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The Old City of Florence and Modern Development in the 20th Century

In 1951, the city adopted a new urban planning scheme. Although carefully studied, it was unable to prevent the saturation of built-up areas beyond the boulevards of the ring road, the tendency towards oil-spill expansion and the lack of facilities, services and parks and gardens.

After the traffic revolution of the 1630s brought about by introduction of the carriage and the 19th century revolution when the multiplication of both public and private vehicles led to numerous old streets being widened, after the Second World War, the rapid increase in the number of private cars put the old centre of Florence to a hard test until the logical decision was taken to limit traffic to a certain zone. Three new bridges were constructed over the Arno: the Vespucci in prestressed reinforced concrete (architects E. and G. Gori, E. Nelli, engineer R. Morandi, 1957); the Indiano (architects A. Montemagni and P. Sica) and the Giovanni Da Verrazzano (architect L. Savioli, engineers C. Damerini, V. Scalesse).

The flood of the Arno in November 1966 devastated houses, museums, libraries and monuments. Young people from all round the world flocked to Florence to help repair the damage. The Galleries Commission Works of Art Restoration Department (Gabinetto di Restauro delle Opere d’Arte della Soprintendenza alle Gallerie) set up in the 1930s was expanded after the flood and merged with the old Semi-Precious Stone Workshop (Opificio delle Pietre Dure), making Florence an international reference point in the sector.

The opportunity offered by decommissioning of the Fortezza da Basso was stupidly wasted. Rather than follow the example of other Italian cities where similar structures were turned into public parks or given a cultural and recreational function, the interior was filled with heavy cumbersome structures intended for trade fairs, thus becoming, together with the Conference Centre opposite, an additional element increasing the strain on the city centre.

Although lacking an organic plan and efficient coordination of resources and initiatives, Florence’s role as a city of study and scientific research has continued to develop, partly through the presence of highly qualified structures such as the Arcetri Observatory (Osservatorio di Arcetri), the National Nuclear Physics Institute (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests Experimental Institute (Istituto Sperimentale del Ministero dell’Agricoltura e Foreste), the European University, branches of foreign universities (particularly from the United States) and numerous libraries which are being laboriously linked.

Weighing up the building and town planning activities in Florence in the last 100 years, we can see with great clarity that the progressive loss of the meaning and rationale of the old city for both citizens and administrators and the failure to create a new city are, in fact, two faces of the same reality - the inability of Florentine culture to positively resolve the new dynamics which have characterised the growth, not just of Florence, but of cities in the western world in general during the current historical period, rather than falling victim to its most deleterious forms.

After the years of “Florence, Capital of Italy” which marked the start of those new dynamics and could count on the presence of at least partly organised and coherent forces and aspirations and after the squalid decline in the 1900s characterised by Fascist intervention, in the years immediately following the Second World War, the urban history of Florence is not one of the construction of values, but rather, on one hand, of the assertion of the “spontaneous” dynamics of the city - in other words, the sum of the results desired by vested interests - and, on the other, through the resolve and awareness of a cultural minority, of a constant, wearing and sterile succession of new urban equilibriums, each more difficult and more problematical than the last.

It is true that there are similarities between the various phases of expansion immediately after the war in Florence and in other Italian cities, “For anyone walking along Via Masaccio, in the San Gervasio district [...] or in the improbable zone of Novoli, it is not difficult to understand the significance of a city abandoned for years to speculation, although it never reaches the heights of Rome, worthy capital of Italy in this too”, (A. Cederna, 1962).

But it is even more true that among cities of a certain level, it is perhaps Florence which holds the sad record for obtuseness, narrow-mindedness, the miserable meanness of every parameter, in short, for a lack of strength and character - even in its errors, which elsewhere, in Rome for example, at least elevate the matter to the heights of tragedy. In the squalid outcome of such a basically tired and lifeless process, in its heavy self-assertion, the few ideas truly worthy of the name, such as those appearing in the general urban planning schemes of 1951 and 1962, have largely remained a dead letter, although, in some cases or for certain problems, they could have avoided the worst and although in a historical perspective they could become evidence of a civil presence in a context of events which consistently and irremediably evade any rational attempt at organisation and management.

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