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MEGA EVENT PLANNING
Series Editor: Eva Kassens-Noor

MEGA-EVENTS AND
LEGACIES IN
POST-METROPOLITAN
SPACES
Expos and
Urban Agendas
Stefano Di Vita
Corinna Morandi
Mega Event Planning

Series Editor
Eva Kassens-Noor
Michigan State University
East Lansing
MI, USA
The Mega Event Planning Pivot series will provide a global and cross-
disciplinary view into the planning for the worlds largest sporting,
religious, cultural, and other transformative mega events. Examples
include the Olympic Games, Soccer World Cups, Rugby champion-
ships, the Commonwealth Games, the Hajj, the World Youth Day, World
Expositions, and parades. This series will critically discuss, analyze, and
challenge the planning for these events in light of their legacies including
the built environment, political structures, socio-economic systems, soci-
etal values, personal attitudes, and cultures.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14808
 Stefano Di Vita · Corinna Morandi

Mega-Events
and Legacies
in Post-Metropolitan
Spaces
Expos and Urban Agendas
Stefano Di Vita Corinna Morandi
Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi
Urbani Urbani
Politecnico di Milano Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy Milan, Italy

Mega Event Planning

ISBN 978-3-319-67767-5 ISBN 978-3-319-67768-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67768-2

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 Foreword

The literature about mega-events and their legacies has grown in many
directions in the last years. It ranges from analyzing economic and social
effects, local and non-local spatial consequences to geopolitical connec-
tions. Within this existing context, the addition by Stefano Di Vita and
Corinna Morandi selects a specific and innovative perspective, aimed at
interpreting mega-events as symptoms of wider urban processes.
I would like to underline at least three dimensions of this innovative
perspective. First, mega-events build up their own geography, redefining
spatial strategies of different actors in a flexible post-metropolitan space.
The case of the Milan Expo 2015 is a good example of this phenom-
enon. After the conclusion of the World’s Fair, the complex redevelop-
ment of the Expo area has become part of a ‘domino effect’ of interests,
transformation areas, and functional and business strategies by public and
private actors. This ‘domino’ game has a crucial role in a wider redesign
process of spatial transcalar strategies that affect the urban region. The
book by Di Vita and Morandi suggests new analytical and interpretative
tools useful to understanding these post-metropolitan spatial dynamics.
Second, if mega-events have typically been managed in a sort of ‘state
of exception,’ the analysis of the governance tools and mechanisms of
mega-events and their legacies can be considered an interesting example
of the occurring change in urban government and governance dynam-
ics. From this perspective, as Di Vita and Morandi clearly show, the
assessment of the immaterial legacy should be connected with a general
evaluation of the relationships between mega-events and processes of

v
vi    Foreword

the redefinition of the urban agenda. In the Milan case, these connec-
tions are clear and very important. It is not by chance that the Mayor of
Milan—elected in 2016—was the manager of Expo 2015, and that his
managerial skills and attitude were considered one of the reasons of his
success in the electoral competition.
Finally, the book by Di Vita and Morandi provides a useful and well-
documented analysis of the multiple connections between mega-events
and the global crisis. The Milan candidature for the Expo 2015 was pro-
posed before the 2008 global financial and economic crisis, which has
contributed to many changes in the effects and symbolic meaning of the
event. For all these reasons, the reconstruction of the long-term process
of design, management, and conclusion of the Expo 2015 and its legacy
can be considered a worthwhile starting point to reflect on the conse-
quences of the global crisis on urban mega projects.
This book by Stefano Di Vita and Corinna Morandi, based on a
long-term research activity on mega-events mostly conducted at the
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di
Milano, is an updated and interesting analysis of a case study (the Milan
Expo 2015), but also provides a wider gaze on mega-events and their
connections with new urban processes. Through this dual view, the
authors are able to contribute to the international literature on mega-
events by proposing new points of view and new assessment perspectives,
while also giving implicit policy recommendations to public actors and
institutions.

Milan, Italy  Gabriele Pasqui

Gabriele Pasqui completed his Ph.D. in Public Territorial Policies at

the IUAV University of Venice, he is the Director of the Department of
Architecture and Urban Studies at the Politecnico di Milano. Full Professor
of Urban Policies, his key scientific interests include interpretations of
contemporary cities dynamics, urban conflicts, urban populations, local
development policies, strategic planning, urban governance, and policies.
 Preface

On the occasion of a short-term account concerning the Milan Expo

2015, this book aims at proposing new lenses to observe and inter-
pret mega-events. Indeed, this manuscript considers mega-events as a
privileged reflection scenario on contemporary urban phenomena, also
related to global geo-economic and geopolitical trends. This original
approach is consequent to the large diffusion of mega-events and their
high frequency throughout world cities, their capability to accelerate and
synthesize the complexity of usually fragmented urban change processes,
the long duration from their bid to their legacies and their changing role
in relation to different phases of world urban dynamics.
Since the 1990s, the global proliferation of mega-events has been
encouraged by processes of deindustrialization of society (particularly of
cities in countries with advanced economies) and of economic and cul-
tural globalization, affecting urban change (Chalkley and Essex 1999).
Within these processes, the promotion of city brands has grown as a pri-
ority of urban policies, and mega-events have become a privileged tool of
urban marketing because of their attractiveness for international tourism
and media. Their role has changed from opportunities for the innovation
of urban morphology and transformation of spatial and socioeconomic
features to extraordinary occasions for repositioning host cities in world
urban networks (Muñoz 2015).
However, following the historical, industrial-based urban develop-
ment and subsequent service metamorphosis of urban cores, the world
crisis—breaking out in 2008 primarily as a financial and economic crisis,

vii
viii    Preface

but still ongoing as a social and political crisis—now demands a deep

reflection on the goals, tools, and mechanisms of urban change processes
(Rydin 2013; Knieling and Othengrafen 2016). This reflection needs
to also develop against the backdrop of a new manufacturing growth of
urban economies, societies, and spaces (Rifkin 2011; Anderson 2012;
Hirschberg, Dougherty and Kadanoff 2017). While highlighting the
necessary update of growth dependent urban agendas, the crisis sug-
gests the potential development of a further phase, resulting not only in
the end of the last expansive cycle of the real estate market, but also in
the need to promote mega-events and exploit their legacies in a post-
metropolitan perspective. This could be an opportunity to both reduce
the frequent unsustainability of mega-event’s spatial projects, but also to
exploit the material and immaterial benefits of these events for a spatial
and socioeconomic regeneration at a wider scale.
Within this context, the Milan Expo 2015 represents an impor-
tant case study according to both its temporal and spatial dimensions.
On the one hand, the event bid and projects were promoted in 2006,
before the outbreak of the global crisis, whereas its following organiza-
tion, implementation, celebration, and post-event planning phases have
been directly affected by the economic downturn. Accordingly, they
have required different approaches and solutions from the past. On
the other hand, the Expo site’s location, complementary projects, and
related transport infrastructures have involved a wide physical space,
which extends to the regional scale of contemporary urban phenomena
(Brenner 2014). The Milan World’s Fair is located in a wide and artic-
ulated urban region, produced by the overlap of several urban tissues
(mainly residential, productive or mixed used, grown in different histori-
cal phases), large and small fragments of open spaces as well as local and
international infrastructures (providing, at the same time, connectivity,
spaces, and barriers). Through this perspective, this wide and articulated
area can be synthesized as post-metropolitan space (Soja 2000; Balducci,
Fedeli and Curci 2017).
Furthermore, the current diffusion of ICTs—which have contributed
to the improvement of the quality of services provided in both the dens-
est urban cores and the in-between spaces of the urban region1—has led

1 For instance, through the Smart City Expo and the E015 Digital Ecosystem projects (See

Chap. 3).
 Preface    ix

to a redefining of the traditional perception of time and space (Morandi,

Rolando and Di Vita 2016), one of the most significant components of
the legacy of the Milan Expo 2015.
According to these issues, this manuscript detects mega-events as rep-
resentative components of urban dynamics through a comparable con-
text of similar experiences, taking the World’s Fairs as a specific study
scenario. Also through the support of the discussion about previous
Expos, it proposes one of the first assessments and immediate reports
of the Milan Expo 2015 and its short-term legacies, whose effects are
trans-scalar (Bolocan Goldstein 2015): from the local impacts of the
exhibition site to the global repositioning of the city on the world map,
passing through the reorganization of spatial and socioeconomic centrali-
ties at the urban region scale. For instance, a new perception of exist-
ing or improved public spaces and infrastructures from the side of the
users has been experimented with during the Expo celebration. Several
minor events were organized and coordinated throughout the city, ser-
vices provided by the enhanced regional railway system and nodes along
the national railway network strengthened (Bruzzese and Di Vita 2016).
The Milan World’s Fair marks a spontaneous ‘discontinuity within
the continuity’ of both traditional event and city agendas. Indeed,
besides the usual criticalities (i.e., attempts of real estate speculation), it
is characterized by the potential for meaningful innovation, for instance
through: smart and sharing city projects, a renovated culture of agricul-
tural activities stimulated by the event theme Feeding the planet, Energy
for life, post-event proposals of innovative research and productive activi-
ties as well as spatial and administrative reorganization from the scale of
the Municipality to that of the Metropolitan City.
While the crisis strongly affected the event organization, both dur-
ing the Expo celebration and the (still ongoing) post-event phase, new
economic activities and social relationships have also grown, accord-
ing to several spatial regeneration projects. Therefore, the book aims at
assessing and highlighting not only how the Milan World’s Fair has been
affected by the economic downturn. It aims at understanding also how
the event has been involved within and contributed to the current urban
innovation process (Armondi and Di Vita 2017), and which debate
about a new urban agenda is going on (Pasqui 2015).
This debate has developed according to the growing regional and
macro-regional scale of contemporary cities (Hall, Pain 2006; Scott
2001; Soja 2011; Brenner 2014), the growing global networks they
x    Preface

increasingly belong to (Sassen 1994; Castells 1996), as well as to the

(already mentioned) renewed demands for a new development model
expressed by the world crisis. However, within the never resolved ten-
sions between cities and nation-states, this debate cannot ignore the
current worldwide increase in new nationalistic movements. This grow-
ing reaction to globalization—mainly expressed in 2016 through the
traumatic events of Brexit in the UK, the election of Donald Trump as
President of the USA along with the growth of the National Front in
France—tends to re-strengthen the importance of national borders.
Therefore, this process undermines those world city networks (Taylor
2004; Herrschel and Newman 2017), which have been developing (since
at least the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989) and for which mega-events
have been an important driver.
As mega-events are here considered as potential keys for reading con-
temporary urban phenomena, the Milan case study—in comparison with
the others explored by this publication—stimulates a reflection about a
necessary updating of ordinary urban policies and studies. From this per-
spective, this book is supported by:

(i) a thematic and multidisciplinary survey about mega-events and

their legacies (Chap. 1);
(ii) a deep analysis of the Milan Expo 2015, its material and imma-
terial legacies and projects, as well as the ongoing post-event
phase, also through a confrontation between extraordinary and
ordinary planning and management tools (Chaps. 2 and 3);
(iii) 
a reflection about the Milan Expo and post-Expo transcalar
effects according to the current need for an updated and postcri-
sis urban agenda (Chap. 4);
(iv) a synthetic, but updated comparison of the Milan Expo 2015
with a selection of other recent World’s Fairs (in terms of goals
and achievements) in order to better understand the event’s
material (i.e., spatial and infrastructural) and immaterial (i.e.,
cultural, economic, political, and social) relationships with host-
ing cities and regions. These cases refer to different temporal
and spatial contexts: from the Lisbon Expo 1998 and Zaragoza
Expo 2008 to the Shanghai Expo 2010. According to the wide
articulation of event typologies—with differences in terms of
duration (temporary or permanent), repetitiveness (extraordi-
nary or periodic), specific themes (sporting, cultural, political,
 Preface    xi

or religious), scale (world, international, or national) as well as

project size (small or large), and spatial model (concentrated or
spread) (Roche 2000; Guala 2015)—the selection of just Expo
case studies aims at configuring a homogeneous study scenario
(Chap. 5).
(v) some suggestions for future World’s Fairs and their integration
within urban agendas according to current spatial and socioec-
onomic dynamics characterized by contradictory effects of the
2008 global crisis within consolidated processes of urban region-
alization (Chap. 6);
(vi) to conclude, a theoretical reflection about the important contri-
bution of specialized and multidisciplinary mega-event studies to
research in the domain of the urban studies (Chap. 7).

