The Urban Planning in the Communal Cities (second half of the 12th century-first half of the 14th century): Themes, Methods, Research Perspectives

Abstract

Between the second half of the 12th century and the first half of the 14th century, the cities of central-northern Italy experienced intense changes, which left profound signs in their structure, conditioned their planning for a long time and characterizing their image in a lasting way. The overbearing growth in size and increase both in construction activities and interventions aimed at transforming the structural framework, effectively redefined in quantitative terms dimension and configuration of urban centres. At the same time the widespread building regulations drawn up for improving the conditions of the built space and its use determined the affirmation of new functional and aesthetic paradigms, which reflected the expectations of a rich and culturally advanced society. Thus, a specificity of the municipal experience in the urban planning field emerged as undoubtedly part of an original and coherent framework. In the last two decades our knowledge about the municipal phenomenon has significantly expanded and that relating to social, economic and political aspects were particularly notable. Important contributions, concerning specific case studies, also came from archival research and studies on material evidence, making new opportunities to verify methods and times of realisation of the initiatives promoted by the civic magistracies possible. On this basis, we can now reconsider some main problematic issues of the urban planning deployed by municipalities in order to identify possible research perspectives. To this end, it seems useful to focus on some particularly encouraging guidelines and propose some essential questions of method.