This article examines how industrialization and demographic growth influenced the exploitation and management of water resources in Italian cities, during a crucial period of modernization of the urban system. First, it focuses on the functional crisis that growing demands for domestic and industrial use posed to traditional water collection and drainage methods. Second, it provides an analysis of the construction of new networks for urban water supply and removal and shows that changes to infrastructure were driven not only by hygienic concerns but also by the functional reorganization of the urban system. Finally, I argue that water management deeply transformed the ecology of the emerging modern city, since it resulted in the creation of a unitary and mechanized water circuit, in new forms of soil and water pollution, and in relations between cities and the territorial water system.
It is, of course, not possible to cover the huge literature on this subject, but it is worth mentioning the pioneering work of Joel A. Tarr and Gabriel Dupuy, Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America ( Philadelphia, 1988). For Italy, see Roberto Balzani and Andrea Giuntini, eds., “Le reti della modernizzazione,” Memoria e ricerca4 (December 1994 ): 7-102; L'acqua e il gas in Italia: La storia dei servizi a rete, delle aziende pubbliche e della Federgasacqua (Milan, 1997); and Andrea Giuntini, ed., “ La città che cambia: Infrastrutture urbane e servizi tecnici a rete in Italia fra' 800 e `900,” Ricerche storiche (September-December 2000): 435-696.
2.
Essential reading in the vast literature that looks at the decisive role of water management with an environmental perspective is Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, 2000); John Opie, Nature's Nation: An Environmental History of the United States (Fort Worth , 1998), 242-51; Joel A. Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective ( Akron, 1996), 111-219; Christopher Hamlin, “Environmental Sensibility in Edinburgh, 1839-1940: The `Fetid Irrigation' Controversy,” Journal of Urban History20, no. 3 (1994): 311-39; John Sheail, An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2002), 48-81; Bill Luckin, “ Pollution in the City,” in Martin Daunton , ed., The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, III: 1840-1950 ( Cambridge, 2000 ); and Jürgen Büeschenfeld, Flüesse und Kloaken: Umweltfragen im Zeitalter der Industrialisierung, 1870-1914 (Stuttgart , 1997).
3.
On urbanization in Italy, see Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950 (Cambridge, MA, 1985); and Salvatore Adorno, “L'urbain, un entre-deux historiographique: Les villes italiennes à l'époque contemporaine; Parcours de lectures à travers les themes de l'historiographie récente,” Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine32, no. 1 (Fall 2003 ): 15-27. For a historical outline of the major Italian cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see, among other things, the “Storia delle città italiane” series published by Laterza from the 1980s on.
4.
In this decade the Italian “demographic transition” got under way; as a consequence of this, between 1881 and 1921 the urban population grew from 23.7 to 32.2 percent of the resident population, and the annual growth rate of the urban population was roughly double that of the national average. As far as the structure of cities is concerned, the number of municipalities with 20,001 to 50,001 inhabitants went from 96 to 156 percent, those with up to 100,000 inhabitants went from 17 to 40 percent, and cities with populations of more than 100,000 increased from 12 to 20 percent (the percentage of town dwellers who lived in the latter went from 42 to 49). See Carlo Carocci and Alberto Mioni, L'Italia in formazione (Bari, 1970), 27-45. As far as economic development is concerned, historians agree that the preconditions for the first phase of intense Italian economic growth, culminating in the 1896-1913 upsurge, were established in the 1880s. See Jon Cohen and Giovanni Federico, eds., The Growth of the Italian Economy, 1820-1960 ( Cambridge , 2001), 8-13, 46-50.
5.
An important and still valid overview is available in the articles edited by Franco Della Peruta, Storia d'Italia, Annali 7: Malattia e medicina (Turin, 1984).
6.
Ministero dell'interno, Direzione generale della statistica, Risultati dell'inchiesta sulle condizioni igieniche e sanitarie nei comuni del regno: Relazione generale (Rome, 1886).
7.
Ministero dell'interno, Direzione generale della statistica, Risultati dell'inchiesta sulle condizioni igieniche e sanitarie nei comuni del regno, Parte prima: Notizie relative ai comuni capoluoghi di provincia (Rome, 1886).
