Spazi ibridi e direttrici di traffico merci: il caso del corridoio ferroviario euro-asiatico

In recent years, the so-called ‘Eurasian Land-bridge’, a railway corridor connecting coastal China with Central and Eastern Europe, has attracted particular interest. In the initial part, the paper offers an examination of the concepts of Eurasia and railway corridor. Subsequently, after describing the characteristics of the Eurasian railway corridor, the paper examines its recent freight traffic dynamics with a threefold objective. Firstly, it seeks to recognise if and how the cooperation/conflict relations that have been established in the territories crossed by the corridor are influencing these flows. Secondly, it pursues to understand whether it may be the corridor itself that catalyses cooperative and conflictual dynamics, and thus acts as a generator of hybrid spaces. Finally, it seeks to investigate whether and how the coexistence of conflictual and cooperative situations and their mutual connections could lead, in the coming years, to scenarios characterised by a possible spatial reorganisation of trade movements.