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Public works and municipal government in two Italian capital cities: Comparing technical bureaucracies in Turin and Rome, 1848–88

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Denis Bocquet
Affiliation:
Ecole française de Rome, Piazza Farnese 67, 00186 Rome. Telephone: + 39 06 57 83 670. E-mail: denis.bocquet@ecole-francaise.it, bocquet@mmsh.univ-aix.fr
Filippo de Pieri
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Progettazione Architettonica, Politecnico di Torino, Viale Mattioli 39, 10125 Torino. Telephone: + 39 (0)11 56 46 513. E-mail: depieri@archi.polito.it

Summary

The article draws a comparison between nineteenth-century Turin and Rome, linking the growth of technical bureaucracies in the municipal institutions of both cities to the local struggles for control over urban space. In both post-1848 Turin and post-1870 Rome, the implementation of new institutional reforms offered local city councils an opportunity to gain more power and autonomy than they had enjoyed in the recent past. The organization and the role of municipal technical services were therefore affected, with quite opposite results, by the conflicts opened with the state about the redefinition of the province of local government

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

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12. Changes in municipal finance provide a good illustration of this state of affairs. The revenues of the town duties, which had been transferred to the crown in 1815, were given back to the city in 1851, thus recognizing the important political role played by the city and its new condition of administrative ‘normality’ (octrois were generally the main financial resource for the Kingdom's cities). In previous years, lack of financial resources had been a chronic weakness for the Restoration city council. Repaci, Francesco Antonio, ‘I dazi di consumo della città di Torino nell'ultimo secolo’, La Riforma Sociale , January–February 1927, pp. 3565.Google Scholar

13. The plan had been discussed in the 1840s and established for the most part in 1846–47, but was approved only in 1851–52 (in three separate parts), after a controversy between the city and the Ministry of Public Works. The conflict ended with the promulgation of a law (1851) which clarified that approbation of city plans did not require a parliamentary vote. The issues at stake in the conflict were not procedural: the question of parliamentary approbation had been posed by state ministers in an attempt to force Turin's municipality to modify the scheme. The whole conflict was somewhat paradoxical, since Turin's city council institutional predecessor, the corpo decurionale, had often been hostile to what appeared as a government-promoted plan in the years before 1847. Documents on the question in Comoli, Vera (ed.), ‘Il “Piano d'Ingrandiment o della Capitale” (1851–1852)’, in Storia dell'Urbanistica. Piemonte I , Edizioni Kappa, Rome, 1987; idem. and Fasoli, Vilma (eds), 1851–1852. Il Piano d'Ingrandiment o della Capitale, Archivio Storico del Comune, Turin, 1996, whose interpretative framework differs considerably from the one adopted here.Google Scholar

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15. The organization of Paris’ technical offices provides a typical example. Châtelet, Anne–Marie, ‘La conception haussmannienn e du rôle desingénieurs et architectes municipaux’, in Des Cars, Jean and Pinon, Pierre (eds), Paris-Haussmann , Picard/Editions du Pavillon de l'Arsenal, Paris, 1991, pp. 257266.Google Scholar

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17. Even when special external committees were appointed by the municipality for special projects, the office could play an important role: such was the case of the studies for the Ceronda canal (1864–68), when the project of head engineer Edoardo Pecco was finally chosen. Pecco, Edoardo, Progetto per condurre in Torino le acque della Ceronda ad uso di forza motrice. Relazione , 15 April 1868, ASCT, Affari Lavori Pubblici, cart. 28, fasc. 10.Google Scholar

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24. The total number of employees proposed by the commission was 138, thirty-four of which (24.6 per cent) devoted to the technical office. Figures for Turin in 1867 provide a comparable total of 114 municipal employees, only fourteen of which (12.3 per cent) were part of the technical office. Figures for 1867 Turin are taken from AM, 1868, part I, pp. 76 ff. Google Scholar

25. ASC, Gabinetto del Sindaco , 1873, posizione 4. In the same years, Turin was not following a similar path towards simplification. On the contrary, the number of municipal offices kept growing, up to a total of twenty in 1882. Only in 1883 was this number reduced to nine and, as in the Roman case, Turin's offices were placed under the direct control of an assessore. AM, 1884, pp. 18, 89 ff. Google Scholar

26. On the origins of these urban institutions, see Verdi, Orietta, Maestri di edifici e di strode a Roma nel secolo XV. Fonti e problemi , R.R., Rome, 1997.Google Scholar

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28. Further changes became effective in 1877, 1880 and 1883. See ASC, Atti Consiglio Municipale, 9 December 1872 (Sistemazione amministrativa dell'Ufficio V), 16 May 1877 (Modifica alle strutture dell'Ufficio V), 7 June 1878, 27 June 1878.Google Scholar

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