KEEPING ROME LIVABLE:

...In areas where it does exercise control, as in zoning, it has built up what Poletti described as a "negative record...

...The city had allowed the families to remain in the apartments illegally for 10 months, but eviction orders were obtained when officials finally decided to turn the apartments over to the families to whom they had originally been assigned...

...some of these newcomers had difficulty finding work...

...The breakdown in postal services, the hospital system and the universities, which critically affects the daily lives of Romans, cannot be blamed on the local government...

...But the city's government is neither totally penniless nor totally powerless...

...Similarly, Italia Nostra has called for a cessation of all private building on still vacant sites, a vast construction program of low-cost public housing on suitable locations and rehabilitation work in the historic center...

...A glance at some of the statistics brought out in the Italia Nostra volume and at the Church-sponsored conference indicates the extent of the city's needs...

...Partly in response to this pressure, the politicians took a step toward making civil servants and elected officials more accountable to neighborhood residents by dividing the city into 20 circoscrizioni, or local districts...

...Much of the blame must be placed on the Christian Democrats, who control the center-left coalition that has governed Rome in recent years...

...While this is hardly a great compliment, there is little doubt that Bologna's transportation system, decentralized planning, day care centers, large school budget (25 percent of total expenditures as compared to 8 percent for Rome) and responsive civil service owe much to a competent, honest administration in City Hall...

...In Rome, as in other Italian cities, activism has traditionally concentrated on national rather than local issues through labor unions and political parties...

...Roads were left unpaved, schools and open space not provided, land below the Tiber embankment was not filled in as required, buildings' were constructed way over the height limit and a central sewer system was not built, causing the area to be flooded for days after a rain...

...Cardinal Poletti's conference was virtually an admission that the Popes, in their capacity as Bishop of Rome, have not played a positive role in their own backyard...

...Life in Rome clearly has its pleasant aspects...

...Since City Hall has no intention of surrending voluntarily any substantial powers, it will have to be forced to do so from below...

...PETER FREIBERG (Peter Freiberg, a New York Post reporter specializing in urban affairs, is a frequent visitor to Rome...

...In recent years, however, this focus has begun to shift slightly as a growing number of neighborhood comitati have been organizing to make demands on City Hall...

...Last September, a 19-year-old boy was killed and several dozen civilians and police injured when police forcibly removed squatters from 148 apartments in the San Basilio district five miles from Rome's center...

...There is what Cardinal Poletti called an "absurd" rate of infant mortality, estimated at 26 per thousand...

...There is, of course, some truth in this defense...

...An estimated 1000 more kindergartens and 3000 new elementary school classrooms are required...

...This in itself should not be startling...

...A particularly horrendous example is the Magliana district, which tourists pass when traveling along the Tiber to Fiumucino Airport...

...by 1951, this had risen to 1.7 million, a figure that has almost doubled in the intervening 23 years...

...Motor traffic, despite the limited curbs downtown, continues to strangle the city, contributing to a carbon monoxide level six times the health hazard limit...

...It is, as Peter Nichols put it in his recent book, Italia, Italia, undoubtedly "the worst administered city on the mainland...

...Moreover, while even tourists suffer severe inconveniences in Rome, the historic center, which includes such landmarks as the Seven Hills, the Spanish Steps, the Piazza Navona, the Vatican and Trastevere, appears to be in good shape...

...money allocated for public investment frequently doesn't get spent because of red tape...

...But the efforts that have been building up in more and more sections of the city-as evidenced by, among others, the Magliana committee, the Trastevere youths, even businessmen on the Via Veneto pressing for more city services-are hopeful indicators that not all Romans are resigned to accepting their city's modern decline and fall without a fight...

...The labor unions have made a rational housing policy a prime demand...

...Many community activists and preservationists are convinced that a much more radical decentralization is needed...

...Hundreds of these apartments have been invaded by squatters from nearby shantytowns who remain until they are evicted...

...Many of those who viewed the exhibit appeared surprised at the extent of the neighborhood's problems...

...The national government, and especially the swollen bureaucracy that rules in the absence of strong Parliamentary authority, controls most of the purse strings...

...Parliament, itself paralyzed by constantly changing Cabinets, is the least likely of the three to offer any impetus for reform...

...Half the children have physical malformations because of the lack of parks and recreational facilities...

...THE BIG PIZZA KEEPING ROME LIVABLE The thousands of Italians and foreigners who flocked to the annual Festa di Noiantri in Rome's colorful Trastevere section found something new amidst the gaily-festooned streets this year...

...At least 50,000 people continue to live in shacks or caves, lacking even the most basic amenities...

...There has, in fact, been a significant amount of rehabilitation in Trastevere and other downtown areas, but not with the purposes Italia Nostra has in mind...

...Even during the prosperous 1950s and '60s...

...The image of Rome as an "Eternal City," which conjures up an image of a religious and cultural entity in which the real problems of everyday life seem insignificant, is deeply ingrained...

