There is something faintly childish about the naive fascination with which certain politicians continue to regard the construction of monumental works of engineering. They tend to see it as a vote-winning expression of technological progress. It’s hard not to read Silvio Berlusconi’s recent committment to build a gigantic suspension bridge linking mainland Italy with Sicily in this light. It would certainly be one of the most grandiose projects possible: a single-span bridge, 3,360 metres long, slung between two towers as big as skyscrapers.
The plan calls for a structure 380 metres high with a deck 64 metres above sea level. Berlusconi’s decision ends 30 years of uncertainty. The legislation promoting the construction of the bridge dates from 1971; work is scheduled to commence in 2004 and be completed in 2010, but Berlusconi’s pledge still cannot be regarded as the final word on the project. No Italian government can look forward to that length of time in office, and there is the risk of developing yet another unfinished project to be passed on to succeeding administrations. Private companies would be involved in the construction and toll collecting, but the figures shown do not seem very clear – there is some doubt about how much the work will cost and the levels at which tolls will be set. Criticism of the bridge is not so much an issue of technical feasibility: it has more to do with the threat to civilized life in Southern Italy, marked as it is by chronic water shortages, inefficient health services, uncertainty and backwardness in all areas of public infrastructure. The real trouble with the bridge is that it works against local developments.
It shoulders aside other spending priorities in the sphere of social policy and will delay the provision of urgently needed services. Above all, notes Osvaldo Pieroni, an academic at the University of Calabria, it destroys the most valuable natural resource of the south: beauty. In this area, the environment and the landscape constitute the principal resources, capable in the holiday months of provoking the migration of the entire population of Northern Italy. The original nature of the south must be preserved. A construction as imposing as the bridge and the impact of its massive approach structures would certainly do serious damage to Villa San Giovanni in Calabria and Ganzirri in Sicily.
Immense works are planned to create the road links and supports at the ends of the suspended sections. No real architectural content is envisaged for these structures, which misleadingly appear minimal set beside the majesty of the bridge itself but are actually huge in relation to their surroundings. The feasibility studies have so far failed to take into account the aesthetic or environmental impact of the bridge’s infrastructure. Nor are any new competitions planned for the design of the utilities, structural organization and ramps on land.
We can therefore expect massive quantities of concrete without any reference to aesthetics. The technical feasibility seems to have been verified scientifically, although it has not been analyzed in the light of dealing with the unforseeable, as the collapse of the Twin Towers has forced on us. Technical challenges, at the very limits of physics and technology, can sometimes lead to consequences so serious that they go far beyond the potential benefits they produce. Progress does not stop, but if pursued in a spirit of frivolous competitiveness and self-glorification in a struggle for the highest tower, the longest tunnel, the most daring bridge rather than utility, it brings negative repercussions.
Politicians require a solution to everything, almost the wave of a magic wand. A more appropriate strategy is to pursue a comprehensive planning of the possible informed by careful historical analysis. This would enable us to live with the problems, address them and guide development toward spreading benefits as widely as possible. After all, the time of the pharaohs has passed.
