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RC21 CONFERENCE 2013: Resourceful cities

Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013

Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology

S16. Resilience cities and the crisis: Local responses, governance and citizen actions

Chiara Rabbiosichiararabb@libero.it

The research was conducted at:

URB&COM Lab.

Dep. of Architecture and Planning (now Dep. of Urban Studies)

Politecnico of Milano (Italy)

Current affiliation:

School for Advanced Studies in Tourism Sciences

Rimini Campus

Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (Italy)

Civic networks and urban regeneration from the bottom-up: towards a new framework for

understanding urban policies? Evidence from Milan, Italy.

(draft for conference presentation do not quote)

The aim of the proposed paper is to widen the debate about urban resilience with reference to

urban regeneration practices arising from civic networks. We propose to focus on urban

regeneration from the bottom-up as a tool for empirical research into the restructuring of urban

governance. In the end, we argue that urban regeneration proposals arising from civic networks are

now more easily legitimated by local governments, as the effects of the economic crisis become

stronger and intermingle with a general institutional crisis. We present this thesis with reference to a

case study based in Milan, in northern Italy.

First, the concept of urban regeneration from the bottom-up is introduced, providing a survey of

various definitions. In fact, bottom-up urban regeneration identifies a variety of experiences that

may differ in inspirational principles, realization practices and final goals. Second, we refer to some

case studies that show how civic networks promoted revitalization by framing a specific area and by

integrating public, private, and nonprofit on this spatial basis. In the inner area of Milan that will be

mostly affected by the Universal Exposition in 2015, a number of organizations are shaping local,

self-organized civic networks whose aim is not just to lobby. They forge a common campus according

to new alliances or conflicts through which formal and informal partnerships might be built and in so

doing they overcome institutional limits within the cityscurrent urban policy.

mailto:chiararabb@libero.itmailto:chiararabb@libero.itmailto:chiararabb@libero.it

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The area we describe can be considered as a living laboratory for a new agenda on governance and

represents a real challenge for the city of Milan and the new left coalition that was elected in May

2011. The new majority in the City Council is attempting to be more inclusive, in a social and in a

spatial sense. While considering the innovative potential of urban regeneration from the bottom-

upin Milan as elsewhere, we also stress a few of the limitations of this approach.

1. INTRODUCTION

Urban regeneration has been a huge topic in the past three decades and, within the fields of urban

studies and the social sciences, has often been debated with reference to the implications brought

about by decentralization and globalization. These includes the increased political autonomy of

cities, especially as welfare providers; the increased economic competition among cities on the

global scale and an increased social mix, alongside multilevel and multi-institutional crisis (Vicari

Haddock 2004; Vicari Haddock and Moulaert 2009). Economic and political changes embedded in

decentralization and globalization have opened up access for actors from the bottom-up. Local

players, local authorities, and urban residents have gained access to and legitimacy in urban

governance. In a first term, in the seventies and eighties, the nexus between urban regeneration and

urban governance was marked out by mega projects, turning urban regeneration into the art of

making room for new economic developers and mobility infrastructure and allowing very little space

for local players and communities. A second term, from the second half of the nineties onwards, has

been characterized by the adoption of a changed approach to urban regeneration by states and local

governments that consisted of introducing so-called participative policies.1 In this shift, public

policies that addressed the theme of regenerating urban space were thought to enable the

integration and coordination of different sectors (improving living conditions by renovating buildings

and creating green areas, by creating jobs and services, by integrating the less favored social classes

into education and training systems, etc.). Participation lay on two very different levels, the first

concerned with the involvement of stakeholders and their interests (via publicprivate partnerships)

and the second concerned with the diffuse participation of a variety of private actors (citizens

included) (Davoudi et al. 2008). Little by little, co-operative methods for civic involvement in spatial

planning have also appeared. This means (1) opting to increase active participation of citizens and

(2) sharing responsibility for the spatial environment between public government and civic

communities in various domains of spatial research, planning, exploitation and management

(Boonstra and Boelens 2011: 100).

Participation is a key sphere of urban regeneration from the bottom-up. However, bottom-up

urban regeneration is a term that identifies a variety of experiences which may differ in inspirational

principles, realization practices and final aims, from so-called integrated public policies to business-

led economic development strategies or popular grassroots and neighborhood-based efforts to

capture the benefits of urban restructuring for local residents (Pacione 2005: 463475). In any case,

1 Interactive, collaborative and/or participatory planning approaches have been introduced in a variety of countries. In

Italy, these approaches have been introduced as a consequence of the Europeanization process that opened up to a new

season for public policies, even though most of these experiences have been assessed as controversial, disappointing or

ineffective (Bricocoli and Savoldi 2010: 256). As for the Italian context, Carla Tedesco has also pinpointed that bottom-up

approaches to urban regeneration and their involvement for new public governancehave been acknowledged by most

planning and public policy literature only in institutional area based, integrated initiatives (Tedesco 2011).

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urban regeneration from the bottom-up presupposes a certain degree of cooperation, if not of

participation, among the actors involved in the policy process (Healey 1997).

