Feltre district at a glance
First steps into our project: spatial and ethnographic research
As students of the course New Interiors 2 of Politecnico di Milano, this semester we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Municipality of Milan for the “Piazze Aperte” initiative. It is an urban regeneration project based on the principles of Tactical Urbanism, focusing on the involvement of the inhabitants in the restyling of their neighbourhood through easy-to-implement, cheap and scalable spatial interventions.
Via Feltre is one of the locations deemed necessary by its local people for an intervention. After receiving this location as the subject of revitalization, we immediately started the research about the character of the neighbourhood. We also got in contact with Eugenio Santoro, the president of the parents association of the primary school Bruno Munari, located in Via Feltre. He expressed interest in his group collaborating with us, and said that they were willing to provide us with all the information we needed. Unfortunately, as a result of the grave situation caused by Covid-19, we lacked the opportunity to experience the environment and atmosphere of the location in person. However, by using both digital and analogic tools, precisely through Google forms and interviews, we were able to analyse the area where we are going to work on.
Located in the Zone 3 administrative division, Feltre is a residential district extending east of the city centre and adjacent to the neighbourhoods of Lambrate and Cimiano. It is named after Via Feltre, a large suburban street that connects Milan to the Parco Lambro city park. The district is mainly composed of large apartment blocks, built in the late 1950s with State subsidies and designed by the famous architects Gino Pollini, Ignazio Gardella, Angelo Mangiarotti and several others. There are two main types of apartment blocks, respectively 4-storey and 9-storey high. The 4 storey buildings are positioned in the centre of the district, where most shops and public services are found, while the taller ones are located in the district’s periphery.
From the collected data, we noticed that Feltre is quite a lively district. Besides the essential operations of residences and businesses, including grocery stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies and other similar retailers, we also remarked the presence of various parks and places where people engage in sports or physical activities, such as tennis clubs, sport complexes, skateparks and gymnasiums. The neighbourhood is also easy to reach and to move around: it presents many bus stops all around its perimeter, as well as the Udine and Lambrate subway stations and the Lambrate railway station.
Regarding to our subject of intervention, the primary school Bruno Munari, it is situated in the district’s right area, surrounded by the 9-storey buildings and immersed in the Ezio Lucarelli park, while Parco Lambro acts as a northern border. The results of our research suggest that this part of the neighbourhood is quiet and mainly occupied by large green areas, but lacks shops and retailers, besides a bar and an ice-cream place. In addition, many people think there are not enough parking spots and the Municipality of Milan has already taken action to resolve this problem as soon as possible.
We also carried out an ethnographic researched, which allowed us to understand how the space is used by people, how people live there, and what relationship they have with the place. Even if the present situation caused by Covid-19 prevented us to speaking with people directly, we still had opportunity to get in contact with a group of locals who live or work in the Feltre district through social medias. Moreover, we also had pleasure to know Raffaele Montervino, a university student who previously made an analytical research on the quality of life of the area. He kindly shared with us the results of his research, and this largely helped us to understand more about the issues present the neighbourhood. Thanks to the collaboration of all of these people, we successfully collected data which is useful to our research.
We received 126 responses to our questionnaire so far, which are much more than what we expected, and this showed that many people care about their community and are willing to spend time to improve their district. Indeed, according to the results of the questionnaire, most of the people (78,6%) stated that they feel part of a community and have intimate relationships and memories with the place and other people living there. A part of them also takes part in different associations which organize some events in the neighbourhood.
Observing the collected data, we discovered that the area is mostly frequented by families who live in the district and by elderly people. Parks are the favourite hangouts for the majority of the interviewed, and many inhabitants stated that the large green area located between the 9-storey buildings is the most important treasure of the district, promoting social interaction and aggregating people. Regarding to the quality of the public space, most interviewed think there are enough spaces for children but few for adults and elderly. This is quite different than what we thought before. Moreover, many people point out a reduction in the quantity of events, which is probably due to a lack of propriety locations.
We are astonished and pleased by the variety of information we received. It gave us great opportunities and inspirations to improve the area for the future. These analysis were just the first step of our work: we are getting new answers to the questionnaire every day, we are still organizing interviews with the members of the proponent association, with teachers and inhabitants and we are also trying to involve the kids of the school Bruno Munari. In the next steps we will continue our work by identifying the key targets, testing new ideas and making new connections between the city and neighbourhood, in order to promote more development and uses in the area. We are glad to be co-protagonists of this transition and eager to carry out all the necessary changes to make it happen.
Group n° 03
Bai Xiaoman, Cattani Carlo Leone, Eugeni Marco, Masini Nicolò, Volpato Eleonora
