Urban Decay in 20th Century Florence
Throughout the 20th century, Florence had been suffering from a process of degradation. The old structure can no longer cope with the demands of modern urban life and has become the “problem” of a complex reality. Its meaning must be recuperated in a new context which never quite reaches an organic equilibrium to thus become a new and successful urban form.
After Giuseppe Poggi’s plan for “Florence, capital of Italy” (1864-1870) and its implementation - with demolition of the city walls to construct the ring road boulevards, creation of Viale dei Colli and Piazzale Michelangelo and the initial development of new residential districts both inside the ring road (the Mattonaia district around Piazza dell’Indipendenza and the Maglio district around Piazza d’Azeglio) and outside (Savonarola, San Jacopino, Piagentina) - and after demolition of the city centre around the old market (1885-1889) to create the grand Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (now Piazza della Repubblica) and construct buildings mainly intended for office use, thus beginning the tertiarisation of the city centre, in the first decades of the 20th century, in line with Poggi’s urban planning scheme, the city spread rapidly as far as the foothills - to Via Vittorio Emanuele II to the west, to Viale Volta to the east and across the Arno along Via Pisana beyond Pignone, where the foundry represented the first industrial nucleus together with the associated workers’ housing.
Until the First World War, the city’s problems apparently accumulated without tangible intervention from the public authorities. On a social level, the workers’ movement developed in defence of a class living in great hardship.
Between 1890 and 1915, the population grew by fifty thousand. Between 1905 and 1913, 36,652 rooms were constructed and about 2,000 low-rent dwellings were built. The terraces of middle class two-storey houses known as “trenini” (“toy trains”) from Ricorboli to San Gervasio and from the Mugnone valley to San Jacopino and Rifredi are a somewhat provincial version of a modern European form which, however, now appears as not devoid of quality in its neatness and dignity with respect to the constructional anarchy of today.
The character of the new middle class residential areas emerges from this passage by Aldo Palazzeschi: “Two months later, I found myself on the opposite side of the city in what were - and still are - the new districts of Florence at Barriera delle Cure, known to the Florentines simply as alle Cure. Here the farmland has only recently started to be licked, violated, strewn and invaded by the new buildings. Farewell to the grand and austere mansions, the severe and magnificent architecture, the cantilever roofs, capitals and cornices. Another life, another light, a different air.
"Clean little white, multi-coloured, pink or pale blue houses among allotments and gardens, green shutters, reddish or coral-pink roofs, little gates, low walls, terraces; leafy boughs, flowers and fruit; flower-beds bordered with strawberries or violets; the sweet smell of verbena and mint; exuberant sprays of roses that hang over to spy from one garden to the next; the splash of taps, the dripping of water, the clatter and setting down of watering cans; the warble of birds and little girls; the shouts and laughter of small children and their tears; the dogs that join in their games; the velvety step of cats along the boundary walls, the cooing of doves on the guttering, the incessant clucking of hens, the rustle of wings; the constant repetition of a piano struck by slim hesitant fingers, the sweet lament of a violin, a ball which breaks away pursued by a shout; an interweaving of glances and smiles, of greetings and exclamations, of small talk.” (Stampe dell'Ottocento, 1932).
In the first 15 years of the century, there were various initiatives in the “low-rent housing” sector. The Independent Low-Rent Housing Authority (Ente Autonomo per le Case Popolari) was set up; cooperative action was incentivised and in 1885, the Committee of the Destitute (Comitato degli Indigenti) was founded. Between 1886 and 1900, the Committee of the Destitute constructed a number of residential blocks with a total of 208 dwellings in Via Monteoliveto, Via del Ponte Sospeso, Via Pisana, Via Spontini, Via Arnolfo, Via Mannelli and Via La Farina. The aim was clearly to utilise areas at the margins of the walled city.
