RC21 CONFERENCE 2013: Resourceful cities Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013 Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social

Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology S16. Resilience cities and the crisis: Local responses, governance and citizen actions Chiara Rabbiosi chiararabb@libero.it The research was conducted at: URB&COM Lab. Dep. of Architecture and Planning (now Dep. of Urban Studies) Politecnico of Milano (Italy)

Current affiliation: School for Advanced Studies in Tourism Sciences Rimini Campus Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna (Italy)

Civic networks and urban regeneration from the bottom-up: towards a new framework for understanding urban policies? Evidence from Milan, Italy. (draft for conference presentation do not quote) The aim of the proposed paper is to widen the debate about urban resilience with reference to urban regeneration practices arising from civic networks. We propose to focus on urban regeneration from the bottom-up as a tool for empirical research into the restructuring of urban governance. In the end, we argue that urban regeneration proposals arising from civic networks are now more easily legitimated by local governments, as the effects of the economic crisis become stronger and intermingle with a general institutional crisis. We present this thesis with reference to a case study based in Milan, in northern Italy. First, the concept of urban regeneration from the bottom-up is introduced, providing a survey of various definitions. In fact, bottom-up urban regeneration identifies a variety of experiences that may differ in inspirational principles, realization practices and final goals. Second, we refer to some case studies that show how civic networks promoted revitalization by framing a specific area and by integrating public, private, and nonprofit on this spatial basis. In the inner area of Milan that will be mostly affected by the Universal Exposition in 2015, a number of organizations are shaping local, self-organized civic networks whose aim is not just to lobby. They forge a common campus according to new alliances or conflicts through which formal and informal partnerships might be built and in so doing they overcome institutional limits within the citys current urban policy.

The area we describe can be considered as a living laboratory for a new agenda on governance and represents a real challenge for the city of Milan and the new left coalition that was elected in May 2011. The new majority in the City Council is attempting to be more inclusive, in a social and in a spatial sense. While considering the innovative potential of urban regeneration from the bottomup in Milan as elsewhere, we also stress a few of the limitations of this approach. 1. INTRODUCTION Urban regeneration has been a huge topic in the past three decades and, within the fields of urban studies and the social sciences, has often been debated with reference to the implications brought about by decentralization and globalization. These includes the increased political autonomy of cities, especially as welfare providers; the increased economic competition among cities on the global scale and an increased social mix, alongside multilevel and multi-institutional crisis (Vicari Haddock 2004; Vicari Haddock and Moulaert 2009). Economic and political changes embedded in decentralization and globalization have opened up access for actors from the bottom-up. Local players, local authorities, and urban residents have gained access to and legitimacy in urban governance. In a first term, in the seventies and eighties, the nexus between urban regeneration and urban governance was marked out by mega projects, turning urban regeneration into the art of making room for new economic developers and mobility infrastructure and allowing very little space for local players and communities. A second term, from the second half of the nineties onwards, has been characterized by the adoption of a changed approach to urban regeneration by states and local governments that consisted of introducing so-called participative policies.1 In this shift, public policies that addressed the theme of regenerating urban space were thought to enable the integration and coordination of different sectors (improving living conditions by renovating buildings and creating green areas, by creating jobs and services, by integrating the less favored social classes into education and training systems, etc.). Participation lay on two very different levels, the first concerned with the involvement of stakeholders and their interests (via publicprivate partnerships) and the second concerned with the diffuse participation of a variety of private actors (citizens included) (Davoudi et al. 2008). Little by little, co-operative methods for civic involvement in spatial planning have also appeared. This means (1) opting to increase active participation of citizens and (2) sharing responsibility for the spatial environment between public government and civic communities in various domains of spatial research, planning, exploitation and management (Boonstra and Boelens 2011: 100). Participation is a key sphere of urban regeneration from the bottom-up. However, bottom-up urban regeneration is a term that identifies a variety of experiences which may differ in inspirational principles, realization practices and final aims, from so-called integrated public policies to businessled economic development strategies or popular grassroots and neighborhood-based efforts to capture the benefits of urban restructuring for local residents (Pacione 2005: 463475). In any case,
1

Interactive, collaborative and/or participatory planning approaches have been introduced in a variety of countries. In Italy, these approaches have been introduced as a consequence of the Europeanization process that opened up to a new season for public policies, even though most of these experiences have been assessed as controversial, disappointing or ineffective (Bricocoli and Savoldi 2010: 256). As for the Italian context, Carla Tedesco has also pinpointed that bottom-up approaches to urban regeneration and their involvement for new public governance have been acknowledged by most planning and public policy literature only in institutional area based, integrated initiatives (Tedesco 2011).

