Across the world, states use demolitions and displacement to reorganize cities according to particular visions of society. Through the voices and experiences of former slum dwellers evicted in the 1970s from a self-grown settlement beneath a Roman aqueduct, this book examines the social consequences of forced relocation and the ways communities rebuild social life in its aftermath. It reveals the forms of sociality that emerge in the gaps of urban planning and highlights the damage caused when governments respond to grassroots urbanism with bulldozers and relocation schemes.