In 1960, when the Italian Communist Party (PCI) won the elections in Bologna, the architect, planner, and militant Giuseppe Campos Venuti, was nominated chief of the city’s department of urbanism. As a teenager, Campos Venuti participated in the Italian Resistance Movement; after the second world war he began studying Architecture in Rome, where he later taught and worked as an urban planner. Following graduation, Campos Venuti received a position with the Bolognese city council, which he held until 1966. As a leader, Campos Venuti put forward a radical and influential approach to urban planning whose primary goal was to counter land speculation. This approach was later known as, Urbanistica Riformista (reformist urban planning).⁠

Campos Venuti’s method stemmed from an awareness that the industrial city was capitalised by powerful landowners who favoured the center as a strategic asset. The Urbanistica Riformista approach addressed the city in its entirety, a holistic attitude made clear by Pier Luigi Cervellati’s 1973 plan for Bologna’s historic center.⁠ Cervellati’s plan used the concept of typology to initiate a methodological “revolution” in urban planning. Through typology, Cervellati and his collaborators linked policymaking and architecture together in one cohesive project for the city. The main goal of this systematic approach was to oppose the emphasis on Bologna’s historical center as a market asset.⁠

This essay investigates the city as a reformist project by analysing Cervellati’s plan from 1973. As a case study, Cervellati’s plan can be read as a direct product of the Urbanistica Riformista approach to urbanism—the innovative strategy of the Bolognese administration led by the Italian Communist Party. Moreover, the plan’s tactics bear a striking resemblance to Aldo Rossi’s theories on typology put forward a few years prior. Despite being widely recognised for their focus on form, many of Rossi’s early studies, especially those published before The Architecture of the City, define typology as a political entity whose variations depend on society, time and culture.⁠

The goal of Cervellati’s plan was to shape an old city for a new society. The project positioned the city center as an urban artifact. As an artefact the center’s form was to be preserved as a collective memory while its functions were adapted to the needs of its growing working class population, otherwise in danger of eviction. Cervellati’s typological approach represented both the analytical tool and the planning method required to improve the city while avoiding raising costs in the center.

The Bologna plan can be inscribed within a wider debate during the 1950s and 60s concerning historical city centers.⁠ The main dilemma was how to address the expansion of cities caused by industrialisation. Specifically, what to do with historical centers whose morphology was not compatible with the twentieth century metropolis. Among the options put forward were: keeping centers as they were—as souvenirs of a past era, themselves museums turned tourist attractions; or transforming them to meet the needs of a modern capitalist society. A question that was even more relevant in the aftermath of World War 2 which forced the reconstruction of many Italian cities.

The Bologna plan proposed an alternative approach to the binary discourse around preservation vs. transformation. Instead, the plan for Bologna consisted of 1. refusing absolute preservation, 2. countering the economic valorisation of urban expansion and 3. a restoration of centers which maintained their economic affordability. In doing so, Cervellati’s proposal appropriated typology as a planning method, linking form, function and class composition.

BOLOGNA: URBAN HISTORY AND RADICAL POLICIES

Bologna, like many Italian cities, consists of a dense medieval center surrounded by a radial expansion of fragmented urban fabric. This scattered growth was further reinforced in 1906, when the medieval city walls were replaced by a modern boulevard ring. A 1940s map shows how a series of districts encircled Bologna’s center: the industrial area in the north, two garden cities located at the bottom of the hills in the east and the west and finally the workers’ neighbourhoods close to both the northern train station and running along the Via Emilia. A new city plan was drawn in 1955 to accommodate one million inhabitants. Within this post war scheme, the historical center was intended to undergo a drastic process of sventramento,⁠ limiting preservation to a few monuments such as churches and palaces.

However in 1960, due to a radical shift in Bologna’s administration and municipal priorities, the plan was abandoned.⁠ The new council organised the city into fifteen neighbourhoods. Each area of the city formed a borough council whose administrative scale fostered both participation and interaction among citizens and public institutions. Moreover, these neighbourhoods were equipped with an excellent network of social services including public kindergartens.⁠ Such an urban organisation reflected the PCI’s agenda to not only represent workers but also citizens. As a result, Bologna became one of the most progressive cities in Europe in terms of welfare. In order to implement these changes, the council⁠ focused on two primary objectives: the redistribution of income in support of workers through the implementation of public services, housing and social investments; and the spread and accessibility of culture among the citizens through the activation of innovative projects.⁠

