The Italian Regions in Astana
by Aldo Bonomi Director of Aaster and Giulia Pavese, Director of the Committee of Italian Regions
DOI 10.12910/EAI2017-025
What brings Italian Regions to a universal exhibition devoted to the energy of the future? The first reason lies in the historical discontinuity which differentiates today’s universal expositions from those which, in the previous two centuries, preceded them. While the Universal Exhibition of the 19th and 20th centuries were events celebrating economy and science as engines of unlimited and continuous progress, the historical phase we live in raises the issue of the limits to the development and the necessity to rethink the use of the enormous overall increase in the productive, technological and cognitive capacities of society. At the heart of Expo is increasingly the concept of power of the limit as a factor of a new social, economic and cultural organization, resource for producing, living, thinking in a new manner. Now this new frontier needs to be declined not only through broad objectives and global policies, but also via political and cultural transformations and local technology infrastructures. Today’s Italy’s transition toward new more sustainable modes of energy production and consumption sees the Regions start to take on a leading role within a European and national policy framework. …