The developments are in fact concentrated in three areas: outside Porta San Frediano; outside Porta San Niccolò and at San Jacopino. The Le Cure and San Vergasio areas which developed at the same time were reserved for the middle and well-off classes. Between 1900 and 1916, the Committee constructed further blocks of housing providing a total of 189 dwellings in Via Botticelli, Via Borghini, Via Mannelli, Via Galliano, Via Angelico, at Villamagna and in Via Adriani.
After an attempt to take over low budget administration of the dwellings, in 1909, the City Council passed a resolution founding the IACP (Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari, Independent Low-Rent Housing Authority). This brought a severe reaction from socialists who criticised the “philanthropic-lucrative nature” of the initiative. Between 1911 and 1914, four IACP residential blocks were completed, offering a total of 223 dwellings in Via Rubieri, near Campo di Marte, in Via Erbosa, in Via Bronzino and in Via Circondaria. By May 31, 1914, there were 63 housing cooperatives providing a total of 1,618 dwellings. Between 1914 and 1929, another body, the Committee for Housing for the Destitute (Comitato per le Case ad Uso degli Indigenti) constructed 562 dwellings.
In 1933, it constructed three buildings in Via del Paradiso on land made available by the City Council, providing a total of 299 dwellings. In 1927, on the initiative of the Provincial Servicemen’s Federation (Federazione Provinciale Combattenti), the National Authority for Low-Cost Housing (Ente Nazionale Case Economiche Popolari) was set up with the aim of building dwellings reserved exclusively for members and built by members themselves in their spare time.
By 1939, this organisation had built 515 dwellings (usually terraced houses). During the Fascist period between 1923 and 1932, the IACP constructed 1,556 dwellings, mainly “isolated” and “non-communicating” blocks of flats in Via Zanella, Via Aleardi, Via Mannelli, Via Benozzo Gozzoli, Via del Romito, Via Manni (the largest development with 270 dwellings), Via del Ponte di Mezzo and Via Erbosa. These residential developments were once again located at the edge of the city and were only later absorbed into the expanding urban fabric.
In the early twentieth century, architect Giovanni Michelazzi was active in Florence. With the town houses he constructed for the city’s middle class families along Viale del Poggio Imperiale, Viale Michelangelo, Via Giano della Bella, Via Scipione Ammirato and Via XX Settembre and the department store building in Borgo Ognissanti (1911), the first example of the modernist language introduced into the old urban fabric, Michelazzi gave Florence works of far from secondary importance in the panorama of Liberty-style architecture in Italy.
The Florentine culture of the 20th century made major contributions to the literary field, finding its ideal expression in magazines: “Leonardo” (1903), “La Voce” (1909), “Lacerba” (founded in 1913 by Ardengo Soffici and Giovanni Papini), “Il Selvaggio” (1924), “Solaria” (1925) and “Il Frontespizio” (1929). These were later joined by “La Critica d'arte” (1935), “Paragone” (1950), “Commentari” (1950), ”seleARTE” (1952) and “Prospettiva” (1975). Florence also assumed a leading role on the national publishing scene thanks to the presence of the publishing companies Vallecchi, Le Monnier, La Nuova Italia, Sansoni, Marzocco and Olschki.
A number of the magazines mentioned above played a major role in the history of modern Italian literature, including in an international cultural context. “It is not easy to say to what extent those Florentine years affected the future of Italy, but one thing is certain. Today, to a historian’s eye, they perfectly reflect the underlying situation, a growing awareness of unease and a quest for new ways forward, a declaration of discontent and the opening up of numerous possibilities. [...] At least at the beginning, everything could be found in the circles of Florentine rebels and this explains the presence of men who were later to take very different and distant paths” (E. Garin, 1960).
Between 1910 and the 1920s, the editors of “La Voce” and “Lacerba” and all the most vigorous representatives of the culture of the moment found themselves, almost literally every day, debating and swapping ideas in the famous “Giubbe Rosse” café in Piazza Vittorio. Leading contemporary novelists and thinkers such as Aldo Palazzeschi, Emilio Cecchi and Vasco Pratolini wrote in Florence’s magazines.
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