Contested Urban Quality. Conficts over urban space between studentifcation, hipster gentrifcation, and utopias in San Lorenzo, Rome

This chapter presents the results of a case study conducted in the neighborhood of San Lorenzo in Rome, which has undergone rapid transformation due to unregulated studentification processes. This transformation has made the question of the quality of urban space simultaneously urgent and contested. The investigation looks at how different issues related to the social definition of the quality of space mutually challenge one another, including the agency of local actors with respect to gentrification dynamics. To explore the neighborhood and the different realities, organizations, and actors in it, multiple qualitative tools were used, such as walk-throughs of the neighborhood guided by residents and activists, semi-structured interviews, participant observation of nightlife and events promoted by organizations and committees active in San Lorenzo. Nostalgia for an idealized past, criticism of institutions, and different desirable futures are among the issues raised in the search for various types of public space quality, and they relate to the desire for an active role in the urban changes of San Lorenzo by the social groups who territorialize their presence within the spaces of the neighborhood. The authors therefore propose to tie efforts for a sociological elaboration of the quality of space to the debate about the right to the city.