Some reflections on practice

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 4Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

Leonardo Benevolo

ISSN: 2239­267X

I do not wish here to discuss my own work which, in any case is not entirely
mine since planning culture is in a large part shared between planners and
with many others. Instead, I will chronologically tell of the attempts to make
planning work in practice, in a variety of different situations.
In an early phase, up until 1965, we actually had a technical background
which was not very large: we were producing drawn planning schemes,
which we were taught at university, and which we have since moved away
from; this approach had left us the concept and idea of having always to
compare one planned layout with another.
In the early 1960s, left wing parties advocated that major cities should prepare
a new general plan. In Rome, Florence and Venice discussions were centred
upon the differences between various planning sketches and schemes. No one



Benevolo ­ Some reflections on practice

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 5Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

then cared about implementation tools, and only history and experience have
pointed out this enormous mistake. The 1962 general plan for Rome remained
entirely unimplemented. In its place the “great season” of illegal building and
land use changes started, which nowadays strongly characterises this city as
one of the major examples of the results of illegal building activity in major
European cities. The plan for Florence, adopted in the same period, did not
succeed in avoiding things from getting worse between the planning scheme
and its implementation. In Venice the plan never came to approval because of
the endless and heated discussions and the alderman for planning, Dorigo,
gave up and moved from politics to history studies.
It is reflecting on these and other disappointments that we have found out
the limits of our planning education and background. I have written the
“Storia dell’architettura moderna” in 1960. In a subsequent book of 1963,
“Le origini del’urbanistica moderna”, I conducted deeper studies on the first
half of the 19th century when a new planning practice was not promoted by
architects but by public health specialists and their requirements: the English
planning legislation of 1849 and the French one of 1850; the latter was used
by Haussman for the “grands travaux” of Paris between 1853 and 1869.
I have discovered illuminating comparisons between planning and medicine
concerning the re­scaling of objectives (remedies normally only come after
harmful effects) and the importance of public tools for implementation.
Following the experiences of the major cities, it is logical that in Italy
subsequent progress in the planning discipline derives from administrators
of some of Italy’s medium­sized cities – such as Bologna, Brescia, Modena,
Como, Ferrara, Mantua and Trento – which have applied in Italy some of the
usual methods and ways used in Europe. Just to report four of them: Antonio
Spallino, mayor of Como in the 1960s; Luigi Bazoli alderman for planning
in Brescia from 1965 to 1980; Germano Bulgarelli, mayor of Modena until
1980, and Bruno Kessler, president of the Trento Region in the 1980s. I
have worked for a long time together with all of them. In such a way I have
had the opportunity to experience what really happened in practice.



Benevolo ­ Some reflections on practice

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 6Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

Brescia was a town of about 200,000 people with a master plan approved in
1961 which was over­dimensioned for a population of about 500,000. We
scrapped all of these provisions so bringing back to agricultural uses a large
part of those areas and we have designed and developed a new neighbourhood
of 6000 housing units on a green field area; this allows us to calculate exactly
the real cost of this public development (cost of the area, roads, sewers,
infrastructures, gardens, schools, sport and cultural facilities and other general
expenses): this was about one fifth of the cost of the construction of the
housing. Areas given up to developers were to cover these expenses, a lot
lower than the cost of private areas on the free market, so reducing for decades
the land values in the city. The new master plan contained this quota of public
areas and an equal quota of private areas. After twenty years the public share
had completely run out, whilst for the private part only 30% had been used.
Without any cost, over 50 million Euros of public works had been realized, so
allowing developers to build about 250 million euros of residential units, 90%
of which were detached houses with private gardens. The confrontation
between the comune and private developers was therefore won by the comune
under free market rules and this situation was maintained until the 1990s,
when the political support came to an end.
These experiences implied and produced social cohesion, based on the
advantage for both developers and the community; for example, when the
provision of public areas seemed to decrease, both categories asked the
Comune to increase it.
Since I had the opportunity to work in several other cities at the same time, I
was struck by the similarity of behaviour, despite the differences in
traditional habits. For example, in Modena the driver spoke informally with
the mayor, whilst this did not happen in Brescia; but Ermanno Gorrieri and
the Christian Democrat party supported urban planning decisions made by
the Communist administration. A big change occurred in 1980 when
“national solidarity” broke down. Ten years later, an even greater change
shocked the structure of international relations so interrupting – together
with many good and bad things – the experiences that I have just described.
(The relevance of this paragraph is too obscure for a non­Italian to



Benevolo ­ Some reflections on practice

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 7Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

understand in its present form!)
What has happened from 1980 up to today? In our field the main
consequence is the worsening of the links between economic rent and
profits. When I moved to Brescia, this was a typical industrial city; today
Brescia is one of the major financial cities of Italy. Behaviour and the
actions of real estate agents, which we can read about every day in the
papers, urge us to reflect on two completely different ways to earn money:
profit and rent. Profit is an essential part of the economic combination upon
which was based the adventure of our urban experiences which produced,
and produces still now, harmony and well being. Economic rent is
something else. It takes advantage of inequalities and it does not aim to
solve collective difficulties, but to increase them. Our job, which operates in
the long term, offers long­lasting scenarios to our human adventures to make
their alternation easier, but at the same time it faces the challenges posed by
those who are able to take advantage in making planning activity harder. At
present, rent wins over profit. The requirement to limit economic rent
through legal measures and actions, an old obsession of the immature Italian
planning culture, has produced over the last decades an always greater legal
protection of private property, pushing higher and higher the cost of land.
A long time ago a friend of mine, assessing the situation of economic rent
and betterment value for speculation purposes (the battle against it yesterday
was perhaps still open, whilst today is almost lost), called it “the battle of
tight shoes”. What would happen in making shoes if there were a ten­times
higher profit on laces? In that case, it would not matter if the shoes are
properly made or not. A pair of shoes would be made just to sell laces.
Likewise, when buying and selling an area, if a developer can earn much
more than when selling a building, it is useless for the architecture to
improve. Buildings, therefore, cannot become a product which compete in
terms of quality and prices but remain merely a sub­product.
There remains one element which is worth discussing in conclusion.
Economic rent not only uses but it also determines disorder. Why in the
post­war period was the landscape in Italy damaged much more than it was



Benevolo ­ Some reflections on practice

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 8Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

in Germany? Not because of the amount of changes, but because of the
disorder produced in a short period of time. Italian landscape had an
enormous value because it has been for centuries the proof of the Italian
culture, adopted in the rest of Europe and worldwide. At present it is no
longer like this and there is a warning in this: the agony of Italia Nostra, that
up until now has its actions supported by public opinion, and at the same
time the success of FAI (Fondo Ambientale Italiano)1 that buys the items
worthy of protection: monuments, collections, whole pieces of landscape
and territory (for example in the Gulf of Naples). If we are forced to buy
single pieces of this heritage, it is because the whole situation is getting out
of hand.

Italian Environmetal Fund.1