The generally restricted meaning of participation in urban policy, as well as the ideology and

implications behind it, was the object of enormous debate at the beginning of the 2000s (Raco 2000;

Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002; Jones 2003). In this paper we are less interested in

assessing communityparticipation within urban regeneration policies in Milan; nor do we wish to

deconstruct the rhetoric of participation that has recently become so overwhelming (Jones 2003) or

even to propose a methodology to rethink and apply urban regeneration policy in ways that could

yield a step change in wellbeing and sustainability outcomes (Unsworth et al. 2011: 183). The aim

of this paper is to widen the debate about urban regeneration with reference to the initiatives

promoted by local, self-organized civic networks. We focus on urban regeneration from the bottom-

up as a tool for empirical research about urban resilience and the restructuring of urban

governance. In so doing we also connect, and test, a new concern in urban policies as well as urban

studies which consists in matching the effects of the economic recession with a renewed interest in

the hidden potential of local areas within cities and propose alternative forms of urban regeneration

and revitalization. This trend is generally understood as opposite to the failing pro-growth, business-

as-usual approach that characterized the decades before the financial crisis (Unsworth et al. 2011).

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HYPOTHESIS

Our definition of bottom-up urban regenerationis derived less from orthodox planning approaches

than from poststructuralist approaches. According to this approach, urban political analysis today

refers not only to the field of action among political parties and of territorial administration and

societal government for the legitimate authorities, but also to a more complex and contradictory

realm in which local actors and supranational organizations, local political administrations and non-

political institutions are said to play a role (Rossi 2004: 156). Along these lines, Ugo Rossi has taken

account of the role played in the process of urban change in Naples by a number of local actors in

the 1990s. Rossi distinguished among actors representing legitimate power in the city (the local

judiciary, new urban political elites, etc.) and actors representing constituent power (such as

institutionalized civil society and urban social movements): The former are revealed as protagonists

of dynamics of urban change from above and the latter of dynamics from below (Rossi 2004,

ibidem). With reference to this second type of dynamics, Beitske Boonstra and Luuk Boelens have

similarly introduced the notion of self-organisation to pinpoint the initiatives for spatial

interventions that originate in civil society itself, via autonomous community-based networks of

citizens, outside government control (Boonstra and Boelens 2011, 100).

Civic networks can be defined as the web of collaborative ties and overlapping memberships

between participatory organizations, formally independent of the state, acting on behalf of

collective and public interests (Baldassarri and Diani 2007: 736).2 Sociologists have mostly

concentrated on analyzing the kind of relationships that connect organizations to each other, the

2 Their role in democratic regimes has been particularly studied by sociology scholars with reference to their role in

integrating and mediating among diverse, sometimes alternative interests or ideological standpoints and in spanning social

cleavages and different social spheres so that civil society can operate as a public arena for discussion, mediation, and

deliberation (see Baldassarri and Diani 2007 for a review).

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kind of structure a network might assume (hierarchical, polycentric, hierarchical, vertical), and the

strength of ties among different nodes of the network thus facilitating or constraining their cross-

cutting and bridging functions, as well as their overall contribution to social integration. Different

from the classical sociological approach, in this paper we refer to some case studies that showed

how civic networks promoted revitalization by integrating public, private, and nonprofit on a spatial

basis. This means that we consider local, self-organized civic networks in a similar way to what

others have called the community of interest. The term is used to pinpoint a geographicallyconnected population that shares common social and economic interests (...) including important

places, traditions that bring residents together, and major stakeholders (Mollenkopf, Pereira, and

Romalewski 2013: 6).3Davide Ponzini has showed that a cultural policy network, the Mount Vernon

Cultural District in Baltimore (US-MD) (which indeed also is a community of interest), was able to

provide urban infrastructure, manage public space, and create localized common goods (e.g. safety,

urban quality, image promotion), since the network tried to produce positive urban effects in

order to take advantage of them, well beyond the established relationship of a given urban regime

(Ponzini 2009: 445). While Ponzini focused on cultural policy networks, our aim is to show how

similarly local, self-organized civic networks set up a process for the realization of urban facilities

or immaterial actions of urban revitalization beyond the given urban regime. This, we believe,

consists also in a form of urban resilience. We also follow Rossi in as much as we are interested in

better understanding the mobilization of actors who do not have direct policy commitments of

their own as generative of productive outcomes on the organization of space. It is argued that

these actors not only make claims in the public sphere, but also actively contribute to the dynamics

of space production that trigger the processes of spatial change at the urban level (Rossi 2004,

158). However we make use of Boelens and Boonstras notion of self-organisation to better

understand urban resilience with reference to urban regeneration proposals coming from thebottom-up in a specific inner area of Milan at the end of the 2000sas the crisis was risingand we

focus on research results following field work conducted in 2011.

Our context of analysis is somewhat framed by three major occurrences. First, the World Universal

Exposition was scheduled in 2008 to be hosted by the city in 2015. Under the slogan Feeding the

Planet, Energy for Life, the event should embrace the broad issue of sustainability. Second,

administrative elections held in Milan in 2011 gave birth to a new local government at city level,

guided by a left coalition after decades of center-right government. The new majority in the City

Council aims to be more inclusive in a social and in a spatial sense. Third, the effects of the economic

recession started to affect Milan the town generally considered the most prominent transport,

industrial, and financial hub in northern Italyto a large extent.

