One hundred years of Company Town: the case of Dalmine, Italy.

The appearance of new forms of inhabiting the space has emerged to meet citizens' demands and new business paradigms. The contemporary city embraces a postmodern concept. The outcome is a new biopolitical project that affects citizens' living conditions through new models of urban planning frameworks on an ever-increasing and integrated scale. To investigate this modern model and its transition, I use as a case study the company town of Dalmine, founded in 1906 by the Mannesmann Tubes company. In the first half of the Twentieth century, Dalmine reflected many characteristics of a company town: (a) it was settled on an agricultural and unexploited territory; (b) the production site was surrounded by welfare facilities for the employees, including housing and public and leisure utilities; and (c) this housing policy imposed residential segregation, an instrument the company used to exercise its biopower over the citizens-workers. Looking up the living remains of the company town, it is evident that “Dalmine went through all the moments of rupture in which spatial and organisational models are redefined and created” 5 in a context which while most Italian company towns have suffered decline and the consequent cessation of activities in the seventies and eighties, the company still plays a leading regional and global role in the steel industry. Nowadays, this industry is in the same place of foundation, producing the same product line. It is an essential driver of the economic growth and development of the city, the surrounding territories, and the whole country. Dalmine can be read today as a collage of different coexistences within industry's omnipresence in the territory. What transitions did Dalmine encompass thought time? What remains of this modern town in the middle of the highly fragmented, heterogeneous, and discontinuous Po Valley? Is it still sustainable to have large plants in the urgency to tackle the socio-ecological transition we are passing on? The presentation will seek to go through the town's history from its establishment to the present day to discuss the model of modernity and its post-modern condition.