ABSTRACT
N. Smith and Richard Tardanico consider the household to be the missing link between work, community and collective action. For them, the household is the basic microstructure of social, economic and political life in which working life and residential community life are experienced as united in family life. Corviale illustrates the problems arising when planners overlook one of the most important principles of progressive planning in the metropolis: integration–the comprehensive inter-relationship of social groups, land uses and districts. About eight kilometres from the centre of Rome, a giant new housing project crowns a hill surrounded by green space. Its name is Corviale, and it has become a favourite target for critics of urban planning since it opened in the mid-1980s. Only a couple of kilometres away, there is another planned neighbourhood, Spinaceto, that is well maintained and functional. A specific analysis of the livelihood and evolution of every neighbourhood is the foundation for an appreciation of metropolitan diversity.