Our intent is threefold. The first, which is mainly descriptive in its aim, is to answer how urban

regeneration from the bottom-up is developing with reference to the case study we portray. The

second intent, which is mainly explicative in its aim, is to test our hypothesis that the results of

urban regeneration from the bottom-up as it emerges from self-organized civic networks are

3 The term is mainly used in urban policy and urban studies trying to solve districting problems related to political

representation, voting rights law, and practice (Mollenkopf, Pereira, and Romalewski 2013). However defining particular

communities of interest can be notoriously fuzzy, because shared interests may be either vague or specific, and because

people both move locations and change their interests over time (Levitt 2010: 56, quoted in Mollenkopf et al. 2013: p. 7).

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particularly topical in the context of the institutional crisis in cities brought about by the economic

downturn. They constitute, in a way, a form of urban resilience.The third intent is to present our

thesis that this shift is coherent with a next step in the contemporary spirit of capitalism that follows

Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's theory: when capitalism is obliged to respond positively to the

points raised by critique, to try to placate it and maintain the support of its troops, who are in

danger of listening to the denunciations, by the same gesture it incorporates some of the values in

whose name it was criticized (2005, 28).

3. CONTEXT

The area we have analyzed consists of urban neighborhoods within the urban core and the suburban

margins of Milan. The area can be represented as a triangle bordered by the historic canals of Milan,

i Navigli, and stretching southwest from an upper point close to the city center towards a base that

touches the urban fringes. This area will be that mostly touched by the Universal Exposition in 2015.

In fact the Expo site is actually located outside the city limits, slightly more than 10 km to the

northwest. However the Navigli have been initially planned as connective waterways to the Expo

site. In addition, this area like many peripheral areas of Milan has a strong rural background.

Generally, rural areas were destroyed during the Fordist boom of the sixties and seventies, and again

in the early 2000s, first in order to make room for factories and a variety of housing buildings, then

to make space for service sector buildings and more housing later. However, the area between the

two canals was able to maintain some aspects of its former rural past. Today it is a rururbanpart of

town, becoming partially more attractive as greening the city (Krueger and Gibbs 2007) became

attractive. Indeed, in relation to some parts of the wasteland and green areas, fighting against the

interests of real-estate developers that would be happy to occupy them and develop new urban

projects is still ongoing. Real-estate and property development also characterized the changes in the

area in the last decade. The upper part is rapidly becoming very attractive for businesses connected

with the cultural-cognitive economy (Bovone, Mazzette, and Rovati 2005). Such new businesses

found a place in obsolete industrial or manufacturing buildings (Adamantopoulou et al. 2009).

The two canals have long represented waterways for transportation of commodities between the

city and the surrounding region/territory.4This function became obsolete at the end of the 1970s.

Their hydraulic role decreased as the agricultural activity within and outside the city diminished.

Since then theyve represented a physical and infrastructural limit to the area we are observing,

which is not very easily accessible. Today the core of the area is at the center of the triangle we have

described, where an infrastructural node (underground, train, buses) is located, connecting the area

to the city center as well as the hinterlands. Future developments that are already planned should

implement the nodal function of the underground station. The casting off of a secondary railway

station in the inner part of the area will open up to new valorization projects, not defined yet.

The upper part of the area plays host to service activities and skilled artisans, giving birth to a

landscape in which traditional and innovative elements coexist. Commercial gentrification has less to

do with large-scale urban renewal schemes, including strong retail components, and more to do with

spontaneous, non-planned commercial gentrification processes. Relevant forms of competition

4However their function was and is mainly hydraulic.

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and complementarity emerge in this new retail environment that are far more complex than simply

a process of old retail forms being displaced by new, trendy ones (Van Criekingen and Fleury

2006). In the southern part, urban retailing is poorer and matches with old, often decaying buildings

among which are a huge amount of council estates and new, real-estate driven, middle-class

developments. Housing and retailing mirror social divides. The southern part of the area remains a

mixture of very popular neighborhoods and areas that are hard to name. Mainly the result of urban

sprawl and property speculation, these southern neighborhoods and areas are only lightly touchedby urban and/or commercial gentrification.

4. FINDINGS

Neighborhoods and local areas seem to have emerged as a new social and spatial sphere to propose

innovative, socially attentive forms of urban regeneration (Moulaert and Swyngedouw 2010).

Neighborhoods and local areas even those that are often considered as margins within the city

contain enormous potential which is underutilized by the residents and under-appreciated by those

who do not know the area well (Unsworth et al. 2011: 186). They represent a significant resource

to be used in responding to challenges such as those provoked by contemporary multilevel crises

(economic, institutional, social) and the lack of urban regeneration policies that could yield a step

change in well-being and sustainability outcomes (ibidem).

In the area of Milan that we are analyzing, we started5by identifying the organizations that were

already stimulating a process of urban regeneration from the bottom up, be they business-led actors

or socially committed organizations. This helped us identify the potential that was already there in

the area between the two canals and that could be better understood along a few major spheres

(FIGURE 1).

Figure 1: mapping the local potential for urban generation from the bottom up in the area between the two canals,

Milan, 2011. DRAFT.

5The data presented come from an applied research project brought about in 2011 in Milan in partnership with a local,

self-organized, civic network, Mesopotamia Milanese (mentioned in more detail in the next pages).

