Saturday, July 26, 2014

Post-peak Rome: the lake that defeated concrete




I think this video it is worth looking and listening at even if you don't understand Italian. It is the story of a lake which has naturally emerged in the middle of a (probably) illegal housing development in Rome. The buildings have partly collapsed and some of them were never completed. At some moment, a natural lake sprung out in the middle of the area and the best efforts of the owners of the property were not enough to destroy it. Now, the citizens of the area took to the lake in small boats, claiming for it to be common property against those who want to drain it to make more buildings.

The song is by the Italian rap group "Il muro del canto". Note the term "palazzinaro"; it can be translated as "building speculator" but, more colorfully, it could be "illegal housing development tycoon".  You can read the whole story (and google-translate it from Italian) at this link.

h/t Kelebek 


Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)