Extractive Alpine landscapes. Systemic territorial perspectives and socio-ecological transition paradoxes

The thesis unfolds in three interrelated sections, each addressing a different scale and temporality of the extractive condition. The first investigates the renewed centrality of raw materials in the European transition, focusing on the spatial implications of recent policies aimed at reopening concessions for cobalt extraction in the Western Alps. The second reconstructs the palimpsest of Alpine transformation through three valleys in Piedmont, examining the relationship between technological innovation and spatial transformation, and tracing how productive cycles and territorial governance have co-evolved over time. This reading interprets the Alps not as a static natural domain but as an engineered, continuously negotiated landscape where infrastructures, industries, and environmental systems intersect. By examining the material and spatial imprints left by successive extraction regimes, mining, hydroelectric production, and manufacturing, it reveals how each phase has redefined both the ecological balance and the political imagination of the mountains. The analysis does not isolate individual sites but considers them as interconnected territories within a more expansive trans-scalar geography, in which local experimentation reflects broader European dynamics of resource use and transformation. The third develops a design framework grounded in territorial configurations conceived as possible conditions for testing critical hypotheses about the future of Alpine territories, presupposing forms of extended, multilevel governance articulated through intermediate plans, agreements, and pacts. These territories, locally marked by extractive concessions yet embedded within global supply dynamics, offer a multi-scalar field in which to question the implications of transition and to envision reversible forms of transformation.