The local culture as a means to explore the processes of social coexistence: a case study on a neighborhood in the city of Rome

Community-based interventions for urban sustainability need to develop a consistent theoretical framework dealing with the individual-context relationship by exploring community affective processes of sense-making, in order to overcome a nomothetic and individualistic perspective. A case study on a neighborhood in the city of Rome is proposed with the aim of detecting the community representations of the neighborhood, as well as the problems and potential development demands. Text analysis was performed across interviews to 60 participants. Cluster analysis identified five different representations of the neighborhood referring to: the multicultural fragmentation and the need for a territorial identity (1), the business influence of the Chinese community and the loss of Italian typicalness (2), the threat evoked by marginalized social groups and abandonment by local authorities (3), the cultural knowledge about different ethnic groups to favor social integration (4), the deterioration of the neighborhood perceived as a crossing point for tourists and commercial traffic (5). These representations are conceived along four latent dimensions (factors) organizing the social coexistence within the neighborhood. They respectively refer to: territorial identity, power systems, social integration and cultural development. Some development paths are proposed for improving neighborhood quality of life and livability.