Greenways as Structures for Urban Change. Milan and Beijing Facing Post-industrial Regeneration

The metropolis of Milan (Italy) and Beijing (China) – even with their differences in the number of inhabitants and dimensions – can be taken as references for Europe and Asia as both are included in the list of Innovations Index (2018) with a comparable rank position. In the last decades, both administrations have started redesigning their urban territory considering the profound transformation in their administrative, educational and cultural centres. This chapter reports the evolution of the post-industrialisation effects on sites in Milan and Beijing and their regeneration as parts of new green networks that represent an ultimate infrastructure based on a series of landscape components. Over the past 50 years, in both metropolises, a kind of parallel progress has endeavoured to apply concepts, strategies and models developed in landscape and environmental design theory. Milan is now a town demonstrating that change derives from opportunities linked to the presence of a strong network of public open spaces, while Beijing is transforming its consolidated built urban fabric by applying the Shan-Shui City and Sponge City processes.