Golbach, Jilke Anne-Marije; (2024) Heritage for People, Not for Profit: Ruins, Regeneration and the Right to the City in Contemporary Rome. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis draws together critical thinking in heritage studies and urban studies to respond to one of the most urgent challenges of the present: the varied processes and effects of capitalist urbanism. By looking at the reuse of industrial ruins in Rome, the thesis explores how heritage is mobilised to confront urban problems (e.g. gentrification, marginalisation, privatisation) and how such mobilisations complicate traditional notions of doing, making, and understanding heritage. At its core, this research aims to expose and critique the different ways in which heritage (broadly understood) challenges, supports, reinforces, or resists neoliberal city-making. Through critical ethnography, the project explores three case studies in Rome’s post-industrial area of Ostiense: the Ex Mattatoio (a former slaughterhouse), the Ex Mercati Generali (a former wholesale market), and the Ex Mira Lanza (a former soap and candles factory). All these sites are currently part of major culture-led regeneration efforts. At the same time – in their ongoing state of ruination – they are being informally used by a range of different actors. By looking at issues of urban renewal and decay, illness and cure, and regeneration and resistance, the thesis unsettles familiar ideas of sustainability, participation and heritage as a useful resource. The thesis argues that the right to the city offers a hitherto underexplored theoretical and practical framework for thinking and doing heritage otherwise. Building on this framework, the thesis makes an original contribution to critical heritage studies by outlining a new paradigm for the field, one focused on ‘heritage for people, not for profit’ (an adaptation of Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer’s call to reimagine ‘cities for people, not for profit’ (2009)). In so doing, the thesis demonstrates the vital role that new approaches to heritage might play in contributing to more just, inclusive, and sustainable urban futures.

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