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Waterways and green areas

Water is a fundamental element of the southwestern part of the area, together with green areas,

represented both by a relatively large amount of urban parks andmost importantlyby the Parco

Agicolo Sud(Rural Park South Milan), a large, protected rural area. Few traditional farms (le cascine)

are still present in the area. Most are owned by the City Council that rents them. Only some are still

productive. Some others are used for other purposes mainly social activities, such as private

community centers or rehab communities. A civic network was set up in 2008 to further protect the

part of the Parco Agricolo Sud that falls within the area. The network develops mixed agricultural

and leisure projects (see also Table 1, row 3) and represents an original way to form associations

between farmers, city residents and city users in common projects. Community gardens, both

private and public, are emerging in the area. A self-organized civic network composed by people

living on a certain road (Table 1, row 5) started cleaning up an area of wasteland and eventually

independently regenerated the surrounding area.

The matter of the waterways in the area is far more problematic.6Here water is not represented

only by the canals, but also by a filling channel, scolamtore Olona, running in the open air in certain

parts of the area. The scolmatore Olona is a real barrier within the area itself and also lies in bad

conditions, spreading negative externalities all around its banks. Other problems arise in the upper

part of the Navigli, whose banks are the object of conflict among retailers, residents, and the City

Council concerning the management of nightlife.

Along the Navigli, three historical rowing clubs actually protect the canal banks and their waters.

With their self-interested actions, they also contribute to the maintenance of a common good the

canals that had been abandoned since their original function became obsolete. Only few areas

alongside the canals have been turned into cycle paths. The request of residents for cycle paths and

a better mobility scheme but also became a project proposed by (at least) two civic networks we

observed (see Table 1, rows 1 and 5).

Residential and productive identities

Former manufacturing or industrial spaces have recently provided room for so-called creative and

innovative service business and business related with the cognitive-cultural economy (Scott 2008).Involved with architecture, design, and fashion, with some niches for excellent artisan production,

they are located in the central part of the area. Many of them have relocated in the area formerly

used by Richard Ginori, a porcelain manufacturer that occupied a surface of 60.000 m2. The site has

today been upgraded and is used by creative service businesses and for luxury apartments. The high

presence of services related with cognitive-cultural economy is also represented by three private

universities proposing curricula related mainly to communication and creativity (IULM, NABA, and

Domus Academy).

6There are two institutional agencies that are in charge of the management of the canals waters. They overlap in certain

roles, conflicting over others and lacking autonomy in relation to some other matters that we cannot describe at length

here.

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It is with reference to the creative service production recently located here that we can identify an

original civic network project: Mesopotamia Milanese is a nonprofit association ambiguously

founded by a newcomer cognitive-cultural economy business company in late 2008. The goal of the

association was to foster a process of urban regeneration in the area. An inclusive approach to

participation is also pursued, although the idea of participation pursued by the association is quite

restricted since the founder company is eager to open up alliances with similar businesses or

associations. However the civic network (Table 1, row 4) is somehow not very active.7

The foundershave not been able to develop bonding ties with other companies (which had difficulty in

understanding their participation in something that adopted, even very lightly, a community-based

approach) or bridging ties with other civic networks, sometimes because of ideological reasons on

both sides (community-based association or social business vs. Mesopotamia).

The transformations derived from the changes in the productive clusters are also reflected in the

urban populations that cross on the area. They are a mix of residents and other mobile populations

as well as a mix of social classes in the core of the area between the two canals, but they remains

pretty heterogeneous in the other parts. It is in general difficult to circumscribe socio-spatial niches.

Blocks of council estates are present in the upper, central, and southern part of the area but in the

upper part they mix with new private, upper-classes oriented, redeveloped buildings. As a general

trend, the residential profiles become more popular going towards the southern fringes of the area

and in the inner southern neighborhoods.

Social entrepreneurship and active citizenship

There is a significant presence of fertile and active citizenship actions and social entrepreneurship in

the area, especially in one of the older central neighborhoods, la Barona, traditionally known as a

poor, deviant neighborhood within the city. A network (called Made in Barona, see rows 5 and 6)

was founded in 2011 with the aim to enhance the area by emphasizing the social resources that are

already located in the area. The network brought together a variety of community-based

organizations (for instance the neighborhood radio), cultural associations, residents associations

and even businesses, even if only those with social commitments. Some of the organizations that

joined the network were already located in the Villaggio Barona, one of the most innovative urban

regeneration projects realized in Milan in the past decade. A redevelopment project set up by a

philanthropic foundation at the beginning of the 2000s, today it hosts a mix of housing estates,

hospitality projects, spaces for local independent companies or associations, a few retailers and a

wide public area. Villaggio Barona quickly became a well-known point of reference within the

neighborhood and in the whole area between the two canals.

In the area, there are also many residentsassociations, both for residents of private estates and for

council estate residents. In addition, in 20102011, left-wing independent candidate Giuliano Pisapia

was strongly supported by neighborhood networks created by sympathizers to reinforce ties

between civic engagement and the candidate mayor. The networks have continued to represent an

important source of urban proposals since Mr. Pisapiaselection.

7Mesopotamia is basically exctinct at the moment we are writing.

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Here a number of organizations are shaping local, self-organized civic networks whose aim is not just

to lobby but also to promote initiatives for spatial interventions (Table 1, last column), originating in

the civil society itself and against government control, as Boenstra and Boelens pinpointed (2011).

