Transformations and the resilient city.Lessons from the Reinventing Cities competitions in Milano

After the peak of the housing and socio-economic crisis in the last decade, a profound shift in urban policies occurred. The change has definitively overtaken the previous seasons, which were characterised by processes of urban transformation limited to the mere reuse and redevelopment of portions of brownfields and greyfields. The current urban regeneration policies orient medium and long term scenarios and are featured by projects involving conspicuous portions of the existing city to be reclaimed and re-infrastructured. The trend pays remarkable attention to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change, also in response to the post-pandemic severe conditions, with the aim of enhancing the centrality of public and collective open space in the construction of the contemporary city. The sustainability challenges in spatial planning open up different research fields, particularly regarding the most relevant transformations in the city tissue, where design, financial and organisational resources interact. To this end, urban regeneration processes are increasingly intertwined with mechanisms, tools, and objectives capable of enhancing biodiversity, improving the urban microclimate, reconstructing a correct relationship between permeability and the water cycle, encouraging energy transition, redesigning the urban landscape, and making cities more resilient. These challenges require multifunctional and multi-scalar solutions and a transdisciplinary approach to tackle the multiplicity of territorial, environmental, social, and economic dimensions. The critical analysis of the proposals resulting from the two editions of the Reinventing Cities competitions in Milan (www.c40reinventingcities.org) allows multiple considerations. The debate raised by the competitions provides the opportunity of reflecting on primary needs, challenges and problems of the city, its residents and local activities. On the one hand, it is necessary to study the coherence among strategies, attentions, tools, and practices that strengthen the international positioning of cities. On the other side, it is important to investigate the capability of public policies to design a qualified open space at different scales, leveraging private investments. As a matter of fact, the density of transformations (uses, activities, relationships, constructions) is associated with the production, design and management of public spaces and facilities. The paper intends to critically explore the actors, processes, intentions, and outcomes of these competitions, investigating the ability of the submitted and awarded proposals to combine the adoption of appropriate ecological and environmental value measures with the effectiveness in meeting social expectations of the surrounding populations and sustainability issues. This should happen without ignoring the effectiveness of public policies in monitoring and leading the different moments of the process and the adaptive capacity in addressing social needs and urban health. The physical transformations and functional renovations resulting from competitions are of significant size and impact and subject to challenging investment by public and private actors. The hypothesis to be tested concerns the possibility of combining them with the demand for an increase in urban and environmental quality and the enhancement of city resilience.