Living the neighborhood

The theme of living has long been considered marginal by urban sociologists, who have concentrated above all on the socio-economic contradictions present in the metropolis. For this reason, the theme has only recently been taken up and addressed by scholars. Living in fact can be considered as a total social phenomenon, which involves many aspects of the individual's life. The house is only the most explicit manifestation of a phenomenon that goes beyond the domestic walls, expanding into the surrounding space, especially in the neighborhood. For Heidegger, building (bauen) implies living (baun): we inhabit not only our home, but every building product. Squares, roads, monuments, meeting places: each of these is an integral part of our life and contributes to create an emotional bond with the territory and with the community context, from the first years of life. Thus also history and symbols linked to a specific space have a fundamental role on the formation of the sense of belonging and on the construction of the identities of individuals. Resuming the results of an empirical research carried out in the Roman suburb of Quadraro and conducted with an innovative qualitative methodology, thanks to the use, in addition to in-depth interviews, both of techniques derived from visual sociology, and mental maps (tool developed by the urban planner Kevin Lynch), we will explore the relationship between the home and the outside world that surrounds it. In particular, using as guidelines the successful elements of a neighborhood identified by Jane Jacobs in her theory on social capital, we intend to verify if and how architectural and urban structures influence the ways in which individuals live and experience their own neighborhood .