The trail of destruction that the last phase of the war left behind shaped Florence’s urban planning for a long period. The few bombardments suffered by the city during the conflict hit peripheral areas, but the German mines that destroyed all the Florentine bridges in August 1944, apart from the Ponte Vecchio, wiped out an urban fabric of great value, extending from the Mercato Nuovo to Piazza Pitti. The debate on reconstruction, which immediately flared up, pitted those who wished to restore the destroyed areas to their previous appearance against those who called for the use of modern solutions and designs. Only the bridge at Santa Trinita ended up being rebuilt ‘as it was and where it was’.
The competition announced in 1945 for the reconstruction of the destroyed areas ended without a winner; the plan that was subsequently drawn up was a compromise between: functional requirements – which led to varying the width and layout of some streets, to adapt them to traffic; the expectations of property owners; and aesthetic aspirations, focusing on architectural forms that referenced medieval design. The incessant negotiations between property owners and controlling bodies, moreover, prolonged the completion of some buildings until the beginning of the 1970s.
Reconstruction was not governed by an overall city plan, as requested by many. In 1951, however, the municipality adopted a city plan covering the entire metropolitan area, which would serve as the planning policy basis for subsequent interventions and for the drafting of the General Regulatory Plans of 1958 and 1962. These documents could only take note of the loss of the ancient urban form, replaced by a chaotic configuration, the consequence of growth without clear structural guidelines. However, the plans confirmed the idea of development towards the west and preserving the hills around Florence from construction, creating a green belt limiting the expansion of the urban sprawl and that still allows us to perceive, from multiple vantage points, the organic nature of the ancient city and its monuments.
Among the areas of expansion created in these years, two are of particular interest: the districts of Isolotto (since 1951) and Sorgane (since 1957). Isolotto is the first Florentine settlement linked to the social housing programmes launched in the post-war period, and its value lies in the attention to functional facilities, including public green spaces, and in the social dimension it seeks to achieve. Collective spaces are also central in Sorgane, which was born as a satellite neighbourhood on the eastern border of the municipality, arousing much debate due to the initial, but later abandoned, proposals that envisaged part of its development on the top of a hill.
In other areas, expansion was subject to opportunistic and speculative considerations. The absence of detailed plans led to a lack of coordination and allowed for the intensive exploitation of land, at a time – the 1960s – when the economic and demographic boom prompted rapid urban growth. This turn soon seamlessly linked the Florentine building fabric with that of the surrounding smaller towns.
In the old part of the city, interventions were by now only piecemeal. Projects to fill vacant lots or replace a building, which in some cases reached considerable levels of quality, as in the case of the new headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio, adjacent to the old hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Their impact on the urban structure of the city centre was very limited. Far more destructive, however, was the catastrophic event that befell Florence on 4 November 1966: the flood. The waters of the Arno overflowed the embankments along the Arno and submerged a large part of the old city centre, destroying everything they invaded or reached: shops, artisan workshops, works of art. The city rose again, but an era was over.