...A portion of these migrants was attracted to Rome despite the fact that the city has little industry: like many national capitals, it relies for jobs primarily on the government bureaucracies, banks, communications, transportation, retailing and tourism...

...Rome's accumulated debts are so huge that the city has virtually ceased paying interest on its loans...

...About 100 buildings were put up here in the late 1960s by developers who broke virtually every provision of the city's safety, zoning, building and health codes...

...The burgeoning population needed places to live, which neither the city nor national government appeared willing or able to provide...

...High rises have not intruded into the center as in London and Paris, old buildings are being renovated rather than demolished, transportation is cheap and markets like the Campo di Fiori appear to be thriving...

...The national focus is reinforced by the media, which provide little sustained local coverage...

...Clearly, the major spur to stem Rome's decline will have to come from its own citizens...

...with the drastic decline in construction in the 1970s, unemployment has increased sharply and inflation, estimated at 22 percent this year, has caused additional hardship...

...Early this year, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the Pope's Vicar of Rome, convened a conference to focus on the city's problems...

...The reasons for Rome's deterioration-and virtually anyone who has lived there for any length of time agrees that the quality of life has gone steadily downhill-are not difficult to find, A key factor is the population growth...

...Instead, the job was given to the speculators, with results that have been disastrous, in physical as well as human terms...

...Despite the conference, there are few signs that the Vatican intends to back up its stated concern with concerted action, such as pledges not to sell the many downtown buildings it owns to speculators...

...When questioned about the grim realities of life in Rome, officials assert the municipality lacks two elements required for constructive changes-money and power...

...On one level, this renovation of old buildings helps to preserve the physical appearance of the center...

...Nor do Romans have to look very far to find evidence that a municipality can be governed with reasonable efficiency...

...In 1940, there were one million people in Rome...

...Nevertheless, Rome is in deep trouble-not only in the center, where 300,000 people live, but even more seriously in the outlying areas that contain 90 percent of the city's population of three million...

...In the Piazza of S. Maria in Trastevere was a small exhibit, manned by a group of young people and consisting of about 20 attractively mounted cardboard pieces, each stating in a few words a problem faced by the neighborhood: rising rents, the growing number of evictions to make way for Americans and other foreigners who can pay more, the closing of small shops due to higher rents and inflation, crowded schools, joblessness among youths and a lack of recreational facilities...

...In some cases, bureaucratic bungling in the assignment of publicly-built low-rent housing has led to similar squatting tactics...

...Divided themselves, and unwilling to share power with the Communists, the second largest municipal party, they are the major contributors to the City Council's vacillation...

...Whether Rome changes course would appear to depend on the amount of pressure generated by the national government, the Church-which continues to wield great power-and the Romani themselves...

...Undoubtedly, part of the impetus for introspection on the part of civic and religious leaders arises from the 1975 Holy Year, when several million additional tourists are thronging Rome, giving a needed boost to the economy but taxing the city's already severely strained facilities...

...Violence, and the consequent fear that has had such a devastating effect on American cities, are rare occurrences...

...And at the end of the post-World War II economic boom, problems that remained hidden- and unresolved-for years are now being spotlighted...

...s a frequent visitor to Rome...

...There must be a real transfer of power to local residents," said Montanari, as at least a partial answer to the central administration's inefficiency and lack of direction...

...But, as Armando Montanari, an architect who does consulting work for Italia Nostra, points out, "Many of the low-income people, the artisans and the market people, who live and work in the center are being forced out...

...This growth reflects the vast internal migration that has occurred in Italy since the war, with up to 10 million farmers leaving their land for the cities...

...Communist-run Bologna, which admittedly has a much smaller population and fewer problems than Rome, is nevertheless generally acknowledged to be the best-governed large city in the country...

...Apartments in Magliana and similar private developments have frequently stayed vacant for months or years because of a scarcity of people who can afford them...

...What has been happening is that real estate corporations have purchased buildings, evicting tenants who were paying low rents for years and renovating the buildings for offices or expensive apartments...

...Private builders, abetted by corrupt government officials, violated the laws to put up row after row of high-rise, project-type housing in outlying districts that was not only aesthetically unattractive but left hundreds of thousands of working-class and middle-income people paying a great deal to live in developments that lacked even a semblance of public facilities and services...

...Last year, Italia Nostra, Italy's major environmental and urban preservation organization, published Roma Sbagliata ("The Mistakes of Rome"), a compilation of opinions by 30 architects, urban sociologists, doctors and other professionals that drew widespread publicity...

...Nor is there any indication that the Vatican intends to back off from its unequivocal support for the Christian Democrats, the party responsible for the backward social policies that the Church deplores...

...At the present time, many Romans seem apathetic and somewhat despairing...

...This lack of positive political direction has turned Rome into a mirror image of the national government, with the civil service triumphant again and exhibiting the same kind of unaccountability and corruption so common at the national level...

...Given Italy's over-centralized system, the capital is even more subject to national influence-critics would say interference-than other cities...

...Rome reports more cases of typhoid fever than the whole United States...