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"Parrinello, Giacomo"
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Fault lines
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.
eBook
Linking contemporary river restoration to economics, technology, politics, and society
River restoration is a novel paradigm of ‘mirescape’ (land-and-water-scape) management that developed along with the emergence of aquatic ecology. River restoration can be seen as the application of an ecological perspective to return rivers to nature. However, the river restoration paradigm is also the contemporary iteration of historical phases of mirescape management. We review the long and varied recorded history of the Po River in northern Italy as a case study to illustrate the transformations and common themes of mirescape management. We find, first, that significant changes in mirescape management and river condition only occur in the context of larger social, political, technological and economic transformations. Second, we show how particular cultural understandings, economic interests, technological innovations and political powers have driven particular paradigms of mirescape management. These have tended towards increasing territorial separation of wet and dry. We find, third, that these separations lead not only to increasing economic precariousness for many, but also to increasingly severe disasters. We conclude that river restoration faces social and political challenges to becoming relevant at a mirescape scale, due to its lack of integration with land management, or with current social, political, technological and economic transformations. To act on this conclusion, we suggest philosophically aligned social movements that river restoration could work with to improve impact and uptake.
Journal Article
Regional Planning and the Environmental Impact of Coastal Tourism: The Mission Racine for the Redevelopment of Languedoc-Roussillon’s Littoral
Research on the coast has highlighted the role of mass tourism as a driver of littoral urbanization. This article emphasizes the role of public policy by focusing on Languedoc-Roussillon in Mediterranean France. This littoral was the target of a state-driven development initiative known as Mission Racine, which aimed to promote the growth of what was seen as a backward area via the development of seaside tourism. For that purpose, the Mission promoted coordinated interventions including forest management, eradication of mosquitoes, construction of resorts, and transport infrastructure. This large-scale redevelopment significantly reshaped the littoral environment, severely impacted pre-existing forms of coastal activities and launched a new tourism industry. The legacy of the Mission, however, also included innovative land-use planning, which established protected areas and sought to contain urbanization. This case study illustrates the ambiguities of public policies for the coast, which can act alternatively as drivers of development or conservation and at times of both, and therein lies the importance of a contextual analysis of their role.
Journal Article
Systems of Power: A Spatial Envirotechnical Approach to Water Power and Industrialization in the Po Valley of Italy ca. 1880-1970
Fossil fuels, more than water, are immediately associated with the industrial energy transition. Preindustrial energy sources, however, continued to play a role in industrial energy regimes. This was the case in the industrializing Po Valley, where water power remained crucial until the 1960s. The article analyzes the ways in which the technological and spatial features of mechanical hydropower and hydroelectricity combined with the spatial and environmental features of the Po watershed, as well as the different envirotechnical regimes associated with these configurations. Through this approach, it sheds lights on the radical change that hydropower underwent during industrialization: from discontinuous to continuous energy production,from diffusion to concentration of access to water resources, and from small- to large-scale, basin-wide system building and interdependency. Concentration, continuity, and large-scale interdependency transformed profoundly the social distribution of access to hydropower, and scaled up, without eliminating, the influence of environmental factors on water power production.
Journal Article
Systems of Power: A Spatial Envirotechnical Approach to Water Power and Industrialization in the Po Valley of Italy, ca.1880–1970
Fossil fuels, more than water, are immediately associated with the industrial energy transition. Preindustrial energy sources, however, continued to play a role in industrial energy regimes. This was the case in the industrializing Po Valley, where water power remained crucial until the 1960s. The article analyzes the ways in which the technological and spatial features of mechanical hydropower and hydroelectricity combined with the spatial and environmental features of the Po watershed, as well as the different envirotechnical regimes associated with these configurations. Through this approach, it sheds lights on the radical change that hydropower underwent during industrialization: from discontinuous to continuous energy production, from diffusion to concentration of access to water resources, and from small- to large-scale, basin-wide system building and interdependency. Concentration, continuity, and large-scale interdependency transformed profoundly the social distribution of access to hydropower, and scaled up, without eliminating, the influence of environmental factors on water power production.
Journal Article
Charting the Flow: Water Science and State Hydrography in the Po Watershed, 1872-1917
Environmental history literature has acknowledged the role of hydrological knowledge in remaking rivers and water systems. The production of such knowledge, however, has thus far remained in the shadows, along with the human-environment interplay that underpins it. This paper
brings these aspects into focus by combining the perspective, methods and questions of environmental history with insights from the history and geography of science. It analyses in particular the environmental history of Po River hydrography, from mid-nineteenth century experiments to the
inception of a state hydrological service for the Po River basin after World War I. The paper argues that environmental forces and features of the Po watershed shaped the scientific enterprise of hydrological knowledge production, by stimulating its undertaking and influencing its outcome.
From initial experimental measurements of discharge to responding to pressing concerns about flood protection, hydrography evolved into constant basin-wide monitoring to overcome the river system's resistance to prediction. The versatile hydrological knowledge produced via watershed
monitoring would prove the key to all kinds of water uses and management projects, making hydrography a crucial articulation of state administrative rule over water resource development in the Po Valley. This paper, therefore, contributes to an environmental history of modern water science
and the state, while writing an important chapter on the environmental history of the Po River basin. Furthermore, it highlights the value of exploring the environmental dimensions of scientific knowledge production as a way to better grasp its implications for environmental change and governance.
Journal Article
Rivers are messy: Beyond the water bias in research and management
This article reviews current trends in interdisciplinary river research to argue that a “water bias” or tendency consider rivers as synonymous with water can hinder our understanding of rivers and consequently also their management. While water is central in defining rivers, contemporary scholarship across a wide spectrum of the natural sciences has expanded from an initial focus primarily interested in water to conceptualize rivers as a more complex set of ecological and physical processes that includes sediment, nutrients, microbial communities, flora and fauna. River research in the social sciences, however, almost exclusively considers rivers as hydrological processes, thus poorly reflecting these advances. We argue that overcoming this “water bias” is essential to both natural and social science research on rivers. Conceptualizing rivers as more than just water, combined with the tools of the social sciences, can generate more robust explanations of how rivers work socially and physically. This in turn can enable more effective river management in a time of rapid social, climatological, and ecological change, when acknowledging the “messy” nature of rivers and their politics and co-producing river knowledge are key to decision-making about rivers’ futures.
Journal Article