They forge a common campus according to new alliances or conflicts through which formal and

informal partnerships develop and activate or at least try to activate urban regeneration from

the bottom-up.

Table 1: Main local, self-organized civic networks proposing urban regeneration and revitalization projects: 2011. DRAFT

Organization Theme Key-words (self-declared) Urban regeneration projects

and other local networks the organization is

involved with

Ass. Bei Navigli

Civic network

Water Space sustainability

Quality of life and involvement

City and rural landscape

meeting

Culture valorization (leisure

and tourism)

Navigli Linear Park project

CIVES participatory labs on urban agriculture & on

Darsena and Navigli regeneration

Connecting

Cultures

Art researchagency

Cultural

production

Connection

Interdisciplinary

Process activation

Imagining Parco Sudrevitalization of Parco Sud

area through art and creativity

Milano e Oltre: urban regeneration throughvisual arts

Co-founder of Made in Barona, a network for

urban regeneration and urban marketing in

Barona neighborhood

Partner of CIVES participatory labs project

Parco delle Risaie

Civic network

Agriculture Urban agriculture

Culture and heritage

Participation

Parco delle Risaie, un cuore agricolo per la citt

project

Partner of CIVES participatory labs project

Mesopotamia

Milanese

Civic network

Economic actors Place (vs. space)

Hospitality

Reconnecting

A few projects proposals on the requalification of

a local urban park and proposals towards the

requalification of the underground station

Supporter of Parco delle Risaie project

Supporter of Dencity, a project to develop a

cultural policy network in Zona 6

Comitato Ponti

Residents

network

Water Reconnecting

Repossession

Stakeholders synergy

Environmental requalification of Olona filling

channel (project proposal)

Environmental requalification of the areas

between Naviglio Grande and the railway, through

a system of barges (project)

Co-founder of Made in Barona, a network forurban regeneration and urban marketing

Consorzio S.I.S.

Social business

Social innovation Community development

Social bond generator

- La Cordata:

Hub Barona, a project for social cohesion and

youth

- Villaggio BaronaMixed social housing as a

regenerating process

Founder of Made in Barona

NABA

University

Cultural

production

Self-organization

Urban ecology

Social factory

Student project themed on the regeneration of

the Darsena, with local civic networks

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A few implications arise from our previous observations. The revitalization and regeneration of the

area is not necessarily the ultimate end of bottom-up proposals. In the majority of cases, the local

area is a means to realize other aims (similar to what happened in the case study portrayed by

Ponzini (2009). This is the case in relation to universities: the local area provides a territorial frame

that suits many types of teaching: labs that are organized within the university curricula develop

activities within the area. This enhances students skills but also provides activities that often

activate a place-making processes within the area. NABA university has started a very light attemptto connect with community-based organizations. As superficial, fragile or circumscribed as this

action might be, it is nevertheless the first move towards bridging ties with the local area.

The relationship with the areaas a means or/and as an end is at the core of urban regeneration

from the bottom-up proposal coming from social entrepreneurship, which is represented by a well-

structured entity in the area. A consortium for social business (Consorzio S.I.S.) is active in the area

with two different businesses: one operating in the realm of hospitality and integration and another

managing a nursery in a newly built part of the area. A third business is located just outside the area,

providing clinic services. These social businesses provide services that are necessarily locally scaled,

and in so doing activate holistic urban regeneration. The local area, for them, is first a way to provide

services (a means) and second an aim. The two layers not only overlap, but end up melting into each

other. Social businesses take part in a variety of community-based civic networks, as civic

participation is often perceived by social business as coherent with their engagement.

One of the three private universities located in the area is planning a huge extension of its campus.

This will consist of a new business center (for its private business) but also an auditorium open to the

public. The university is also involved in a project to create a student house that will rehabilitate a

cascina (thanks to a public long-term concession over the building) which lay in total ruin and

abandonment. These actions, outside a public policy framework for urban regeneration, on one side

reinforce the universitysproperty estate and will offer essential services to its paying students. On

the other side, the university will also regenerate part of the area: by offering an open auditorium or

rehabilitating a public heritage building, it engages in exchange with the area the university its

located.

Further reflection upon the networking of local actors is needed. A well-structured system of webs

and alliances exists. However, they have a high rate of mortality, or they easily change geometry.

Some local, self-organized civic networks have reinforced or enlarged themselves as an ad hoc

measure to gain access to external funding in order to sustain specific projects. In Milan, many

cultural, environmental, or welfare-oriented projects are co-financed by a philanthropic foundation

connected with a bank (Fondazione Cariplo). To be granted financing, projects have to be submitted

by networks of private and public actors with different profiles. Therefore at the local level we

can distinguish among networks that are born specifically to submit proposals for external funding8

8For instance, this is the case of the CIVES project on participatory labs to discuss issues related to urban agriculture in the

area and the requalification of Milan dock, la Darsena. The CIVES project was co-financed by Fondazione Cariplo in 2010.

