Looking at Milan As an Alpha City: Framing and Updating a Research Agenda

The paper contributes to the debate on elites’ spaces in European cities in specific relation to phenomena of alpha territorialisation. It tries to apply this international figure to Milan, that is the main financial and economic hub in Italy. This case can be considered as an original intersection between the articulation of urbanisation and socio-spatial polarisation processes in the Italian context and the dynamics of global cities, integrating international trends with site-specific characteristics. Based on comparison with London, the article updates the recent evolution of spatial processes, policy, and planning in the Milan urban core. On the one hand, it recognises different local strategies, phases, and possible meanings of phenomena of alpha territorialisation, which vary according to different places of development (near the city centre or in external areas of the urban core) and to different times of implementation (before and after the 2008 crisis; before and after the approval of new general urban plans in 2012 and 2019). On the other hand, it identifies open challenges and knowledge gaps to develop further research and policy-making in a city that, since the 2011 political turn, has been investing in a radically new urban agenda, that is very articulated: from new statutory urban plans, to multiple sectoral urban policies; from large redevelopment projects, to new experimental planning tools specifically targeted to the regeneration of multiple neighbourhoods. Within goals and rhetorics of economic innovation, social inclusion, and environmental regeneration, the experimental approach promoted by the Milan urban governance is multifaceted, but the implementation mechanisms are still unclear, and the risks of further gentrification and disparities cannot be excluded. For all these reasons, the effects of this new phase of spatial policy and planning in Milan demand for further investigation, considering local specificities in relation with global processes of other alpha cities