The destruction of landscape and community is the unprecedented price paid in Italy for post-World War II economic growth, according to Italian authors Pasolini and Bianciardi. A price that is intrinsic to its very contradictory nature, a modernisation without civil and social development; the economic boom, far from creating social homogeneity, ended up generating profound contradictions, reified in the single-family houses. A unique case is described here, that of a priest building, some 30000 single and two-family housing units, all through private cooperatives.