Planning Cities for Profit

Mark Twain may have enthused that "the Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo," but at least one Italian figures that the country's history-choked metropolitan melange is not at all the thing for a modern industrial nation. Importing the "new towns" concept from other European countries and the U.S., Milanese Financier Renxo Zingone, 58, is pushing a somewhat heretical "desire to build cities in a rational, non-chaotic fashion"--and at a profit.

Zingone's heresy is a complete new city, now rising on 2,000 acres of faded countryside between two industrial centers, Milan and Bergamo. The community will be a "completely equipped organism," housing 1,000 or so light industries, which will provide jobs for an ultimate population of 50,000. Thus "Zingonia," as it is called, differs from most European new towns since it is a money-making private venture rather than a policy-serving public project.

A banker and real estate operator who grew rich in Milan's postwar boom, Zingone will ultimately pour $40 million into the venture. Zingonia began three years ago when he bought a cluster of five hamlets, two of which were conveniently classified as "depressed areas." There he is setting up prefabricated factories and warehouses for sale to firms attracted by the benefits given to depressed areas: ten-year freedom from taxes, plus cheap 5% government loans. So far 112 firms, German, Dutch and Swiss as well as Italian, have begun turning out products ranging from ceramics to motorcycles.

In its growing residential sector, Zingonia offers $7,000 apartments and $30,000 two-story villas. The area is separated from the industrial sector by a park, civic center, soccer stadiums, swimming pools and tennis courts. Zingone has already almost recouped some $10 million he invested in a smaller community ("Quartiere Zingone") outside Milan that houses 8,700 people, and has attracted such U.S. firms as Pfizer and International Harvester. He expects to get his $40 million back from Zingonia--with a handsome profit--by 1974, when he turns its municipal buildings and 45 miles of public roads over to a yet-to-be-created municipal government.

Before then, Builder Zingone plans to head--quite literally--for the hills. Pitting pragmatism against civic pride, he is planning a residential center in the Tuscan highlands outside Florence on the theory that "after the floods last fall, Florentines would welcome a place to live safe up in the hills."

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