Relazioni disegnano spazi: il canale villoresi come occasione di riqualificazione e riconnessione degli spazi pubblici urbani

According to many urbanists public spaces could be generated by a prior and unitary order result of a planned design. We should focus on connecting and reporting more than building. Our opportunity is to concentrate on builded space, reclaiming and retraining what we already have. Requalification is the way to act, the new therapy of spaces: new networks of relations generate new spaces for the community. Villoresi canal is the case study that we are using to verify this new attitude. It is sited in the north of Milan, where, after Milan-city, we have the most populous and urbanized territory of the entire region. In this part of the region we can find a density of 4.000 inhab/kmq instead of 415 inahab/kmq according to the regional average. The city centers spread around claiming all they could. The north of Milan is characterized by a presence, often forgotten, of Villoresi Canal, a canal that links Ticino river to Adda river developing itself for 86 km. This canal is the opportunity, the resource, that all the cities in the north should exploit designing a new greenway, an ecological corridor. The canal will become the more important thread of the net that can link all the cities in the north of Milan and can become an example for similar metropolitan areas. A network of relations that can generate new public spaces.