Exploring the social origins and history of town planning in nineteenth-century England and France. Carefully documented and copiously illustrated, Origins of Modern Town Planning delves into the social origins and history of town planning in nineteenth-century England and France.The touchstone of Benevolo's research is the relationship between town planning and politics. The twofold origin of the planning concept found expression in two schools of nineteenth-century the Utopians—Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier—and their active vision of the town as a self-sufficient, coherent organism are contrasted with the specialists and officials who endeavored to remedy each urban defect individually by introducing new health regulations and social legislation into already existing towns. Despite the conceptual difference, however, Benevolo points out the shared ideology which inspired all achievements of thought and action—even the purely technical—and establishes its correspondence in spirit up to the time of modern socialism.
Pubblicazione di forte carattere politico, guidata dalle convinzioni del suo autore. Tipica dell’ambiente architettonico italiano degli anni Sessanta, ma perciò poco neutrale in ogni caso. È il libro giusto se cercate un discorso sui proto-comunismi e le origini della sinistra moderna, con alcuni brevi accenni sui progetti urbanistici rudimentali prodotti da tali correnti. Per il resto, arriva solo fino a Haussmann. Risultano particolarmente eccessive le pagine di citazioni tratte da una fonte o l’altra, che spesso non contengono informazioni veramente indispensabili.