INTRODUCING URBANISTICA RIFORMISTA

When Campos Venuti took office, he immediately criticised the 1955 plan for its overestimation of the city’s demographics: a plan for 1,000,000 inhabitants was not needed for a city of only 840,000 people with no projected population growth. Furthermore, similar to many regulatory schemes produced in Italy at that time, the 1955 plan was the product of lobbying by real estate speculators seeking to manipulate the market. By reallocating previously un-zoned land on the outskirts of the city to buildable plots, the proposal disproportionately advantaged these investors. Campos Venuti understood that such a plan was bespoke to real estate speculation. The way the proposal was drafted provided a benefit solely to a few powerful landowners, creating an opportunity for them to buy the land cheaply and afterwards lobby the municipality to change the zoning permits, thus resulting in an overwhelming increase in the land’s market value.⁠

Campos Venuti’s goal was thus to limit the consequences this process would have had on the working class and the whole productive sector—targeting the commodification of land as the enemy of a liveable city. In an attempt to reverse urban speculation, the council, led by Campos Venuti, drew a set of new urban policies. These policies followed a precise strategy pertaining to three key areas of the city of Bologna: the outskirts and their regional connections; the areas of recent expansion for industry and housing which were the first areas targeted by real estate speculation; and lastly the historical center, what Campos Venuti defined as the most important area, the core of the land value inflation process.

According to Campos Venuti, the outskirts of the city had to be planned in accordance with the entire region. The most important of these interventions focused on the decentralisation of service sectors. The result was the development of two new centralities outside the historical city: Center Gros, a commercial wholesale area, and the Fiera District.⁠ Understanding that allocating new buildable areas in the city increased the land’s value, Campos Venuti redesigned them to host both industrial and low-income housing complexes. Bologna’s administration also applied the national law 167/1962, a law that allowed councils to buy privately owned land for public purposes at a low price.⁠ The administration therefore expropriated the majority of the buildable areas close to the city center. Considering housing as a public service, the council, in conjunction with various housing cooperatives,⁠ drafted a series of local plans known as, Piano per l’Edilizia Economica e Popolare, or PEEP.⁠ Peep was a urban planning tool specifically for building low-income neighbourhoods, each aiming to provide an outstanding 40 square meters of green space and services per person.⁠

Campos Venuti and his colleagues denounced the dispossession of low-incoming housing in the center, which they believed was caused by the renovation of the city’s old houses into luxury apartments or office spaces.⁠ He understood that this process of dispossession was the consequence of metropolitan development, generating a series of knock-on effects. Campos Venuti described the urban cycle in this way: first, the city expands as results of industrialisation; second, expansion of the city increases the value of the neglected central areas; third, owners and investors’ regenerate central areas to increase rent; fourth, inhabitants are evicted; fifth, the council is forced to build new housing elsewhere; sixth, the expansion of the city increases the value of both the center and periphery. By understanding urban development in these terms, Bolognese planners were forced to address the city center as a critical factor in determining land values. To stop this process, a policy was put forward to preserve the physical, social and economic structure of this central area and avoid the eviction of local inhabitants. Afterwards, the same policy was applied to the city at large.

TOWARDS A LOW-INCOME HOUSING PLAN

The Bolognese policy was formalised in 1969 as the Piano per l’edilizia economica e popolare (Low-income housing plan PEEP/1973)—developed specifically for Bologna’s historical center—by Pier Luigi Cervellati as part of the Piano per il centro storico (Plan for the Historical Center). The plan was based on research developed by Leonardo Benevolo⁠ in 1965 and was commissioned by the Bologna city council: the Relazione dell’indagine settoriale sul centro storico di Bologna.⁠

Benevolo’s research focused on the preservation of the old city as a physical embodiment of previous values. His research, therefore, relates to what Rossi was also theorising at the time, reading the city as a physical urban artifact.⁠ In both approaches the city was positioned as a giant urban artifact, autonomous from the rest of the city. Benevolo however, argued that the preservation of the city center, as an integral and finite urban artifact, was part of a broader strategy for investing in the city as a whole. Viewing the historical center as a distinct urban element, was based on what the report defined as the contrast between the so-called, città storica, and the città moderna—the latter being the developments that emerged with the industrial revolution. In the case of Bologna, the contrast between these two cities was represented clearly in the 1889 city plan. This plan shows the dense and organic fabric of the center coloured in grey, contrasting with the gridiron structure of the city’s “future expansion,” traced around the core in pink.⁠ The report argues that most of the required programs of the modern city, especially tertiary activities especially suited to the city center, were incompatible with the dense medieval urban fabric and its intricate road network.⁠ Therefore, the report suggests that, wherever the insertion of new programs into the center destroyed the historical fabric, it was the planner’s and the administrator’s duty to imagine a metropolitan organisation that would allow their coexistence.

