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This essay takes its inspiration from the actions of local government in San Jose, Costa Rica, in the 1970s, which used the subterfuge of renovation to curtail or relocate activities it deemed illegal or unsavoury in the Plaza de la Cultura. Archaeological and literary evidence from diverse periods in Antiquity are consistent with the possibility that in the last century of the Republic and the Augustan age (c. 133 bc–ad 14), authorities in Rome weaponized the disruptive processes of construction and reconstruction to make and remake the city’s greatest political stage, the Roman Forum and its immediate environs, according to their ideals, by inconveniencing or even denying access to political opponents or the populace at large.
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