An Italian way to modern urbanism: plan for the fascist foundation cities

Abstract

In the Twenties, in Italy, the fascist regime initiated a work of foundation of new urban centers. The birth of the new city was linked to the desire to create a new arrangement of the territory, from the morphological and economic perspective. It was developed a model of territorial settlement that included three scalar passages of intervention (the capital, the rural town, the rural village).The common elements to the idea of the city typical of this experience was related to the relationship with the history of Italian town planning and with the territory. In the first case, the reference to typical elements of the Italian cities: - the square as representative center of social and political life, but also as a center of urban design; - the relationship between street and urban block; - the use of archetypal elements, such as the bell and the civic tower (which recalled the image of the Renaissance city and the birth of the municipalities), the arcade (as unifying element between the buildings); - the use of town planning schemes of classical origin, revised according to the theories of Camillo Sitte; - the revival of the aggregative logics of the historic urban fabric. The relationship with the territory was instead emphasized through: - the adoption of regional routes as main paths of urban design; - the relationship between the shape of the city and land contours; - the relationship with the improvements carried out to reclaim wetlands. The paper, after a historical and design common principles analysis, both urban and regional level, examines the principal urban patterns, classifying them according to the type of main routes and their relationship with the central square (linear, radial, cross-shaped, with bayonet paths schemes) and with the urban fabric, through interpretative drawings and comparative synthesis, suggesting design ideas for contemporary urban planning.