خرید و دانلود نسخه کامل کتاب The Gas Industry in Latin Europe Economic Development During the 19th and 20th Centuries – Original PDF

1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction. State of the Art: The Gas Industry in Latin Europe Countries Between 1850 and 1920—An Overview Andrea Giuntini and Jesús Mirás-Araujo Infrastructures and LatIn europe Infrastructures are not ignored by any means by historians. This is true both for the European context and for other regions of the world. In this volume, we refer to very specific infrastructures, i.e., large technical systems in networked cities and across territories. In particular, we will examine in depth the procedures and techniques used to physically and functionally reorganise urban and territorial systems during a period when the increas- ing industrial and economic complexity necessitated the search for new A. Giuntini (*) Department of Economics Marco Biagi, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy e-mail: andrea.giuntini@unimore.it J. Mirás-Araujo Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain e-mail: jmiras@udc.es © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. Mirás-Araujo, A. Giuntini (eds.), The Gas Industry in Latin Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16309-8_1 2 methods. The basic objective of this chapter is to analyse the widespread experimentation in new development trajectories and in advanced and articulated market solutions able to offer innovative processes. Inspired by the logic of comparing, both chronologically and spatially, the solutions adopted and different typologies of services, we have selected a subset among the several possibilities, namely, the gas industry. This sector had its own internal consistency and provides a wide variety of local and national cases, deeply rooted in the processes of change on a global scale. The identity and setting of this entire volume are based on a network view, that is, network services in the form of technical infrastructures located within a territory. We would ordinarily define them as public utili- ties, a label adopted by scholars conducting research on infrastructures over the last thirty years. Without going into too much detail, it is neces- sary to dedicate at least a few words to describing the type of infrastruc- tures which we refer to and which ultimately have features that allow a common reading in terms of gas. In order to be as clear as possible, fire stations, hospitals, schools, mili- tary bases and so on are not included in this analysis. The study focuses on energy networks, including gas, and on everything related to the sanita- tion and transport sectors. In other words, those which are scientifically defined as networked technical services, related to the Networked City (Tarr and Dupuy 1988). The analysis examines the complex set of social, eco- nomic, cultural and political relationships that converge, concentrate and interconnect through the action of individual and collective subjects, both private and public. A network-based approach works as a tool for repre- senting and interpreting the organisation of the territory. Between the 1880s and the end of World War I, the Networked City was born. The network became a new reference model and paradigm, acting as a guide for the functional analysis of services. In essence, a new concept of the city arose, based on an organic idea in which technology and public services were indissolubly intertwined. The urban agglomerations that were formed in this period found the necessary connective fabric that defined their scope in the technological networks. Expanding the concept in more general economic terms, it seems that a kind of economy emerged made up of constellations, networks and dis- tricts that shaped the city. Within this space there were a series of services and infrastructures, which the engineers were called upon to manage and which occupied strategic positions. The application of technological dis- coveries to urban services appears to be the most immediate way for the