In the past years, Milan has become a model city in public space regeneration. The Piazze Aperte (“Open Squares”) programme, launched in 2018, has become a key reference for municipalities and activists aiming at transforming their cities with safer streets, more attractive and more accessible public spaces, more climate-resilient infrastructure and stronger, more compact and liveable neighbourhoods.

Piazze Aperte aims to enhance public spaces and turn them into gathering places for communities, to extend pedestrian areas, and to promote sustainable forms of mobility to benefit the environment and improve the quality of life in the city. Piazze Aperte uses the “tactical urbanism” approach to put public spaces once again at the center of community life and to encourage people to make the most of public squares, rather than just using them for parking or thoroughfares. By giving people back their community spaces, the hope is that, through activities, gatherings, and even just simply “living” in these areas, public squares will once again regain their full status as local meeting places.

Thanks to the collaboration agreements signed in the programme, the City of Milan and its residents are able to actively cooperate in the design, development, and implementation of public spaces, based on the principles of shared management.

In the past 4 years, Piazze Aperte has redeveloped 40 public spaces covering over 20,000 m2, with the participation of thousands of citizens, NGOs, associations, schools, religious organisations and businesses.