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On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan-Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which-alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility-Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures and Tables
List of Acronyms
Introduction Chapter 1. The Roads before the Motorways
Chapter 2. 1922: The Motorway from Milan to the Prealpine Lakes
Chapter 3. Motorway Mania in Italy in the 1920s
Chapter 4. The Ordinary Roads Problem
Chapter 5. From the Pedemontana Project to the Construction Suspension
Chapter 6. A Case Study: The Turin-Milan Motorway
Chapter 7. The 1930s: The European Utopia and the Nationalist Fulfillment
Chapter 8. The Bankruptcy and Legacy of the Motorways
Conclusion Bibliography
Index
About the author
Massimo Moraglio is a senior researcher at the Technische Universität Berlin. He has received an EU Marie Sklodowska Curie IEF fellowship and is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Transport History. He has coedited the volumes The Organization of Transport: A History of Users, Industry, and Public Policy (2015) and Peripheral Flows: A Historical Perspective on Mobilities between Cores and Fringes (2016).
Summary
On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan–Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which—alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility—Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.
Additional text
“Based on prodigious archival research, Driving Modernity explores how the Italian autostrada project grew out of a somewhat fantastic idea by a coterie of Milan businessmen into an internationally recognized technological icon of Fascist Italy. This book speaks clearly and convincingly about the political values embedded in infrastructures.” · Thomas Zeller, University of Maryland, College Park
“Moraglio’s work is a deep dive into a grandiose and distinctively modern project in interwar Italy. Never before has the complex ideological character of these motorways been so clearly analyzed, from the moment of their conception to the widespread adoption of the automobile.” · Mathieu Flonneau, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, LabEx EHNE