Though this publication aims to mainly exploit a point of view from

urban planning, policy, and geography, at the same time, it provides hints
towards impact studies related to large urban projects and other discipli-
nary approaches (i.e., from urban economy to urban sociology). Within
the current contradictory framework between global economic and cul-
tural development centered on cities (which are more and more nodes of
worldwide material and immaterial networks) and an increasing world-
wide return of nationalism (which could affect the phenomenon of glo-
balization through which post-Fordist cities and mega-events have been
developing), this book may be of interest to those readers (students,
researchers, and policy makers) carrying out research and planning activi-
ties not solely devoted to mega-events, but also on overall urban processes.

Milan, Italy Stefano Di Vita

Corinna Morandi

References
Anderson, Chris, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. New York: Crown
Publishing Group, 2012.
Armondi, Simonetta and Di Vita, Stefano (eds.), Milan: Productions, Spatial
Patterns and Urban Change. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.
Balducci, Alessandro, Fedeli, Valeria and Curci, Francesco (eds.), Post-
Metropolitan Territories. Looking for a New Urbanity. London and New York:
Routledge, 2017.
xii    Preface

Bolocan Goldstein, Matteo, “Post-Expo Geographical Scenarios”. Urbanistica

155 (2015): 118–122.
Brenner, Neil (ed.), Implosions/Explosions. Towards a Study of Planetary
Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2014.
Bruzzese, Antonella and Di Vita, Stefano, “Learning from (Milan) Expo”.
Territorio 77 (2016): 95–105.
Castells, Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy,
Society and Culture. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.
Chalkley, Brian and Essex, Stephen, “Urban Development Through Hosting
International Events: a History of the Olympic Games”. Planning
Perspectives, 14:4 (1999): 369–394.
Guala, Chito, Mega Eventi. Immagini e legacy dalle Olimpiadi alle Expo. Roma:
Carocci, 2015.
Hall, Peter and Pain, Kathy (eds.), The Polycentric Metropolis. Learning from
Mega-City Regions in Europe. London: Earthscan, 2006.
Herrschel, Tassilo and Newman, Peter, Cities as International Actors. Urban
and Regional Governance: Beyond the Nation State. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017.
Hirschberg, Peter, Dougherty, Dale and Kadanoff, Marcia, Maker City: A
Practical Guide for Reinventing Our Cities. San Francisco: Maker Media,
2017.
Knieling, Jorg and Othengrafen, Frank (eds.), Cities in crisis. London and New
York: Routledge, 2016.
Morandi, Corinna, Rolando, Andrea and Di Vita, Stefano, From Smart City
to Smart Region. Digital Services for an Internet of Places. Cham: Polimi
Springerbrief, Springer, 2016.
Muñoz, Francesc, “Urbanalisation and City Mega-Events. From ‘Copy & Paste’
Urbanism to Urban Creativity”. In Viehoff, Valerie and Poynter, Gavin
(eds.), Mega-event Cities: Urban Legacies of Global Sport Events. Farnham and
Burlington: Ashgate, 2015.
Pasqui, Gabriele, “Expo 2015 and Milan: Intertwined Stories”. Urbanistica 155
(2015): 106–109.
Rifkin, Jeremy, The Third Industrial Revolution. How Lateral Power is
Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Roche, Maurice, Mega Events and Modernity. London and New York:
Routledge, 2000.
Rydin, Yvonne, The Future of Planning: Beyond Growth Dependence. Bristol:
University of Bristol Policy Press, 2013
Sassen, Saskia, Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing,
1994.
 Preface    xiii

Soja, Edward W., Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 2000.
Soja, Edward W., “Regional Urbanization and the End of Metropolitan Era”. In:
Bridge, Gary and Watson, Sophie (eds.), The New Blackwell Companion to the
City. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011: 679–689.
Taylor, Peter, World City Networks. A Global Urban Analysis. London and New
York: Routledge, 2004.
 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Eva Kassens-Noor, the series Editor, for the
opportunity, she has given us to publish this book and for her ‘patient
wait.’
Gabriele Pasqui, the Director of the Architecture and Urban Studies
Department at the Politecnico di Milano, has been sustaining the focus
on mega-events and urban policies as a research axis of the department.
Matteo Bolocan Goldstein has contributed to our understanding of
the trans-scalar dimension of the mega-events and contemporary urban
phenomena analyzed in the book, as well as of the stakeholder network
of the Milan Expo 2015.
Andrea Rolando has supported our analyses and reflections about the
importance of material and immaterial networks in the organization of
the Milan Expo 2015 and its urban region.
Susi Botto and Paolo Galuzzi have provided precious materials, infor-
mation, and reflections about the Milan Expo 2015 process, as well as
useful comments and feedback on our work during its implementation.
Fabio Lepratto has elaborated the maps integrated into and support-
ing our manuscript.
Zachary Jones has professionally reviewed the text of the book.

xv
 Contents

1 Mega-Events and Legacies: A Tradition of Studies 1

Stefano Di Vita

2 The Spatial Projects of the Expo 2015 and the Post-Event:

The Relationship with Milan’s Urban Change Before,
During, and After the Crisis 15
Corinna Morandi

3 The Planning and Governance of the Expo 2015 and

the Post-Event: The Growth of a New Awareness—
Overcoming the State of Exception 39
Matteo Basso and Stefano Di Vita

4 From the Post-Expo 2015 to an Urban Agenda for Milan 65

Corinna Morandi

5 World’s Fairs and Processes of Urban Change: New City-

Regional Nodes and Networks 79
Stefano Di Vita and Corinna Morandi

xvii
xviii    Contents

6 Towards a Post-crisis Urban Agenda: Learning from

Mega-Events 115
Stefano Di Vita

7 Mega-Events and Urban Studies: Which Mutual Effects? 137

Stefano Di Vita and Corinna Morandi

References 147

Index 149
 About the Authors

Stefano Di Vita completed his Ph.D. in Urban, Regional and

Environmental Planning at the Politecnico di Milano, where he is
research fellow and adjunct professor in the fields of Urban Planning and
Design. His main research interest concerns issues related to sustainabil-
ity and innovation of urban change processes, also focusing on mega-
events.
Corinna Morandi is Full Professor in Town Planning and Urban
Design at the Politecnico di Milano. The main research areas concern
town planning in the metropolitan area of Milan and the role of com-
mercial and multifunctional poles in urban dynamics. She is member of
the International Ph.D. course in Urban Planning, Design and Policy, at
the Politecnico di Milano.
Matteo Basso completed his Ph.D. in Regional Planning and Public
Policy, he is a research fellow at the Department of Design and Planning
in Complex Environment at the IUAV University of Venice. He teaches
the course Cities, Global Change and Sustainable Development at the
Venice International University. His research interests are spatial analysis,
urban policy analysis, and design.

xix
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Expo 2015 in the Milan urban region: airports,

major roads and railways, metro lines and redevelopment
areas (former railway yards and metropolitan hubs) 34
Fig. 2.2 Expo 2015 along the North West urban axis: transport
infrastructures (roads, railways and metro lines) and
redevelopment areas (1. Porta Nuova; 2. Farini
railway yard; 3. Bovisa; 4. CityLife; 5. Portello;
6. Cascina Merlata; 7. Stephenson) 35
Fig. 2.3 Expo 2015 along the North West conceptual axis:
Cathedral, Castle, Cemetery, Expo Site and Trade Fair 35
Fig. 2.4 Expo 2015 and the peri-urban surrounding context:
interchange node, entrances and local connections,
pavilions, perimeter canal, Lake Area and Expo village 36
Fig. 3.1a–h Milan Expo site during the staging of the 2015 World’s
Fair (May–October 2015) 55
Fig. 3.2a–d Milan Expo site during the post-event temporary reopening
on the occasion of the summer event called Experience
(June–September 2016 and June–September 2017) 59
Fig. 5.1 Comparison of the 4 Expo sites (updated in 2017):
localization in the urban region and relations with transport,
green and blue networks 107

xxi
xxii    List of Figures

Fig. 5.2 Comparison of the 4 Expo sites (updated in 2017):

settlement layouts and local context 108
Fig. 5.3 Comparison of Expo and post-Expo layouts in Lisbon
(1998–2017) and Zaragoza (2008–2017) 109
Fig. 5.4 Comparison of Expo Shanghai 2010 and Milan
2015 layouts, and of related permanencies in 2017 110
 CHAPTER 1

Mega-Events and Legacies: A Tradition

of Studies

Stefano Di Vita

Abstract As anticipated in the Preface, this book has different goals.

It aims at emphasizing the role of mega-events, and Expos in particu-
lar, as lenses to observe urban dynamics in the current conjuncture on
the occasion of providing a first international reflection about the out-
comes and short-term legacies of the Milan Expo 2015, also through
an essential comparison with previous experiences. Accordingly, by
stressing the connections between Expos and urban phenomena, it
aims at highlighting the potential role of mega-events in contribut-
ing to the ongoing multidisciplinary debate about the development of
post-crisis urban agendas and studies. In order to introduce and sup-
port the implementation of these contents, this chapter provides a bib-
liographical analysis regarding the legacies of mega-events, which may
take various forms: spatial and infrastructural, social and cultural, envi-
ronmental and touristic, economic and political, as well as in terms of
urban marketing. This articulated system of issues is dealt with through
a comparison of thematic and multi-disciplinary references about
mega-events promoted at international level within different discipli-
nary fields of urban studies.