The project was promoted by a network of networks, including civic networks (Fondazione Rete Civica Milano) and cultural

organizations operating (ARCI Milano) at city scale or at local scale (Associazione Parco delle Risaie, see Table 1, row 3) and

a university (the Dep. Of Architecture and Planning of the Politecnico of Milan, a university which is not located in the

area). The project was supported by the City Council, the local city council, one of the agencies that is in charge of

managing the valorization of the Navigli (NAVIGLI s.c.a.r.l.), the Rural Park South Milan, the Associazione bei Navigli (Table

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and those that are free from interests of this kind. The ties among the organizations that compose

this second kind of network come more in the form of bonds than of bridging. In this case, urban

revitalization and regeneration is more strictly based on the value of social capital.Networking can

bring an indirect benefit in terms of reputation and therefore serve the networksown interests,

albeit while providing revitalization at a spatial level. The local, self-organized civic networks we have

observed also have very different ideas of what valorization of the local area means: some

networks rely on the traditionali.e. economicidea of multiplication of economic capital.

Organizations involved in civic networks associate different meanings to what they see at the core of

their initiatives of urban regeneration or revitalization (see column 3, Table 1). Reconnecting, or

mending (ricucire), was a term used to pinpoint the need to mend the divides that physical obstacles

create within the area (the railway road belt, the canals, the Olona filling channel). In fact, most of

the organizations propose urban regeneration actions that might reduce the physical obstacles.9

However, the mending action does not take into consideration only physical divides. For some civic

networks, divides are eminently social, and to regenerate means to activate plugging actions with

reference to social deprivation paths. Participation, synergy, bond creating, place making emerge

as key terms to foster urban regeneration from the bottom up in the point of view of many

organizations. However, they mean very different kinds of participative actions, widely considered

along a formal continuum between institutional participation and community-based initiatives.

The ecological and environmental dimensions of urban regeneration are very much present in the

initiatives proposed from the bottom-up that we observed. However, environmental sustainability is

not always debated in its deepest meanings. It is a must-quote, since the area is characterized by

the presence of waterways and green areas. Only a few organizations propose projects that discuss

the meaning of environmental sustainability and propose articulated evaluation, while others just

mention it as a label. Systemic interventions are scarcely proposed. Social sustainability is taken into

account from networks but not always emerges in projects. Economic sustainability is acknowledged

in any proposal, but in very different mannersfrom proposing light interventions (non-expensive)

based on the enhancement of what already exists, and also favoring short commodity chains that

would favor local producers. But some networks would like to engage developers especially real-

estate developers that are expanding in the area in supporting bottom-up initiatives, since real-

estate developers will also take advantage once the public spaces within the area are more lively and

well-maintained.10

Our study focused on forms of urban regeneration or revitalization promoted by local, self-organized

civic networks. We have shortly mentioned a few characteristics of these networks actions

considering the area as a means or as an end; the role of networking and social capital; the theme of

reconnecting; the stress on sustainability in their projects. By proposing these projects, civic

1, row 1), on of the association of retailers of the Naviglio Pavese canalbanks, a farm (Societ Agricola Fedeli), and the

Institute for the Valorization of Agriculture (Istituto per la Tutela e la Valorizzazione dellAgricoltura).9This is the case of the two projects proposed by Comitato Ponti (Table 1, row 5): reconnecting the divide created by the

Olona filling channel via a park alongside it and reconnecting the area between the canals with what is outside the canals

thanks to a system of barges. The project proposed by associazione Bei Navigli also would like to reconnect the city to the

suburban localities via a linear park along the canal banks (row 1). Mesopotamia Milanese talks about reconnecting the

area with the rest of the city, requalifying the underground station at the core of the area (row 4).10

This kind of strategy was pursued by Mesopotamia Milanese.

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networks behave in a resilient way towards the economic recession and institutional current crises,

opening up pathways for urban change (Rossi 2004).

5. DISCUSSION

It is generally considered that by working alongside strategic partners within a neighborhood,

effective policies may begin from the current position of communities, using resources that are

already available and building interconnections between people, buildings, land and skills to realize

value that can be harnessed by the locality so that communities can determine their own futures

and realize and manage these assets (Unsworth et al. 2011: 199). Will what is happening in some

areas within Milan, such as the area we observed, become a form of urban public policy and

overcome the lack of a clear policy direction in terms of how to rethink and apply urban

regeneration policy in ways that could yield a step change in wellbeing and sustainability outcomes

(Unsworth et al. 2011: 183)?

To answer this question, we now go back to the second contextual element that we pinpointed

earlier: the color change in the City government following elections in 2011. Milan, the urban

center generally considered the most prominent transport, industrial and financial hub in northern

Italy, has been a traditional stronghold of the right wing since Silvio Berlusconi entered politics in

1993. The new elections in May 2011 unexpectedly saw the success of a left-wing candidate,

Giuliano Pisapia. The new major does not even belong to the center-left major national party (PD, or

the Democrats) but has always been involved in left-wing movements and minority parties. A well

established lawyer, Mr. Pisapia has distinguished himself for defending a variety of discriminated

people throughout his legal career.

A few months after the new coalition was installed, a Development General Plan ( Piano Generale di

Sviluppo) was edited (Comune di Milano 2011). The plan supports the idea of conceiving a town as a

common good and proposesto reform the city government and relaunch the civil and economic

development of Milan (p. 3). This consists in creating an agenda that might be able to face the

current crisis and feed a new project for Milan in a moment of decreasing resources. The themes

for the City Council agenda are environment and energy;11

society and services;12

city limits and

beyond.13

With reference to our discussion, it is important to pinpoint the purpose expressed in the

Piano Generale di Sviluppo of making a city oriented towards the future: welcoming and open to

the world (p. 5). This involves a reform of the spatial model14

and reinforcing the networks (p. 5).

