New life unfolding Milan’s streets
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and one of the densest in Europe. As a post-industrial city, over the years, Milan has morphed into a cultural, creative and trade hub, while remaining Italy’s leading economic and financial market. Milan is now a place of international fairs, renowned for its design and fashion weeks. For those from the rest of Italy, Milan is an ambivalent, jarring juxtaposition of heaven and hell: it is the vibrant city to go for work, but at the price of being around the colder Italians, it is a place of fashion, nightlife and creativity, but one where people can be too busy to say “hi” to their neighbors. Milan before the Covid-19 pandemic meant people enjoying the golden hour with a glass of Prosecco or a Spritz after a long day at work. It was young generations hanging out in the streets outside bars, or crowds in museums and concerts.
But it was also traffic — a lot of traffic. It was noise, life at high speed, busy roads, and pollution — Lombardy, the region where Milan sits, is among the most polluted areas in Europe. Car use is still predominant in Milan, with only 55% of its 1.4 million residents using public transport to commute to work. And according to research published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, air pollution may have been an important contributor to Covid-19 fatalities. Up until early June, Lombardy recorded 16,300 Covid-19 deaths, while more than 90,000 people had tested positive to the virus.
On March 8, the Milanese woke up in the first major non-Asian city to go under lockdown and to severe restrictions to their ability to move, leave their house for non-essential needs and enjoy life. The city started to change.
It became silent abruptly, birds were audible singing outside our windows, and people were bonding with neighbors for the first time in a while. Some of the billboards around the city were left blank, and the city walls were plastered with a new kind of white — what’s the point of investing in advertising when no one is out there to see it? Time seemed to have frozen.
When you’re forced to stay home, most of the time wearing pajamas or sport suits and only occasionally a nice t-shirt for a video call, isolated from the world, you lose the ties to the community, your networks — and your identity as part of something. The reasons that made people Milanese, like AC Milan, aperitivo, or the vibrant life that made them choose to migrate here, vanished. Milan became one of those ghost towns with no sign of street life.
A new fresh look to streets
Suddenly, streets and public space became the places we were craving the most. We started to realize how much we took them for granted all this time. Without all the traffic and cars, the streets looked like a new free space for people.
On April 30, the Milan municipality announced one of the most ambitious urban programs in Europe to tackle the Coronavirus crisis. It lays out the reallocation of street space from cars to cycling and pedestrians.
The program, called Strade Aperte (“Open Streets”), aimed to turn 35km of streets into cycling and walking space over the summer. As more and more residents perceived public transport as unsafe, the program aimed to reduce car use by opening up the city to alternative greenways to move. Milan is small and dense, with the average commute standing at 4km, making the switch from cars possible and relatively easy.
Besides strengthening the city’s bike lane network, the program also introduced 30km/h speed limits in many roads to make the streets safer for everyone. Some parking lots will be converted to outdoor seating spaces and extended sidewalks.
The program is rethinking Milan as a blueprint for other cities as they scramble to respond to the health and economic crisis. Allowing more room for people in cities means allowing more room for bars, shops and restaurants, boosting street life — a healthy, safe and sustainable plan for our environment.
As part of this initiative, Italy’s Ministry of Transport announced a “bike bonus”, a 60% state subsidy on the purchase of a bicycle or a subscription to a shared mobility network for city residents. The subsidy, which is available until the end of 2020, aims to encourage people to use bikes and scooters to move around.
The importance of public space and public life
In the middle of the lockdown, I remember seeing two old men seating on a bench as I walked my dog. They sat on opposite ends, talking under a tree. They shouldn’t have been there — the 6 pm bulletin by the Civil Protection had become a regular appointment, a litany of death and trauma. Experts advised elderly people to stay home and some would have thought they were being irresponsible — it wasn’t safe, or wise, for them to be there. As I got closer to them, I realized they knew this — they were looking for some company, someone to talk to, they were lonely.
This was something we all felt during the pandemic — we were all lonely to some extent, although we, the younger generations, knew how to use technology to compensate for being alone — Zoom and House Party became part of our daily lives. Mental health, depression and anxiety have been an invisible killer in this global crisis and Italians seemed to strive to fill the void that vanished communities, silent bars, closed schools had left in their lives. They drew rainbows on their windows and pavements, sang from their balconies and shared love messages while isolated.
Balconies became a symbol of Italians’ attempt to bridge this social distance and to give space to social relationships.
Urban lifestyle after Covid-19
At the time of writing, Milan reopened its streets and fear has started to wane from our city. The urban life faces the challenge of enforcing physical distancing — staying physically far from one another — without causing social distancing — staying emotionally, personally, socially close. Streets will be the new homes of our social life, and with less space for cars, the human scale looks poised for becoming the new core or our cities. With a new identity, perhaps more in harmony with nature, the environment and health, cities will keep being the place where we can thrive together.
And Milan could rediscover a new identity founded on new values such as mobility, time and community. As Monocle Magazine’s The Urbanist puts it, “Cities are cities because they have got people in them, and people need to come together to make cities come alive.” We need to come back together one day, and in Milan, we hope we will do it unfolding streets of new lives and encounters.