Keywords Mega-event legacies · Material vs immaterial · Short-term

vs long-term · Local vs wider area

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Di Vita and C. Morandi, Mega-Events and Legacies
in Post-Metropolitan Spaces, Mega Event Planning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67768-2_1
2 S. DI VITA

1.1  Outlining an International Literature Review

Notwithstanding their historic origins (since at least the second half of
the nineteenth century), the recent increasing interest in mega-events
has resulted from the proliferation of post-Fordism and globalization
(Chalkley and Essex 1999). Despite the frequent negative impacts and
conflicts created by mega-events—i.e., cultural, economic, environmen-
tal, political, social, and spatial—their rising appeal, in particular from the
late 1980s up until the global crisis in 2008, has referred to their capa-
bility to speed up processes of urban development and change (some-
times already ongoing) in host cities. This acceleration is made possible
by their ability to concentrate—both temporally and spatially—physical
and intangible resources, otherwise dispersed.
According to exceptional concentrations of economic and human
resources, mega-events are able to simultaneously produce different
kinds of negative and positive outcomes, as well as generate different
kinds of legacies—not only material, but also immaterial. ‘While World’s
Fairs historically were celebrations of science and technology, more
recently they have also been driven by local desires to make major invest-
ments in infrastructure and to revitalize urban neighborhoods’ (Wilson
and Huntoon 2001, p. 2). A similar shift has also involved sporting
mega-events, such as the World Cup and the Olympic Games, which are
comparable to Expos in terms of negative impacts, positive effects, and
legacies.
The Olympics, often considered the most important mega-events,
form the greatest part of global event studies and bibliographical refer-
ences. Therefore, this manuscript intentionally focuses on World’s Fairs.
Nevertheless, this chapter aims at reflecting in general terms about the
concept of the legacies of mega-events, which are frequently dealt with,
but, at the same time, relate to different issues and meanings:

• from the material legacies of event facilities and venues, transport

and technological systems or green and blue networks to the imma-
terial legacies of human capital, businesses and urban brands;
• from direct legacies, strictly related to the short-term event celebra-
tion, to indirect legacies more extensively related to the medium-
and long-term capability to exploit and reuse the event facilities,
venues and infrastructures;
 1 MEGA-EVENTS AND LEGACIES: A TRADITION OF STUDIES 3

• from local legacies, concerning the immediate surroundings of the

event sites, to wider legacies, involving the entire hosting cities and,
in some cases, the hosting countries.

However, this chapter does not aim to add new reflections to a long-
standing international debate about mega-event legacies, which have
already been shown through a vast and multi-disciplinary field of studies
(Getz 2008a, 2012) and bibliographical references. On the contrary, it
aims primarily at providing some introductive evidence for the rest of the
book by focusing on the legacy component of mega-events as it connects
the extraordinariness of Expos, as well as of Olympics and World Cups,
with the ordinariness of urban dynamics.
Broadly speaking, the international literature mainly focuses on
impacts and benefits traditionally concerning urban cores or whole coun-
tries, rather than contemporary urban phenomena now defined as post-
metropolitan spaces (Soja 2000; Balducci et al. 2017). This book, in
contrast, aims at dealing with contemporary urban issues resulting from
the relationships between mega-events and cities from the point of view
of the regional scale of contemporary urban issues.
World’s Fairs and other mega-events are used to be considered
extraordinary episodes within ordinary urban change processes, whose
iconic attractiveness has particularly grown since the 1980s. However, in
the context of the world crisis, the supposed mega-event singularity no
longer seems able to easily activate extraordinary dedicated funds, either
public or private—as highlighted by the Milan Expo 2015, the main case
study of this book. Even when able to provide exceptional economic
resources—as for instance in some developing countries, such as in the
BRICS and Oil-rich countries—the contrasts between the self-referential
logics of world events and the needs of local communities have become
more and more evident and conflictual (Müller 2014a, b; Makarychev
and Yatsyk 2016; Vainer 2016). Furthermore, the supposed mega-event
singularity demands a high level of complex management to interlink
mega-event strategies, often without success, with local development
schemes (Hiller 2012). That is, it demands a huge quantity of human
skills that can frame long-term and wide-ranging spatial effects. Indeed,
mega-events can foster urban and territorial effects all along their ‘life
cycle,’ from the starting of their bid to their planning and construction;
from their staging to the capitalization of their benefits.
4 S. DI VITA

Event typologies are quite articulated according to their different

specializations (i.e., business, cultural, political, religious, or sporting),
target (i.e., global, world regional, national, regional, or local), and tem-
poral intervals (i.e., occasional, periodic, or permanent) (Roche 2000;
Guala 2015). All large events, and not only the mega-events, are poten-
tially capable of producing different kinds of negative impacts, positive
effects, and legacies, both temporary and permanent, which can differ
from one event to another due to both the event typologies and the spe-
cificities of their related projects and contexts. On the one hand, these
differences can be seen in the development of small- or large-scale inter-
ventions, as well as through the implementation of new services or the
improvement of existing ones. On the other hand, they can be identified
in the multi-scalar economic, environmental, political, social, and spatial
qualities of their hosting cities and countries, as well as of their surround-
ing neighborhoods,1 which can also express an articulated system of dif-
ferent interests, locally or globally driven, and often conflictual.
While the total number of variables affecting event outcomes is vast,
there are not necessarily direct nor automatic connections between an
event’s success and its long-term benefits, which mostly depend on the
post-event organization and management. Therefore, by assuming the
perspective of the city, and not just that of the event, the post-event
planning and governing—often underestimated and postponed until
after the event celebration—is crucial. Toward this end, some interna-
tional experiences can be considered as paradigmatic cases, such as the
1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and the 2012 Olympic Games in
London. In the case of Barcelona, we refer to the strong relationship
between the event venues and infrastructures promoted by the 1986
Olympic Plan and the strategies and projects for the city and its urban
region, first promoted by the 1976 Metropolitan Plan (Marshall 2004;
Monclús 2007; Brunet 2009). In the case of London, we refer to the
establishment of the Olympic Park legacy company, and the elabora-
tion of post-event plans to reuse the area, before the event celebration,
that helped ensure success (Bernstock 2009; Evans 2010; Kassens-Noor
2012).
Mega-event legacies are heterogeneous. One of the long-term benefits
can consist of the improvement of the spatial quality of the hosting cities.

1 See also Chap. 6.

 1 MEGA-EVENTS AND LEGACIES: A TRADITION OF STUDIES 5

For instance, through the promotion of different kinds of interventions,

which may be directly connected or collateral to the events themselves:
reusing abandoned building stock; transforming large brownfields;
exploiting cultural, historical, and natural heritage; as well as diffusely
increasing the quantity or improving the quality of public spaces, facili-
ties, services, and transport networks. These are permanent changes in
the urban fabric, even though provided by temporary initiatives, both in
terms of large urban transformation projects and molecular urban regen-
eration processes.2 Accordingly, mega-event legacies can refer to the
improvement of the quality and efficiency of urban networks concerning
accessibility and mobility—both physically in terms of people and goods
and digitally with information—as well as the production and distribu-
tion of energy and clean water or the collection of waste. Such efforts
can produce positive outcomes from both the spatial and environmental
points of view.
Strictly concerning the quality of the local environment, the lega-
cies of mega-events can consist of decrease of the urban footprint: for
instance, by reclaiming polluted soils and waters as well as experimenting
in the fields of green architecture, energy, and mobility (Di Vita 2010;
Case 2012; Viehoff and Poynter, 2015). Consequently, mega-events
can stimulate the economic development of both the hosting cities and
countries by involving various economic sectors. From the develop-
ment and innovation of building products and processes to the growth
of tourist and cultural activities, these processes enable the incremental
diversification of the local economy. The attractiveness of mega-events
for international media, together with the related strategies of urban
marketing, can improve the rank of host cities, with potentially positive
effects in repositioning them within the world urban networks, as well as
in boosting economic investments and activities along with commercial
relationships.3

2 Several are the studies and related bibliographical references, which deal with this spe-

cific issue. Within them, we would like to specifically mention (Essex and Chalkley 1998;
Chalkley and Essex 1999; Cashman and Huges 1999; Hiller 2006; Coaffee 2007; Smith
2012).
3 Even in this case, several are the studies and related bibliographical references, which

deal with this specific issue. Within them, we would like to specifically mention (Hall 1992;
Preuss 2004; Clark 2008; Getz 2008b; Page and Connell 2012).
6 S. DI VITA

Finally, mega-events can provide several cultural, political, and social

benefits:

• the increasing of the political consensus at both the local and the
international level;
• the growth of employment and income (for citizens, corporations,
and organizations) determined by the economic activities directly
and indirectly generated;
• the boostering of the local identity, awareness, self-esteem,
and belonging for citizens involved, even if only as spectators
of the event entertainment and users of the event venues and
infrastructures;
• the growth of local sensitivity to cultural or sporting activities that
can be provided by the specialized themes and activities promoted
by the different typologies of mega-events through a process of
‘collective learning’;
• the strengthening of the event organization and management, as
well as of the ordinary cooperation capabilities, for both public and
private actors—such as institutions, firms, and the third sector—
directly involved with and interacting in the event and post-event
planning and governing, also through innovative procedures, within
a process of ‘human capacity building’;
• the development of skilled professional expertise, as well as of spe-
cialized research groups and activities, whose knowledge can be fur-
ther exploited at the local and international levels.4

These examples, which are not all-encompassing, but still evocative,

highlight how the different forms of mega-event legacies can empower
urban development and change. In the case of Madrid, the physical leg-
acy made by sport venues was provided by the only recent city bids for
the Olympic Games, then assigned to London (2012), Rio de Janeiro
(2016), and Tokyo (2020). Therefore, this case shows that the mega-
event legacies can be distinguished between a host legacy and a bid
legacy:

4 Even in this case, several are the studies and related bibliographical references, which

deal with this specific issue. Within them, we would like to specifically mention (Roche
2000; Burbank et al. 2001; Macrury and Poynter 2009; Hayes and Karamichas 2011;
Costa 2013; Wilson 2013; Viehoff and Poynter 2015).
 1 MEGA-EVENTS AND LEGACIES: A TRADITION OF STUDIES 7

• the first refers to the pre-, during and post-event effects;

• the second refers to the material and immaterial effects of the candi-
dature phase alone (Kassens-Noor et al. 2015).

Nevertheless, the crucial question relates to the costs—not only eco-

nomic, but also environmental and social—of these increasingly expen-
sive operations. Contemporary global society has become intensely aware
that mega-events frequently produce negative outcomes. As practices and
studies highlight, there are several risks, which can affect both the events
and their hosting cities.
Mega-event projects are frequently expensive and oversized; there-
fore, the buildings and infrastructures they leave behind are difficult
to reuse after the conclusion of the events themselves. These massive
interventions often rely merely on a business model conception, pro-
moted by local governments or driven by the responsible international
organizations—such as the BIE for the Expos, as well as the IOC for
the Olympics and the FIFA for the World Cup (Gaffney 2013; Müller
2014a, b). They are often promoted through strong top-down and anti-
democratic procedures, justified by the complexity of their processes
and their limited time frame. Accordingly, they risk encouraging some
negative trends of globalization, for instance by emphasizing ongoing
worldwide processes of ‘urbanilisation’ (Muñoz 2015), as well as already
growing social inequalities and conflicts. Furthermore, while mega-
event legacies can be potentially positive, their short-term outcomes
can be reduced by poor financial and economic performances, leading
to increases in public debt. At the same time, the related interventions
risk deepening imbalances within the real estate market of host cities—
between the areas directly involved by mega-events and those that are
not—potentially provoking gentrification.
The mega-event legacies can also be temporarily delayed or definitely
lost (Kassens-Noor et al. 2015). As anticipated, the acceleration of urban
development and change processes potentially provided by mega-events
are frequently affected by difficulties in the reuse of dedicated venues
and infrastructures. These problems derive from the frequent inflex-
ibility of the projects, due to a diffused incapability to plan and govern
the post-event phase from the beginning of the process concerning the
event candidature, organization, and celebration. Several mega-event
editions provide evidence to this critical and expensive outcome. To cite
some very well-known problematic cases, Seville originally intended to
8 S. DI VITA

transform the Expo 1992 site into the scientific and technological park
‘Cartuja 93.’ After 25 years, this process has not yet been concluded.
Similarly, the sport venues built for the occasion of the 2004 Olympics in
Athens are mostly abandoned and degrading.