It is also stated that reinforcement of networks should occur, favoring policies and reward

mechanisms that will be able to give value to Milan, not only as a dwellers city ( citt di residenze)

but as a city that invests in knowledge, research, production and qualitative artisanal production

and local retailingall of this with an eye to looking at the Expo and through the Expo (ibidem.

My translation).

11By promoting a deep change in the mobility, living, and productive patterns, towards major environmental sustainability

and a less wasteful model of urban development (cit. My translation).12

By promoting equal opportunities (among genders, ethnic groups, generations, social classes, and social groups) within

the same urban form; by building multiple opportunities to have access to housing services, according to different needs.13

By identifying a metropolitan method of government that might be able to face the urban agenda regarding public

transport and green-belt planning and management concerns, looking at environmental issues and political themes.14

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It is this point that has particular importance for our case study. The area that will be mostly touched

by the Milan World Expo 2015 corresponds to the southwest area of the city within the Navigli. In

fact the Expo site is actually located outside the city limits, slightly more than 10 km to the

northwest. The theme chosen for World Expo 2015 is Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life and the

event is expected to embrace technology, innovation, culture, tradition, and creativity, and how

these relate to food and diet, as well as the broad issue of sustainability. The eventsinitial budget

was sensibly reduced with reference to what was initially declared and it was rapidly acknowledgedthat the only area within the city administrative boundaries that would have possibly benefitted

from the public and private investments related to the event was the one related to the Naviglio

Grande, since the canal represents the waterway which ideally connects the city to the Expo site.

Most of the money allowed for regenerating the city within its limits will be used to finish a long-

lasting/seemingly never-ending/much-troubled top-down urban regeneration project that concerns

the Darsena, the obsolete dock of Milan canals just outside the upper part of the area we have

studied. In the previous paragraphs we showed that in the inner area of Milan between the canals,

a number of organizations involved in local civic networks are shaping a common campus (Ponzini

2009) through which urban regeneration and revitalization within the area is influenced, often

overcoming institutional policy limitations. At the same time these actions integrate the public,

private, and nonprofit on a spatial basis and influence the urban governance process through an

interplay with the urban, legitimate policy scheme.

Indeed, Milan has always been known as a city with a lively civil society and participative

entrepreneurship, even though, as Paola Savoldi and Massimo Bricocoli underline, Milanese and

Lombard pragmatism has granted very few to strategic institutional policies that promoted urban

regeneration from the bottom-up. The local politics arena always preferred use traditional forms of

participation that privileged traditional groups of stakeholders (2010: 256). In addition, civil societys

wings were strongly clipped by the twenty-plus years of center-right government that incentivized

exploitative real-estate redevelopment and annihilated participative projects, if not reifying them

and using them as a city marketing strategy. On the contrary, listening to the civil society proposals

is a key element on which the coalition guided by Mr. Pisapia would like to be distinguished from its

predecessors. In addition, a main point of the current City Council government agenda consists in

the decentralization of powers within the city. In fact, differently from what happens in cities such

as Rome or Paris, Milan administrative districts within the city ( le Zone) have very few competences

and decisional power. Their role is mainly advisory. Transferring to le Zone duties and powers from

the central City Council has been an issue of great debate, for in the past decades, center-right

governments have never wanted to accomplish it.15

The districts have, however, a mayor. A new

District Mayor has also been elected for la Zona 6, the district that mainly but not entirely

corresponds to the area between the two canals that we have previously described. A professional

urban planner, the Presidente del Consiglio di Zona 6, is well rooted in the area. Among the nine

15The new coalition wants to actively promote the role of the districts as a decentralized institution. A Commission for

(administrative) Decentralisation, Municipality, and Civil Participation (Decentramento, Municipalit e Partecipazione

civile) has been created for eachZona. The district units have been invited to create working groups to identify local

criticalities as well as proposals arising from the bottom up. The zone should be granted autonomy should Mr. Pisapia be

reelected in 2016,

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district mayors within the city, he can perhaps be said to have more of a double background,

matching grassroots experience in civil society with professional expertise in urban regeneration.16

Following the abundance of bottom-upprojects to regenerate the district proposed by local, self-

organized civic networks and in connection with the novelties both introduced by the new City

Council and the horizon of the World Expo in 2015, the District Mayor proposed that both the

central City Council and local stakeholders should take part in a MilanoExpo Zona 6 Forum. The

project was quite ambitious if we consider Italian urban (and national) politics, highly noted both for

a scarce vertical and horizontal communication among different political levels or among Offices and

for a scarce tradition of policies really bringing together different urban categories and interests (

Bricocoli and Savoldi 2010; Codecasa and Ponzini 2011). The District Mayors ideawas to create an

intermediate occasion for debating projects that he and a technical group would then propose to

the Councillorships Office explicitly created to coordinate the actions previewed for the World Expo

2015.

