Between corporate power and urban democracy: Dalmine's spatial negotiations (1950-1994)

Who owns a city built by a company? In theory, company towns promised total order: streets, houses, schools, even leisure facilities aligned with the rhythms of production. As a microcosmos shaped by corporate priorities, the urban design of the company town relied on company designers or commissioned projects by famous architects, and public amenities were deployed to reinforce a precise identity tied to the company’s interests, long occupying a distinctive place in the history of urbanization in the 20th century. Where company towns persisted after the war, they ceased to be the exclusive domain of corporate authority and turned into arenas of negotiation. In Dalmine postwar, municipal authorities, workers, and residents challenged the company’s hegemony over land, housing, and infrastructure, making the town’s built environment the uneven product of overlapping claims. These struggles revealed the company town as a contact zone, a stage where corporate strategies, democratic aspirations, and popular initiatives collided and reshaped each other.