Città e risorse tra attività economiche e pubblica utilità

The current study investigates the relationship that connects the commercial enterprises to the cities and their territory. The cities (not only Rome, but also municipalities and colonies) tended to operate controls on the entrepreneurial activity carried out in the urban territory, both through specific regulation and through the administration of the necessary tools for carrying out these activities. This trend had its roots in the republican period, but found their highest and articulate expressions in the imperial period, in the constant pursuit of the more general ‘principle’ of the control of the territory, intended as, therefore, not only from the military and political points of view, but also productive and, in the widest sense, environmental. The analysis of the cases and of the sources shows the propensity to concrete realization of ‘sustainability’, principle that is progressively establishing itself in modern territorial contexts.