Environment And Urbanization In Modern Italy

From the second half of the 1940s, when postwar reconstruction began in Italy, there were three notable driving forces of environmental change: the uncontrollable process of urban drift, fueled by considerable migratory flows from the countryside and southern regions toward the cities where large-scale productive activities were beginning to amass; unruly industrial development, which was tolerated since it was seen as the necessary tribute to be paid to progress and modernization; and mass consumption. In his fourth book, Federico Paolini presents a series of essays ranging from the uses of natural resources, to environmental problems caused by means of transport, to issues concerning environmental politics and the dynamics of the environment movement. Paolini concludes the book with a forecast about the environmental problems that will emerge in the public debate of the twenty-first century.

Marco Armiero is Senior Researcher at the Italian National Research Council and Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technologies, Universitat Aut(noma de Barcelona. He has published extensively on-Italian environmental history and edited Views from the South: Environmental Stories from the Mediterranean World. --

Earth’s fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between “rural” and “urban,” “backwardness” and “development,” and “before” and “after,” shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.

Providing a comprehensive account of one of the most formative historical periods, this book uniquely describes Renaissance architecture as the physical manifestation of economic, social and political change. Shifts in architectural style and design are described in parallel with Italy’s economic and demographic growth, external and internal conflict and the evolution of urban and regional government. Urban Development in Renaissance Italy covers the full extent of the Renaissance period, charting the era’s medieval roots and its transformation into Mannerist and Baroque tendencies. Encompassing Palermo and Naples, the book fully covers northern, central and southern Italy, surpassing the conventional literature that tends to focus solely on northern Italy. Transforming medieval towns into city states, Renaissance governments invested heavily in developing the built environment to create a sense of awe and civic pride; while aristocratic dynasties, bankers and merchants commissioned sumptuous properties as a means of expressing their wealth and position in society; and holy orders built imposing churches to extend their influence. Architecture and planning, it is argued by Dr Paul Balchin provided a clear and significant path to political and economic power. It is within this context that the centre of political and economic gravity shifted over time within Italy from the republic of Venice in the 14th century to Medici Florence in the 15th century, and on to Papal Rome in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

The book, showing virtuous examples of urban planning in Italy and Europe, exposes certain doubts and open questions: what is the new role of urban planning? What actions / rules are now achievable for the protection, planning and management of local-scale landscapes? The overall reflections gathered in the book contribute to suggest innovative visions about landscape planning at local scale, seen as first steps towards a more functional change of perspective. New landscapes are the result of local planning practices that no longer seem able to “understand” the current society through urban design. Public space and new urban centralities interact with the increasingly complex functions of social life and mark the distance from territorial values, relying less and less on physical relationships (economic and functional) and increasingly on symbolic and intangible relationships, as ‘cultural identity’. Landscape is essential for the sustainable future of the urban and rural territory: the landscape quality is a factor of economic competitiveness and acts also as a factor of social cohesion and integration.

This book examines the transformation of the Italian city from the 1950s to the present with particular attention to questions of identity, migration and changes in urban culture. It focuses on two phases of that transformation: the years of accelerated industrialisation in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the period of de-industrialisation and postmodernity beginning in the 1980s. It shows how major demographic movements and cultural shifts threw into relief new conceptions of the city in which old boundaries had become problematic. Design, fine art, literature, youth culture, film and social history all provide focal points. The contributions bring specialist expertise to each area while the extensive illustrations give a vivid picture of the contemporary visual culture for which Italian cities are famed. This is a genuinely interdisciplinary approach by Italian and English-speaking historians and scholars of urban studies, literature, architecture and design which introduces new debates and research to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Extensive illustrations provide a vivid picture of contemporary Italian visual culture.

People and goods from across the globe filled the vibrant ports of Genoa and Venice during the Renaissance. This book takes us onto the streets, bridges, and waterways of these significant, sensuous cities to reveal the ambitious schemes undertaken to promote the cleanliness and health of their communities. Along the way, we encounter a broad and fascinating cross-section of Renaissance society -- from courtesans to street food sellers and architects to canal diggers -- and, using new archival sources, uncover both the ideals and lived experiences of health and environmental management. During the Renaissance, vital connections were believed to exist between people's natures and those of the places they inhabited. Problems in urban or environmental bodies could have social and moral, as well as physical, effects. Street cleaning or the dredging of canals, therefore, were often justified in societal and religious, as well as natural, terms. These associations shaped government measures to regulate everyday life in ports, alongside communal responses to natural disasters. They informed the management of the environment, including waste disposal, flood defences, dredging, and land reclamation, and endowed such activity with both physical and symbolic purpose. This is not simply a story of elite, official initiatives. Members of communities used public health structures to resolve the challenges of urban life -- social and physical. Occupational groups such as fishermen acted as environmental experts through the organisation of their guilds and provided reports on specific projects and proposals to government magistracies. Finally, the governments of both ports operated important systems of petitions and privileges, which encouraged innovation and the development of new technology by citizens and foreigners to address the central, environmental challenges of the day. Renaissance public health, then, emerges as a collaborate enterprise, as well as a site of tension within cosmopolitan neighbourhoods, and its study unveils more about forms of governance and community in this period. An illuminating and original account of social policies, urban design, and environmental management between 1400 and 1600, Cleaning Up Renaissance Italy provides a new, multi-disciplinary history of Renaissance Italy.

Recent decades have seen many economic history books and articles published about working men and women, small and big entrepreneurs, guilds and state manufactures, farmers and journeymen, and children and citizens. Studies have been conducted both at a macro and a micro level, at a global and at a local scale and with regional and national approaches aimed at analysing cultural, social and economic phenomena associated with the world of work. Yet, there is still new ground to be covered. This book aims to fill a gap in early modern history by presenting new insights in the study of global labour history. It considers the whole Italian peninsula as one geographical unit of analysis, encompassing all of the features that characterize labour cultures during the early modern period. It details the evolution of forms of labour in both agriculture and manufacture and the role of labour as an economic, social and cultural factor in the evolution of the Italian area.