The right to (stay put in) the city: Il caso di Porto Fluviale a Roma.

In the prolonged afermath of the economic crisis begun in 2008, the importance of Housing Rights Movements is gaining a new momentum in metropolises like Rome. Here the spaces they squat for inhabitng purposes represent more than emergency shelters for people in a conditon of severe housing deprivaton within a proft-oriented and individualistc cityscape. Indeed, they enact a “right to stay put” into the city and contrast the socio-spatal marginalizaton of the dispossessed urban dwellers in three main ways. Firstly, they subtract spaces from the speculaton and from the top down model of urban regeneraton. Secondly, they allow marginal people not to be relegated out of the consolidated urban fabric, and to be visible as social and politcal subjects. Thirdly, they provide a set of grassroots actvites that confgure alternatve models of sociability, contentous politcs and communing inside neighborhoods afected by diverse forms of deprivaton. In this respect, housing squats can be interpreted as urban commons that, besides providing emergency housing, contrast gentrifcaton and artculate a renewed “right to the city”. In order to empirically support this theoretcal framework, we will discuss the case of the squat Porto Fluviale, located in the central area of Ostense and occupied since 2003. The alternatve housing paterns it has been developing, and the role it plays in the neighborhood, shows the diverse ways in which Housing Rights Movements conceive and practce the “right to stay put” in urban landscape.