(Giovanni Bozzetti President of Ambienthesis) The green rails take shape. This year we start with the design, and then work will begin which will last about 2 years and the same number will be used for monitoring. And so Milan, imitating the High Line of New York, the urban oasis of London or the Promenade plantée of Paris, will have in about three years a new and suggestive city park characterized by a "wild green", free to grow, to die and transform itself, while remaining accessible to its citizens.
Milan, participating in the European tender "Horizon 2020-SCC-02-2017" with the "CLEVER cities" project, was awarded over 2,5 million euros last December for the development of innovative environmental regeneration interventions in the city area, which had a strong impact on the quality of the urban fabric and that they could be replicated by other European cities. "CLEVER cities", which adopts the integrated model already tested by the city of Milan with the European project "Sharing Cities" in the field of energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, innovative sensors, data sharing and involvement of the local community, had already been an example how a large city could become a resource catalyst, creating synergy with the territory for the benefit of citizens. Urban regeneration, in fact, is not achieved only by redeveloping buildings, squares, streets, but also by making the so-called peripheral neighborhoods more vital, supportive places, open to diversity and mutual contamination of cultures, styles and social opportunities. Rotaie Verdi is thus part of a larger project of transformation of one of the most problematic suburbs of Milan, the one that affects the area identified as Porta Romana / Vettabbia, which goes from the Roman airport, in fact, to the Parco della Vettabbia, just before Chiaravalle and the South Agricultural Park. The aim of the project, however, is not only to increase greenery and fight the degradation of the city suburbs: the linear park is proposed as an ecological corridor that intends to connect the city with the countryside , the south of Milan with the agricultural park at the gates of the metropolis, hosting ecosystems typical of the Lombardy region accompanied, from time to time, by artificial lakes, well-kept flower beds, benches, areas equipped for families with games for children. The park will stretch for about six kilometers along the route of the old railway line that crossed the disused airports of San Cristoforo, Porta Genova and Porta Romana and will give the Milanese and the many tourists who visit the Lombard city every year a suggestive place to walk, pedaling and spending hours outdoors in the midst of nature.
In past years, through field surveys carried out by its volunteers, WWF Italy had come to the elaboration of a hypothesis of a possible landscape for the areas around the railway yards and of an innovative model of urban space regeneration. The initial idea was to exploit the strip of the railway embankment to create an ecological corridor along the tracks, hypothesizing on part of the areas the birth of naturalistic oases endowed with a more "wild" nature that would integrate and interact with the areas intended for public green. The WWF green project definitively approved in February (and supported by Fondazione Cariplo with Palazzo Marino, Cooperativa Eliante and Rfi) goes hand in hand with the redevelopment of disused railway yards and aims to become one of the hearts of Milan's environmental redevelopment plan as well as an essential step to improve the health and well-being of its citizens. A project, which according to the surveys already carried out by naturalist experts, could really favor local biodiversity: within the airports and along the tracks there are already 368 plant varieties, equal to 81 percent of the total known in the city, while the invertebrates would be represented by 64 species and subspecies, in particular of insects. Taking up the words of the project participants: "Green rails it is an absolutely vivid example of how urban planning and design can be formidable tools for mitigation and adaptation to climate change; abandoned urban areas must not necessarily be seen only as an opportunity to locate new urban functions, but also as places to increase urban resilience, mitigate the phenomenon of the heat island, revitalize ecological connections, through functional de-waterproofing ".Thinking of the territory and the soil as an opportunity to live better and mitigate the effects of the climate was also the basis of the project that Legambiente has hypothesized in recent months: the creation of a new and large protected area of 55 thousand hectares that unites Milan from South to North to cover a third of the surface of the metropolitan city. A large Metropolitan Park that surrounds the hinterland and crosses Milan with rays and green corridors joining the two already existing regional parks (the South Agricultural Park and the North Park) to combat the scorching heat of the city, due not only to the weather but also to the "Urban heat islands" due to overbuilding and "insufficient vegetation cover".
Milan has always been a laboratory of ideas, at the forefront of the rest of Italy. Within this horizon, today many players are moving, such as multinationals, universities, research centers, small and medium-sized enterprises. This is where the solutions to some problems start, which all other cities then take as an example. In addition to “Rotaie Verdi”, another innovative project worth mentioning is that of the “Vertical Nest”: a building designed by architect Mario Cucinella, 96 meters high, with an oval plant, with a rhomboidal reticular structure and covered in wood, metal and glass. The new tower, which will be built in Porta Nuova, will be characterized by being functional, highly sustainable and innovative from the point of view of energy efficiency. The skeleton of the building will in fact consist of a double layer that will allow the envelope to “breathe”, as if it had a double skin “which isolates it from the cold in winter and protects it from overheating in summer”. Thanks to the various solar panels installed in different strategic points and to the rainwater collection systems integrated into some design elements (such as the mirrored sail above the entrance), the consumption of resources will also be reduced to a minimum. The green evolution of the Lombard capital would thus seem not to be satisfied with its streets but to take shape both horizontally and vertically.