Negotiating the middle-class city. Housing and equipping post-war Turin, 1950-1980

Abstract

The article explores the pattern of fragmented public spaces and collective facilities built in Turin between the 1950s and the 1970s, as the result of negotiation processes conducted between public institutions, private developers and professionals over the design and construction of housing devoted to the middle-class. Considering three developments -the complexes of Moncalieri and Collegno located at the outskirts of the city, and the new residential district of Quartiere Ippodromo in the southern sector -the article observes public facilities as the outcome of a set of different policies, mirroring the encounter between an heterogeneous set of actors and initiatives: from the scale of the playground close to the condominio to the public park at the edge of the new residential sectors, from the neighborhood's kindergartens and primary schools, to the community and sports centers in the new districts. During this period, houses devoted to middle-class and new public facilities were negotiated, designed and built simultaneously, bringing light to the fragmented process of construction that generated post-war Turin, implemented through series of punctual agreements between private and public actors. Through an uncommon approach, that aims at combining traditional sources with the analysis of less explored planning tools (mainly the convenzioni urbanistiche and the piani di lottizzazione), the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the development of post-war Italian cities, by looking at the aggregation of houses and facilities as two dimensions of inhabiting/living -closely interrelated in middle class housing -that together contribute to actively build the "ordinary" city. Nowadays this interrelationship still represents a focal point of social cohesion, urban quality and liveability.

Mass Housing Neighbourhoods and Urban Commons

“…The magnitude of mass housing problems depends mostly on these conditions and is interlinked with contextual specificities. Scanlon and Whitehead, 2008;Caramellino and Zanfi, 2015;Hess et al, 2018a). The former Yugoslav countries, which are not part of the European Union, have rarely been included in those studies.…”

Evaluation & Criticism

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Middle-Class Housing has been explored as a specific typology in urban and architectural research (Caramellino and Zanfi, 2015) and stands next to a larger body of research which focuses on affordable or social housing (Hess et al, 2018) in particular on mass housing (Glendinning, 2021) and on larger housing estates in former socialist countries (Hess and Tammaru, 2019). Studies are often highlighting the differences between Western States and former (Eastern) socialist countries as well as contras northern (Scandinavian) and southern European models of housing.

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Middle-Class by Design

“…This is especially true when it is constructed and inhabited in the context of urban real estate development. While access to public housing was typically monitored by the state via various administrative conditions such as income restrictions, private ownership shaped a community in middle-class mass housing, which is less explicitly defined and remains under-researched (Caramellino, 2015).What is middle-class housing? Although it is one of the main aspects of the urban fabric in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and Latin America, middle-class mass housing has been generally under-represented in urban and architectural studies.…”

“…This is especially true when it is constructed and inhabited in the context of urban real estate development. While access to public housing was typically monitored by the state via various administrative conditions such as income restrictions, private ownership shaped a community in middle-class mass housing, which is less explicitly defined and remains under-researched (Caramellino, 2015).…”