From the editors
LOCAL LIABILITY Words Alessandro Rognoni
In my early years as an international student, I held the conviction that, wherever I went, I would contribute to making my environment more diverse. My attitude, as I realised over the years, might have been overly-optimistic.
Five years ago, before stepping onto Dutch soil, I went to London to study architecture. Many were the motivations to move, the strongest of which was a personal desire to be an international student, within an established trans-national environment like the EU (of course... the UK case turned out to be a scam!).
04
The now established position of the international student, still very much a privileged one but improbable a few decades ago, was to me alluring as an unmissable chance to gain a mature understanding of the complexities of our (built) environment. When making my move, I was also convinced that I could positively engage with a foreign habitat, contributing to the increasingly multicultural reality of a city like London, and bringing with me the set of diverse knowledge and benevolence which I had gained in an Italian high school. Soon enough, I found myself reassessing my optimistic thinking. When looking for a place to live, I decided to move with two friends in a former council-owned estate (public housing in British terms) in Church street, a decades-old marketplace squeezed between the higher end quarters of Marylebone and Maida Vale. Around the market, an established Arab community had lived in council blocks since the 60’s and 70’s. What was offered to us by CityWest Homes (a private real estate company providing services for the Westminster council) was a place in a fairly central position, close to our academic premises, but with a rental price still acceptable in London standards. As we moved in, the former tenants of the flat were packing up their last boxes. They revealed to us that, following semi-privatization, they couldn’t afford the rent. As I later found out, other long lasting tenants were forced to move out in favour of new occupants who, like us, were in need of short rental contracts. The block was in fact set for demolition, in favour of a new development providing a high percentage of private housing (together with the typical “affordable” counterpart). As I assessed my ignorance, and realised what kind of system I was feeding into, I began to think differently of my positive impact as an international student.
