Building New Communities

We easily assume that the political systems of New Deal America and Fascist Italy were poles apart, but this fascinating exploration of the "new towns" of the 1930s argues persuasively to the contrary. Diane Ghirardo reveals that the planned communities of the New Deal, from Greenbelt towns to migrant worker camps, had close parallels in Italy and that new town policies in the United States and Italy were startlingly similar. In each country the central government tried to help solve massive unemployment problems in part by adopting essentially conservative designs to move impoverished citizens back to the land. The settlers were to flee the terrors of the Depression in an image borrowed from the past: the traditional nuclear family diligently at work on its own plot of ground, uninvolved in strikes or demonstrations.


Recognizing that architectural and planning history are inseparable from the study of politics and social movements, Ghirardo uses the new town ideal as a window to view American and Italian social and economic policies. As she examines specific towns and settlements in each country, she shows that they were meant to remove their inhabitants not only from the "wickedness" of the city but also from contagious notions about revolution and radical social change.