The world is full of sights that we think nothing of today, but that caused major upheaval when they were first introduced.
For instance, hearing a train pass by may be mildly disruptive at best, but a common concern in Victorian times held that the sounds and motion of trains would damage people's sanity to such a degree that they'd instantly become violent and deranged. This was called "railway madness" and it seemed to assume that any rowdy or violent behavior by train passengers was the fault of the train itself.
But while this was an unfounded and spurious claim, we can see a more immediate example of how a local feature changes things every time we see a dam. In many cases, people had to be displaced for that dam to be possible and in Italy, we can actually see the evidence of that displacement on some special occasions.
