Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City by Borden Painter

Author:Borden Painter [Painter, Borden]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781403966049
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2016-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Two years later, the new building for ONMI, designed by Cesare Valli opened in Trastevere in a prominent location on the Lungotevere Ripa overlooking the Tiber.3

These policies led also to the glorification of “ruralization” and control of migration to the cities. Rural families produced more children than urban families. Fascist surveillance worked more easily and efficiently in the countryside, whereas migration to cities and urban crowding, it was feared, might lead to social unrest.

These ambitious policies for population growth and control fell far short of their goals. Marriage and birth rates improved somewhat, but not in the dramatic way Mussolini expected. In addition, migration to cities continued—nowhere more markedly than Rome. Migration, not more babies, doubled Rome’s population during fascist rule. The nearly 700,000 inhabitants of Rome in 1921 grew to 1,415,000 by 1941. Between 1931 and 1936 annual population growth was 4.3 percent, with an immigration of 34,000 people each year.4 By 1938, the government estimated an annual population increase of 50,000. Therefore it had to come as close as possible to building new housing for that number and to create new streets and other basic services such as water, sewers, lighting, and gas.5

The magnetic force attracting migration to Rome put pressure on the regime to provide more housing for all classes. Mussolini’s Rome included the construction of new neighborhoods to accommodate people moving from other parts of Italy to the capital as well as housing for established Roman residents displaced by the regime’s demolition projects. The pressures of growth required the regime to meet, in Mussolini’s words, “the problems of necessity,” such as housing, schools, churches, and hospitals.

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