urban regeneration from the bottom-up presupposes a certain degree of cooperation, if not of participation, among the actors involved in the policy process (Healey 1997). The generally restricted meaning of participation in urban policy, as well as the ideology and implications behind it, was the object of enormous debate at the beginning of the 2000s (Raco 2000; Swyngedouw, Moulaert, and Rodriguez 2002; Jones 2003). In this paper we are less interested in assessing community participation within urban regeneration policies in Milan; nor do we wish to deconstruct the rhetoric of participation that has recently become so overwhelming (Jones 2003) or even to propose a methodology to rethink and apply urban regeneration policy in ways that could yield a step change in wellbeing and sustainability outcomes (Unsworth et al. 2011: 183). The aim of this paper is to widen the debate about urban regeneration with reference to the initiatives promoted by local, self-organized civic networks. We focus on urban regeneration from the bottomup as a tool for empirical research about urban resilience and the restructuring of urban governance. In so doing we also connect, and test, a new concern in urban policies as well as urban studies which consists in matching the effects of the economic recession with a renewed interest in the hidden potential of local areas within cities and propose alternative forms of urban regeneration and revitalization. This trend is generally understood as opposite to the failing pro-growth, businessas-usual approach that characterized the decades before the financial crisis (Unsworth et al. 2011). 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HYPOTHESIS Our definition of bottom-up urban regeneration is derived less from orthodox planning approaches than from poststructuralist approaches. According to this approach, urban political analysis today refers not only to the field of action among political parties and of territorial administration and societal government for the legitimate authorities, but also to a more complex and contradictory realm in which local actors and supranational organizations, local political administrations and nonpolitical institutions are said to play a role (Rossi 2004: 156). Along these lines, Ugo Rossi has taken account of the role played in the process of urban change in Naples by a number of local actors in the 1990s. Rossi distinguished among actors representing legitimate power in the city (the local judiciary, new urban political elites, etc.) and actors representing constituent power (such as institutionalized civil society and urban social movements): The former are revealed as protagonists of dynamics of urban change from above and the latter of dynamics from below (Rossi 2004, ibidem). With reference to this second type of dynamics, Beitske Boonstra and Luuk Boelens have similarly introduced the notion of self-organisation to pinpoint the initiatives for spatial interventions that originate in civil society itself, via autonomous community-based networks of citizens, outside government control (Boonstra and Boelens 2011, 100). Civic networks can be defined as the web of collaborative ties and overlapping memberships between participatory organizations, formally independent of the state, acting on behalf of collective and public interests (Baldassarri and Diani 2007: 736).2 Sociologists have mostly concentrated on analyzing the kind of relationships that connect organizations to each other, the
2

Their role in democratic regimes has been particularly studied by sociology scholars with reference to their role in integrating and mediating among diverse, sometimes alternative interests or ideological standpoints and in spanning social cleavages and different social spheres so that civil society can operate as a public arena for discussion, mediation, and deliberation (see Baldassarri and Diani 2007 for a review).

kind of structure a network might assume (hierarchical, polycentric, hierarchical, vertical), and the strength of ties among different nodes of the network thus facilitating or constraining their crosscutting and bridging functions, as well as their overall contribution to social integration. Different from the classical sociological approach, in this paper we refer to some case studies that showed how civic networks promoted revitalization by integrating public, private, and nonprofit on a spatial basis. This means that we consider local, self-organized civic networks in a similar way to what others have called the community of interest. The term is used to pinpoint a geographically connected population that shares common social and economic interests (...) including important places, traditions that bring residents together, and major stakeholders (Mollenkopf, Pereira, and Romalewski 2013: 6).3 Davide Ponzini has showed that a cultural policy network, the Mount Vernon Cultural District in Baltimore (US-MD) (which indeed also is a community of interest), was able to provide urban infrastructure, manage public space, and create localized common goods (e.g. safety, urban quality, image promotion), since the network tried to produce positive urban effects in order to take advantage of them, well beyond the established relationship of a given urban regime (Ponzini 2009: 445). While Ponzini focused on cultural policy networks, our aim is to show how similarly local, self-organized civic networks set up a process for the realization of urban facilities or immaterial actions of urban revitalization beyond the given urban regime. This, we believe, consists also in a form of urban resilience. We also follow Rossi in as much as we are interested in better understanding the mobilization of actors who do not have direct policy commitments of their own as generative of productive outcomes on the organization of space. It is argued that these actors not only make claims in the public sphere, but also actively contribute to the dynamics of space production that trigger the processes of spatial change at the urban level (Rossi 2004, 158). However we make use of Boelens and Boonstras notion of self-organisation to better understand urban resilience with reference to urban regeneration proposals coming from the bottom-up in a specific inner area of Milan at the end of the 2000s as the crisis was rising and we focus on research results following field work conducted in 2011. Our context of analysis is somewhat framed by three major occurrences. First, the World Universal Exposition was scheduled in 2008 to be hosted by the city in 2015. Under the slogan Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life, the event should embrace the broad issue of sustainability. Second, administrative elections held in Milan in 2011 gave birth to a new local government at city level, guided by a left coalition after decades of center-right government. The new majority in the City Council aims to be more inclusive in a social and in a spatial sense. Third, the effects of the economic recession started to affect Milan the town generally considered the most prominent transport, industrial, and financial hub in northern Italy to a large extent. Our intent is threefold. The first, which is mainly descriptive in its aim, is to answer how urban regeneration from the bottom-up is developing with reference to the case study we portray. The second intent, which is mainly explicative in its aim, is to test our hypothesis that the results of urban regeneration from the bottom-up as it emerges from self-organized civic networks are
3

The term is mainly used in urban policy and urban studies trying to solve districting problems related to political representation, voting rights law, and practice (Mollenkopf, Pereira, and Romalewski 2013). However defining particular communities of interest can be notoriously fuzzy, because shared interests may be either vague or specific, and because people both move locations and change their interests over time (Levitt 2010: 56, quoted in Mollenkopf et al. 2013: p. 7).

