Oltre l’efficienza delle infrastrutture lineari di trasporto

Linear transport infrastructure – roads and railways – continues to represent a strategic pillar for economic development, territorial connectivity and the competitiveness of production systems. Within contemporary mobility policies, these works are often celebrated for their ability to reduce distances, increase travel speeds and ensure access to markets and services. However, precisely because of their pervasive and transformative nature, they are also among the main factors of systemic pressure on the most vulnerable territories, particularly in peri-urban and rural areas (Bonomi, 2014; Secchi, 2005).
The dominant design approach, based on standardised technical parameters and a performance-based logic, tends to overlook the ecosystemic, settlement and social complexity of the places crossed (Dematteis et al., 2001). This results in a sectoral rationality that prioritises functional efficiency at the expense of
ecological balance, social relations and landscape quality.
This approach, often disconnected from context, contributes to territorial fragmentation, loss of biodiversity and the spread of forms of spatial injustice (Blondel et al., 2019; Steiner et al., 2013).
Yet roads are not just technical infrastructure designed to facilitate movement: they are complex devices capable of modifying, constructing and narrating the landscape (Magnani, 2005). Linear infrastructure – far
from being a neutral element – behaves like a relational system, capable of preserving and sustaining the forms of life, characteristics and dynamics of the places it crosses. It takes the form of an articulated structure made up of routes, lines, intersections and spaces of various kinds and scales, designed to
accommodate and orchestrate different modes of interaction between people, environments and functions (Marshall, 2005).
The road thus becomes the backbone of a broader territorial system, capable of generating multiple uses of the land, weaving connections between biophysical elements, and accompanying and regulating ecological processes. It is also a potential space for expression and communication, where rest areas, ramps or overpasses can be transformed into visual and narrative sequences, capable of making the landscape traversed recognisable and memorable (Annunziata et al., 2018; Augé, 2007).
In this context, road space is presented as a defined but porous area, whose margins are places of exchange between infrastructure and context, points of interaction between functional networks and territorial structures. Here, a continuous system of landscapes is constructed, a web of connections that can mend fractures and restore coherence to disjointed territories.
The aim of this chapter is to question the rationality of infrastructure design in light of these issues, analysing how the standards, criteria and design logic of linear transport infrastructure influence not
only functional performance, but also the form and quality of the landscape. It is a question of exploring the tensions between efficiency and context, between regulatory rigidity and territorial adaptability, in an attempt to identify design models capable of restoring infrastructure to an active role in the construction of the territory and the contemporary landscape.