Spatialities of Control (Turin 2006)

Turin, a city in northwestern Italy with a population of about 900,000 and a metropolitan area of about 1.5 million was the host of the 2006 Winter Olympics. As the capital of the Piedmont region of 4.3 million inhabitants, Turin is the fourth-largest Italian city. Thanks to the headquarters of automobile manufacturer Fiat, the city was recognized as the Italian capital of automobile production, and as such, Turin has often been compared to Detroit (see Vanolo, 2008, 2015). As in many other cities dominated by one corporation, the general crisis of the Fordist-style factory manufacturing, beginning in the late 1970s, has been dramatic, thus laying the foundation for a debate on the economic future of the city. Following a devastating automobile crisis in 1996, the metropolitan administration launched an initiative to support the city’s economic diversification and a change in its industrial image.