Ancient hill ‘desecrated’ by car park
March 8, 2009
Amid a crescendo of protest, the city of Rome is about to start building a seven-storey underground car park beneath one of the city centre’s prettiest and most strategically located parks.
La Terrazza del Pincio is laid out on the summit of the steep hill overlooking Piazza del Popolo, the architectural masterpiece at the top of Via del Corso, Rome’s ancient main street. Both the park and the piazza below it were transformed by the architect Giuseppe Valadier in the 19th century after the French government then in control of the city noted the absence of well laid-out walks in the centre. The avenues are lined with oaks and pines and dotted with busts of eminent ancient Romans, and enjoy fabulous views across the city centre.
But the park is about to disappear behind high fences and, for several years, will be a building site. When the public is allowed back, the authorities claim it will be unchanged from before, but instead of earth and remains of the ancient city it will house seven floors of parking.
Believing it is still not too late, Italia Nostra, (Our Italy), an association dedicated to protecting Italy’s heritage, this week made an appeal for a suspension of the work and a re-examination of the whole project.
The association claims that the car park is being imposed on the city without proper consultation, without a thorough review of the archeological remains buried within the hill, and at the risk of damaging a vital acquifer that runs through it. It also claims it is unnecessary. As any visitor to Rome knows, many of the narrow cobbled lanes of the city are clogged with cars around the clock, despite parking restrictions that are often only theoretical. The Pincio scheme will be the third huge underground car park meant to address this congestion yet the car park under the Villa Borghese nearby is regularly half empty, the association claims.
The suspicion of some critics is that the true motivation for building a third such facility is to generate hefty construction contracts without the controversy that visible schemes attract.
Italians are conspicuously more attached to their cars than other Europeans. Recent figures published by Eurobarometer show that there are 670 cars per 1,000 Italians, a figure beaten only by the US. In Rome it is even higher, at more than 900 cars per 1,000 citizens.
Adrian Labucci, president of the Rome branch of Italia Nostra, said: “Car parks and monuments are incompatible. This is cultural vandalism.”
The city authorities say that the project will provide residential car parking for those living in central streets that are soon to be pedestrianised, and that all relevant officials backed the plan. But at the protest meeting letters were read out indicating that only outline consent had been given.
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk By Peter Popham
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Uses of Chromium
February 6, 2009
In metallurgy, to impart corrosion resistance, create a shiny finish, or increase hardness:
- as an alloy constituent, such as in stainless steel
- in chrome plating
- chromic acid is used in some anodizing processes
As dyes and paints:
- Chromium(III) oxide is a metal polish known as green rouge.
- Chromium salts color glass an emerald green.
- Chromium is what makes a ruby red, and therefore is used in producing synthetic rubies.
- also makes a brilliant yellow for painting
- As a catalyst.
- Chromite is used to make molds for the firing of bricks.
- Chromium salts are used in the tanning of leather.
- Potassium dichromate is a chemical reagent, used in cleaning laboratory glassware and as a titrating agent. It is also used as a mordant (i.e., a fixing agent) for dyes in fabric.
- Chromium(IV) oxide (CrO2) is used to manufacture magnetic tape, where its higher coercivity than iron oxide tapes gives better performance.
- In well drilling muds as an anti-corrosive.
- In medicine, as a dietary supplement or slimming aid, usually as chromium(III) chloride, chromium(III) picolinate, chromium(III) polynicotinate or as an amino acid chelate, such as chromium(III) D-phenylalanine.[7]
- Chromium hexacarbonyl (Cr(CO)6) is used as a gasoline additive.
- Chromium boride (CrB) is used as a high-temperature electrical conductor.
- Chromium(III) sulfate (Cr2(SO4)3) is used as a green pigment in paints, in ceramic, varnishes and inks as well as in chrome plating.
- Chromium(VI) is used in the post Ballard preparation of Gravure (rotogravure) printing Forme Cylinders. By electroplating the metal onto the second coat of copper (after the Ballard skin), the longevity of the printing cylinder is increased.
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OMC reduces Indian chrome ore price for Q1 shipments
January 31, 2009
It is reported that Orissa Mining Corporation has reduced the price of Indian chrome ore for domestic sale to a large extent. The new price is applied to shipments in January to March 2009 quarter.
As per report, a typical high grade chrome ore produced in India has contained Cr2O3 48% to 49.99% and its price has been reduced to INR 4,976 per tonne, corresponding to approximately USD 96 per tonne, which has fallen to nearly half of the price for October to December 2008 quarter.
