La stagione delle giunte rosse nell’Italia degli anni ’70 e ’80, tra difficoltà del riformismo urbano ed esordi dell’urbanistica contrattata

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, left-wing councils were formed in almost all major Italian cities, based on an alliance between the PCI and PSI. This article focuses on the urban planning choices made during that period in four major cities – Turin, Milan, Rome, and Naples – with the aim of comparing how the dynamics of change in the 1970s and 1980s influenced municipal policies. In the first five years, the logic of intervention, although adapted to different local contexts, tended to converge both in its approach, which was strongly publicistic, and in its aims, essentially seeking to compensate for social and territorial imbalances. The situation changed in the 1980s: the dirigiste approach to urban planning persisted in Rome and Naples, faced a crisis in Turin, and was abandoned in Milan. This transition, marked by a resurgence of market primacy, proved fatal for the culture of urban reformism: once those local government experiences had ended, reconciling redistributive objectives and development promotion policies would prove increasingly complicated.