8.
See, for example, Filadelfo Fichera, Risanamento delle città, Con applicazione a Catania: Principi tecnici di ingegneria sanitaria urbana (Catania, 1886); Antonio Cantalupi, L'igiene delle città: Dell'acqua potabile (Milan, 1890); Donato Spataro, Ingegneria sanitaria: Igiene delle abitazioni, III; and Provvista, condotta e distribuzione delle acque (Milan, 1891).
9.
Risultati dell'inchiesta sulle condizioni igieniche e sanitarie nei comuni del regno, I: Notizie.
10.
On the network of canals in Milan, see Simone Neri Serneri, “ Resource Management and Environmental Transformations: Water Incorporation at the Time of Industrialisation; Milan, 1880-1940,” in Dieter Schott, Bill Luckin , and Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, eds., Resources of the City: Contributions to an Environmental History of Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate , 2005).
11.
Neri Serneri, “ Resource Management”
12.
For an overall picture, see Giovanna Vicarelli, Alle origini della politica sanitaria in Italia: Società e salute da Crispi al fascismo (Bologna, 1997).
13.
A large number of local studies are now available. See, for example, Enrica Di Ciommo, Bari, 1806-1940: Evoluzione del territorio e sviluppo urbanistico (Milan, 1984); Renato Rozzi, La Milano del piano Beruto, 1884-1889: Società, urbanistica e architettura nella seconda metà dell'Ottocento (Milan, 1992); Roberto Balzani, Un comune imprenditore: Pubblici servizi, infrastrutture urbane e società a Forlì, 1860-1945 (Milan, 1991 ); Gabriella Corona, “ La sostenibilità urbana a Napoli: Caratteri strutturali e dinamiche storiche ,” and Roberto Parisi, “ Verso una città salubre: Lo spazio produttivo a Napoli tra storia e progetto,” both in “Napoli sostenibile ,” Meridiana42 (2001): 53-74; Maristella Casciato, “ Lo sviluppo urbano e il disegno della città,” and Lidia Piccioni, “ Roma e il suo territorio,” both in Vittorio Vidotto, ed., Roma capitale ( Rome, 2002) and many articles in Gabriella Corona and Simone Neri Serneri , eds., Storia e ambiente. Città, risore e territori nell'Italia contemporanea (Rome , 2007).
14.
See, for example, Luigi Pagliani, Trattato di igiene e sanità pubblica (Milan, 1912), 2 vols. On the role of hygienists in the conceptualisation and construction of the modern city in Italy, see also Guido Zucconi, La città contesa: Dagli ingegneri sanitari agli urbanisti, 1855-1942 (Milan , 1989).
15.
Alice Ingold , Négocier la ville: Projet urbain, societé et fascisme à Milan (Rome, 2003).
16.
On this development in the Veneto region, see Donatella Calabi, “ I servizi tecnici a rete e la questione delle municipalizzazioni nelle città italiane, 1880-1910,” in Paolo Morachiello and Georges Teyssot, eds., Le macchine imperfette: architettura, programma, istituzioni nel XIX secolo (Rome, 1980).
17.
Again, for example, Pagliani, Trattato di igiene, 1:227-28; Zucconi, La città contesa, 18-20, 46-68. For references to the city as a machine based on regular circulation, see David Trotter, Circulation ( Basingstoke , 1988). The crisis that congested circulation imposed on the urban machine was highlighted by Lewis Mumford in his classic work, The Culture of Cities (1938), especially chap. 4.
18.
The case of Palermo is enlightening. Here the modernization of the aqueduct was repeatedly postponed, and the construction of a new sewage system was begun disjointedly in the 1880s, with the result that financial resources were wasted and serious hygienic problems left unresolved. See Orazio Cancila, Palermo (Bari, 1999), 205-8. Palermo was the fifth largest town in terms of population in Italy, after Naples, Milan, Rome, and Turin.
19.
Cantalupi, L'igiene delle città, 142-70; and Spataro, Ingegneria sanitaria.
