The spatial dimension of national economic programming. Convergences and divergences in post-war Italy

This article reconstructs the gradual emergence of the territorial dimension within post-war Italian economic programming, with particular attention to the 1950s and 1960s. The relationship between economic programming and urban and spatial planning is examined from a dual perspective: on the one hand, the representations of territory conveyed by programming documents; on the other, the expert networks and forms of interdisciplinary collaboration involved in their production. The article shows how the progressive territorialization of programming developed through the interplay of new interpretations of development, instruments of knowledge and technical-professional expertise, while also contributing to a transformation of public discourse on territory. Progetto ’80 represented the point of greatest convergence in this process, making explicit a conception of territory as a structural dimension of the country’s economic and social transformations. At the same time, the persistent sectoral division of instruments, expertise and administrative structures reveals continuing divergences and difficulties in translating this perspective into political and institutional terms. The territorial dimension thus provides a particularly revealing lens through which to understand global programming in Italy: an attempt to connect economic development, territorial transformations and changes in society by treating economy, society and territory as interdependent dimensions in governing the country’s transformation.