The Self-Managed Spaces That Keep Florence Alive

While someone runs through backing tracks ahead of an evening event and someone else chats at the counter of the little bar decked out with posters and old photos, a young man walks in and asks if this is the neighborhood’s grassroots gym. He’d never been to the social center before, but a friend had invited him.

Word of mouth, a small moment of connection, and a place that opens up to anyone. The CSA NextEmerson is a living, vibrant place. It sits in the northern part of Florence, where it has always been since 1989, the year of the first occupation.

Since August 2025, social centers have been a daily fixture in the media and political debate: first the eviction of the Leoncavallo in Milan, then, in December, the eviction of the Askatasuna in Turin, followed by the ZK Squat in Ostia in January 2026. And finally Spin Time in Rome this summer.

The current government’s agenda — always hostile to social centers — is clear: these occupied spaces must be cleared to restore legality and safety. And there is a repressive crackdown, codified by the new “Security Package” (a decree plus a bill), that threatens the people who frequent these spaces along with dissent and the freedom to protest.

Born between the 1970s and 1980s, grassroots and self-managed, built by workers and students, social centers are places of sociopolitical protest and dissent, of participation and neighborhood activism — often in the outlying districts where they take root — and of countercultural expression built on alternative artistic languages.

Florence, too, was swept up in the youth movements of that era. Marvi Maggio, a researcher and expert in the city’s urban history, describes a long tradition “of resistance to fascism, of labor and social struggles.” The first social centers here emerged between 1986 and 1989: the Indiano, the CPA in Florence’s south, and the CSA Emerson (later NextEmerson).

Others followed in the years after, both in the historic center and on the outskirts. Today one of the newest and largest is the Polveriera, in the San Lorenzo district. The Emerson got its name because, as they explain, “the first occupation happened in an appliance factory, in Novoli.”

“There’s a real territorial bond with the north side of the city.” Matteo (not his real name), an activist at the social center, was there for that first occupation. At the time there was a heartfelt turnout of young people, workers, and students from the area in the environmental fight against the incinerators. “A dialogue had begun with the factory’s former employees — one of the first Florentine cases of grassroots working-class organizing.”

“I remember the big graffiti: The union betrayed the workers’ struggles.” He recounts how, at the turn of the 1990s, “Florence ended up losing what industry it had and moved ‘toward the monoculture of tourism'”: the process of gentrification begins, leading to a hollowing-out of community life, while at the same time the industrial district shifts from the north of the city out toward the plain.

And so many buildings “are left as empty shells.” The birth of the Emerson answers the need to reclaim those spaces, and it’s also a form of protest: “the choice was always to occupy places hanging under the threat of real-estate speculation — fairly large former factories with industrial uses, shut down after bankruptcies and layoffs, but also after major struggles.”

In the Polveriera’s story, too, the reclaiming of a space is central.

Here, though, the occupation grew out of a purely student movement. The social center sits in the cloister of the former convent of Sant’Apollonia, owned by the Region of Tuscany, not far from the Medici Chapels.

It was born on May 23, 2014, “the child of an occupation carried out by a coalition of university and student collectives from the humanities,” explains Andrea (not his real name), amid a climate of campus ferment and grassroots renewal that, between 2012 and 2014, also led to occupations on Via del Leone and at Mondeggi.

The Greek graffiti still visible on the ground-floor walls of the occupied area bears witness to a “beautiful convergence of various student movements, especially foreign ones” who, in the 1970s, fleeing authoritarian regimes, “had found a gathering point here.” The complex has always been tied to student life and to this day is bound to student use, but at the time of the 2014 occupation it had stood abandoned for 15 years.

Beyond wanting a place to bring together the energies of the various university collectives, the occupiers wanted to revive a common good — “spaces that would otherwise just be ‘dusty'” (polverosi) — and give it back to the community, students and non-students alike, through social and cultural initiatives.

From the start, they say, “there was the intention to work together, the collective and the institutions, so that the complex would also be healthy and livable.” Andrea underlines another important point: “For years the Polveriera was the eye on Afrin: the Kurdish question found enormous expression here.” After three evictions and four occupations, since 2006 the CSA NextEmerson has been in Castello, in a former railway-machinery factory, decommissioned and in bankruptcy receivership.

The building is huge, and it holds a gym, a skate park, a library, a recording studio, a room for tango, and two spaces for concerts. With every new occupation, “we’ve always carried everything with us — the community, the initiatives, the activities.”

To date, the Polveriera’s self-managed space has never been evicted, but a hypothetical eviction has been the subject of much debate since last year, because a renovation project backed by a €5 million fund is due to begin within 2026 at the Sant’Apollonia complex.

Those who take part in the assembly are asking that the redevelopment respect and enhance the right to education, and they defend the social experience built up over the years. The dialogue with the city administration (which, as of January 2026, denied any risk of eviction) and with the regional government is still ongoing.

For Matteo, of the NextEmerson, “the social center has evolved to meet the threats of the moment.” From the early years’ environmental battles and the fight against heroin, it moved on to globalization and the No Global movements, and later took on the issue of immigration.

Today there’s the resistance to a resurgent fascism. Running through all of it, the fight against touristification remains — as much political as cultural. The closing or privatization of so many social spaces has driven up the cost of cultural life, and in social centers like the Emerson, like the Polveriera, like many others, artistic and cultural practices are accessible and free, they try to escape commodification, and artistic expression is free and unpoliced.

“And this is a cultural argument, but it’s also an absolutely political one.”

In these self-managed social spaces, youth participation is still there, still crucial — but it has changed, perhaps more fearful, shaped by the current repressive political climate. And it’s a complicated matter. “Right now, the idea that collectives of university and high-school students occupied three sites in two or three years feels like a distant past that apparently no longer exists.” There used to be more trust, they say.

Some feel there’s more disinformation today. One answer may be to stick to what is factual, and so “to talk about the repression.” Others argue it’s necessary to change the ways we communicate.

Someone else concludes that, despite the current state of things, “you have to get active anyway,” because in these places — as in any other space of participation, a square, a demonstration — fear finds “an antidote.”

Story by Rosanna Anselmi.

Photos of the Polveriera by Júlia Sabatés Gil