particularly topical in the context of the institutional crisis in cities brought about by the economic downturn. They constitute, in a way, a form of urban resilience. The third intent is to present our thesis that this shift is coherent with a next step in the contemporary spirit of capitalism that follows Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's theory: when capitalism is obliged to respond positively to the points raised by critique, to try to placate it and maintain the support of its troops, who are in danger of listening to the denunciations, by the same gesture it incorporates some of the values in whose name it was criticized (2005, 28). 3. CONTEXT The area we have analyzed consists of urban neighborhoods within the urban core and the suburban margins of Milan. The area can be represented as a triangle bordered by the historic canals of Milan, i Navigli, and stretching southwest from an upper point close to the city center towards a base that touches the urban fringes. This area will be that mostly touched by the Universal Exposition in 2015. In fact the Expo site is actually located outside the city limits, slightly more than 10 km to the northwest. However the Navigli have been initially planned as connective waterways to the Expo site. In addition, this area like many peripheral areas of Milan has a strong rural background. Generally, rural areas were destroyed during the Fordist boom of the sixties and seventies, and again in the early 2000s, first in order to make room for factories and a variety of housing buildings, then to make space for service sector buildings and more housing later. However, the area between the two canals was able to maintain some aspects of its former rural past. Today it is a rururban part of town, becoming partially more attractive as greening the city (Krueger and Gibbs 2007) became attractive. Indeed, in relation to some parts of the wasteland and green areas, fighting against the interests of real-estate developers that would be happy to occupy them and develop new urban projects is still ongoing. Real-estate and property development also characterized the changes in the area in the last decade. The upper part is rapidly becoming very attractive for businesses connected with the cultural-cognitive economy (Bovone, Mazzette, and Rovati 2005). Such new businesses found a place in obsolete industrial or manufacturing buildings (Adamantopoulou et al. 2009). The two canals have long represented waterways for transportation of commodities between the city and the surrounding region/territory.4 This function became obsolete at the end of the 1970s. Their hydraulic role decreased as the agricultural activity within and outside the city diminished. Since then theyve represented a physical and infrastructural limit to the area we are observing, which is not very easily accessible. Today the core of the area is at the center of the triangle we have described, where an infrastructural node (underground, train, buses) is located, connecting the area to the city center as well as the hinterlands. Future developments that are already planned should implement the nodal function of the underground station. The casting off of a secondary railway station in the inner part of the area will open up to new valorization projects, not defined yet. The upper part of the area plays host to service activities and skilled artisans, giving birth to a landscape in which traditional and innovative elements coexist. Commercial gentrification has less to do with large-scale urban renewal schemes, including strong retail components, and more to do with spontaneous, non-planned commercial gentrification processes. Relevant forms of competition
4

However their function was and is mainly hydraulic.

and complementarity emerge in this new retail environment that are far more complex than simply a process of old retail forms being displaced by new, trendy ones (Van Criekingen and Fleury 2006). In the southern part, urban retailing is poorer and matches with old, often decaying buildings among which are a huge amount of council estates and new, real-estate driven, middle-class developments. Housing and retailing mirror social divides. The southern part of the area remains a mixture of very popular neighborhoods and areas that are hard to name. Mainly the result of urban sprawl and property speculation, these southern neighborhoods and areas are only lightly touched by urban and/or commercial gentrification. 4. FINDINGS Neighborhoods and local areas seem to have emerged as a new social and spatial sphere to propose innovative, socially attentive forms of urban regeneration (Moulaert and Swyngedouw 2010). Neighborhoods and local areas even those that are often considered as margins within the city contain enormous potential which is underutilized by the residents and under-appreciated by those who do not know the area well (Unsworth et al. 2011: 186). They represent a significant resource to be used in responding to challenges such as those provoked by contemporary multilevel crises (economic, institutional, social) and the lack of urban regeneration policies that could yield a step change in well-being and sustainability outcomes (ibidem). In the area of Milan that we are analyzing, we started5 by identifying the organizations that were already stimulating a process of urban regeneration from the bottom up, be they business-led actors or socially committed organizations. This helped us identify the potential that was already there in the area between the two canals and that could be better understood along a few major spheres (FIGURE 1).
Figure 1: mapping the local potential for urban generation from the bottom up in the area between the two canals, Milan, 2011. DRAFT.

The data presented come from an applied research project brought about in 2011 in Milan in partnership with a local, self-organized, civic network, Mesopotamia Milanese (mentioned in more detail in the next pages).