Opposing the sventramento,⁠ the report proposed the notion of risanamento conservativo, conservative restoration. While the first can be understood as the superimposition of a new form on the ancient urban structure, the second acknowledges the heterogeneity of the new and old city, considering the historical center as one of the modern city’s multiple parts. Whereas the sventramento modified form according to a specific function, the risanamento conservativo read the historical center as a valuable urban artifact worth preserving. Therefore, the center was needed to host new functions while maintaining its form, “rather than modifying the form according to function, we need to understand what function fits the existing form.”⁠

Benevolo’s operative interpretation of the city⁠ defined the historical center as a balanced system of different building categories which he classified according to their historical value and artistic character. This classification led to the following groups: 1. buildings that must be kept intact both internally and externally; 2. buildings that must be kept intact only externally, especially relating to how they influenced their immediate context and 3. buildings that do not need to be preserved. Additionally, the report identified a set of functions suitable for the form of each building type.⁠

The council, based on these notions, proceeded with two different means of collecting data. First, they looked for the appropriate medium to express the intertwined relationship between the historical center, its inhabitants and their lifestyles, habits and culture. As a result, the council commissioned photographer Paolo Monti to produce the censimento fotografico, a photographic survey consisting of over 8,000 black and white pictures. Taken from a pedestrian’s point of view, these photographs provide a physical description of Bologna’s center at the time.⁠ The censimento fotografico is a detailed reportage—excluding cars and contemporary road signs—determining a collective perception of Bologna’s urban landscape. Second, the council analysed the socio-economic data of the 1961 and 1971 censuses. Together, these censuses revealed that nearly 80 percent of the center’s population were tenants, 30 percent of whom were retirees, and that the large majority of people working at the time were artisans or employees. Furthermore, the data highlight a decrease in the number of families living in the center, instead indicating an increase in the number of students and retirees. Combining these elements into an architectural strategy, Cervellati and the housing department built an extensive archive of Bologna’s existing building types.

The archival research demonstrated housing as the “analytical constant of the architecture of the city,”⁠ or, that the house, as an element, defines the urban fabric. This notion is strengthened by the same representation of housing typologies throughout the centuries: historic architectural drawings always show the ground floor plan and sometimes even the first floor in a manner that depicts diverse housing functions in a conventional and descriptive way. These planimetric depictions of buildings were often joined by axonometric views detailing construction techniques and materials. This extensive collection of drawings suggested a typological approach as a recognition of “the perseverance of ways of living and behaving that take shape in similar and recurrent buildings” and was read as the study of how people have been living in the same houses over centuries.⁠ This study suggested that those urban systems are driven by housing and are composed of gardens, arcades and streets. Consequently, the architects proposed a series of interventions whose goals were to adapt Bologna’s old buildings to the contemporary necessities of its working-class inhabitants.

The housing department⁠ established four main building types composing the city prior to 1833, studying the formation and association of each category over time. These categories consisted of: A. “the big container” (mainly monasteries); B. “the courtyard building” (where the aristocracy and high bourgeois used to live); C. “the artisans’ house” (workers’ housing); and D., “the bourgeois house with a small courtyard” (medium to low bourgeois). Afterwards, the architects analysed what new functions each typology could potentially host.

The slogan, “An Ancient City for a New Society,”⁠ defined the low-income housing plan’s approach. The conservative restoration of the historical center sought to counter gentrification, instead supporting the existing socio-cultural environment, avoiding the dispossession of employees, retirees, students and new couples. By providing evidence and alternatives for upgrading existing buildings to accommodate existing inhabitants, planners used the archive to defend the integrity of Bologna’s historical center from real estate speculation.

Rather than restoring specific buildings, the council proposed working on thirteen comparti (city parts) as the focus of their low-income housing plan.⁠ Each comparto was defined as a morphologically and functionally consistent sub-area composed of Category A and Category C housing both working together in a complementary way. Within the idea of the comparti lay a novel political project, proposing the importance of a minimal dwelling, and its requisite services, as a basic human need instead of its speculative financial value. Such an understanding further relates to Bologna’s specific historical context where the house was private while the street, the church, the market, the square and the council were the structural complementary services.

Among the types mapped by Cervellati’s team were the “houses for artisans,” which formed elongated rectangular blocks whose voids dominated the built environment.⁠ The façade of this type gave form to one of Bologna’s most distinct architectural features, the arcades. Bologna’s arcades flank the city’s streets, making them architecturally continuous. Additionally, the rectangular blocks contained hidden gardens, which acted like squares. The gardens, accessible from the main roads via entryways and courtyards, suggested a peculiar relationship between public and private spaces. Starting from a study of all of the type’s transformations over time, the plan adapted the original form of the “houses for artisans” to meet contemporary needs. As a result the design proposed a new internal configuration for both the ground and upper floors, splitting the singular houses into a series of apartments and spaces across each level.⁠ The ground floor was intended to host activities open to the public in the front and private services (i.e. laundry) in the back, while the upper floors were divided into apartments on each level: 35-45 square meter apartments for students and elderly people; 60-90 square meter apartments for young couples; and/or a duplex of 120–180 square meters for larger families. Following their objective to convert housing from an economically productive good into a public service, the council attempted to revert the former rental contract into a new undivided ownership regime.⁠

