Civic poles, how to strengthen the offer of services, training and work opportunities, cultural and mutualistic potential

ROME – There are 6,250 active and reactive social realities in Rome, one out of three in the field with self-income, production, transformation and consumption projects. And then their nodes, about 21 multilevel aggregations, from Esquilino to la Pisana, from Spinaceto to Montesacro, from Quarticciolo to Corviale, from Tor Sapienza to Cinecittà, from Tufello to Tor Bella Monaca, which guarantee – even in difficult phases such as those of the pandemic and the current one of the expensive bills – cohesion, services, a dimension of participation and community that the city institutions hardly intercept. These are the protagonists of the research “Mutualism networks and civic poles in Rome”, presented in the Campidoglio byFairwatch Associationthe Urban Studies Laboratory Labsus of the Sapienza University of Rome, with the support of the program “Capital suburb” from the Charlemagne Foundationand which contains a proposal: to create, in collaboration with the Capitoline Administration and the local institutions, real “Civic poles” to strengthen the offer of services, training and job opportunities, cultural and mutualistic potential starting from those already activated autonomously by the interviewed realities.

Research. For the first time, the work cross-referenced the data with the realities of Associations surveyed by the Voluntary Service Center of Rome, the social Cooperatives, the neighborhood Committees, the ecclesial bodies engaged in projects for integral ecology together with the social centers and to housing occupations, with informal realities, open schools, spaces for popular sport, and then the galaxy of the other economy. The result is a “map of maps “, available in open date on the site ofNetwork Associationwhich not only geolocates the realities and shows their essential characteristics and activities, but allows you to trace the existing and potential relationships between the different entities.

Some unexpected features. The investigative activity highlighted a series of even unexpected characteristics with respect to common sense. Only 13% of the most active realities are informal, while most are constituted or animated by social promotion associations (31%), cultural associations (25%), cooperatives (9%) or social enterprises (6%). Among the most practiced sectors of activity there is that, so necessary for the city, of reuse, recycling and circular economy (18%), second only to social and socio-health services (21%), while significant percentages are attributable to agricultural production (8%), transformation (7%) and craftsmanship (4%).

The use of resources. Most of the resources in the budget are spent on activities (45%), a growing percentage for expensive bills, and for personnel (35%). And most of the time is spent in carrying out the activities (30%), in the relationship with employees and volunteers (20%), and with the beneficiaries (10%), but also, and in equal quantities, for all due interactions with offices, bureaucracy and city administration (10%). If most of the realities interviewed (over 70%) deal well with the digital, social and communicative dimension, skills largely accelerated by the pandemic, that of bureaucracy, the volatility of relations with politics, and the difficulty of maintaining , to have recognized, identified, restructured, managed adequate spaces and suited to the activities afflicts an at least similar percentage of the city realities.

The proposal. The research does not limit itself to indicating this path, but provides some models of structuring and general organization of “Civic poles”, starting from three proposals developed in the neighborhoods of Tor Bella Monaca, Quarticciolo and Esquilino, contextualized in a regulatory review with some cases of national and international success in the making or already consolidated such as the neighborhood houses in Turin, Australia and Canada, the French “Third Places”, the community foundations or the cooperative universities which in Spain institutionalize those collaborations in large city projects ” inside-outside the academy” that this research tries to practice in a small way.

The planning of the Civic Poles. “The data from our research – explained Troisi – show that the planning of the Civic poles it is already underway in the city, but there is a need on the part of the administration for listening, in-depth analysis and knowledge of tools”. Mancini “and the Charlemagne Foundation invited the four strategic councilors for these projects – Catarci, Funari, Gotor and Zevi – to work together and to work with us. Not to multiply projects but to make strategies, policies, inhabited by the reality that this city keeps it standing, as the pandemic has brought out”.