1.2  Legacies: Opportunities and Risks

In synthesis, mega-events can represent an important stimulus for urban
development and change processes, but they can also generate onerous
projects connected to ephemeral situations (De Magistris 2004). As their
risks are numerous and the uncertainties about their outcomes and lega-
cies are high, it should be useful to preliminarily assess—at the beginning
of the process—the economic, environmental, social, and spatial bene-
fits determined by alternative projects (Furrer 2002). In order to reduce
their risks and to increase their positive benefits, in both the short and
long term, a preliminary assessment of the mega-events could determine
their ability to achieve urban development goals, either previously or ‘ad
hoc’ planned. While mega-events risk altering local planning strategies
and actions, the event and post-event planning and management could
be integrated within long-term organic and participated urban change
processes or within long-standing wide and shared urban visions (Wilson
2009). This approach can contribute to overcoming the event-centric
logic, often promoted by world urban elites, with a city logic, more con-
nected to citizens’ needs; for instance, through planning and governing
the exploitation of the mega-event’s legacies from the beginning of the
event organization and management processes (Cashman and Horne
2013), both in the case of the acceleration of pre-bid urban agendas
(‘mega-event accelerated legacy’), or the development of new projects
and plans (‘mega-event motivated legacy’) (Kassens-Noor et al. 2015).
According to the majority of specialized studies, mega-events can be
successfully celebrated in relation to the correspondence between costs
and availability of economic resources, the cooperation between pub-
lic and private actors, as well as the executive coordination of different
projects (De Magistris 2004). It means that the success of the mega-
events relies first on the efficiency of their organization and management
process. Additionally, mega-events can generate short- and long-term
benefits—that is, positive effects and legacies—if they are included
in or coordinated with long-standing urban scenarios, in particular if
 1 MEGA-EVENTS AND LEGACIES: A TRADITION OF STUDIES 9

developed through a wide participation of stakeholders. On the con-

trary, they risk to not be able to positively boost and increase ordinary
urban development and change processes, but they can generate prob-
lems for host cities and countries. In this sense, the deep crisis in Greece
and Brazil is also strongly related to top-down development choices and
a system of corruption, connected to the speculation of the real estate
market, that were accelerated and broadened by local editions of world
events. Accordingly, the impacts of the 2004 Athens Olympics, the 2014
Brazil World Cup, and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (Kassens-Noor
2012; Breathen et al. 2015; Broudehoux and Sánchez 2015) have con-
tributed to the development of the current economic, social, and politi-
cal problems of these cities and countries.
According to all these considerations, the post-event development
seems more important than the mega-events themselves. However,
the combination with the current conjuncture led by the 2008 crisis
demands a deep reflection about which legacies could be more advan-
tageous and useful in relation to the goals of a really sustainable eco-
nomic, environmental, and social development, which can no longer be
postponed. Therefore, the planning and governing of mega-event leg-
acies should now be considered necessary, but no longer sufficient, to
determine truly sustainable long-term benefits. Indeed, they very much
depend on the precise intended goals for these legacies, as revealed by
contradictions identifiable even in the most successful cases.
Within the above-mentioned case of Barcelona, we can see the shift
from the success of the 1992 Olympics and its post-event reuse of ven-
ues and infrastructures, to the 2008 real estate crisis, also determined by
national and local development strategies based on the building sector,
even by exploiting the occasion of mega-events. This is an example of
how long-term negative impacts can also occur when mega-events are
entirely coordinated within ongoing local urban change and develop-
ment processes. Furthermore, within the other above-mentioned case
of London, the contrast between the successful Lee Valley spatial and
environmental regeneration process, on the one hand, and the Tower
Hamlets gentrification, on the other—respectively, directly and indirectly
connected to the 2012 Olympics (Raco and Tunney 2010; Poynter et al.
2015; Viehoff and Poynter 2015)—is clear. It shows that problems can
also occur when a specific mega-event legacy plan has been approved in
advance.
10 S. DI VITA

1.3  Conclusion
Based on all of these reflections, and on the occasion of a first interna-
tional accounting of the outcomes and short-term legacies of the Milan
Expo 2015, the general goal of this book is to reflect on the current
meaning of mega-events. Accordingly, it aims at verifying the doubts
concerning the mega-event processes and the hypotheses of their neces-
sary innovation in relation to the current deep economic, sociocultural,
political, and spatial changes determined by the global crisis. Therefore,
the following chapters will prove the issues anticipated by this first sec-
tion focusing on the main case study of the Milan Expo 2015 and post-
Expo,5 still ongoing. These aspects will also be reinterpreted in relation
to other recent World’s Fairs, taken as comparative case studies, includ-
ing the Lisbon Expo 1998, Zaragoza Expo 2008, and Shanghai Expo
2010.6 Within the book’s conclusions, theoretical doubts and hypotheses
raised in this section, together with the empirical evidences presented in
the following four chapters dedicated to the case studies (Chaps. 2, 3, 4
and 5), lead to the final theoretical reflections about the potential contri-
butions of mega-events to new urban agendas and studies.7

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 CHAPTER 2

The Spatial Projects of the Expo 2015

and the Post-Event: The Relationship
with Milan’s Urban Change Before, During,
and After the Crisis

Corinna Morandi

Abstract This chapter is the first dedicated to the Milan Expo 2015,
which is the main case study of this book according to its relations
with both the turning point of the crisis and the scale of a post-metro-
politan space (such as the one of the Milan urban region). Specifically,
this chapter focuses on the spatial features of the 2015 World’s Fair,
by considering them as a significant component of the Milan urban
change process, mainly due to the recent service and new manufactur-
ing metamorphosis of the city. After a first general, but critical descrip-
tion of the current urban transformation and regeneration process,
it retraces the steps through which the Expo site projects developed,
from the event candidature to its celebration. Afterword, it focuses on
the final Expo site project and the ongoing post-event reconfigura-
tion: from the first proposal based on the real estate exploitation of the
area to the last one regarding the reuse of the event material legacies
toward the strengthening of Milan as a node of the world knowledge
economy network.

Keywords Milan urban change · Milan Expo 2015 · Spatial projects

Material legacies

© The Author(s) 2018 15

S. Di Vita and C. Morandi, Mega-Events and Legacies
in Post-Metropolitan Spaces, Mega Event Planning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67768-2_2
16 C. MORANDI

2.1  Expo and Milan: A Successful Relationship?

The bid for Expo 2015 was won by Milan in March 2008. The reasons
Milan was selected by the Bureau International des Expositions-BIE can
be related to several factors. Among them, the relevance of the theme
Feeding the planet, Energy for life; the possibility to establish international
contacts with developing countries (diplomacy of Mayor Letizia Moratti)
and the collaboration—at the time of the candidature—among the insti-
tutional actors in fostering the participation in the bid: the City of Milan,
the Lombardy Region, and the National Government.
Other factors soon appeared as the main obstacles to the realization
of the Expo, starting with the ownership of the proposed areas, which
at the time of the bid belonged to: Fiera Milano, a private foundation;
Belgioiosa SpA, a private company active in Milan’s real estate market as
well as a small part owned by the City of Milan and Rho, a Municipality
bordering Milan. No real alternatives were discussed, despite the anom-
aly (in comparison with previous cases) of locating the Expo in an almost
entirely privately owned area. The Expo event was not present in the
public discourse—a large, popular participation was neither evident1—
up until 2012, when the transformation of the site began. Few actors
explicitly supported the decision, which seemed to be reserved for a few
important stakeholders: first, the private owners of the areas and the
Chamber of Commerce.
On the other side, the site and its localization highlighted some
important positive features: the size (1.1 million square meters), the
compactness,2 the formal destination to agriculture—an activity which
had not been operational for many years—the proximity to the Milan
Trade Fair, recently relocated from an urban neighborhood to the new
site, along the vital axis of redevelopment at the regional scale (Figs. 2.2,
2.3). Other important factors included the site’s high level of accessibil-
ity due to the recently realized transport infrastructures and the future
planned ones. In fact, the site is affected by major road and public trans-
port infrastructures, such as the highways by-passes and links, the railway
national and regional lines, and the metro line. While the long-distance
accessibility to Milan is good enough (with three airports and high-speed
1 In 2009, an online survey was launched to understand local citizens’ expectations in

regard to the exposition and a two-day open discussion was held in a theatre.
2 It was assumed that a huge plant hosting the Poste Italiane services inside the original

perimeter would be moved, but this did not happen.

 2 THE SPATIAL PROJECTS OF THE EXPO 2015 AND THE POST-EVENT … 17

railway),3 the metropolitan mobility—with the city core and among the
suburbs—suffers for the lack of a diffused system of local, fast public
transport, also due to the congestion of the sprawled fabric.
Despite the important territorial implications of the decision to organ-
ize an International Exhibition in the city outskirts, the Expo program
was never integrated in the general Milan city plan, which remained
‘aside’ for the three political coalitions ruling the Municipality: from the
decision-making phase to the implementation of the exposition, as well
as during the current phase dealing with the management of the post-
event (Morandi and Gaeta 2010; Bruzzese and Di Vita 2016a). During
the long, difficult maturation of the process which initiated the trans-
formation of the area only in 2012, it appeared as if few actors really
believed in the possibility of realizing Expo 2015.4
After gaining the event, the manner of implementing the Expo soon
proved to be quite difficult, dotted by stop-and-go cycles in nearly all
of the pivotal elements, such as the economic resources to finance the
project, the governance process, the availability of the areas, and the
settlement pattern of the exposition. In fact, several elements in the
background of the implementation process were no longer the same
as during the bidding phase, starting from the change in the city and
state government (from Letizia Moratti to Giuliano Pisapia—and, since
2016, Giuseppe Sala—and from Romano Prodi to Enrico Letta and later
Matteo Renzi). A huge change occurred in the expectations of the pri-
vate stakeholders involved in the transformation of the areas, mainly due
to the real estate market crisis. In Milan and in the metropolitan area,
the supply of offices and middle-upper class residences largely exceeded
demand, and it became clear that a new phase of growth for Milan could
not relate solely to real estate market performance. The economic cri-
sis, both at the national and at the local government level, also caused a
related reduction of the available resources to fund the program.
Within this framework, the elaboration of the master plan for the
Expo also revealed significant changes. We will deal in depth with the
3 Despite the low level of intercontinental accessibility.
4 The low reputation of Milan in the years before Expo is described by a columnist who
refers to it as ‘a “waiting city”, vaguely smacking of Beckett, quarrelsome and frightened,
chased by the ghosts of the bribe-taking season, underestimated by the influential Le Monde
that hurled courses on the exhibition grounds building yards using the expression chantier
à l’italienne to reject the improvisation that trespasses in corruption of the “usual Italy,
inadequate and always late” ’ (Schiavi 2017: 9–10).
18 C. MORANDI

morphology and the pattern of the Expo settlement, which transformed

a huge, but previously shapeless space in a place with some important
structural spatial features, intended to become important elements of
the legacy of the exhibition, through the transformation of the site and
creation of a new destination. Additionally, other outcomes of the event
legacy, both physical and immaterial, will be outlined from the current
perspective of the complete redevelopment of the site, which could soon
start and require more than the next decade to be completed. The event
realization and features are described in the framework of the important
recent changes occurring in Milan and in the region.

