Milan was the number one Italian property market in the 1950s and 1960s. Private sector players built a very large number of new homes, most of which to house the emerging middle classes drawn to this commercial, financial and management centre, the regional capital of Lombardy. This new residential landscape was created by means of a variety of different processes and means. The paper investigates them by reconstructing a few case histories of residential projects involving agreements entered into by the City government with private sector players to implement the 1953 Master Plan. An attempt is made to highlight the main procedures employed to insert the new developments within the existing city and the relations maintained by the new developments with the main themes of post-war urban planning in Milan.
Keywords: Residential building; middle classes; urban planning development agreements