Spatial representations from the company town to «Padania Classics»

Abstract

This article outlines changes in the representation of certain places in the Po Valley by analyzing audiovisual and photographic sources. Three stages are identified: In the first one, a rhetoric narrative is found in some documentaries regarding Dalmine, now a former model village. The second stage, corresponding to the first decades after Second World War, is characterized by a documentary narrative that celebrates Italy as an uprising consumer society thanks to technological developments whereas a new territory takes shape without adequate urban planning. In the third stage, in the last decades of the century, a different narrative depicts with melancholy sense of decay the spatial disorder caused by mismanaged urban sprawl and industrialization (Turri 1979; Celati, 1989a). In this case, while the dream of utopian self-determination dis-appears, a new landscape emerges in search for a new identity. Finally, a post-modern variant of the latter narrative emerges in the project Atlante dei Classici Padani (D’Ab-braccio et al., 2015), in which abandoned areas (Dal Borgo et al., 2016; Varotto, 2014) and kitsch architecture are perceived in an alternative way, seen as icons of contempo-rary landscape.