In 2019, the Municipality of Milan announced the call for Piazzale Loreto renovation in the context of the second edition of Reinventing Cities. This international competition is one of the flagship initiatives of the global network C40 to “accelerate innovative, zero-carbon and resilient urban projects”^[1]. It enables the member cities to offer “quickly available”^[2] sites owned by themselves or by partners and to select projects for redevelopment. The strong ideological backing offered by this international framework creates a sort of shield from criticisms about the proposed development, which is always depicted as innovative, necessary, and sustainable. Is this always the case?

The C40 city network

The C40 city network reunites 96 city mayors under the banner of contrasting the climate crisis through urban agendas, and it represents an exemplary case of the emergence of a global city diplomacy (Acuto, 2013). C40 claims to be at the “forefront of climate leadership”^[3] to pursue environmental justice internationally through “an inclusive, science-based and collaborative approach”^[4]. The tenets of the network are a strong belief in the potential of cities to tackle climate change and the ability to promote coordinated action through a shared governance identity (Gordon, 2020). The network is voluntary, based on the subscription of some conditions (such as adopting a climate action plan). One of its strategic funders is Bloomberg Philanthropies, a powerful charity corporation of the former New York City mayor, Mike Bloomberg. Scholars recognize the power of C40 as a new actor for policy ideas innovation, circulation, and implementation (Gordon, 2013). At the same time, some raise concerns about its legitimacy and stake since it promotes beyond government politics (Acuto & Rayner, 2016) implementing public-private partnerships. Others criticize C40’s role in promoting the interests of transnational capital through neoliberal approaches to climate governance (Leal & Paterson, 2023).

Reinventing Cities is the call from the C40 mayors to private actors to work together toward new models for decarbonized development. The core concept is promoting urban densification as a “greener way of living”^[5] and to “stimulate sustainable development”^[6]. The competition’s selection criteria include project relevance to the site, quality of climate solutions, viability of the business model, and team suitability. The 10 Challenges for Climate identified by the competition range from energy efficiency to climate resilience, innovative design, biodiversity, sustainable mobility, and materials management. Challenge number 9 addresses inclusive actions and community engagement to serve the needs of the local population, involving the residents and stakeholders in the project design and future management. Does the LOC project serve the needs and interests of the local population, and how?

LOC project in the context of Milan’s neoliberal development

Participation in this competition is becoming a stable tool for the Municipality of Milan to redevelop its properties. In fact, in the first three editions of Reinventing Cities, it has put on the call fifteen areas^[7], whose ownership has been passed to the private developers through direct sale or rights surface transfer. In the case of the LOC – Loreto Open Community project, the Municipality will sell the building and cede the surface rights of the square and the underground area for 90 years. The project team’s representative is CEETRUS Management & Development S.r.l (today Nhood Services Italy S.p.A.^[8]), a real estate holding of the French multinational Auchan, a retail group famous for its homonymous supermarket chain. They are privately negotiating the public-private partnership to start the development. Construction works were supposed to start in May 2024 but were suddenly suspended due to issues related to the partnership agreement. The reason behind that seems to be that the Municipality has been acting more cautionary since, in 2024, a series of judicial inquiries accused it of violating national planning rules^[9]. The prosecutor affirms that the Municipality has improperly issued simplified building permits to facilitate real estate investments, informally accelerating the planning application procedure and diminishing the planning fees.

These judicial proceedings ignited the political and technical debate^[10] about the neoliberal planning practices the city embraced in the last decades. Critics of the Municipal and mayors’ action argue that the interest in economic growth has gone too far over principles of equity and redistribution. Since the 1990s, in a general national framework of diminished tenant protection and privatization of public housing, the city undertook a prompt adaptation of public planning to market-oriented approaches. Examples of the latter are the intensification of public-private partnerships for redevelopment in the 2000s and the introduction in the early 2010s of programs for the transfer of development rights (Serra, 2021). Many urban projects of the last two decades can be read through the framework of entrepreneurial urbanism (Harvey, 1989). The Municipality acts to facilitate capital investments with public land sellouts and implements a political economy “of place” rather than “of territory”. After hosting the World Expo in 2015, the city undertook a whirling acceleration in asset financialization and real estate international investments, with only a shallow slowdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. This acceleration facilitated privatization, gentrification, and growing spatial inequalities.

The analysis of the LOC project reveals a deep match between this specific redevelopment intervention and the general neoliberal planning framework adopted by the Municipality of Milan, based on sustained public-private partnerships and placemaking to facilitate private investments. The role of the international competition Reinventing Cities and the C40 city network put the LOC project in direct dialogue with a precise idea of the city development based on competitiveness for international investment attraction. This development model implies increasing commodification and financialization of urban space, raising serious concerns about social inequality and the actual benefits for residents.

Bibliography

Acuto, M. (2013). Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link (1st ed.). Routledge.

Acuto, M., & Rayner, S. (2016). City networks: breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock-ins?. International Affairs, 92(5), 1147-1166.

Gordon, D. J. (2013). Between local innovation and global impact: cities, networks, and the governance of climate change. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 19(3), 288–307.

Gordon, D. J. (2020). Introduction: All the World’s a Stage: Cities and the Global Governance of Climate Change. In Cities on the World Stage: The Politics of Global Urban Climate Governance (pp. 1–29). Cambridge University Press.

Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler: series B, human geography, 71(1), 3-17.

Leal, J. M., & Paterson, M. (2023). Transnational city networks, global political economy, and climate governance: C40 in Mexico and Lima. Review of International Political Economy, 31(1), 26–46.

Serra, S. (2021). Urban planning and the market of development rights in Italy: learning from Milan. City, Territory and Architecture, 8(1), 3.

^[1] Claim for the launch of the fourth Reinventing Cities edition, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[2] Reinventing Cities Regulation for the Expression of Interest Phase, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[3] From the “About” section of C40 Cities website, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[4] Ibidem.

^[5] Reinventing Cities Regulation for the Expression of Interest Phase, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[6] Ibidem.

^[7] A full list with relative descriptions of Milan’s Reinventing Cities projects is available on the Municipality of Milan website, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[8] Nhood website, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[9] Magazine article: 03/05/2024, L’inchiesta Park Towers a Milano, Diritto PA, last retrieved 12/12/2024. 

^[10] Magazine article: 11/25/2024, Necrologio per l’urbanistica? Se per cercare di salvare Milano si mette a rischio tutta l’Italia, Gli Stati Generali, last retrieved 12/12/2024.