The foundation cities were the principal expression of a Fascist urban planning that was linked to the industrial urban utopias of the 19th century. This construction pursued a new social model that envisioned harmonious co-habitation among the inhabitants, the relative end of class conflict, the promotion of autarchy, the organisation of the new anthropological model of a radiant society in which the dichotomy between city and countryside would be superseded. In this article, we analyse the case of the town of Torviscosa, founded in the lower Friulian plain in 1937, amidst swampland subject to reclamation whose economic activity, the production of viscose, was a response to international sanctions that were applied to Italy after the invasion of Ethiopia the preceding year.
