Contemporary Production and Urban Change: The Case of Milan

Abstract

How do new sites of production and workplaces relate to the making of urban change in Milan’s peripheral areas? The paper answers this question by looking at two different fields of investigation related to peripheral areas. On one hand, the paper examines the policies promoted by the public administration at the municipal level to enhance urban innovation through new workplaces within the smart city agenda. On the other hand, the urban innovation brought by the establishment of cultural and creative industries promoted by private actors will be examined, ranging from the new geography of creative places to the creation of temporary transformations. Starting from these two fields of analysis, the paper identifies areas of difference and potential combined effects between public action and private initiative. These are placed against the backdrop of a conception of contemporary production that has worked as a tool for social inclusion and place-making in peripheral contexts in Milan

The Culture-Oriented Urban Regeneration: Place Narrative in the Case of the Inner City of Haiyan (Zhejiang, China)

“…"Without culture, there is no future for cities" [55] Culture-oriented urban regeneration has been practised in big cities in the past few decades, especially in big European cities such as Bilbao, Barcelona, Milan, etc., [56][57][58]. The construction of large-scale cultural facilities can improve the city's image, thereby promoting the tourism industry; the holding of very large cultural events can deliver sustainable regeneration for host cities [59]; the development of cultural industries as important growth engines can stimulate consumption and promote economic development [60].…”

Coworking, the Sharing Economy, and the City: Which Role for the ‘Coworking Entrepreneur’?

“…In fact, coworking can produce a positive effect on the urban environment and for the people involved only if they become more stable forms of work organization in the city, lasting in time and surviving as business activities capable of interacting with the socio-economic urban fabric. At a broader scale, the emerging forms of sharing activities and collaborative workplaces are leading to a "spatial reconfiguration of jobs in cities" [58], creating new networks of microbusinesses that are replacing the traditional industrial clusters and in which coworking spaces are acting as physical platforms [18]. It is also changing "the way cities generate jobs through entrepreneurship" [59], and in this sense the "coworking entrepreneur" should be regarded as an urban innovator, whose choices are capable of producing urban concentrations of creative activity and consequently shape the urban and socio-economic fabric of our cities.…”

All smoke, no fire? Sharing practices and political investment in two Italian cities

“…The latter aspect is of utmost importance for this paper and drives not only the selection of the country, but also the case selection within Italy. We chose a most-different system: Mantua, a small town with a pilot project supported by Labsus (an Italian think tank working on the concept of subsidiarity), and the major city of Milan, the Italian economic engine featured in all international comparisons (Gascó et al, 2015;MIT 2017) and in the scholarly literature (Vitale, 2010;Cavenago et al, 2016;Armondi and Bruzzese, 2017;Polizzi and Vitale, 2017). Milan is a well-known case where the municipality played an explicit governing role on these issues with no technical support from external agencies.…”