Public housing estates in Italy from the 1960s to the 1980s. A critical analysis

The public housing policies pursued in Europe in the ‘60s and late '80s have left a vast legacy of housing estates created with industrialized building systems. They were mainly built in the suburban areas of the major cities, sometimes as real “new towns”. From the start, in Italy at least, most of them turned out to be unfit for the inhabitants needs. Actually, they consist of rapidly deteriorated, obsolete and often overcrowded homes within neighborhoods where the “crisis” is environmental and technological but also social, political and cultural. Partial and incomplete responses have emerged with reference to specific policies adopted in several European countries. In Italy, particularly in the south of the country, the effect of economic downturn requires a thinking that goes beyond the current strategy of social housing in favor of more specific, urgent and effective solutions. In relation to this scenario, this lecture is about: a. a critical analysis of public housing policies pursued in Italy from after the second world war to present; b. an overview of public housing interventions made between the ’60s and ’80s, with particular reference to the center and south of Italy; c. some results of a research focused on an emblematic case-study of southern Italy: the PSER intervention in Naples in the ‘80s.