THE CONSTRUCTED UCHRONIA OF LEONARDO BENEVOLO. THE ROLE OF PUBLIC URBANISATION IN THE SAN POLO PROJECT IN BRESCIA

Abstract

The article rediscovers the urban project created by famous urban planner and historian Leonardo Benevolo for the San Polo district in Brescia, focusing on the public urbanisation method, tested for the first time in Italy and, despite the economic and urban success of the operation, never repeated since. The first section provides an overview of the political and administrative conditions that brought Benevolo to Brescia, and his relationship with Luigi Bazoli, the enlightened town planning councillor. The second section describes the paradigm shift brought about by public urbanisation: a revolution in the systems of land ownership in Italy that aimed to align itself with the main European countries by defining a market for publicly owned urbanised areas that would lower construction prices and allow for cohesive planning of urban development. The third section offers a critique of the planning operation, underlining its undisputed merits, but also highlighting its limitations and unexpressed possibilities. The fourth section shows how San Polo is a uchronia, a single fragment of an alternative history, illustrating how, in 1962, Fiorentino Sullo's proposal for national urban reform, which would have made public urbanisation a state law, raised such great concerns that it provoked an attempted coup d'état. The conclusion re-inserts San Polo into the contemporary age, verifying the urban value of the operation fifty years later and attempting to bring to light Benevolo's lesson, unheeded but still valid for today's challenges.