'Troppo sarebbe che un privato potesse imporre ad una comune'. Di un caso di (mancato) esproprio nel Ticino di inizio Ottocento

Starting from the case study represented by a dispute that arose in Ticino between a citizen and the municipal administration for the ownership of a road, this article intends to investigate the role played by the law in the formation of a new concept of spatiality and, therefore, the relationship existing between the construction of modern statehood and the management and transformation of the territory in the first half of the 19th century. Once the Ticino legislative discipline on the road system has been examined, it is in particular the possibility of carrying out the institution of forced expropriation that assumes a very significant importance, as the reference to the concept of public utility and the necessary balance between the exercise of power and the guarantee of individual property begin to be at the center of a discourse that will play an increasing role in the public-private dialectic in the following decades.