I mezzi di trasporto e la città, tra percezione e rappresentazione

Abstract

During the history, the iconography of the city has been transformed following the development of new transports which allowed to reach and to visit more easily some urban places, changing deeply kinds and times of approach. The evolution of the transports -diversified, capillary and more and more fast- offers nowadays manifold and unusual perspectives, inspiring new images of the contemporary urbanity. If the ships, with theirs slow and gradual approach, suggested to the travelers some renewed representa-tions of the urban contexts (iconographic and literary) in comparison to the most traditional and static views, the trip by train, instead, directed the eyes far away: the look became incapable to catch the proximities, but it was able, as Fernand Léger affirmed in 1920 "to earn in synthetic value". From the beginning of the twentieth century the technological progress and the diffusion of aviation (dirigibles, helicopters) made then representations able to embrace spaces and to connect the city with his surroundings, inside a more unitary vision. Also the funicular, diffused in several Italian cities from the end of the nineteenth century, constitut-ed a meaningful kind of conveyance, able to focus the attention on a particular landscape and some urban views, contributing to identify a definite image of the city, which in turn, influences on the position of the transports. The aim of the paper therefore is an analysis of the relationship and of the mutual influences between the transports and the representations of the city.