The concept of community in Italian town planning in the 1950s: Fid-Bau Portal

The concept of community in Italian town planning in the 1950s

MAZZOLENI, CHIARA

In Italy, during the post-war reconstruction period and throughout the 1950s, the concept of community served as a focus for different orientations of thought and different viewpoints regarding the practice of town planning. Two of these orientations merit particular attention. The first one, inspired by the theoretical elaboration of the Movimento Comunità , attempted to develop a new conception of town planning as a social science. The purpose of the second, and more pervasive, orientation was to legitimize the institutional role of the town planner while at the same time defining a set of principles and rules for the discipline. The latter was supported by the professional élite, a group which was best represented by the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica (National Institute of Town Planning). This article will attempt to clarify how, within the ranks of the latter orientation of thought, the contribution of several authoritative foreign scholars was significantly reduced while at the same time the French literature and Gutkind's ideas were used to define the concept of the città nucleare which alluded to cellular space patterns, and to elaborate an image of community which defined a principle of urban composition.