Railways and port infrastructures in the industrialisation of Catania (1861-1914)

Journal title STORIA URBANA
Author/s Giovanni Cristina
Publishing Year 2013 Issue 2013/138 Language Italian
Pages 20 P. 53-72 File size 2669 KB
DOI 10.3280/SU2013-138004
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This paper selectively analyses the impact, both on the local urban fabric and on the Sicilian territorial hierarchies, of the processes of industrialisation and infrastructures building which took place in Catania between the 1860s and the First world war. The birth of a railway system connecting Catania at the same time with the port city of Messina - the most important in Sicily - and with an even more extended sulphur-producing hinterland re-defined the urban and territorial hierarchies of the Island, creating geopolitical competition and conflicts. As for Catania, these dynamics were characterised by a difficult integration, both in a logistic and spatial perspective, between the railway and the waterfront, by a lack of coordination between the construction of port infrastructures and trade development, and by a gap between the ambitions, the projects and the rhetoric of the local (but sometimes nationally renown) political and economic actors and the actual development perspectives of the city.

Keywords: Catania Port and railway Industrialisation Geopolitical conflicts Political rhetoric

Giovanni Cristina, Ferrovie e strutture portuali nel processo di industrializzazione di Catania (1861-1915) in "STORIA URBANA " 138/2013, pp 53-72, DOI: 10.3280/SU2013-138004