A two-tiered system for regeneration of central and peripheral areas Alpha territorialisation and its leftovers in Milan

Keywords: Alpha Territories, Milan, Italy
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 65

Abstract

The project questions alpha territorialisation starting from Milan, the city that most embodies the character of a global city in the Italian contest. Milan is used as a “gateway” to introduce the international debates at the local level.
Different characters of VIP urbanism will be illustrated, ranging from developments related to luxury real estate, to those related with knowledge and creative economy. Several typologies of urban transformation will be outlined (e.g., big projects, cultural and creative districts), as well as their relationships with broader planning and policy strategies at multiple governance levels.
The paper main argument is that in Milan, a very attractive city for international investors even during COVID-19, for a long time the local administration has opted for elite-capture at any cost (Pasqui, 2018), without coupling it with any form of value-capture (Ferm, Raco, 2020). This resulted in a two-tiered system: (a) attracting big capitals as precondition to bring “regeneration” in existing or forthcoming centralities; (b) mobilising residual “special” plans or bottom-up initiatives labelled within the rhetoric of social innovation in deprived areas.
The debate on alpha cities highlights how the production of the wealthy city, and socio-spatial dynamics occurring in poor areas should not be considered as separate systems (Minton, 2017). As such a separation risks to amplify urban inequalities, the challenge of this reflection is thus discussing processes taking place in “central-alpha” and peripheral areas as interconnected systems.