The dwelling units provided only the minimum amount of private space. In exchange, they were counterbalanced by a greater number of shared spaces and social services, such as meeting and community rooms, playgrounds, green areas as well as social and civic centers, enabling citizens to participate in the political life of the city. These services were to be scattered throughout the historical center, hosted by the ‘big containers,’ the abandoned monasteries and palaces classified in Category A. The generous number of shared facilities detailed in the plan suggested a way of living that encompassed not only the house, but the city at large. Consequently, the design completely discarded the house-factory dichotomy which otherwise defined the Fordist approach.

To cite an example, the San Leonardo/Sant’Orsola complex began as a thirteenth-century church before becoming the monastery of the Ursuline nuns. Despite expanding during the eighteenth century through the acquisition of many horti (vegetable gardens), by the mid-twentieth century, the complex was converted into a school and hospital, shrinking into a rectangular form as a result. The proposed renovations of Cervellati’s plan consisted of converting the main church into a theatre and the small interior church, together with the dining room and courtyard, into a gym—a facility linked to the existing school but open to all. The proposed complex would also house the neighbourhood civic center (with rooms dedicated to meetings, free time, health care, exhibitions, a library etc.) and student accommodations. These interventions would not, however, alter the building’s urban structure. The buildings were protected due to their visible and longstanding relationships with the block and surrounding urban fabric represented by the arcades—a recurring element in each of the complexes. These civic centers gave rise to a network of diverse spaces which could facilitate political engagement, meetings and cultural events. They were, in other words, rooms for free time not spent at work. The aim of this approach was to provide spaces that were properly designed for social interaction, expressing the importance of a collective consciousness. As the architects stressed in their book, Bologna: metodologia del restauro nei centri storici (Bologna: restoration methodology in the historical city centers), everything was planned from the perspective of the dwellers’ self-management. Self-management was seen as the only way to truly share choices and activities.⁠

The architects decided to use different representational media in order to explain and share the aims and objectives of the projects with the citizens. For the big containers of Category A, they made scale models of the buildings, while for the housing, they used the same style of drawing found in the archive: but instead of an axonometric view of the house as an isolated building, they used top-view perspectives of each unit’s interior. This graphical choice underlines the main characteristic of the space as being inhabited. Each apartment type was represented not just in terms of its ‘architecture’ but also in a high level of detail, giving a snapshot of the daily life happening within. The ‘perspectival plans’ show different furniture in each apartment, tables are covered with pens, books or food, pillows have different textiles and curtains show a variety of patterns—in a clear attempt to oppose standardisation. This approach is particularly important as a demonstration of the project’s ethnographic accuracy, which focuses on the dweller as a subject to be supported, rather than exploited.

PRESERVATION AS THE RE-APPROPRIATION OF THE CITY

Urbanistica Riformista was a project of both preservation as well as a civic re-appropriation of the city:⁠ it represented a revolution within the field of urban planning. This happened by understanding the historical center of Bologna as a unique urban artifact, highlighting, in Rossi’s words, “the multiplicity of functions that a building can contain over time and how these functions are entirely independent of the form.”⁠ In terms of planning, such an understanding meant operating within a unitary system, balancing the preservation of form while adapting functions to the needs of a contemporary society and the socio-economic composition of a given area.

The typological approach understands typology as, “the perseverance of ways of living and behaving that take shape in similar and recurrent buildings.” Typology in this case allowed the architects to work on an existing form, establishing continuity between the former and the contemporary ways of inhabitation. Adapting the different typologies to current needs without disrupting their urban relationships, represented a step forward in a series of modifications that occurred over time—a history the architects were deeply aware of. Within the method of Urbanistica Riformista, the typological approach proposed a way to link collective needs and the economy to architecture and urbanism—two practices that tend to be used for the exploitation, rather than support, of the working class.⁠ Typology here is understood as a political tool that expresses a possible link between form, function and social class.

This praxis, the process of active preservation, understood as the rehabilitation of the building structure and the functional renovation of its spaces without disrupting the urban systems to which they belong, was part of a wider political project and represented an act, through which, architecture was used as a powerful tool for the working class’s re-appropriation of the city against its otherwise capitalist valorisation.

AUTHOR

Enrica Mannelli is an architect. She graduated in Rome and holds an MA in Housing and Urbanism from the Architectural Association (2017). She has worked in Rome, Milan and London with a number of firms ranging in size, method and ambition. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Architectural Association.