The regime's public works

Fascism inherits some of the unresolved problems of the “bourgeois” city: the growing contrast between center and periphery and the prevailing attention to individual architecture with little interest in the context; from the increasingly visible gap between valuable architecture and current construction to a concern for the formal design of the city rather than for its real needs.

With the advent of fascism, the island's backwardness was highlighted by a weak urban fabric, reduced according to a 1921 census to an extremely small population of cities (about 10%), and a very high percentage of residents in small towns.

From a parallel with Sicily, similar in area and geographical conditions, it emerged that the cities between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants were 19 against the two Sardinians: Cagliari went even further with its 61,417 residents, while Sassari totaled 44,148. Iglesias had about 19,000 inhabitants, while the future provincial capitals, Oristano and Nuoro, were even less populated, with 10,153 and 8,534 residents, respectively.

The events of the Barbarian town, which in 1927 became the “Province of Littorio”, are illustrative of the evolution of a small town in the city, with representative public buildings, but also of homes for the new bureaucrats, who completely renewed an urban fabric that was still a village.

Many of the Sardinian cities were included in the group of the many regulatory plans drafted, but rarely implemented, in Italy in the Twenty Years. Despite extremely poor legislation dating back to the nineteenth century, the number of regulatory and expansion plans was very high, also through the practice of the competition.

The first urban planning law of the Italian state was approved only in 1942 in a country now torn by war, calling into question the many plans already approved, including the Sardinian ones.

Fascism also inherits some of the unresolved problems of the “bourgeois” city: the growing contrast between center and periphery and the prevailing attention to individual architecture with little interest in the context; from the increasingly visible gap between valuable architecture and current construction to a concern for the formal design of the city rather than for its real needs.

The regime's response is an intervention policy based essentially on two points: competitions for regulatory plans, almost always destined to remain without implementation and in any case far from the demiurgical action assigned to them; gutting and thinning interventions for the hygienic rehabilitation of the city center.

Update

20/9/2023 - 11:36