Scholars have different views on how much weight to give to the political intentions of architecture and urban planning, according to context and to the prevailing questions of the moment in their disciplines. My presentation addresses designs for state-sponsored Italian settlements in the modern Italian colonial era (1869-1943), with an emphasis on the 1930s, when the Fascist regime financed and oversaw settlements for relocated Italians within Italy’s national borders and in the formal African colonies too, with only minor variations between the ideas informing their architectural and urban designs.

Do the continuities in design between ‘nation’ and ‘colony’ or ‘Empire’ matter when it comes to our understandings of these sites? Historians tend to think that yes, while architectural historians not as much. And does the fact that the government at the time insisted on the expression “internal colonization” mean that we should regard internal-settlement programs as “colonial” ones? Historians tend to think that no, while architectural historians are more easily convinced. And, ultimately, how do these decisions about interpretation shape our understandings of Fascist and colonial vestiges?