La creazione del quartiere degli affari : il ruolo dell'edilizia bancaria nello spazio di Londra, Milano, Genova

This thesis explores the establishment of the central financial district in nineteenth century within the framework of urban transformation processes and the development of the legal and institutional structures of banking. The aim of the research was to understand how and to what extent the new bank headquarters influenced the urban layout, by defining privileged areas for financial exchanges either in contrast or in continuity with the pre-existing economic-institutional centers. The development of the financial centers in the cities of Milan and Genoa has been compared to the evolution of the City area in London through the definition of distinctive parameters like geographical persistence, concentration and centrality, emphasizing affinities and differences on a local as well as on a national and international level. If in the latter case the origin of the financial center is included between the 1830s and 1870s, in the Italian context it is instead comprised between 1895s and the beginning of the first world war. The expansion of the business centers in Milan and Genoa has been traced through the direct analysis of documentary sources, by intersecting the renewal interventions approved by the local town councils with the management of real estate properties pursued by the credit institutes.