From INA-Casa to Social Housing. But what kind of innovation are we talking about?

Abstract

The contribution, starting from the comparison between two of the most important Italian periods of residential building construction for public and social purposes, INA-Casa (1949-1963), and the recent local Social Housing experiments, raises the question as to whether the way to respond to the need of housing for the rent is still building new districts or whether, in the face of the need not to occupy further land, the most innovative solutions are rather to be sought in the renovation of existing housing stock; in the reconversion of abandoned buildings into residences; in the experimentation of self-construction practices of renovation for the empty and disused public residential housing stock. In this regard, some experiments have been successfully launched in our country.