2.2  The Urban Change of Milan Over the Last Decade

(2006–2016)
Milan, despite the compactness of its fabric and a recognizable urban
shape based on a spatial model made of radial axes and rings—the lat-
ter substituting the ancient walls with roads—has always been heav-
ily integrated within the urban region. This condition is important for
the attractiveness of the large-scale settlements: ‘a metropolis owns part
of its success to the territory that surrounds it, that supplies qualified
human resources and contributes, with its demand of goods and ser-
vices, to reaching the critical mass necessary for the efficient function-
ing of many services: for this reason metropolitan accessibility is very
important’ (Assolombarda 2017: 41). The quality of the relationship
has changed over time with the continuous urban extension that first
exploded in the 1950s. Nowadays, it is impossible to identify the physi-
cal borders between the city and the region, though the administrative
boundaries still refer to different actors of the urban and regional gov-
ernance: the City of Milan, the Metropolitan City, and other Northern
Italy Provinces.5 We underline that we use different definitions to refer
to the large scale Milan territory: from Milan urban region, with round

5 It is difficult to define borders of the real Milan urban region. Going beyond the cur-

rent administrative organization and keeping into account the real spatial, infrastructural
and socioeconomic dynamics, a useful definition has been provided by the OECD (2006).
Accordingly, besides the area of the institutional Milan Metropolitan City, the Milan urban
region—hosting 7.5 million inhabitants—includes also 8 Northern Italy Provinces. 7 in
Lombardy (such as Bergamo, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza e Brianza, Pavia, and Varese)
and 1 in Piedmont (such as Novara).
 2 THE SPATIAL PROJECTS OF THE EXPO 2015 AND THE POST-EVENT … 19

7.5 million people,6 to Milan Metropolitan City (former Province of

Milan), hosting round 3.2 million inhabitants. The highest level refer-
ence for the territorial governance for Milan is the Lombardy Region,
with round 10 million inhabitants.
The complexity of the geographical features and of the institutional
levels ruling the large-scale Milan territory is reflected in the superpo-
sition of governance tools, with both regulatory and strategic contents
and targets (i.e., environment protection, infrastructures programs, and
planning).
The most relevant change in the institutional governance has been the
establishment of the Milan Metropolitan City in January 2015, as a con-
sequence of the national reform for the reorganization of the territorial
bodies.7
An updated tool has been provided for the metropolitan scale govern-
ance in May 2016: The Strategic Metropolitan Plan outlines orientations
and commitments for the several bodies and actors involved in the field
of decision making, specifying features and targets of local development
for the different districts of the metropolitan area (Città Metropolitana di
Milano 2016).
At the local scale, the planning tool we refer to is the Piano di
Governo del Territorio-Pgt, a general plan which has both strategic and
regulatory contents. The current Pgt was approved in 2011 and is now
under revision (2017) mainly in the strategic targets, as a consequence
of the major changes which occurred recently modifying the city’s gov-
ernance perspective and process, also due to the dynamics following the
Expo organization and realization.
In the framework of a spill-over process involving more and more
external sectors of the urban region, since 1973 (peaking at 1.7 million
inhabitants), the City of Milan has been steadily losing population for
35 years, until 2008, when the trend reversed. This scenario involved
flows returning to the core of the metropolitan area, occurring within a
larger trend of growth in the region. The population of the city reached

6 Seethe previous note 4.

7 That is, the National Law 56/2014, which introduced 10 Metropolitan Cities through-
out the country (such as Bari, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Reggio Calabria,
Rome, Turin, and Venice) as an intermediate governance body between the regions and the
Municipalities for the largest and/or most dynamic urban regions.
20 C. MORANDI

1.37 million in 2016, with growth intensifying in the last three years (4%
during the period of 2014–2016). The amount of young people—19
to 34 years old—showed the most significant increase, even though the
share of the so-called digital natives—youngsters up to 19 years old—
is among the smallest in Europe, and the share of young population is
quite low (21.7% of youths 0–14 years)8: this occurs in a scenario of
falling birth rate, representing indicators of weakness of the city’s per-
formance (Assolombarda 2017). The contribution of foreign people to
this new trend is important, and the ratio of regular foreign residents
in Milan has steadily remained 19% since 2014. The current number of
jobs in Milan outlines the specificity of the city economics both within
the national framework as well as from the international perspective. A
total of 930.000 jobs (increase 2.1% with respect to 2014) and 296.000
enterprises (increase 1.4% with respect to 2014) are listed in Milan in
2016 (Camera di Commercio di Milano 2016); 71% of these are in the
service industry, and 34% of the multinational corporations and 75% of
ICT businesses established in all of Italy are located in Milan.9 ‘Milano
distinguishes itself as the privileged gateway of foreign investments
directed to Italy, with a concentration of 38% of all foreign greenfield
projects’ (Assolombarda 2017: 25). After years of decrease, the residen-
tial real estate market shows new positive dynamics: Transactions have
grown by 14.8% compared with 201310 (Assolombarda 2017). This sce-
nario is quite different from the one, which appeared at the half of the
first decade of the 2000s.
The starting phase of realizing the Expo coincided with a turn
in some relevant urban issues, both related to the orientation of the
local government as well as to national and international occurrences
(Armondi and Di Vita 2017). In 2006, the urban real estate market
still maintained positive dynamics, following the outcomes of the pro-
cess of negotiation, which had led to the start of the major episodes of
the transformation of former industrial areas (Morandi 2007). In a short
time, the impact of the world economic crisis sharpened the gap between

8 For the same indicator, Lyon and Barcelona show, respectively, shares of 30.0 and

24.2%.
9 Source: Milan Chamber of Commerce (2016 different data sets).

10 ‘Anyhow, the increase of the transactions has not decreased the stock of unsold hous-

ing, because a new quality product is placed on the market at a competitive price compared
to the used one’ (Assolombarda 2017: 47).
 2 THE SPATIAL PROJECTS OF THE EXPO 2015 AND THE POST-EVENT … 21

the supply of real estate market ‘products’ (offices, very expensive apart-
ments, and high-end stores) and demand, resulting in the interruption of
several redevelopment projects. With the change in the political leader-
ship of the city in 2011 (with a left-wing green coalition), an attempt
was made to reduce the building capacity forwarded by the general
plan (which was partly revised) and re-orientate part of the provision
of new buildings toward social housing and more mixed-use schemes.
Some important issues were outlined, such as the extension of the area
where the pollution charge would be applied, and also introducing—
later increasing—car and bike sharing11 as well as financing—together
with national resources—new public transport facilities to reduce pri-
vate traffic pollution. Policies aiming for social innovation and inclusion
that would better deal with the problems related to mass immigration
were activated. The decision to confirm support for the realization of the
Expo 2015 program was started by the new municipal government with
the theme Feeding the Planet, Energy for life serving as a strong argu-
ment for the new environment-oriented leadership, despite the strong
opposition to the Expo by local movements.12 As we will underline later,
the realization of Expo seems to have worked as a catalyst of resources—
which continues to foster the current phase of affluent change of the
city—raising its level of internationalization, a target of the third munici-
pal leadership in this last decade. On the other side, resources are more
and more necessary (and are partly addressed by the local government,
together with European and national grants) to merge development
and social cohesion and to focus on social and spatial problems of the
urban and metropolitan periphery. About 281 million euros have been
placed by the Municipality from 2014 to 2016 to face the effects of the
loss of jobs and of increasing urban poverty. At the same time, with the

11 Milan has a quite high number of cars (1.912 per million inhabitants) and of bicycles

in sharing mobility (3.717 per million inhabitants).

12 Local actions against Expo were developed all throughout the construction phase, for

instance against the realization of the water way forwarded in the Western sector of the
metropolitan area, but also opposing critics and alternative issues to the mainstream posi-
tive narrative of the exhibition program and social impact. The witness of the alternative
narrative is in www.noexpo.org. The peak of the struggle against the exposition was organ-
ized with the support of international ‘black blocks’ on May 1st 2015, in coincidence with
the Expo opening, that caused the reaction of thousands of Milanese citizens who sponta-
neously met to clean the sites damaged during the riots.
22 C. MORANDI

help of 140,000 volunteers of the third sector association—very active

in Milan—110,000 immigrants and refugees have been assisted between
2013 and 2016.13
The urban and metropolitan physical settlement revealed fast changes
during the decade, that also in part resulted from programs previously
begun or which had been interrupted. The deletion, rescaling, and slow-
ing-down of several large projects in the city’s urban core occurred fol-
lowing the recent economic downturn (Briata et al. 2016), even if the
negative pick seems to have been overcome. On the whole, the transfor-
mation programs have modified the apparently fixed long-lasting spatial
hierarchy of the urban structure:

• the city center—in great part a pedestrian area—as a magnet of pop-

ulation and activities, extending to the ring of the ‘Spanish walls,’ or
even overlapping it, as in the Porta Nuova scheme with Cesar Pelli’s
towers, a mobility and urban node of regional scale, showing the
paradigm of the new, quite questioned skyline dotted by skyscrapers
(Nicolin 2016);
• the increasing specialization of urban districts—fashion, design, lux-
ury, creative activities, and smart city—where urban change relates
also to diffused transformations of existing buildings and regenera-
tion processes (Bruzzese 2017; Morandi 2017);
• the implementation of redevelopment schemes, often started years
before, to create high-quality residential neighborhoods, as in city
life with Zaha Hadid and Daniel Liebeskind’s buildings, in part
transformed into insurance companies’ headquarters due to the dif-
ficulties in merging with the demand;
• the extension of the university campuses, both as an expan-
sion of the existing ones, or in new locations, as is the case of the
Università Statale in the Expo site: universities are a major actor
of recent urban programs and of the real estate urban market14
(Balducci et al. 2010);
• the strengthening of the supply of specialized facilities and research
centers in the field of the healthcare system;
• the (still incomplete) process of growth of a polycentric settle-
ment at the regional scale, including the Expo site, which belongs

13 Data sets from IRS (Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale).

14 See Chap. 4.
 2 THE SPATIAL PROJECTS OF THE EXPO 2015 AND THE POST-EVENT … 23

to an axis made of linear centralities lying north-west; other poten-

tial centralities being the expansion south with the metropolitan
multifunctional node of Milano Fiori and to the north-east with
the redevelopment scheme of the Falck steel mills in Sesto San
Giovanni (Fig. 2.1) (Morandi and Paris 2015; Armondi and Di Vita
2017).

