ABSTRACT
The demise of totalitarianism and its overt appropriation of history would bring with it a rupture in the continuous tradition of defined urban space as an organic and unconscious reflection of the political order. This period of post-war reconstruction provided a pause for reflection in the matter of urban space, an understandable reaction to the negative use of the rhetoric of the piazza under fascism. With Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), a new Italy was presented in film which was intent on hedonism, and which had abandoned its traditional values. The combination of Italy's reduced circumstances and the desire by different cultural groups to expose the actuality of the experience of war resulted in the exploration of neo-realism in a number of cultural forms. Traditional urban space lapsed from view, except where used to underscore contemporary miseries, a disappearance paralleled in the field of urbanism by the architectural concentration on the formal design of housing.
