The Principles of a Stable Community : 90 Years of Structured Integration in a Culturally Diverse New Town in Sardinia

Abstract: An atom, a cell and a solar system have very little in common. My science teachers from high school will confirm that I am very far from being an expert on the matter but nontheless, I have studied these three systems in separate classes: chemistry, biology and astronomy. So I believe they must be fairly unrelated from each other! All they have in common is that they are studied through a magnifying lens by people who are better than me in maths. But onceyou look through the lens, you should see a main body and smaller objects rotating around it. The electrons around the protons, the cytoplasm around the nucleus and the planets around the sun. The key element they have in common is structure. Perhaps this is too abstract, even for an abstract, so let’s bring things back to earth. Structures play a fundamental role in shaping the world around us and this thesis aims to understand to what extent and how they influence people’s daily lives. The case study is based on the new town of Arborea in Sardinia, originally designed and owned by a private company to make an efficient and innovative industrial food production system. It aims to show how the ambition to produce was ingrained in the buildings and societal structures and how the surroundings affected the people who moved there. Everything was studied in detail:from the road grid to the houses, the church’s positioning and even selecting people from the north of Italy who were deemed most suitable to work there. The use of structuration theory will be key to uncover the different layers and relations that still shape the community today. 35.000 cows, 3800 people, a history of cultural clashes, a productive system, a very fascist background, a ’sex patrolling’ priest, a dozen volunteering organisations will all feature in thethesis and together enable to draw a picture of the new town.