The availability of areas to be transformed is far from exhausted. Beyond

the recent and ongoing projects, which involve more than 5 million
total square meters, the current general plan of Milan outlines the rede-
velopment of abandoned military areas (0.9 million sqm) and rail yards
(1.3 million sqm). Furthermore, these programs are integrated with
other new urban transformations distributed throughout the urban
fabric. Programs of redevelopment for millions of square meters of for-
mer industrial land in the metropolitan area still await implementation,
among them the mentioned former Falck steel mills in the north-east
sector (Armondi 2017). Therefore, even though the crisis was particu-
larly strong in the building and real estate sectors, new spatial develop-
ment proposals are still huge, with low potentials of real fulfillment in a
short time.
Within this framework, the change in the social structure of residents
and of city users is considerable. Besides the important ratio of foreign
residents, 17.7% of regular jobs in Milan are taken by foreigners, and 15%
of the enterprises in the metropolitan area are run by immigrants. About
200,000 total students are enrolled in Milan’s universities, corresponding
to more than 15% of the resident population, and 7% being foreign stu-
dents. The advancement of the internationalization process generates dif-
ferent effects, including the enrichment of tourist flows and the increasing
influence of transnational economic players in the fields of finance, the
property market, and entrepreneurship. What has changed are some com-
ponents of the city’s attractiveness that have contributed to strengthening
the demand for the location of upmarket brands. The number of tourists
increased from 5.6 million (2010) to 7.3 million (2015, when Expo was
held) and 7.4 million (2016, without the event effect)15 and the rate of
leisure tourism (culture, events, and shopping) increased by 50%, more
than business tourism (Camera di Commercio di Milano 2016). Milan
confirms itself as an ‘urban node of macro-regional and world networks’

15 An increase of 14% of tourists is registered in the first 4 months of 2017.

24 C. MORANDI

(Bolocan Goldstein 2015). Expo 2015 added a strong contribution to

the city repositioning and branding on the world map (‘Milan. A place
to be’ was the slogan of a successful branding campaign, quoting the
New York Times), reinforcing Milan’s position as the Italian financial and
economic hub (OECD 2006); the core of the Italian knowledge-based,
creative, digital, and sharing economy (Camera di Commercio di Milano
2016) and as a major destination for cultural tourism.16
This overview of the affluent features of the contemporary condition
does not have to leave aside the huge problems related to social (and
spatial) exclusion, which remain prevalent and must be addressed within
the policy framework. These were—at least in part—recalled during
Expo, also through the presence and action of the social and no profit
organizations, which located their spatial and political hub in Cascina
Triulza17 (a part of the Expo legacy).

2.3   From Candidature to Celebration: The

Development of the Expo Program
While the Milan 2015 World’s Fair was organized and managed through
an extraordinary planning and governance system, often criticized,18 the
exposition was successful in relation to the safety of the site’s construc-
tion and use, its accessibility as well as for attracting more visitors than
expected.19
On the base of the 2006 and 2007 Candidature Dossier—which
already included the preliminary event projects (i.e., cultural, spatial,
infrastructural, and environmental), but independent from ordinary
regional, provincial, and municipal plans—Milan won the competition
against the Turkish city of Izmir and was awarded the event. Only after
the BIE selection (in March 2008) was the Expo 2015 governance struc-
ture established, and, in December 2008, Expo 2015 SpA—the agency
responsible for the event management—was created.20
16 ‘For sure Milano stands out amongst the benchmarks for its international reputation

also thanks to the recent success of Expo, but it is also well inserted in the global networks,
through its forms too, and it enjoys a significant popularity as a whole as well as for specific
segments linked both to the economic domain and the artistic-cultural one’ (Assolombarda
2017: 19).
17 See Paragraph 3.2.

18 See Paragraph 3.2.

19 21.5 million real visitors in comparison with the expected 20 million.
20 See Paragraph 3.2.
 2 THE SPATIAL PROJECTS OF THE EXPO 2015 AND THE POST-EVENT … 25

In 2010, Giuseppe Sala, Milan city manager and future Mayor after
the 2016 elections, was appointed as CEO of the Expo 2015 SpA. His
role is quite important in establishing the different decisional sectors
involved in the event program, starting from the funding, which was
seriously reduced from an initial budget of 3.227 (in 2007) to 1.446
billion euros (in 2012), shared between the National Government (833
million euros), the regional and local public authorities (477 million
euros), and the private sponsors (136 million euros). The budget, even
if reduced, was important and the risk of corruption was high, calling for
special control procedures, which contributed to delays in the construc-
tion of the Expo site.21
Construction only officially began in 2012, thus leading to its com-
pletion under emergency conditions. Indeed, apart from the compli-
cated development of the event governance,22 the areas devoted to the
event celebration were not available (being for the most part private23)
until the second half of 2011. Several political fights affected their acqui-
sition and, accordingly, the development of the event and post-event
plans.24 Among the contrasting proposals for gaining the areas dedicated
to the exposition site—such as their purchase (preferred solution of the
president of the Lombardy region) and their free concession based on
the future prospects of real estate development (preferred solution of
the Mayor of Milan)—an agreement was not found until June 2011,
through the establishment of Arexpo SpA.25

2.4  The Spatial Projects of the Expo Site

The area lies within the boundaries of two municipalities: Milan (85%)
and Rho (15%), 10 km from Milan’s city center. The masterplans which
had been presented for the candidature were comprised of a very tra-
ditional setting of pavilions, including (in the first two versions) a

21 SeeParagraph 3.2.
22 See Paragraph 3.2 for the final budget of the Expo investments, including both the
works for the exhibition site and the ones at the scale of the urban region.
23 The areas involved by the Accordo di Programma, around 1,050,000 sqm. Their main

owners were originally the Milan Trade Fair Foundation (520,000 sqm), the real estate
company Belgioiosa Srl (260,000 sqm), and the Rho Municipality (120,000 sqm).
24 The Accordo di Programma for the Expo site and its post-event reuse was negotiated in

November 2008, but it was only approved in August of 2011 (more details in Paragraph 3.2).
25 More details in Paragraph 3.3.
26 C. MORANDI

200-meter-high tower, as a landmark in the hinge between Expo and

the Trade Fair plant.26 No reference to the theme of Feeding the planet
was explicitly found in the general setting of the pavilions. According
to the general constraints established by the BIE for the site organiza-
tion, which had to be a completely fenced off precinct, the master plan
focused exclusively on the area devoted to the exhibition pavilions
and to the services, without any attempt to relate the site to the urban
and territorial contexts. The site is isolated by several barriers on each
side, including highways, roads and railway infrastructures along with
a massive industrial cluster on the northern border (Morandi 2008).
Infrastructures represent an opportunity for accessibility in nodes such
as stations and links (the interface between infrastructures and the settle-
ments), but a barrier as for their linear development.
A significant turn in the masterplan’s approach occurred when a
Committee of international designers was appointed to prepare a new
layout, involving: Jaques Herzog from Switzerland, Richard Burdett
from the UK, Joan Busquets from Spain, William McDonough from
the USA, and the Italian Stefano Boeri.27 In September 2009, they pre-
sented a conceptual plan with a strong vision for an Expo quite different
from the traditional model, even from the Shanghai 2010 Exposition,28
the previous iteration of the event organized for millions of people to
discover innovative products. The Milan Expo 2015, through the inten-
tion of the Committee, aimed at delivering an innovative approach to
world expositions, closely related to the focus on nutritional issues and
environmental themes. The vision presented (shown through a maquette
and renderings) an isle surrounded by a canal, crossed in length by a cov-
ered boulevard—1.5 km long and 35 m wide—with a square located at
the crossing point with the 325-meter-long perpendicular axis as well as
an open theater and a hill at the two ends. The reference for the axis is
the decumano, which together with the orthogonal cardo represents the
matrix of all Roman settlements. The boulevard suggests a table set to
feed people, thereby representing the inspiring theme spatially, and also

26 For the spatial schemes of the first master plans, see Bruzzese and Di Vita (2016b).
27 A significant presence of international archistars has featured in the major Milanese
urban projects since the 1990s, also used as a legitimation of the outcomes of negotiations
that were difficult to enforce.
28 See Paragraph 5.3.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
renunciation of Roman Catholicism, privately, however, and under an
assumed character, in one of the London churches!
In December the same journals chronicle as a notable incident,
‘That the Chevalier de St. George and his Son (call’d Cardinall of
York) had a long audience of the Pope, a few days ago, which ’tis
pretended turn’d upon some despatches, receiv’d the day before
from the Chevalier’s eldest Son.’ Whatever these despatches
contained, loyal Londoners hugged themselves on the fact that the
Princess of Wales was taking her part in annually increasing the
number of heirs to the Protestant Succession, and loyal clerics
expounded the favourite text (Prov. xxix. 2), ‘When the righteous are
in authority, the people rejoice.’ Preachers of the old Sacheverel
quality took the other half of the verse, ‘When the wicked beareth
rule, the people mourn.’ These were convenient texts, which did not
require particularly clever fellows to twist them in any direction.
 CHAPTER XII.