At all events, the higher prices of USD 700 to USD 800 per tonne had once prevailed in the international market, mainly in China. However, owing to the cutback of ferrochrome to be produced from chrome ore as implemented from October of 2008, the world demand for chrome ore has decreased to a large extent and, in order to cope with this aspect, price of Indian chrome ore for domestic sale has been urged to revise.
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Spain destroys lost Roman city for a car park
September 6, 2008
THE archeologists could barely hide their excitement. Beneath the main square of Ecija, a small town in southern Spain, they had unearthed an astounding treasure trove of Roman history.
They discovered a well-preserved Roman forum, bath house, gymnasium and temple as well as dozens of private homes and hundreds of mosaics and statues — one of them considered to be among the finest found.
But now the bulldozers have moved in. The last vestiges of the lost city known as Colonia Augusta Firma Astigi — one of the great cities of the Roman world — have been destroyed to build an underground municipal car park.
Dr Sonia Zakrzewski, a senior lecturer in archeology at Southampton University who has worked on the site, said: “It is a real shock when things like this happen. I am surprised it has gone ahead. There is no doubt this site is of fundamental importance to archeology.”
Much of the site has been hurriedly concreted over: the only minor concession to archeologists and historians, is to leave a tiny section on show for tourists. The rest will be space for 299 cars.
The Roman city has proved to be one of the biggest in the ancient world. Its estimated 30,000 citizens dominated the olive oil industry. Terracotta urns from Ecija have been discovered as far away as Britain and Rome.
The region produced three Roman emperors — Trajan, Theodosius and Hadrian — and the research has shown that Ecija was almost as important in the Roman world as Cordoba and Seville.
The socialist council says that had it not dug up the main square, Plaza de Espana, to build the car park in 1998, the remains would never have been found. But it insists the town must press ahead with the new car park.
“Nonsense,” says the town’s chief archeologist, Antonio Fernandez Ugalde, director of the municipal museum. “For some reason, the politicians here think it is more important to park their own cars. It simply does not make sense.”
But despite opposition from numerous other archeological groups and the Spanish Royal Academy of Art, there is now no possibility of restoring the 2,000-year-old Roman town.
The most exquisite discovery was a statue, known as the Wounded Amazon, modelled on an ancient Greek goddess of war. Only three other such statues are known to exist. The one in Ecija is in by far the best condition with some of its original decorative paint intact.
Juan Wic, the mayor, who is responsible for the car park project, said he was happy to have kept one of his main election pledges. He said it was “essential for the commercial future of the square and city”.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk
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Rome’s Car-Parking Chaos Sparks “Barbarian” Debate
September 6, 2008
Visitors leaving Rome with anecdotes of cars parked on zebra crossings, blocking pavements or two abreast on narrow streets would probably think the locals would welcome plans for a giant new carpark.
But this is Italy, where the calmest of conversations looks like a row, and debate between conservationists and modernizers over a carpark on an ancient hillside has escalated into a raging debate with both sides calling each other “barbarians.”
Some of the biggest names in Italian culture and politics – film director Franco Zeffirelli, pop star Adriano Celentano and centre-left opposition leader Walter Veltroni – are involved.
In a city that is effectively an open-air museum, bulldozers starting public works are almost always halted by archaeologists hailing the discovery of yet another ancient ruin.
Pincio hill is a Neoclassical terraced garden designed by Giuseppe Valadier in the early 19th century astride 1st Century BC ruins that conservationists have dubbed a “Secret Pompeii.”
City hall chose Pincio two years ago for a seven-storey, 726 space carpark to allow the narrow streets between Piazza del Popolo and Piazza di Spagna — one of Europe‘s poshest shopping districts – to be reserved for pedestrians.
In a city whose drivers American travel writer Bill Bryson said “park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid in my lap,” there is a clear need for more orderly parking and more public transport.
The debate essentially forces Romans to choose between their passion for cars – Italy has one of highest densities of car ownership in the world — and pride in their ancient culture.
The Pincio carpark was approved when Veltroni was mayor but Rome is now run by right-winger Gianni Alemanno. Traditionalists in Italy’s conservative government want him to ditch the plan — as do some leftists like Celentano, who called it “degenerate.”
In the latest round, Culture Minister Sandro Bondi – a poet – accused the centre left of turning Rome into “a supermarket for mass tourism.” In a letter to one newspaper, he proposed an international contest to solve Rome’s traffic problems.
Veltroni, a novelist and modernist, says the real barbarians are those who say “no” to anything new “in the country with the most acute ‘Nimby’ (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome in the world.”
“Without local people the centre of Rome risks becoming a giant tourist mall … and local people must have somewhere to park their cars,” he wrote in Corriere della Sera Newspaper.
Source: http://www.reuters.com
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