Mass housing and collective-use facilities in the 20th century Turin: an urban history of stratification

Historians of public housing schemes in Italian cities have usually approached the history of public facilities from within the limits of a given housing complex, observing which collective-use infrastructures were built for a specific neighborhood (a parish, a school, a public market, etc.). This approach has been guided by a representation of 20th century public housing schemes as separate entities within the urban landscape, each with its own narrative of design decisions, community dynamics, and outcomes. Our paper aims at challenging this perspective by examining a case study of an Italian city where the development of public housing was intertwined with broader transformation processes. We concentrate on an urban transect in the northern periphery of Turin, Italy, punctuated by housing complexes built at different times under various funding programs. These schemes are part of a heterogeneous landscape in which they coexist side by side with piecemeal suburban developments, private housing initiatives for the lower middle classes, fringes of nineteenth-century planned neighborhoods, traces of former rural buildings, and other urban materials.