The Fordist city and the creative city: Evolution and resilience in Turin, Italy

Abstract

Turin is an industrial city which has been a key site for Italian industrialisation in the past century, particularly because of the presence of FIAT car manufacturing. Turin is regarded as the archetypical Italian Fordist city, but as a consequence of the gradual crisis of Fordism, local institutions started diversifying the city's economic basis, particularly in the last decade, by embracing a culture-led approach to urban regeneration. The article analyses the evolution of Turin from Fordism, drawing on the concept of resilience. Specifically, the analysis will support two arguments. First, by focusing on the evolutionary patterns of alternative segments of the socio-economic base of the city, it is possible to detect synergies between the variety of local economic cultures and practices, on the one hand, and the capability of coping with shocks and transformations, which is basically resilience, on the other hand. Secondly, emphasising a multi-equilibrium perspective, it is possible to argue that apparently contrasting urban typologies, such as the 'Fordist city' and the 'creative city', have a hybridising potential, producing mixed forms of industrial-cultural cities as a result of the interaction between creativity and path-dependent growth.

Smart Cities as Organizational Fields: A Framework for Mapping Sustainability-Enabling Configurations

“…In this light, the system's sustainability-enabling resilience, rather than sustainability in itself, should be understood as the key measure of organizational fields' success. Resilience can be generally defined as a system's capability to resist crises and to leverage its own difficulties and mistakes as evolutionary opportunities to learn and get stronger [40,41]. By "sustainability-enabling resilience", consistently, we indicate: (i) a system's capability to resist crises without jeopardizing the system's own long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability; along with (ii) the system's capability to leverage its own difficulties and mistakes as evolutionary opportunities to learn about the sustainability challenges it faces and adapt accordingly.…”

Turin and Lingotto: resilience, forgetting and the reinvention of place

“…Turin is a city that proved remarkable levels of resilience in translating from Fordism to different economic specializations: the city is surely experiencing the economic crisis, but several different economic sectors are also developing in relation to, for example, tourism and culture (cf. Vanolo, 2015aVanolo, , 2015b. At the same time, Lingotto apparently proved to be a highly resilient building, being still used, crowded with people and economically active, after a century of life, by completely changing its functions and roles within the city.…”

“…At the beginning of 1970s, nearly 80% of industrial workers were involved in car manufacturing. FIAT managed to impose a tight control over local suppliers, including financial control, which contributed to producing a symbiotic relation between the city and the company: a 'total embedding' where the spatial, institutional and cultural developments of the city and the firm were highly interconnected (Vanolo, 2015a). Such interconnections are evident in Turin's urban fabric, which bears the traces of FIAT's responses to global economic crises.…”

“…By pushing a closed door, we easily accessed the garden, but then we have been pushed away by a member of the security. As mentioned before, since the publication of the first strategic plan of the city in 1999, Turin progressively followed the path of the 'knowledge economy' and 'creative city' strategies (Pinson, 2002;Vanolo, 2015aVanolo, , 2015b. It is interesting to read the signs of these strategies in the material configuration of Lingotto.…”

“…During the 1980s, Turin started thinking and discussing about possible, alternative development paths, without stepping into any specific strategy (Vanolo, 2015a). It was clear that the city had to move in a different direction, namely, move away from the monoculture of FIAT and car manufacturing in general.…”