20.
Carla Giovannini, Risanare le città: L'utopia igienista di fine Ottocento ( Milan, 1995), 105-40; and [Ugo Giusti], Annuario statistico delle città italiane, I, 1906 (Florence, 1906).
21.
Ministero dell'interno, Direzione generale della sanità pubblica, Inchiesta sulle acque potabili nei comuni del regno al 31 dicembre 1903, Vol. I: Relazione generale; Acquedotti (Rome, 1906).
22.
Inchiesta sulle acque potabili, xxi.
23.
See, for example, “La grave questione dell'acqua potabile a Torino,” Rivista di ingegneria sanitaria, November 1 and 15, 1910.
24.
Inchiesta sulle acque potabili, xvii-xix.
25.
See the single reports for each town and the summaries of the survey in Inchiesta sulle acque potabili, and ibid., 514-15 for the information that 264 municipalities (out of 3,466) imposed some payment for water.
26.
For a detailed picture, see Celso Capaci, Acquedotti e acque potabili ( Milan, 1918), 92-360. See also Pagliani's converging considerations of a few years earlier in his Trattato di igiene. For a picture of the following period, notwithstanding its partiality, see Istituto nazionale di urbanistica, Annuario delle città italiane, II ( Rome, 1934 ).
27.
Significantly in 1916, the interior ministry prepared a research project on drilling methods for underground water wells and on the “artificial recharge” method, which were considered effective alternatives to the “very costly use of spring water.” See Rivista italiana di sanità pubblica (October 16, 1916), 480.
28.
In particular, for the diffusion of electric pumps and improvements in sterilization methods, although these still proved to be unsatisfactory in the treatment of surface water.
29.
Aldo Berselli, Franco Della Peruta, and Angelo Varni, eds., La municipalizzazione in area padana: Storia ed esperienze a confronto (Milan, 1988). See also Fabio Rugge, ed., I regimi delle città: Il governo municipale in Europa tra `800 e `900 (Milan, 1992); Robert Millward, “The Political Economy of Urban Utilities,” in Martin Daunton, ed., The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, III: 1840-1950 (Cambridge, 2000); and Robert J. Morris and Richard H. Trainor , eds., Urban Government: Britain and Beyond since 1750 (Aldershot, 2000).
30.
See Tarr, Search for the Ultimate Sink, 122-30; Hamlin, “ Environmental Sensibility in Edinburgh”; and Donald Reid, Paris Sewers and Sewer Men: Realities and Representations (Cambridge, MA, 1991).
31.
See Fichera, Risanamento delle città; Spataro, Ingegneria sanitaria; and Felice Poggi, Le fognature di Milano: Studio generale delle canalizzazioni urbane con speciale applicazione alla rete di Milano (Milan, 1913).
32.
As can be gleaned from the 1899 Inchiesta, summed up in Giovannini, Risanare le città, 141-55.
33.
See Simone Neri Serneri, “Water Pollution in Italy: The Failure of the Hygienic Approach, 1890s-1960s,” in Christoph Bernhardt and Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, eds., The Modern Demon: Pollution in Urban and Industrial Societies (Clermont-Ferrand, 2002), 163-73.
34.
These were dutifully illustrated and debated in the relevant technical journals, the most important of which, in the first decade of the century, was the “Rivista di ingegneria sanitaria,” where one can find, for example, Riccardo Bianchini's discussion of the subject: “Considerazioni tecniche sulla eliminazione dei materiali provenienti dalle fognature delle città” (nn. 1, 2, 4, 1907). See also references cited at note 31.
35.
Neri Serneri , “Resource Management”; see also Hamlin, “Environmental Sensibility in Edinburgh.”
36.
An overview, with a positive appraisal of drainage into the sea and dispersal was delineated by two well-known hygienists, Gino Casini and Giuseppe Marrucchi, “Il problema delle fognature nei grandi centri urbani sotto l'aspetto tecnico, igienico ed economico,” in Atti del VII congresso nazionale delle acque (Bari, 1933) (Pisa, 1935).