Waterways and green areas Water is a fundamental element of the southwestern part of the area, together with green areas, represented both by a relatively large amount of urban parks and most importantly by the Parco Agicolo Sud (Rural Park South Milan), a large, protected rural area. Few traditional farms (le cascine) are still present in the area. Most are owned by the City Council that rents them. Only some are still productive. Some others are used for other purposes mainly social activities, such as private community centers or rehab communities. A civic network was set up in 2008 to further protect the part of the Parco Agricolo Sud that falls within the area. The network develops mixed agricultural and leisure projects (see also Table 1, row 3) and represents an original way to form associations between farmers, city residents and city users in common projects. Community gardens, both private and public, are emerging in the area. A self-organized civic network composed by people living on a certain road (Table 1, row 5) started cleaning up an area of wasteland and eventually independently regenerated the surrounding area. The matter of the waterways in the area is far more problematic.6 Here water is not represented only by the canals, but also by a filling channel, scolamtore Olona, running in the open air in certain parts of the area. The scolmatore Olona is a real barrier within the area itself and also lies in bad conditions, spreading negative externalities all around its banks. Other problems arise in the upper part of the Navigli, whose banks are the object of conflict among retailers, residents, and the City Council concerning the management of nightlife. Along the Navigli, three historical rowing clubs actually protect the canal banks and their waters. With their self-interested actions, they also contribute to the maintenance of a common good the canals that had been abandoned since their original function became obsolete. Only few areas alongside the canals have been turned into cycle paths. The request of residents for cycle paths and a better mobility scheme but also became a project proposed by (at least) two civic networks we observed (see Table 1, rows 1 and 5). Residential and productive identities Former manufacturing or industrial spaces have recently provided room for so-called creative and innovative service business and business related with the cognitive-cultural economy (Scott 2008). Involved with architecture, design, and fashion, with some niches for excellent artisan production, they are located in the central part of the area. Many of them have relocated in the area formerly used by Richard Ginori, a porcelain manufacturer that occupied a surface of 60.000 m2. The site has today been upgraded and is used by creative service businesses and for luxury apartments. The high presence of services related with cognitive-cultural economy is also represented by three private universities proposing curricula related mainly to communication and creativity (IULM, NABA, and Domus Academy).

There are two institutional agencies that are in charge of the management of the canals waters. They overlap in certain roles, conflicting over others and lacking autonomy in relation to some other matters that we cannot describe at length here.

It is with reference to the creative service production recently located here that we can identify an original civic network project: Mesopotamia Milanese is a nonprofit association ambiguously founded by a newcomer cognitive-cultural economy business company in late 2008. The goal of the association was to foster a process of urban regeneration in the area. An inclusive approach to participation is also pursued, although the idea of participation pursued by the association is quite restricted since the founder company is eager to open up alliances with similar businesses or associations. However the civic network (Table 1, row 4) is somehow not very active.7 The founders have not been able to develop bonding ties with other companies (which had difficulty in understanding their participation in something that adopted, even very lightly, a community-based approach) or bridging ties with other civic networks, sometimes because of ideological reasons on both sides (community-based association or social business vs. Mesopotamia). The transformations derived from the changes in the productive clusters are also reflected in the urban populations that cross on the area. They are a mix of residents and other mobile populations as well as a mix of social classes in the core of the area between the two canals, but they remains pretty heterogeneous in the other parts. It is in general difficult to circumscribe socio-spatial niches. Blocks of council estates are present in the upper, central, and southern part of the area but in the upper part they mix with new private, upper-classes oriented, redeveloped buildings. As a general trend, the residential profiles become more popular going towards the southern fringes of the area and in the inner southern neighborhoods. Social entrepreneurship and active citizenship There is a significant presence of fertile and active citizenship actions and social entrepreneurship in the area, especially in one of the older central neighborhoods, la Barona, traditionally known as a poor, deviant neighborhood within the city. A network (called Made in Barona, see rows 5 and 6) was founded in 2011 with the aim to enhance the area by emphasizing the social resources that are already located in the area. The network brought together a variety of community-based organizations (for instance the neighborhood radio), cultural associations, residents associations and even businesses, even if only those with social commitments. Some of the organizations that joined the network were already located in the Villaggio Barona, one of the most innovative urban regeneration projects realized in Milan in the past decade. A redevelopment project set up by a philanthropic foundation at the beginning of the 2000s, today it hosts a mix of housing estates, hospitality projects, spaces for local independent companies or associations, a few retailers and a wide public area. Villaggio Barona quickly became a well-known point of reference within the neighborhood and in the whole area between the two canals. In the area, there are also many residents associations, both for residents of private estates and for council estate residents. In addition, in 20102011, left-wing independent candidate Giuliano Pisapia was strongly supported by neighborhood networks created by sympathizers to reinforce ties between civic engagement and the candidate mayor. The networks have continued to represent an important source of urban proposals since Mr. Pisapias election.

Mesopotamia is basically exctinct at the moment we are writing.

Here a number of organizations are shaping local, self-organized civic networks whose aim is not just to lobby but also to promote initiatives for spatial interventions (Table 1, last column), originating in the civil society itself and against government control, as Boenstra and Boelens pinpointed (2011). They forge a common campus according to new alliances or conflicts through which formal and informal partnerships develop and activate or at least try to activate urban regeneration from the bottom-up.
Organization Theme Key-words (self-declared) Urban regeneration projects and other local networks the organization is involved with Navigli Linear Park project

Ass. Bei Navigli Civic network

Water

Space sustainability Quality of life and involvement City and rural landscape CIVES participatory labs on urban agriculture & on meeting Darsena and Navigli regeneration Culture valorization (leisure and tourism) Connection Interdisciplinary Process activation Imagining Parco Sud revitalization of Parco Sud area through art and creativity Milano e Oltre: urban regeneration through visual arts Co-founder of Made in Barona, a network for urban regeneration and urban marketing in Barona neighborhood Partner of CIVES participatory labs project

Connecting Cultures Art research agency

Cultural production

Parco delle Risaie Civic network

Agriculture

Urban agriculture Culture and heritage Participation Place (vs. space) Hospitality Reconnecting

Parco delle Risaie, un cuore agricolo per la citt project Partner of CIVES participatory labs project A few projects proposals on the requalification of a local urban park and proposals towards the requalification of the underground station Supporter of Parco delle Risaie project Supporter of Dencity, a project to develop a cultural policy network in Zona 6

