Italian Architects and the Reform of Urban Planning Legislation in the Early 1960s. A Long-Term Perspective on the Reasons for a Commitment

The article examines the failure to pass an organic law reforming town planning in Italy in the 1960s. It focuses on an aspect less considered by historiography: the reasons that drove many influential architects-urbanists and the association that represented them (Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica, the National Institute of Urban Planning) to promote the law and make it an essential part of their commitment, to the point of perceiving its eventual demise as a historical failure. To show the reasons for this commitment, the article adopts a long-term perspective, tracing its origins to the modality in which the discipline of urban planning was established in the history of Italy. The article also interprets this experience through the analytical category of «field of (cultural) production», proposed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.