(1751 to 1761.)
rom the year 1751 to the coronation of George III.
(1761), the London Parliament and the London
newspapers were the sole sources from which the
metropolitan Jacobites, who were not ‘in the secret,’
could obtain any information. There were two events in
the earlier year which in some degree interested the Jacobite party.
The first was the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His way of life
has been mercilessly censured, but, considering the standard of
morals of his time, it was not worse than that of contemporary
princes. It was quite as pure as that of Charles Edward (the Jacobite
‘Prince of Wales’), with whom ultra-Tories disparagingly compared
him. Many lies were told of him, cowardly defamers knowing that a
prince cannot stoop to defend himself from calumny. It was assumed
that he was of the bad quality of the worthless, scampish men who
were among his friends. The assumption was not altogether
unjustifiable. ‘He possessed many amiable qualities,’ said Mrs.
Delany, speaking for the aristocracy. ‘His condescension was such
that he kept very bad company,’ said a May Fair parson on the part
of the church. The well-known Jacobite epigram not only refused to
be sorry at his death, but declared that had it been the whole royal
generation, it would have been so much the better for the nation.
The press chronicled the event without comment. On ‘Change, the
Jacobites openly said, ‘Oh, had it only been the butcher!’ A few
weeks later everybody was drinking ‘the Prince of Wales’—George
or Charles Edward.
The other death was that of Viscount Bolingbroke,
DEATH OF
which occurred in the last month of the year 1751. GREAT
Bubb Dodington reflected the general indifference, by PERSONAGES
the simple entry in his Diary, ‘Dec. 12. This day died .
Lord Bolingbroke.’ The newspapers said little more of the pseudo-
Jacobite than they had said of the prince. It amounted to the sum of
Mrs. Delany’s testimony, and ‘she remembered Lord Bolingbroke’s
person; that he was handsome, had a fine address, but that he was
a great drinker, and swore terribly.’ His own treachery to the
Chevalier de St. George caused more than one honest Jacobite to
be suspected of treason to his lawful king. He made the name
odious, and almost warranted the assertion of Burgess (an old
divine, a familiar friend of the St. John family), who declared in all
good faith, that God ever hated Jacobites, and therefore He called
Jacob’s sons by the name of Israelites!
The references to modern Jacobites in the
THE NEW
Parliament at Westminster began, however, now to HEIR TO THE
be fewer and far between. There was not, on the THRONE.
other hand, much additional respect expressed for
‘the happy establishment.’ On an occasion in 1752, when 22,000l.
were about to be voted as a subsidy to the Elector of Saxony, some
of ‘the electoral family’ seem to have been present in the House.
Beckford, as outspoken as Shippen of old, saw his opportunity and
remarked: ‘I am here as an English gentleman; as such, I have the
right to talk freely of the greatest subject of the King, and much more
of the greatest subject of any foreign state. If there be any persons in
the House, belonging to any Princes of Germany, they ought not to
be here; and, if they are, they must take it for their pains;—for, their
presence, I hope, will not keep any member in such an awe as to
prevent him from freely speaking.’ The subsidy, however, was
granted.
The principles of the men who surrounded the young Prince of
Wales became of absorbing interest,—for pure, as well as party,
reasons. Bubb Dodington, in December, 1752, speaks in his Diary of
an anonymous manifesto, which was in fact a remonstrance to the
king from the Whig nobility and gentry, against the method according
to which the heir to the throne was being educated; and also against
the arbitrary principles of the men then in power; but especially that
‘there was a permanency of power placed in three men whom they
looked upon as dangerous; and that these three men entirely trusted
and were governed by two others, one of whom had the absolute
direction of the Prince, and was of a Tory family, and bred in arbitrary
principles; and the other, who was bred a professed Jacobite, of a
declared Jacobite family, and whose brother, now at Rome, was a
favourite of the Pretender, and even his Secretary of State. In short,
the corollary was, that Murray, Solicitor-General, and Stone,
governed the country.’ A copy of this anti-Jacobite declaration
reached the king’s hands. ‘What was the effect,’ says the diarist, ‘I
can’t tell; but I know they were very much intrigued to find out
whence it came, and who was the author.’
In 1753, in the debate in the Commons on the
LORD
number of land forces to be raised and paid for during EGMONT ON
that year, Lord Egmont made a speech, the JACOBITES.
immediate report of which must have raised surprise
and anger in St. James’s Street and Pall Mall. That Lord Egmont
should denounce increase in the number of men was to be
expected, but the Jacobites hardly expected from him such a blow
as was dealt in the following words:—‘I am sure the old pretence of
Jacobitism can now furnish no argument for keeping up a numerous
army in time of peace, for they met with such a rebuff in their last
attempt that I am convinced they will never make another, whatever
sovereign possesses, as his Majesty does, the hearts and affections
of all the rest of his subjects, especially as they must now be
convinced, however much France may encourage them to rebel, she
will never give them any effectual assistance.’
It is observable that the Jacobites began to be IN BOTH
spoken of in less unworthy tones by their antagonists HOUSES.
than before. The Pope and ‘Papists’ were referred to
in no unbecoming phrases. Indeed, the English ‘Catholics’ were
never rancorously assailed. The popular spirit was (and is) against
that Ultramontanism which would stop at no crime to secure its own
triumph; which recognises no law, no king, no country, but Roman,
and which, asserting licence for itself, is the bitter and treacherous
enemy of every civil and religious liberty. The Earl of Bath reflected
the better spirit that prevailed when, in 1753, in the debate on the Bill
for annexing the forfeited estates in Scotland to the Crown (which
ultimately passed), he said, ‘I wish national prejudices were utterly
extinguished. We ought to live like brothers, for we have long lived
under the same sovereign, and are now firmly united not only into
one kingdom, but into one and the same general interest; therefore,
the question ought never to be, who are English? or, who are Scots?
but, who are most capable and most diligent in the service of their
King and Country.’
One reference to the rebellion was made in the House of
Commons, in 1754, in the debate on the propriety of extending the
action of the Mutiny Bill to the East Indies. Murray, the Solicitor-
(soon after the Attorney-) General, observed, ‘His present Majesty
will not attempt it’ (proclaim martial law, under any circumstance,
independently of parliament), ‘as no such thing was thought of during
the late Rebellion, notwithstanding the immense danger we should
have been in, had His Royal Highness and troops from Flanders
been detained but a few weeks by contrary winds.’
Although there was plotting in 1753, and mischief
JACOBITE
was a-foot, and Government spies were far from HEALTHS.
having an idle time of it, the royal family lived in
comparative quiet, save one passing episode connected with a
charge laid, in the month of March, against Bishop Johnson, of
Gloucester, Murray (Solicitor-General), and Stone (one of the sub-
preceptors to the Princes George and Edward)—as Jacobites—of
having had, as Walpole puts it, ‘an odd custom of toasting the
Chevalier and my Lord Dunbar (Murray’s brother and one of the
Chevalier’s peers) at one Vernon’s, a merchant, about twenty years
ago. The Pretender’s counterpart (the King) ordered the Council to
examine into it.’ The accuser, Fawcett, a lawyer, prevaricated. ‘Stone
and Murray,’ says Walpole, ‘took the Bible, on their innocence.
Bishop Johnson scrambled out of the scrape at the very beginning;
and the Council have reported to the King that the accusation was
false and malicious.’
Vernon was in reality a linen-draper. Few people doubted the
alleged drinking of Jacobite healths at his house. The dowager
Princess of Wales told Bubb Dodington that her late husband had
told her that Stone was a Jacobite,—the prince was convinced of it,
and when affairs went ill abroad, he used to say to her in a passion:
How could better be expected when such a Jacobite as Stone could
be trusted?
Lord Harcourt, Prince George’s governor, was a THE ROYAL
pedantic man, having no sympathies with the young. FAMILY.
My lord was not much of a Mentor for a young
Telemachus. He bored the prince by enjoining him to hold up his
head, and, ‘for God’s sake,’ to turn out his toes. The tutors of Prince
George, after his father’s death, were in fact divided among
themselves. Bishop Hayter, of Norwich, and Lord Harcourt were
openly at war with Stone and Scott (the last put in by Bolingbroke),
who were countenanced by the dowager princess and Murray, ‘so
my Lord Bolingbroke dead, will govern, which he never could living.’
Murray, and Stone, and Cresset were Jacobites. Cresset called Lord
Harcourt a groom, and the bishop an atheist. The princess accused
the latter of teaching her sons, George and Edward, nothing. The
bishop retorted by declaring that he was never allowed to teach them
anything. His chief complaint was that Jacobite Stone had lent
Prince George (or the Prince of Wales) a highly Jacobite book to
read, namely, ‘The Revolutions of England,’ by Father D’Orléans; but
the objectionable work had really been lent by ‘Lady Augusta’ to
Prince Edward, and by him to his elder brother.
Tindal, the historian, remarks that about this very PARLIAMENTA
year (1753) ‘a wonderful spirit of loyalty began to take RY
place all over the kingdom.’ The debates in the two ANECDOTES.
Houses at Westminster confirm this. The old anxious
tone was no longer heard. Not a single reference to Jacobites and
their designs can be found in the reports of the proceedings in the
Legislature. ‘High Church,’ which was once a disloyal menace,
became a subject of ridicule. Horace Walpole thus playfully
illustrated the ignorance of the High Church party in a debate on the
proposal to repeal the Jews’ Naturalization Bill. ‘I remember,’ he said
‘to have heard a story of a gentleman, a High Churchman, who was
a member of this House, when it was the custom that candles could
not be brought in without a motion regularly made and seconded for
that purpose, and an order of the House pursuant thereto, so that it
often became a question whether candles should be brought in or
no, and this question was sometimes debated until the members
could hardly see one another, for those who were against, or for
putting off the affair before the House, were always against the
question for candles. Now it happened, upon one of those
occasions, that the High Church party were against the affair then
depending, and therefore against the question for candles; but this
gentleman, by mistake, divided for it, and when he was challenged
by one of his party for being against them, “Oh Lord!” says he, “I’m
sorry for it, but I thought that candles were for the church!”’
Admiral Vernon, ‘the people’s man,’ supporting the
ATTEMPT TO
popular prejudice against the emancipation of the MAKE
Jews, said that if the Bill passed, rich Jews would ‘PERVERTS.’
insist upon the conversion of everyone employed by
them, ‘and should they once get the majority of common people on
their side, we should soon be all obliged to be circumcised. That this
is no chimerical danger, Sir, I am convinced from what lately
happened in my county. There was there a great and a rich Popish
lady lived in it, who, by connivance, had publicly a chapel in her own
house, where mass was celebrated every Sunday and Holiday. The
lady, out of zeal for her religion, had every such day a great number
of buttocks and sirloins of beef roasted or boiled, with plenty of roots
and greens from her own garden, and every poor person who came
to hear mass at her chapel was sure of a good dinner. What was the
consequence? The neighbouring parish churches were all deserted,
and the lady’s chapel was crowded, for as the common people have
not learning enough, no more than some of their betters, to
understand or judge of abstruse speculative points of divinity, they
thought that mass, with a good dinner, was better than the church
service without one, and probably they would judge in the same
manner of a Jewish synagogue.’
In one sense Tindal’s view of the general increase
DR.
of loyalty was not ill-founded. There was, however, an ARCHIBALD
increase of Jacobite audacity also; but the CAMERON.
Government were as well aware of it as they were
that the Chevalier was hiding at Bouillon, and that the people there
were heartily sick of him. One proof of their vigilance was made
manifest in the spring of 1753. On the 16th of April, at 6 o’clock in
the evening, a coach, with an escort of dragoons about it, and a
captive gentleman within, was driven rapidly through the City
towards the Tower. The day was the anniversary of Culloden. The
time of day was that when the friends of the happy establishment
were at the tipsiest of their tipsy delight in drunken honour of the
victory. It was soon known who the prisoner was. He was Dr.
Archibald Cameron, brother of Duncan Cameron, of Lochiel. Duncan
had joined Charles Edward, in obedience to his sentimental prince,
but with the conviction that the insurrection would be a failure.
Archibald had followed his elder brother as in duty bound, and the
prince from a principle of allegiance. After Culloden and much
misery, they and others escaped to France by the skin of their teeth.
The King of France gave Duncan the command of a regiment of
Scots; Archibald was appointed doctor to it, and each pretty well
starved on his appointment. Both were under attainder, and subject
to death, not having surrendered before a certain date, or offered to
do so after it.
Had Archibald remained quietly in France, his life at least would
have been in no danger; but in the early part of 1753, he crossed to
Scotland in the utmost secrecy, and when he landed he had not the
remotest idea that the eye of Sam Cameron, a Government spy, was
upon him, by whom his movements were made known to the
Ministry at the Cockpit in Downing Street. There can be no doubt
that the doctor went to his native land on a political mission. ‘He
certainly,’ says Walpole, ‘came over with commission to feel the
ground.’ He always protested that he was there on private business
connected with the estate of Lochiel. His enemies declared that the
private business referred to a deposit of money for the Jacobite
cause, the secret of the hiding-place of which was known to
Archibald, and that he intended to appropriate the cash to his own
use. Had Cameron’s mission not been hostile to the established
government, he probably would have asked permission to visit
Scotland; and, more than probably, he would have been permitted to
do so. Be this as it may, his namesake, the spy, betrayed him; and
