Living Social Crisis in the Public Historic City. The Case of Quarticciolo

The paper reflects on the relationship between social crisis and urban design through the case of Quarticciolo, a historic public housing settlement in the eastern periphery of Rome. Classified by the 2008 PRG as part of the “Historic City” and recently affected by the Caivano bis Decree, Quarticciolo represents a significant field for observing contemporary urban policies. In continuity with an approach that has progressively recognized areas of historical interest as “living parts of the city rather than cultural assets to be isolated” (ANCSA, 2017), the article extends this perspective to contexts of cultural value marked by marginality and decay, often read exclusively as areas of social emergency. Quarticciolo is interpreted as a paradigm of the public historic city, where fragilities concern not only the social dimension but also spatial, settlement-related and relational aspects, embedded in everyday living practices and in the configuration of public space. Within this framework, the Caivano bis Decree is critically examined as a device that tends to separate security, welfare and urban transformation, reducing territorial complexity to a matter of control. The paper argues for the need to reposition such contexts within a vision of integrated urban regeneration (Toledo Declaration, 2010), in which urban planning acts as an enabling tool for recomposition, moving beyond purely physical interventions and engaging with relationships and latent territorial potentials, through a heritage and community-based approach.