Mesopotamia Milanese Civic network

Economic actors

Comitato Ponti Residents network

Water

Reconnecting Repossession Stakeholders synergy

Environmental requalification of Olona filling channel (project proposal) Environmental requalification of the areas between Naviglio Grande and the railway, through a system of barges (project) Co-founder of Made in Barona, a network for urban regeneration and urban marketing

Consorzio S.I.S. Social business

Social innovation Community development Social bond generator

NABA University

Cultural production

Self-organization Urban ecology Social factory

- La Cordata: Hub Barona, a project for social cohesion and youth - Villaggio Barona Mixed social housing as a regenerating process Founder of Made in Barona Student project themed on the regeneration of the Darsena, with local civic networks

Table 1: Main local, self-organized civic networks proposing urban regeneration and revitalization projects: 2011. DRAFT

A few implications arise from our previous observations. The revitalization and regeneration of the area is not necessarily the ultimate end of bottom-up proposals. In the majority of cases, the local area is a means to realize other aims (similar to what happened in the case study portrayed by Ponzini (2009). This is the case in relation to universities: the local area provides a territorial frame that suits many types of teaching: labs that are organized within the university curricula develop activities within the area. This enhances students skills but also provides activities that often activate a place-making processes within the area. NABA university has started a very light attempt to connect with community-based organizations. As superficial, fragile or circumscribed as this action might be, it is nevertheless the first move towards bridging ties with the local area. The relationship with the area as a means or/and as an end is at the core of urban regeneration from the bottom-up proposal coming from social entrepreneurship, which is represented by a wellstructured entity in the area. A consortium for social business (Consorzio S.I.S.) is active in the area with two different businesses: one operating in the realm of hospitality and integration and another managing a nursery in a newly built part of the area. A third business is located just outside the area, providing clinic services. These social businesses provide services that are necessarily locally scaled, and in so doing activate holistic urban regeneration. The local area, for them, is first a way to provide services (a means) and second an aim. The two layers not only overlap, but end up melting into each other. Social businesses take part in a variety of community-based civic networks, as civic participation is often perceived by social business as coherent with their engagement. One of the three private universities located in the area is planning a huge extension of its campus. This will consist of a new business center (for its private business) but also an auditorium open to the public. The university is also involved in a project to create a student house that will rehabilitate a cascina (thanks to a public long-term concession over the building) which lay in total ruin and abandonment. These actions, outside a public policy framework for urban regeneration, on one side reinforce the universitys property estate and will offer essential services to its paying students. On the other side, the university will also regenerate part of the area: by offering an open auditorium or rehabilitating a public heritage building, it engages in exchange with the area the university its located. Further reflection upon the networking of local actors is needed. A well-structured system of webs and alliances exists. However, they have a high rate of mortality, or they easily change geometry. Some local, self-organized civic networks have reinforced or enlarged themselves as an ad hoc measure to gain access to external funding in order to sustain specific projects. In Milan, many cultural, environmental, or welfare-oriented projects are co-financed by a philanthropic foundation connected with a bank (Fondazione Cariplo). To be granted financing, projects have to be submitted by networks of private and public actors with different profiles. Therefore at the local level we can distinguish among networks that are born specifically to submit proposals for external funding8
8

For instance, this is the case of the CIVES project on participatory labs to discuss issues related to urban agriculture in the area and the requalification of Milan dock, la Darsena. The CIVES project was co-financed by Fondazione Cariplo in 2010. The project was promoted by a network of networks, including civic networks (Fondazione Rete Civica Milano) and cultural organizations operating (ARCI Milano) at city scale or at local scale (Associazione Parco delle Risaie, see Table 1, row 3) and a university (the Dep. Of Architecture and Planning of the Politecnico of Milan, a university which is not located in the area). The project was supported by the City Council, the local city council, one of the agencies that is in charge of managing the valorization of the Navigli (NAVIGLI s.c.a.r.l.), the Rural Park South Milan, the Associazione bei Navigli (Table

10

and those that are free from interests of this kind. The ties among the organizations that compose this second kind of network come more in the form of bonds than of bridging. In this case, urban revitalization and regeneration is more strictly based on the value of social capital. Networking can bring an indirect benefit in terms of reputation and therefore serve the networks own interests, albeit while providing revitalization at a spatial level. The local, self-organized civic networks we have observed also have very different ideas of what valorization of the local area means: some networks rely on the traditional i.e. economic idea of multiplication of economic capital. Organizations involved in civic networks associate different meanings to what they see at the core of their initiatives of urban regeneration or revitalization (see column 3, Table 1). Reconnecting, or mending (ricucire), was a term used to pinpoint the need to mend the divides that physical obstacles create within the area (the railway road belt, the canals, the Olona filling channel). In fact, most of the organizations propose urban regeneration actions that might reduce the physical obstacles.9 However, the mending action does not take into consideration only physical divides. For some civic networks, divides are eminently social, and to regenerate means to activate plugging actions with reference to social deprivation paths. Participation, synergy, bond creating, place making emerge as key terms to foster urban regeneration from the bottom up in the point of view of many organizations. However, they mean very different kinds of participative actions, widely considered along a formal continuum between institutional participation and community-based initiatives. The ecological and environmental dimensions of urban regeneration are very much present in the initiatives proposed from the bottom-up that we observed. However, environmental sustainability is not always debated in its deepest meanings. It is a must-quote, since the area is characterized by the presence of waterways and green areas. Only a few organizations propose projects that discuss the meaning of environmental sustainability and propose articulated evaluation, while others just mention it as a label. Systemic interventions are scarcely proposed. Social sustainability is taken into account from networks but not always emerges in projects. Economic sustainability is acknowledged in any proposal, but in very different manners from proposing light interventions (non-expensive) based on the enhancement of what already exists, and also favoring short commodity chains that would favor local producers. But some networks would like to engage developers especially realestate developers that are expanding in the area in supporting bottom-up initiatives, since realestate developers will also take advantage once the public spaces within the area are more lively and well-maintained.10 Our study focused on forms of urban regeneration or revitalization promoted by local, self-organized civic networks. We have shortly mentioned a few characteristics of these networks actions considering the area as a means or as an end; the role of networking and social capital; the theme of reconnecting; the stress on sustainability in their projects. By proposing these projects, civic

