Urbanism

URBANISM. - Name commonly used to indicate the general phenomena of the formation of large urban agglomerations, especially when rapid and intense, and also that particular influx due to the attraction of the urban center upon the nearby and distant rural populations. Phenomena that often assume proportions and intensity such as to become pathological.

Phenomena connected with this problem are found as far back as the Roman era, especially when foreigners of every sort flocked to the capital of the Empire, driven either by necessity, or by the desire to make their fortune, or by the attractions of comforts, luxury and amusements. In the ages that followed, the phenomenon of U. did not begin to become worrisome until the beginning of the modern era, as an effect of the formation of the great national States. It was, moreover, more pronounced in the rest of Europe than in Italy. Statistics, which in the service of demography and other social sciences have made it possible to acquire ever more precise data, show that from the 19th century onward the phenomenon of U. has assumed imposing proportions: the formation of capital and its employment in industry constitute the principal cause of urban development. At the beginning of the 19th century, only London and Paris, among the great European cities, hovered around one million inhabitants. By 1900 other European capitals had reached that level: Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Constantinople and Moscow. Even more rapid has been the formation of the great cities of North and South America, fed by an enormous influx of immigrants. A similar rapidity of development is found in the Australian cities and in the great Asian cities, where, moreover, the influx of Europeans for the development of trade, which served as a stimulus for the formation of large nuclei of natives, reveals itself as a competing force with respect to the extraordinary natural increase of the local populations.

In Italy, in the 1500s, Naples, Palermo, Milan, Venice, Rome, Genoa and Messina, until its destruction by earthquake, could be considered great cities, though without the numerical level of their populations being comparable to that of the great foreign capitals. To find Italian cities with one million inhabitants, one must wait until about 1930 (Rome and Milan). The municipalities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants today constitute more than 25% of the total population. In some of these the population, over a period of seventy years, has increased on average by 400 per 100: thus, besides Rome and Milan, which have singular characteristics and development curves, certain cities with military and commercial ports, or seats of great industries, especially the Lombard industrial centers, and certain great cities of the south. The last war opened a painful parenthesis in the normal development, already alarming in itself, of the urbanistic phenomenon: especially in the countries that were the theater of military operations, the great cities received an impressive number of refugees and of profiteers without means and without work, who have created new problems of arduous solution.

The development of urban areas could not, however, be left to the arbitrary will of private builders and individual initiatives. Thus there arose in all the countries affected by the phenomena of u. the institution of the master plan, and a corresponding discipline of study, urban planning, which aims to regulate as rationally as possible the harmonious development of cities. In Italy, as early as 1865 a first regulation was introduced by regulating, for municipalities with over 10,000 inhabitants, the formation of plans to improve the situation of the built-up areas from the point of view of hygiene and traffic, and providing for the formation of expansion plans for the creation of new neighborhoods. From 1885 onward special measures followed one another for the master plans of the major cities, without however resolving the broader urbanistic problems. Notable progress was achieved with the law of 17 Aug. 1942, which placed every master plan in function of the general interest, on the one hand by means of the territorial coordination plan, around which the individual municipal plans were framed, and on the other by means of the general master plan, which embraced the entire municipal territory. Municipalities were furthermore permitted to create a public domain of areas, expropriating the expansion zones of the urban aggregate, imposing on private individuals the obligation to carry out the arrangements provided for in the "detailed plans" and with execution by official order in case of non-compliance. Provision had also been made to constitute special buildable units, by means of special "compartments", the obligatory transfer of areas destined for road surface, the imposition of restrictions on urban areas destined for private gardens, the prohibition of the subdivision of land for building purposes before the approval of the detailed master plans.

Demographic statistics concern themselves with analyzing to what extent the increase of the population is to be attributed to the surplus of births over deaths, and to what extent to internal migrations and immigrations, and it permits a social evaluation of the phenomenon of u. From a certain point of view, it is indispensable to social progress, since only in the urban agglomeration is the development of the sciences, letters and arts possible, through the creation of great schools, libraries, museums, laboratories.

