Urban Strategy
Milan (IT)
2025

The city of Milan has been experiencing, in recent years, and with more significant acceleration after the pandemic, a substantial rethinking of urban mobility and public space in favor of greater use of active mobility, greater attention to the most vulnerable users (like children and older people), and less use of private motorized vehicles. The work has mainly focused on rebalancing, in favor of all users, the use of the street, which represents the largest share of public space and which reaches every citizen in a capillary manner.

This direction -necessary to guarantee more effective road safety and the reduction of urban pollution- aims, as in many other international cities, to increase citizens’ well-being and physical and mental health.

In this sense, we believe it is essential to open up new scenarios for the use of public space, also for that action of sharing objectives, education towards the youngest, and awareness of the great environmental challenges, more necessary than ever in a society that tends to reduce physical sociality but at the same time wants to participate and find moments of collective meeting and sociality.

Bastioni Aperti is a project that gives the city a place of well-being, a meeting space, and an alternative vision of the city and its mobility.
As the Bogotà cycle path has seen the closure of about 120 km of roads to vehicular traffic every Sunday morning and holiday for about forty years, Milan could start with the Bastioni Ring street.

The Bastioni Ring street is the city’s second ring road, starting from the historic center after the Navigli Ring street. It corresponds to the trace of the Spanish-era walls that surrounded the city and that defined its maximum size until the threshold of the 19th century. By the end of the 18th century, the walls had lost their defensive utility and the architect Giuseppe Piermarini had converted many parts of them into hanging gardens, effectively creating a long elevated walk that, to a flat city like Milan, offered an unparalleled view of the Alps and the plain to the south.

The first general master plan of the city by the engineer Beruto rethought the space of the now demolished walls as a large green ring of Viennese inspiration, with gardens, water, and public buildings. In part, this vision has remained: Today the circle of the Bastioni is a tree-lined avenue with different species that contains green parterres and small gardens and connects 10 large parks and gardens of the city, such as the Sempione Park, the Indro Montanelli Gardens and the Basiliche Park.

The bastions today are also, nevertheless, a large traffic artery that sees the duplication of vehicular flows with two parallel ring roads a few meters away from each other and with six dedicated lanes, divided between the innermost part (the area corresponding to the actual Bastioni) and the outermost part (the one that was immediately behind). The outermost part is served by tram lines 9 and 10, which run respectively along the eastern and western part of the ring street.
The Bastions have, therefore, crossed the history of the city and, like many parts of it, are today the symbol of continuous reuse of the territory, based on different needs: from a defensive place in the 1500s to a panoramic walk in the 1700s, to a space almost entirely dedicated to vehicular flow today after the advent of mass motorization. Can the Bastioni change again today and, thanks to their outstanding qualities (a continuous tree-lined avenue that unites all the municipalities and connects parks, monuments, and very important public functions of the city), become a paradigm of the future Milan?

Bastioni Aperti could be organized every Sunday morning, which, today, is already a time of less traffic in the city.

Bastioni Aperti is a ring of about 12 km served by 10 stops of all the metro lines and the railway lines, as well as the starting point of various cycle-pedestrian itineraries belonging to Cambio, the bicycle plan of the metropolitan city.

Bastioni Aperti is the opportunity to stay in the city on the weekend because here you can find tranquility and relaxation for a walk or a bit of sport.

Bastioni Aperti is an opportunity for children and families with medium and low incomes, for those who do not have a park near their home, and for everyone who wants to do physical exercise and socialize in the open air.

Bastioni Aperti could host various activities related to active mobility (bicycle courses for all ages, sports competitions, bicycle workshops, group or independent walks), proximity tourism (guided tours and bike tours of monuments and green heritage), culture (music and small concerts) and local street food.

Bastioni Aperti could be the city’s experimental space, which can be shared with all citizens, where the sustainable Milan of the future can be implemented.

Credits
Type/Program: Strategic Urban Design
Client: Milan Municipality (an idea shared with the Task Force for road safety and active mobility)
Year: 2024-2025
Location: Milan, Italy
Status: Ongoing