1, row 1), on of the association of retailers of the Naviglio Pavese canalbanks, a farm (Societ Agricola Fedeli), and the Institute for the Valorization of Agriculture (Istituto per la Tutela e la Valorizzazione dellAgricoltura). 9 This is the case of the two projects proposed by Comitato Ponti (Table 1, row 5): reconnecting the divide created by the Olona filling channel via a park alongside it and reconnecting the area between the canals with what is outside the canals thanks to a system of barges. The project proposed by associazione Bei Navigli also would like to reconnect the city to the suburban localities via a linear park along the canal banks (row 1). Mesopotamia Milanese talks about reconnecting the area with the rest of the city, requalifying the underground station at the core of the area (row 4). 10 This kind of strategy was pursued by Mesopotamia Milanese.

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networks behave in a resilient way towards the economic recession and institutional current crises, opening up pathways for urban change (Rossi 2004). 5. DISCUSSION It is generally considered that by working alongside strategic partners within a neighborhood, effective policies may begin from the current position of communities, using resources that are already available and building interconnections between people, buildings, land and skills to realize value that can be harnessed by the locality so that communities can determine their own futures and realize and manage these assets (Unsworth et al. 2011: 199). Will what is happening in some areas within Milan, such as the area we observed, become a form of urban public policy and overcome the lack of a clear policy direction in terms of how to rethink and apply urban regeneration policy in ways that could yield a step change in wellbeing and sustainability outcomes (Unsworth et al. 2011: 183)? To answer this question, we now go back to the second contextual element that we pinpointed earlier: the color change in the City government following elections in 2011. Milan, the urban center generally considered the most prominent transport, industrial and financial hub in northern Italy, has been a traditional stronghold of the right wing since Silvio Berlusconi entered politics in 1993. The new elections in May 2011 unexpectedly saw the success of a left-wing candidate, Giuliano Pisapia. The new major does not even belong to the center-left major national party (PD, or the Democrats) but has always been involved in left-wing movements and minority parties. A well established lawyer, Mr. Pisapia has distinguished himself for defending a variety of discriminated people throughout his legal career. A few months after the new coalition was installed, a Development General Plan (Piano Generale di Sviluppo) was edited (Comune di Milano 2011). The plan supports the idea of conceiving a town as a common good and proposes to reform the city government and relaunch the civil and economic development of Milan (p. 3). This consists in creating an agenda that might be able to face the current crisis and feed a new project for Milan in a moment of decreasing resources. The themes for the City Council agenda are environment and energy;11 society and services;12 city limits and beyond.13 With reference to our discussion, it is important to pinpoint the purpose expressed in the Piano Generale di Sviluppo of making a city oriented towards the future: welcoming and open to the world (p. 5). This involves a reform of the spatial model14 and reinforcing the networks (p. 5). It is also stated that reinforcement of networks should occur, favoring policies and reward mechanisms that will be able to give value to Milan, not only as a dwellers city (citt di residenze) but as a city that invests in knowledge, research, production and qualitative artisanal production and local retailing all of this with an eye to looking at the Expo and through the Expo (ibidem. My translation).
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By promoting a deep change in the mobility, living, and productive patterns, towards major environmental sustainability and a less wasteful model of urban development (cit. My translation). 12 By promoting equal opportunities (among genders, ethnic groups, generations, social classes, and social groups) within the same urban form; by building multiple opportunities to have access to housing services, according to different needs. 13 By identifying a metropolitan method of government that might be able to face the urban agenda regarding public transport and green-belt planning and management concerns, looking at environmental issues and political themes.
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It is this point that has particular importance for our case study. The area that will be mostly touched by the Milan World Expo 2015 corresponds to the southwest area of the city within the Navigli. In fact the Expo site is actually located outside the city limits, slightly more than 10 km to the northwest. The theme chosen for World Expo 2015 is Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life and the event is expected to embrace technology, innovation, culture, tradition, and creativity, and how these relate to food and diet, as well as the broad issue of sustainability. The events initial budget was sensibly reduced with reference to what was initially declared and it was rapidly acknowledged that the only area within the city administrative boundaries that would have possibly benefitted from the public and private investments related to the event was the one related to the Naviglio Grande, since the canal represents the waterway which ideally connects the city to the Expo site. Most of the money allowed for regenerating the city within its limits will be used to finish a longlasting/seemingly never-ending/much-troubled top-down urban regeneration project that concerns the Darsena, the obsolete dock of Milan canals just outside the upper part of the area we have studied. In the previous paragraphs we showed that in the inner area of Milan between the canals, a number of organizations involved in local civic networks are shaping a common campus (Ponzini 2009) through which urban regeneration and revitalization within the area is influenced, often overcoming institutional policy limitations. At the same time these actions integrate the public, private, and nonprofit on a spatial basis and influence the urban governance process through an interplay with the urban, legitimate policy scheme. Indeed, Milan has always been known as a city with a lively civil society and participative entrepreneurship, even though, as Paola Savoldi and Massimo Bricocoli underline, Milanese and Lombard pragmatism has granted very few to strategic institutional policies that promoted urban regeneration from the bottom-up. The local politics arena always preferred use traditional forms of participation that privileged traditional groups of stakeholders (2010: 256). In addition, civil societys wings were strongly clipped by the twenty-plus years of center-right government that incentivized exploitative real-estate redevelopment and annihilated participative projects, if not reifying them and using them as a city marketing strategy. On the contrary, listening to the civil society proposals is a key element on which the coalition guided by Mr. Pisapia would like to be distinguished from its predecessors. In addition, a main point of the current City Council government agenda consists in the decentralization of powers within the city. In fact, differently from what happens in cities such as Rome or Paris, Milan administrative districts within the city (le Zone) have very few competences and decisional power. Their role is mainly advisory. Transferring to le Zone duties and powers from the central City Council has been an issue of great debate, for in the past decades, center-right governments have never wanted to accomplish it.15 The districts have, however, a mayor. A new District Mayor has also been elected for la Zona 6, the district that mainly but not entirely corresponds to the area between the two canals that we have previously described. A professional urban planner, the Presidente del Consiglio di Zona 6, is well rooted in the area. Among the nine

