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Italian streets that don't exist on any map (2022)
How a system designed for circus performers and traveling salesmen helps homeless people access services.
The vie fittizie, or fictitious streets, are a hand-me-down from the post-war era, when local authorities invented imaginary addresses as a way of linking the population to the land. Rome’s via fittizia is named after Modesta Valenti, a homeless woman who died in the city’s main train station on January 31, 1983, after emergency services repeatedly refused to help her. Despite the system’s faults, the sprawling, patchwork map of invisible streets across the country presents an unusual solution that helps homeless people to claim their rights and be counted in the community in which they live.
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