HONORABLE MENTION – ROME CITYVISION COMPETITION

Riccardo Nannola + Livia Paolucci

“Cities originate from the need of relations, trade and opinions exchange. When this necessity ends, there’s the annihilation of the city” (Anonymous).

Columns of cars, at the horizon, stand toward the Roman pine trees. The city is uninhabited and its streets are deserted. Only the buildings “talk”, communicate and transmit information as citizens did years before. And, how citizens did, they hide their identities under widescreens…

Time ago the excessive use of cars caused the city collapse. There were 3.5 cars/inhabitant; the city hadn’t the places to cope with these numbers and tried to respond with multi-storey car parkings, built in the heart of the old Centre, or proposing car alternation strategies.

But romans didn’t give up their cars.

On the contrary, the time of displacements increased twofold, and then triplicated. At 6.30 pm, from Via Casilina to Via Tuscolana, drivers had to expect a four hours trip. When cars were not in use, they were stacked on the borders of the streets, or on the sidewalks, and even in the center of squares.

Nobody could take a picture without immortalizing a car.

Roma was a scrapyard. Pedestrian were less and less… Staying outdoor was impossibile.

Blogs, YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace, Flickr, Facebook turned the internet users in writers, journalists, photographers, movie directors, rockstars. The Web 3.0 gave vent to the people’ desire of writing, talking and showing themselves. All this caos drove men to be unable to listen, to read and even to look beyond their monitor.

This digital narcissism caused the lack of interest in the traditional media, that had lost their objectivity, impartiality and plausibility. The Web became a canvas where people painted and projected their wishes and their fears, blind of selfishness.

The installation of the screens began as a publicity stunt and finished to be at citizens’ disposal. After few years, everyone had his personal page shown in good sight on their own house’s facade. Was a pity that nobody could see it from outside. The number of hours spent outdoor radically decreased, and it fell down when people started working from home in front of their computer monitor. Someone experimented the home working jobs years before, but they were a minority group. With coming Web 4.0, each activity was online. Even the basic needs could be satisfied through a touch…

The need of assert oneself and the individualism spread in Rome. Sharing own house’s facade became soon fashionable, in the same way as Social Networks drew the crowds years before.

It was the beginning of a phenomenon that would have devastating consequences on human relations skill.

A stray dog rambles in Via del Corso, hunting up something to eat and perhaps looking for a dark nook to sleep.

Everything emits light.

Screens have completely modified human relations capacity, that’s become as a code, a sequence of isolated sentences, icons, approval displays and all types of propagandas.

A sort of natural selection chooses the extroverts and the selfconfidents, who stand out, build micro relations with everyone and everything surrounding them.. There is no place for reflectives, bashful and clumsy, who surrend to this jungle called Network. They become nameless. They simply don’t exist.

In the 4.0 Age men lost their humanity.

Roma 4.0 is a clear and anti-utopic vision where the city becomes the last, umpteenth, victim of the human individualism and citizens’ need of affirmation. It’s not a project, but the consequence of the absence of a project. The consequence of a lacking conscience.

The comparison and the relations are at the basis of human society and bring about the origins of the squares, markets and towns. And everyday they allow to attain new acquaintances and to build friends and loves.

“What is the city but the people?” (Coriolanus, W. Shakespeare).