All juridical persons, such as associations, institutions, organizations, and business companies, were

invited to the Forum as long as they had elaborated projects, preliminary initiatives, or socio-

economic development coherent with the Chart and/or as long they were willing to actively

contribute with their participation in the operative plan for transformation and valorization of the

area around the Waterway Expo 2015. The District Mayor had seen in these projects the chance to

take advantage of World Expo 2015 to propose projects that would contribute to the urban

regeneration of the area well after the event. The Forum Chart (2012)17

pinpointed three main aims:

the promotion of extended and diffused connection of the area from the margins of the city to the

city center; the individuation of new public spaces within the city margins, especially where divides

were currently present; and the promotion of private, coherent interventions in obsolete or

underused spaces.

The document for the actuation of the Forum was signed at the end of March 2012. The first

presentation to potentially interested stakeholders was planned to take place in June 2012.

6. (FIRST) CONCLUSION

What we have shown indicates an interplay between non-politically legitimized initiatives for urban

regeneration and revitalization from the bottom up and how civic networks are able to converge

different interests into a spatial frame integrating policies and collective action. In a context of

economic recession, the urban regeneration and revitalization initiatives and proposals already

activated by multiple organizations and civic networks can be considered forms of urban resilience

that are raising the interest of public administrations. Even if fragmented or not yet accomplished,

these initiatives overcome the institutional limits to urban regeneration policies of any kind

within the city.

Strategies for mending physical as well as social divides were missing in town, as were paths towards

participative forms of urban regeneration framed by at least a few criteria of social, environmental,

16He was also a promoter of the previously mentioned Villaggio Barona(see also Rabaiotti 2000).

17The document was not publicly published.

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economic, and institutional sustainability. Indeed, recognis(ing) untapped areas of potential by

challenging and going beyond the business-as-usual urban policy orthodoxy, and how to enable

communities to realize this potential to build their own resilience strategies and improve well-being

(Unsworth et al. 2011: p. 83) is not only of interest to self-organized civic networks but also, and

more often, to institutional actors, which might be very sincere in their desire to take the path of

listening to bottom-up proposals, promoting active citizenship and legitimate forms of urban

regeneration interventions coming from the bottom-up.

However, this attention seems also an easy way to respondat institutional level this time to the

move from turbo capitalism to zombie capitalism .18

The shift which brought about the interplay

of actors that we have shown with reference to Milan is coherent with a next step in the

contemporary spirit of capitalism if we follow Boltanski and Chiapello s assumption that when

capitalism is obliged to respond positively to the points raised by critique, to try to placate it and

maintain the support of its troops, who are in danger of listening to the denunciations, by the same

gesture it incorporates some of the values in whose name it was criticized (2005, 28). Crises are

moments at which hegemonic understandings of the operation of political economies are called into

question. This tends to repoliticize identities, institutions and societal structures, and hence opens

up space for a proliferation of discourses attempting to interpret the causes of and solutions to the

crisis (Oosterlynck and Gonzlez 2013: p. 1077). We have not followed the discursive approach of

Oosterlynck and Gonzlez (and neither the one of Jessop and Sum 2001 that they refer to) but we

think we have reached similar conclusions. The effective presence of many different stakeholders

proposing urban regeneration projects from the bottom-up does not represent only a form of

urban resilience. It might be exploited by the City councils to favor local development in the context

of the economical and institutional delegitimization that they are experiencing. And, obviously

enough, for exploitative business, who might indirectly take advantage of the urban regeneration

provided by local, self-organized civic networks and turn it to their own advantage.

7. PROLOGUE. OR THE REAL CONCLUSION.

However, that is not the end of the story. During the Christmas holidays in 2012 I had the chance to

informally and separately meet the District Mayor and one of the persons that should have taken

part in the technical group of the Milano Expo Zona 6 Forum. They communicated to me that the

Forum never saw the light of day. Both were disappointed and disenchanted by the general chances

for real change in urban policy in Milan. The idea of the Forum was given a cold welcome by the

Councillorships at central level. Basically, the Milano Expo Zona 6 Forum was too complex a project.

It was a secondary problem beside the other, major problems that the City Council has to solve

before the World Expo 2015. But without support and legitimization by the central City Council, the

District Mayor considered it very difficult for him and his team to manage the project, considering

the lobbies and possible conflicts among the Forumsparticipants.

This does not mean that the City Council led by Mr. Pisapia abandoned its aim of fostering bottom-

up initiatives calling for participation and active citizenship. Indeed, it is opening up space for many

18Some critiques suggest that neoliberalism may have lost its hegemonic appeal and entered a living dead phase, but

that it is sustained by macro-economic and macro-institutional conditions such as global over-accumulation, public

austerity and indebtedness, and beggar-thy-neighbor governance rationalities (Oosterlynck and Gonzalez, 2008: p. 1076).

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more solid initiatives towards this goal and opening up more space to civil-society, socially mixed

proposals.19

At the same time, at a stage of scarce investment by the private sector, we wonder

connecting with our earlier conclusion if this is really a case of a new opening up in urban policy

and urban governance, or if these policies represent simply a way to make virtue out of necessity.

What will happen if the economy booms again? Will the pro-growth, business-as-usual model

return, and even be advantaged by the regeneration freely provided by formerly excluded civic

networks? As we have seen, the political gap between civil society and political government is stillvery strong and there is a struggle to really assume participation and active citizenship in a plural

way. In addition, the typically Italian familistic way of managing civil society, business organization

and politics creates another problematic point that we have not faced here, but that raises ground

for further enquiries.

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