For those who love Rome

Thanks, I hate to see changes that don't make sense.

Laurel you can relax. The so-called architect who wrote that article doesn't know that the new building is the temporary ticket office of a new archaeological site.

The guy who designed it has already explained that he has delibetately planned a buildIng with 10 inches deep foundations. This way the day the area will be pedestriazized they'll be able to move it without spending too much money.

Thanks to a 120,000 € budget, the upper aquifer, private property rights and the romans who lived down there 2,000 years ago, today there isn't another solution. Note that they have wasted a couple of years looking for a better place where to put this new ticket office. There isn't, but complaining on the internet is easier than thinking.

@Dario, Tom Rankin is not a so-called architect. His bio is here. The temporary ticket office is a minor part of what he points out as failures in the city.

I think it is difficult for North Americans to look at the problems and wonder why its citizens put up with incessant problems that other cities solved (at least to some degree) long ago.

For example -- and this is only one example -- Paris and London, far larger than Rome, have managed to create a bus system one can count on and train riders to enter through one door and pay a fare that actually might cover the cost of a ride so they can maintain the fleet and service. In Rome, a ride costs only Euro 1.50, there are frequent lapses in bus arrivals (the infamous "no buses" message on the bus app I used to get on my phone while waiting for a bus), and the fleet is dangerously outdated and poorly maintained while riders slip in and out of any door, with or without passes or validated payment.

Then there is AMA with its ridiculous absenteeism. All cities have some problems with this, but Rome takes the cake! No wonder there is trash in the street. Parking enforcement is lax, people park on the sidewalks adn in pedestrian crossings, a condition that would not be tolerated for 2 minutes in most of the western world.

I have to agree with both Tom's and Laurel's comments on Rome transit. If I'm having dinner in Trastevere, I allow an hour from Via Firenze area and am often cutting it close. Sometimes I wonder if I could have walked there faster.

I don't want to believe that things are as dire as Mr. Rankin describes, but I trust Laurel and her even-handedness about a city she loves, as I do.

My only real immersion in Rome was a week's worth two years ago, right about this time of year, at a second-floor walkup at Campo de' Fiori. It was our second trip there, with only a brief 2-day fly-by seven years prior, from which I got no feel for the city at all. This time, we rented an apartment and our goal was to act--best we could--as locals instead of tourists. To aid in the process, we had friends--from Chicago--that we had met in Salerno two years prior, that winter in Rome every year and could show us the non-tourist ropes, as it were.

They had a rental apartment of their own up by Porta Pia on via Nomentana, and showed us their neighborhood-- the best place for an aperatif, for a steamed artichoke, to do laundry, etc. Basically we followed them while they did their daily somewhat-mundane duties, but in that routine we'd nip into a church here (St. Agnese) or an unpopular (by tourists) attraction (Villa Torlonia, the wartime residence of Mussolini). Fascinating places that virtually nobody visits. And in those areas, I never saw piles of garbage, although there was a fair amount of construction going on.

We found the transit system labyrinthine (everything funnels through Termini) but fairly efficient, somewhat uncrowded (yes, it was February), relatively clean and the local ridership helpful & friendly. Also it was less cosmopolitan than you might think in a world-class city--I dealt with mostly Italians, most of whom spoke at least some English. And most of them smiled when I marveled to them how wonderful Rome was to me. They agreed, as if they too thought they were fortunate to live there. Who knows, maybe they were being courteous & didn't want to burst my balloon! However, I will admit I did often see people hopping on the buses through the back door that I surmised did not have a pass of any kind and had no intention of paying.

So that's why this article kind of baffles me. I didn't have the vacation blinders on, I was open to all experiences. What I saw was an eminently affordable place to--at least for awhile--live in a heightened state of enjoyment. I've been to a few venues in Europe, and Rome is the place I want to hang my hat for a couple months at a time upon my retirement. And I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way.

He is a so-called architect and an awful blogger because he complains about something that's been discussed and discussed for years to find a better solution. And he does it as if it was either a mistake or the fruit of last minute lazyness.

Mr Ingrao, the man who designed that building has done a lot for Rome, he has opened or improved dozens of small archaeological sites that we all enjoy, but hey... let's piss on others' job since it's so easy!

In other words the so-called architect doesn't follow the debate going on in his own profession before writing and gives a wrong picture to his readers when cheking is a matter of minutes. There is a post by the famous Rome blogger, Tonelli, about the all story: if you speak italian it's really a matter of minutes.
So-called is a compliment in my book, writers are like spider-men: great power etc. etc.

The comment he makes about stalls and confusing laws is also stupid. They are confusing to him and to his friends owning a restaurant that would like to ignore them to make more money. It would take me 2 hours on an English dictionary to Explain you how wrong that sentence is. Like me, the so-called architect may not like the stalls around Rome, but they are legal and there is no way to legally close them without loosing hundreds of workplaces and wasting thousands of Euro with lawyers.

If you want to be elected major of Rome you can't raise the price of the single ride ticket and you must tolerate double parking. It's not rocket science. Incidentally, I'd compare Rome's budget and debt with the rest of the western world (that you have fully visited, wow).

...the so-called architect may not like the stalls around Rome, but
they are legal and there is no way to legally close them without
loosing hundreds of workplaces and wasting thousands of Euro with
lawyers.

Although the author doesn't care for noise (generators) and pedestrian hindrances the stalls cause, I didn't necessarily sense him asking for them to be banished. He is more baffled why citizens are forced to eat purchases from counter-service eateries outside, on noisy, crowded sidewalks, because those places aren't allowed to have even minimal seating inside.

As long as the tables/stools aren't so many that they cause a safety issue, I'm curious about ordinances forbidding them?