Inhabiting, be citizens, that is cum-cives, or customers?

Introduction The goal is the analysis of the conflict growing between the interest of the inhabitants and that of the real estate market. With particular reference to Italy, considering the trends of residential urban transformations it is necessary to understand if the welfare of the inhabitants has improved. To inhabit it is one of the four pillars of the Athens Charter (1938), considering as base brick the family structure formed mostly by two adults, one worker (mainly male) and two children. With the life that was rhythmed by the times of production (Ernesti, 1995) i.e. the movements 'house' 'work'. So for over 300 years the home issue has had a close relationship with that work as the many models of economy of space have proved. And the third/fourth age was not contemplated, instead today it represents the larger population. In manufacture, in administrative offices etc. the jobs have become unsteady and the precarious ones, both temporally and geographically, have risen in Western countries: the uncontrolled globalization requires the labour force free from any ties, as are the other its products/elements. To underline that in countries called BRIC the model 'home-work' is still valid for reasons of scale and agglomeration: the causes of their growing 'urban gigantism'. The paper investigates, using case studies, if there is awareness of these radical social transformations, how they are tackled and what idea of civitas is proposed and is built with the cum-cives - i.e the citizens. All this with the EU budget constraints that limit local authorities in their urban policies and therefore also those for the house. Thus forcing them to disposals of public property, also the residential one, to heal the financial deficit, as it is happening recently in the capital of Italy. Conclusion The housing policies must be essential part of urban policy, related to those social and fiscal ones. If, as is the Italian case, there are reforms of the cadastre that raise property values, without urban policies of social equity there is not 'social housing' that can work. Unless the logical is to pursue the US model of 'social and wealth zoning', elder people in 'city of pensioners' or abandoned, increasing the ghettoization and peripheries without quality and having gentrification of inner cities. Without National Policies, much more than the bad recent Italian 'House Plan' the 'home question' will remain open. It is possible to have by useful examples suggestions for methodological good practices and strategies that make clear the need for such an integrated approach. The only way for getting more equity spatially and the reduction of the risk of social unrest. An approach able to conjugate the market and policy, that is the art of govern the polis.