After gentrification

What happens after gentrification? Social sciences have described gentrification in depth. But what happens to a neighborhood when this process is interrupted? The study of Rome’s San Lorenzo district allows us to look at this aspect of the process which affects many cities in Italy and, more generally, in Mediterranean Europe. The economic crisis that erupted in 2008 also produced an urban crisis, particularly affecting previously gentrified areas of the city. San Lorenzo is no ordinary neighborhood: it is the university district in Roma, a hub of grassroots movements and political activism. A neighborhood that precisely because of gentrification processes, has been hollowed out of inhabitants and of social spaces. As described in real estate agency advertisements,San Lorenzo has become a district “for investment use,” whereby housing is no longer connected to belonging but to temporary living.