Milan-Turin: a bundle of infrastructures to access a network of places, between cultural heritage and landscape

The current research aims at investigating the relationships between mobility infrastructures and cultural heritage analyzing the case of the territories located along Turin – Milan axis. The territories in between these cities are a region where the two the main centers located at the edges are fastly connected by high speed railway and highway and at the same time still interlaced with several smaller centers of the in-between territories. The presence of a network of infrastructures - belonging to the so-called long/fast and short/slow networks - could represent a relevant opportunity to discover the richness of the territories in between the main centers. In this sense it is interesting to investigate the accessibility from the main infrastructural bundle (motorway, high speed railways, historical railways, waterways) to the territories, in order to estabilish a better connection to and among them. Relationships should be understood as a possibility to connect two or more places, identified as cultural places, to be reached from the infrastructures (stations on railways or service areas on motorways) with different systems of transport, enhancing intermodality such as that between train or car and bicycle. Therefore, the aim is to give at the same time accessibility to tourists and better mobility opportunities for the inhabitants that could benefit from their territorial values. The research is based on two main points: the first one concerns with the identification of a methodology for the investigation of the relationships between infrastructure and cultural heritage in terms of accessibility. The analysis includes also the use of tracking tecnologies based on gps systems to represent the network of cultural routes for the fruition and the development of the places. The second one deals with the visual representation and particularly with the identification of a mapping system that can contribute to effectively represent the multiscale structure of such a complex landscape.