With the City of Milano for the Challenges of the Future

Two frontier issues, which the institutions, in particular the Municipality, will have to confront and find solutions for in the near future. Perhaps listening to and collecting suggestions from the second-year students of the Bachelor in International politics and government in the class of Management of Government Organizations taught by Amelia Compagni (with Giulia Cappellaro), who have worked on climate gentrification and biodiversity in collaboration with the Resilience Department of the Municipality of Milan. A project in which about 80 students took part, divided into 13 groups of 6 elements each, each of which could freely choose either one of the two highly-current themes and then develop solutions and proposals that could best address them. 

"Climate gentrification, with Milan increasingly oriented towards the construction of 'green' projects", explains Amelia Compagni, "also brings with it some negative consequences, because the price of apartments goes up and many inhabitants could be forced to move out of neighborhoods where they now have deep roots. What the Municipality should do to deal with this situation was the challenge proposed to the students, who had to develop a real action plan, which was coherent and concretely implementable".  

The second track concerned the theme of biodiversity, one of the themes most dear to mayor Giuseppe Sala, "which must be increased not only in ecological and environmental terms, but also in economic terms", says Amelia Compagni, "because Milan has the largest agricultural park of Europe and this can allow to diversify production, which is in practice the produce that ends up on our tables. These are issues which the Municipality has just begun to think upon and the students' works have been considered very valuable above all because they are actually feasible, not abstract projects ". 

“Great work, great ideas on two topics that are new to us too. We liked the combination of the idea and a structured implementation plan”, confirms Serena Chillè, Communication and Design Officer of the Resilient Cities Department. 

"Me and the other students of the group (Chiara Binello, Vittoria Montinari, Martina Imbò, Jean Michal Mrozak, Riccardo Corsi)", says Michele Forti, 20, from the province of Modena, "worked on climate gentrification because it is a subject that we know well, since we live in peripheral areas that have recently been redeveloped. In particular, we followed the project of the Bosco-Navigli district, which seems to be a replica of what happened in the Isola neighborhood, where beautiful houses have been built, but which have exorbitant prices. Our work proposes ideas and solutions that tend to combine environmental sustainability with social sustainability”, continues the student, “while always trying to be pragmatic. One aspect, pragmatism, which makes these experiences particularly important, an anticipation of what we will have to deal with in our future".