However, it can also be the cause of numerous and serious hardships. Under normal conditions the great cities, by continually attracting less gifted individuals, contribute appreciably to the increase in the number of the mentally degenerate and the physically handicapped. Even individuals not positively affected turn out, according to medical and statistical analyses, to be afflicted by a general weakening that reverberates upon the succeeding generations with ever greater drawbacks. Moreover, the continual acquisition of the majority of new inhabitants takes place in a socially and intellectually less advanced environment, so that the most refined outward civilization is often dissociated from the presence of solid moral foundations. The unbridled race for amusements of every kind, which often nest in the cities unchecked, generally lead to a weakening of the sense of duty and of human dignity. The religious and moral spirit undergoes strong shocks; through the loss of spiritual guidance, more effective in less populated localities, it is found to be undermined in comparison with the greater soundness of the rural family, with negative repercussions on the education of children. Vice is in the cities undoubtedly more conspicuous, easier, less hindered by the public authorities, often itself a source of profit for a considerable number of individuals.

The housing problem becomes perpetually insoluble. The city organization proves always insufficient, especially where private speculators anticipate building construction by a long time ahead of sanitary installations, schools, and the network of communication with the center, also because the public bodies are not in a position to cope economically with the continual arising of new needs. Crimes, especially those against property, find in these cases favorable ground for their development, just as the percentage of alcoholics is progressively increasing.

A first group of measures of a repressive character concerns the imposition of limits on the influx into the cities. Thus registration in the population registers of new individuals is made conditional upon the demonstration of concrete possibilities of work and in general of the possession of the means of subsistence, and more or less severe penalties are imposed on those who facilitate clandestine immigration. Measures of this kind were also taken in Italy, in 1928 and in 1930, and with greater coherence in 1939, as well as in the countries toward which emigration usually directs itself.

A second group of measures has a preventive character in relation to the causes of urbanistic phenomena. Among these causes, the poverty of rural dwellings, the distance from doctors, and the scarcity or total absence of public and private assistance and of schools stand out. The social improvement of rural areas is necessary, creating at the same time centers of interest that keep the peasant tied to the land. Measures aimed at promoting the fragmentation of large landed estates have been adopted in many countries of continental Europe, with the twofold intent of favoring the transformation of cultivators into small landowners and of facilitating a more direct and immediate attachment to the cultivated land, through a concomitant increase in agricultural credit and rural housing.

For Italy, the two laws of 12 May and 21 October 1950 are particularly to be remembered, the first concerning the plateau of the Sila, the second for the territories of other Italian regions, predominantly central-southern and Sardinian. They regulate the expropriation of lands susceptible to transformation, subjecting to it properties exceeding a certain size, by means of the payment of compensation, and on the other hand exempting lands under intensive cultivation provided with organic and efficient farms, equipped with modern installations and managed in associative form with several workers. Collateral legislative provisions have then sought to favor the voluntary establishment of small cultivating properties, by means of financial and fiscal benefits.

Experience and statistics further demonstrate that in countries with differences in altitude, such as Italy, there occurs a progressive depopulation from the higher zones, which are more difficult to exploit and subject to greater hardships, toward the lower zones, and from these toward the plain, and then toward the cities. Hence the necessity of intervening with laws and with adequate appropriations in favor of mountainous zones, which nonetheless have a preponderant part in the economy of individual States. Preventive measures also include legislative provisions aimed at the more rational regulation of the colonization of zones of national territory less endowed by nature, and at the coordination of plans for internal colonization with internal migratory movements, so as to divert from the cities nuclei of rural populations that are excessive in relation to a given territory, in order to direct them toward the zones to be colonized. For the achievement of these aims, the norms on the regulation of the placement of labor prove opportune, which can also have the useful function of diverting industrial workers from one city in order to direct them toward another that offers greater possibilities of employment.

Even the enlargement of the city perimeter, with the consequent creation of human hives, devoid of aesthetic, hygienic and moral sense, and the consequent inevitable extension of the city, could be replaced by the creation of healthy and modern villages, not far from the place of work, suitably connected with the city by convenient means of transport, which are in continuous growing development.

Francesco Traversa