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The new coalition wants to actively promote the role of the districts as a decentralized institution. A Commission for (administrative) Decentralisation, Municipality, and Civil Participation (Decentramento, Municipalit e Partecipazione civile) has been created for each Zona. The district units have been invited to create working groups to identify local criticalities as well as proposals arising from the bottom up. The zone should be granted autonomy should Mr. Pisapia be reelected in 2016,

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district mayors within the city, he can perhaps be said to have more of a double background, matching grassroots experience in civil society with professional expertise in urban regeneration.16 Following the abundance of bottom-up projects to regenerate the district proposed by local, selforganized civic networks and in connection with the novelties both introduced by the new City Council and the horizon of the World Expo in 2015, the District Mayor proposed that both the central City Council and local stakeholders should take part in a MilanoExpo Zona 6 Forum. The project was quite ambitious if we consider Italian urban (and national) politics, highly noted both for a scarce vertical and horizontal communication among different political levels or among Offices and for a scarce tradition of policies really bringing together different urban categories and interests ( Bricocoli and Savoldi 2010; Codecasa and Ponzini 2011). The District Mayors idea was to create an intermediate occasion for debating projects that he and a technical group would then propose to the Councillorships Office explicitly created to coordinate the actions previewed for the World Expo 2015. All juridical persons, such as associations, institutions, organizations, and business companies, were invited to the Forum as long as they had elaborated projects, preliminary initiatives, or socioeconomic development coherent with the Chart and/or as long they were willing to actively contribute with their participation in the operative plan for transformation and valorization of the area around the Waterway Expo 2015. The District Mayor had seen in these projects the chance to take advantage of World Expo 2015 to propose projects that would contribute to the urban regeneration of the area well after the event. The Forum Chart (2012)17 pinpointed three main aims: the promotion of extended and diffused connection of the area from the margins of the city to the city center; the individuation of new public spaces within the city margins, especially where divides were currently present; and the promotion of private, coherent interventions in obsolete or underused spaces. The document for the actuation of the Forum was signed at the end of March 2012. The first presentation to potentially interested stakeholders was planned to take place in June 2012. 6. (FIRST) CONCLUSION What we have shown indicates an interplay between non-politically legitimized initiatives for urban regeneration and revitalization from the bottom up and how civic networks are able to converge different interests into a spatial frame integrating policies and collective action. In a context of economic recession, the urban regeneration and revitalization initiatives and proposals already activated by multiple organizations and civic networks can be considered forms of urban resilience that are raising the interest of public administrations. Even if fragmented or not yet accomplished, these initiatives overcome the institutional limits to urban regeneration policies of any kind within the city. Strategies for mending physical as well as social divides were missing in town, as were paths towards participative forms of urban regeneration framed by at least a few criteria of social, environmental,
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He was also a promoter of the previously mentioned Villaggio Barona (see also Rabaiotti 2000). The document was not publicly published.

