This is nice marriage of modern with stone and wood. Roof is in Italian villa style anyway. This is how old towns should accommodate new standards. Otherwise many of them will become empty ruins soon. How valuable is a house without people living in it?
Another one:
Surely this would change a character of old towns somewhat, but at least they would stay alive.
There is new housing, LeBroc. That's not why some of the old rural villages are being abandoned. It's because the younger people go to bigger cities for work. They also find it boring because there's no movie theater close by or the nightlife they prefer.
As for housing stock, there are all sorts of restrictions about what you can do to the old houses, but nothing prevents you from building a new house even in agriculturally zoned areas if you have a big enough plot of land.
There's no need to destroy the harmony and beauty of the towns and the Italian landscape either. You can do them in Mediterranean style and in a way that is in harmony with our climate. For a majority of the year we're also trying to keep the sun out, for example.
This is a new four family condo.
These are new single family homes.
Closer in to urban areas where the zoning is different, you even have our version of "developments".
And of course in the town and city centers you have modern apartment blocks.
So, they exist. If I can afford it I'd prefer not to live in one, though.
Strict zoning laws are not just an Italian thing. I live in a community that is perhaps eighty years old with a housing stock of what Americans call Colonials, Dutch Colonials and Tudors. You would never be allowed to build a "modern" timber and glass house here. Someone dared to build a "traditional" house but painted it a bright blue. The housing association sued him. It's now a decorous beige.
It depends on the town, of course. Some of them have no concept of aesthetics or zoning. That's part of what's wrong with so much of the east coast of Florida.