The new towns in the Agro Pontino: a literature review and critical bibliography

Politecnico di Milano, ABC dpt. of Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering, Milan, Italy

Corresponding author: emanuela.margione@gmail.com

Abstract

This literature review intends to focus on how the settlements system of the Agro Pontino, newly designed in a geographic area contiguous to the capital city and directly connected to the integral reclamation project elaborated by the agricultural economist Arrigo Serpieri starting from 1923, is narrated. The reclamation of the Agro Pontino is one of the most important territorial transformations carried out by Fascism under direct public control. Also, this case study is particularly significant due to the relationship between the capital city, Rome, as large urban centre, the new medium size cities, villages and the morphological structure of agricultural holdings, into a historical context where the concept of agricultural property is defined. Today we have an enormous number of books, paper and documents written in different historical period that can help us to understand the evolution of the Italian new towns but at the same time the large number of these materials can also make it difficult for understanding the project and its meaning through time. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to explain how to prepare a critical bibliography able to show the evolution of the reclamation project and the construction of new towns and the changing of its meaning over time. Also, thanks to this bibliography it’s possible to extract the main issues related to the Italian case study: the relationship between the existing landscape and the network of roads; the relationship between the plans for villages, towns and the architectural features of the new settlements, and finally, the role of public buildings as a system of public facilities promoting new behaviour patterns, and their bold modernist architecture symbolized the conquest of the land.