rethink what in the Italian context is commonly defined as ‘housing emergency’ by putting forward the notion of ‘habitability crisis’ understood in terms of spatio-temporal fix. This means that a habitability crisis stems from long-term processes that make places uninhabitable for entire social and generational cohorts. A crisis of habitability undermines the relational sense, identities and multifunctionality of places, hence their ontological consistency. The article discusses the strengths and limitations of this conceptual approach through the lens of ethnographic findings collected in housing squats that are part of the Housing Rights Movements in Rome.

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