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economic, and institutional sustainability. Indeed, recognis(ing) untapped areas of potential by challenging and going beyond the business-as-usual urban policy orthodoxy, and how to enable communities to realize this potential to build their own resilience strategies and improve well-being (Unsworth et al. 2011: p. 83) is not only of interest to self-organized civic networks but also, and more often, to institutional actors, which might be very sincere in their desire to take the path of listening to bottom-up proposals, promoting active citizenship and legitimate forms of urban regeneration interventions coming from the bottom-up. However, this attention seems also an easy way to respond at institutional level this time to the move from turbo capitalism to zombie capitalism .18 The shift which brought about the interplay of actors that we have shown with reference to Milan is coherent with a next step in the contemporary spirit of capitalism if we follow Boltanski and Chiapellos assumption that when capitalism is obliged to respond positively to the points raised by critique, to try to placate it and maintain the support of its troops, who are in danger of listening to the denunciations, by the same gesture it incorporates some of the values in whose name it was criticized (2005, 28). Crises are moments at which hegemonic understandings of the operation of political economies are called into question. This tends to repoliticize identities, institutions and societal structures, and hence opens up space for a proliferation of discourses attempting to interpret the causes of and solutions to the crisis (Oosterlynck and Gonzlez 2013: p. 1077). We have not followed the discursive approach of Oosterlynck and Gonzlez (and neither the one of Jessop and Sum 2001 that they refer to) but we think we have reached similar conclusions. The effective presence of many different stakeholders proposing urban regeneration projects from the bottom-up does not represent only a form of urban resilience. It might be exploited by the City councils to favor local development in the context of the economical and institutional delegitimization that they are experiencing. And, obviously enough, for exploitative business, who might indirectly take advantage of the urban regeneration provided by local, self-organized civic networks and turn it to their own advantage. 7. PROLOGUE. OR THE REAL CONCLUSION. However, that is not the end of the story. During the Christmas holidays in 2012 I had the chance to informally and separately meet the District Mayor and one of the persons that should have taken part in the technical group of the Milano Expo Zona 6 Forum. They communicated to me that the Forum never saw the light of day. Both were disappointed and disenchanted by the general chances for real change in urban policy in Milan. The idea of the Forum was given a cold welcome by the Councillorships at central level. Basically, the Milano Expo Zona 6 Forum was too complex a project. It was a secondary problem beside the other, major problems that the City Council has to solve before the World Expo 2015. But without support and legitimization by the central City Council, the District Mayor considered it very difficult for him and his team to manage the project, considering the lobbies and possible conflicts among the Forums participants. This does not mean that the City Council led by Mr. Pisapia abandoned its aim of fostering bottomup initiatives calling for participation and active citizenship. Indeed, it is opening up space for many
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Some critiques suggest that neoliberalism may have lost its hegemonic appeal and entered a living dead phase, but that it is sustained by macro-economic and macro-institutional conditions such as global over-accumulation, public austerity and indebtedness, and beggar-thy-neighbor governance rationalities (Oosterlynck and Gonzalez, 2008: p. 1076).

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more solid initiatives towards this goal and opening up more space to civil-society, socially mixed proposals.19 At the same time, at a stage of scarce investment by the private sector, we wonder connecting with our earlier conclusion if this is really a case of a new opening up in urban policy and urban governance, or if these policies represent simply a way to make virtue out of necessity. What will happen if the economy booms again? Will the pro-growth, business-as-usual model return, and even be advantaged by the regeneration freely provided by formerly excluded civic networks? As we have seen, the political gap between civil society and political government is still very strong and there is a struggle to really assume participation and active citizenship in a plural way. In addition, the typically Italian familistic way of managing civil society, business organization and politics creates another problematic point that we have not faced here, but that raises ground for further enquiries.

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Indeed a Welfare Forum has been activated, and a public notice was created that projects which were socially innovative and presented by a network of stakeholders would be able to rent abandoned spaces within cities at low prices.

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Oosterlynck, S., and S. Gonzlez. 2013. Dont Waste a Crisis: Opening up the City Yet Again for Neoliberal Experimentation. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (3) (May): 10751082. Pacione, M. 2005. Urban Geography: a Global Perspective. London; New York: Routledge. Ponzini, D. 2009. Urban Implications of Cultural Policy Networks: The Case of the Mount Vernon Cultural District in Baltimore. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 27 (3): 433450. Rabaiotti, G. 2000. Progetti Nella Citt Senza Strumenti Nelle Istituzioni: Un Progetto Alla Barona. Territorio (13): 97106. Raco, M. 2000. Assessing Community Participation in Local Economic Development Lessons for the New Urban Policy. Political Geography (19): 573599. Rossi, U. 2004. The Multiplex City: The Process Of Urban Change in the Historic Centre Of Naples. European Urban and Regional Studies 11 (2) (April 1): 156169. Scott, A. J. 2008. Resurgent Metropolis: Economy, Society and Urbanization in an Interconnected World. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (3): 548564. Swyngedouw, E., F. Moulaert, and A. Rodriguez. 2002. Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: LargeScale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy. Antipode 34 (3) (June): 542 577. Tedesco, C. 2011. Negli Interstizi Delle Azioni Innovative Di Rigenerazione Urbana. Archivio Di Studi Urbani e Regionali (100): 8299. Kruger, R. and D. Gibbs. 2007. The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe. New York, N.Y: Guilford Press. Unsworth, R., S. Ball, I. Bauman, P. Chatterton, A. Goldring, K. Hill, and G. Julier. 2011. Building Resilience and Wellbeing in the Margins Within the City: Changing Perceptions, Making Connections, Realising Potential, Plugging Resources Leaks. City 15 (2) (April): 181203. Van Criekingen, M., and A. Fleury. 2006. La Ville Branche: Gentrification et Dynamiques Commerciales Bruxelles et Paris. Belgeo 1-2: 121. Vicari Haddock, S. 2004. La citt contemporanea. Bologna: Il mulino. Vicari Haddock, S., and F. Moulaert. 2009. Rigenerare la citt: pratiche di innovazione sociale nelle citt europee. Bologna: Il mulino.

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