Institutional and non‐institutional governance initiatives in urban transport planning: The paradigmatic case of the post‐collapse of the morandi bridge in genoa

Abstract

The relationship between the institutional (established in law) and non‐institutional initiatives (not supported by law) that improve the public transport system is currently a debated topic. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most relevant aspects of this relationship during an emergency event, namely the paradigmatic case study of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, which occurred in August 2018. The investigation, according to a consistent methodology widely used in the literature, is made up of a selection of interviews with professional figures particularly involved in institutional structures, drawing on qualitative results, and compared with official statistics. The events that occurred in Genoa, during the phase of reorganization of the urban transport service and the circulation in the city, underlined how the response of citizenship is a crucial element, including from the governance point of view. Analytic and observational findings reveal that non‐institutional initiatives smooth major criticalities where formal institutions can only produce sub‐optimal transport solutions (because of the limited means they own by virtue of the moment of emergency), providing evidence that the two modes of governance are absolutely complementary.