the Justice Clerk of Edinburgh, washing his hands of the business,
sent the trapped captive to London, where he arrived on the seventh
anniversary of the decisive overthrow of the Stuart cause, and while
the ‘joyous and loyal spirits’ were getting preciously hysterical in
memory thereof. The ‘quality,’ however, were supremely indifferent
‘Nobody,’ writes Walpole, ‘troubled their head about him, or anything
else but Newmarket, where the Duke of Cumberland is at present
making a campaign, with half the nobility, and half the money of
England, attending him.’
In the Tower Dr. Cameron was allowed to rest BEFORE THE
some eight and forty hours, and then a multitude saw COUNCIL.
him carried from the fortress to where the Privy
Council were sitting. The illustrious members of that body were in an
angry mood. They were blustering in their manner, but they stooped
to flattering promises if he would only make a revelation. When he
declined to gratify them, they fell into loud tumultuous threatenings.
They could neither frighten nor cajole him; and accordingly they flung
him to the law, and to the expounders and the executants of it.
Very short work did the latter make with the poor TRIAL OF
gentleman. It is said that when he was first captured CAMERON.
he denied being the man they took him for. Now, on
the 17th of May, he made no such denial, nor did he deny having
been in arms against the ‘present happy establishment.’ He declared
that circumstances, over which he had no control, prevented him
from clearing his attainder by a surrender on or before a stated day.
But he neither concealed his principles nor asked for mercy. There
was no intention of according him any. Sir William Lee and his
brother judges, the identity of the prisoner being undisputed, agreed
that he must be put to death under the old attainder, and Lee
delivered the sentence with a sort of solemn alacrity. It was the old,
horrible sentence of partial hanging, disembowelling, and so forth.
When Lee had reached the declaration as to hanging, he looked the
doctor steadily in the face, said with diabolical emphasis, ‘but not till
you are dead;’ and added all the horrible indignities to which the poor
body, externally and internally, was to be subjected. The judge was
probably vexed at finding no symptom that he had scared the
helpless victim, who was carried back to the Tower amid the
sympathies of Jacobites and the decorous curiosity of ladies and
gentlemen who gazed at him, and the gay dragoons escorting him,
as they passed.
Next day, and for several days, Jean Cameron, the THE
doctor’s wife, was seen going to St. James’s Palace, DOCTOR’S
to Leicester House, and to Kensington. She was JACOBITISM.
admitted, by proper introduction to majesty, to the
dowager Princess of Wales and to the Princess Amelia. The
sunshine of such High Mightinesses should ever bear with it grace
and mercy; but poor and pretty Jean Cameron found nothing but
civility, and an expression of regret that the law must be left to take
its course. She went back to cheer, if she could, her doomed, but not
daunted, husband. He was not allowed pen and ink and paper, but
under rigid restrictions. What he wrote was read. If it was not to the
taste of the warders, they tore up the manuscript, and deprived the
doctor of the means of writing. Nevertheless, he contrived to get
slips of paper and a pencil, and therewith to record certain opinions,
all of which he made over to his wife.
It cannot be said that the record showed any respect whatever for
the king de facto, or for his family. These were referred to as ‘the
Usurper and his Faction.’ The Duke of Cumberland was ‘the
inhuman son of the Elector of Hanover.’ Not that Cameron wished
any harm to them hereafter. He hoped God would forgive, as he put
it, ‘all my enemies, murderers, and false accusers, from the Elector
of Hanover (the present possessor of the throne of our injured
sovereign) and his bloody son down to Sam Cameron, the basest of
their spies, as I freely do!’ He himself, he said, had done many a
good turn to English prisoners in Scotland, had also prevented the
Highlanders from burning the houses and other property of Whigs,
‘for all which,’ he added, ‘I am like to meet with a Hanover reward.’
On the other hand, the doomed man wrote in CHARLES
terms of the highest praise of the old and young EDWARD, A
Chevalier, or the King and Prince of Wales. There PROTESTANT.
would be neither peace nor prosperity till the Stuarts
were restored. The prince was as tenderly affectioned as he was
brave, and Dr. Cameron knew of no order issued at Culloden to give
no quarter to the Elector’s troops. As aide-de-camp to the prince, he
must (he said) have known if such an order was issued. On another
subject, the condemned Jacobite wrote: ‘On the word of a dying
man, the last time I had the honour of seeing His Royal Highness
Charles, Prince of Wales, he told me from his own mouth, and bid
me assure his friends from him, that he was a member of the Church
of England.’ It is to be regretted that no date fixes ‘the last time.’ As
to the assurance, it proves the folly of the speaker; also, that
Cameron himself was not a Roman Catholic, as he was reported to
be.
From Walpole’s Letters and the daily and weekly papers, ample
details of the last moments of this unfortunate man may be collected.
They were marked by a calm, unaffected heroism. ‘The parting with
his wife (writes Walpole) the night before (his execution) was heroic
and tender. He let her stay till the last moment, when being aware
that the gates of the Tower would be locked, he told her so; she fell
at his feet in agonies: he said, “Madam, this is not what you
promised me,” and embracing her, forced her to retire; then, with the
same coolness, looked at the window till her coach was out of sight,
after which, he turned about and wept.’
On the following morning, the 7th of June, Dr. CAMERON’S
Cameron expressed a strong desire to see his wife CREED.
once more, to take a final leave, but this was
explained to him to be impossible. With a singular carefulness as to
his own appearance, which carefulness indeed distinguished all who
suffered in the same cause, he was dressed in a new suit, a light
coloured coat, red waistcoat and breeches, and even a new bagwig!
The hangman chained him to the hurdle on which he was drawn
from the Tower to Tyburn. ‘He looked much at the Spectators in the
Houses and Balconies,’ say the papers, ‘as well as at those in the
Street, and he bowed to several persons.’ He seemed relieved by his
arrival at the fatal tree. Rising readily from the straw in the hurdle, he
ascended the steps into the cart, the hangman slightly supporting
him under one arm. Cameron, with a sort of cheerfulness, welcomed
a reverend gentleman who followed him,—‘a Gentleman in a lay
habit,’ says the ‘Daily Advertiser,’ ‘who prayed with him and then left
him to his private devotions, by which ’twas imagined the Doctor was
a Roman Catholic, and the Gentleman who prayed with him, a
Priest.’ This imagining was wrong. On one of the slips, pencilled in
the Tower, and delivered to his wife, the Doctor had written: ‘I die a
member of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, as by law established
before that most unnatural Rebellion began in 1688, which, for the
sins of this nation, hath continued till this day.’ At Tyburn, moreover,
Cameron made a statement to the sheriff, that he had always been a
member of the Church of England. There was no discrepancy in this,
he was simply an active Jacobite Nonjuror. As the
THE LAST
reverend gentleman who attended him, hurriedly VICTIM.
descended the steps, he slipped. Cameron was quite
concerned for him, and called to him from the cart, ‘I think you do not
know the way so well as I do.’ Walpole says: ‘His only concern
seemed to be at the ignominy of Tyburn. He was not disturbed at the
dresser for his body, nor for the fire to burn his bowels;’ but he
remembered the emphatic remark of his Judge, that the burning was
to take place while he was yet alive; and he asked the sheriff to
order things so that he might be quite dead before the more brutal
part of the sentence was carried out. The sheriff was a remarkably
polite person. He had begged Cameron, after he had mounted into
the cart, not to hurry himself, but to take his own time: they would
wait his pleasure and convenience, and so on. The courteous official
now promised he would see the Doctor effectually strangled out of
life, before knife or fire touched him. On which, Cameron declared
himself to be ready. It was at this juncture, the chaplain hurriedly slipt
down the steps. ‘The wretch,’ says Walpole, who in doubt as to his
Church, calls him ‘minister or priest,’ ‘after taking leave, went into a
landau, where, not content with seeing the Doctor hanged, he let
down the top of the landau, for the better convenience of seeing him
embowelled.’
Even such brutes as then found a sensual delight IN THE SAVOY.
in witnessing the Tyburn horrors were touched by the
unpretentious heroism of this unhappy victim. Some of them
recovered their spirits a day or two after, when a man was pilloried at
Charing Cross. They repaired to the spot with a supply of bricks and
flung them with such savage dexterity as soon to break a couple of
the patient’s ribs. On the 9th of June at midnight, there was a
spectacle to which they were not invited. The Government (wisely
enough) were resolved that Cameron’s funeral should be private.
The body lay where Lovat’s had lain, at Stephenson’s the
undertaker, in the Strand, opposite Exeter Change. A few Jacobite
friends attended and saw the body quietly deposited in what the
papers styled, ‘the great vault in the precincts of the Savoy.’
It was in this month a report was spread that an attempt had been
made to blow up the Tower, from which, perhaps, the legend has
arisen that the young Chevalier and a friend in disguise had been
there to see if it could not be done! ‘The Report,’ according to the
‘Weekly Journal,’ ‘of a lighted match being found at the door of the
Powder Magazine in the Tower was not true.’ A bit of burnt paper
lying on the ground within the Tower gave rise to a story which
agitated all London for a day or two;—and which will be presently
referred to.
How Dr. Cameron’s death affected both parties, in
A SCENE AT
London, is best illustrated by a well-known and RICHARDSON’
picturesque incident recorded by Boswell. Soon after S.
the execution, Hogarth was visiting Richardson, the
author of ‘Clarissa Harlowe.’ ‘And being a warm partisan of George
II., he observed to Richardson that certainly there must have been
some very unfavourable circumstances lately discovered in this
particular case which had induced the King to approve of an
execution for rebellion so long after the time when it was committed,
as this had the appearance of putting a man to death in cold blood,
and was very unlike his Majesty’s usual clemency. While he was
talking, he perceived a person standing at a window of the room
shaking his head, and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous
manner. He concluded that he was an idiot whom his relations had
put under the care of Mr. Richardson, as a very good man. To his
great surprise, however, this figure stalked forward to where he and
Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argument,
and burst out into an invective against George II., as one who, upon
all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous, mentioning many
instances. In short, he displayed such a power of eloquence that
Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that
the idiot had been at the moment inspired. Hogarth and Johnson
were not made known to each other at this interview.’
Neither Hogarth nor Johnson knew the real facts of CAMERON’S
this case. Cameron played a desperate game and CASE.
lost his stake. Scott, in the Introduction to
Redgauntlet,’ declares that whether the execution of Cameron was
political or otherwise, it might have been justified upon reasons of a
public nature had the king’s Ministry thought proper to do so.
Cameron had not visited Scotland solely on private affairs. ‘It was
not considered prudent by the English Ministry to let it be generally
known that he came to inquire about a considerable sum of money
which had been remitted from France to the friends of the exiled
family.’ He had also, as Scott points out, a commission to confer with
Macpherson of Cluny who, from 1746 to 1756, was the
representative or chief agent of the ‘rightful King,’ an office which he
carried on under circumstances of personal misery and peril.
Cameron and Macpherson were to gather together the scattered
embers of disaffection. The former, being captured, paid the forfeit
which was legally due. ‘The ministers, however,’ says Scott, ‘thought
it proper to leave Dr. Cameron’s new schemes in concealment, lest,
by divulging them, they had indicated the channel of communication
which, as is now well known, they possessed to all the plots of
Charles Edward. But it was equally ill-advised and ungenerous to
sacrifice the character of the King to the policy of the administration.
Both points might have been gained by sparing the life of Dr.
Cameron, after conviction, and limiting his punishment to perpetual
exile.’ As it was, Jacobite plots continued to ‘rise and burst like
bubbles on a fountain.’ An affectionate memory of Cameron was
also transmitted through the hearts of his descendants. In the reign
of Victoria, his grandson restored honour to a name which, in a
political point of view, had never been dishonoured.
In the royal chapel of the Savoy, the following inscription is to be
read on the wall beneath a painted glass window:—In memory of
Archibald Cameron, brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who
having been attainted after the battle of Culloden in 1746, escaped
to France, but returning to Scotland in 1753, was apprehended and
executed. He was buried beneath the Altar of this Chapel. This
window is inserted by Her Majesty’s permission in place of a
sculptured tablet which was erected by his grandson, Charles Hay
Cameron, in 1846, and consumed by the fire which partially
destroyed the Chapel in 1864.
The window above referred to has six lights, and each light now
contains figures representing St. Peter, St. Philip, St. Paul, St. John,
St. James, and St. Andrew.
As a sample of how minor offences on the part of A MINOR
unquiet Jacobites were punished, the case may be OFFENDER.
cited of the Rev. James Taylor, who was not allowed
to indulge his Jacobitism even in a compassionate form. A beggar
was arrested in his progress from house to house. He was found to
be the bearer of a recommendatory letter from the Nonjuror Taylor, in
which it was stated that the bearer had fought on the right side at
Preston Pans and Culloden. For this offence Mr. Taylor was tried,
convicted, and heavily sentenced;—namely, to two years’
imprisonment, a fine of 300l., and to find sureties for his good
behaviour during the next seven years, himself in 1000l., and two
others in 500l. each.
All this time, Parliament was perfectly tranquil. There was no flash
of anti-Jacobitism. There was nothing in the debates but what
partook of the lightest of summer-lightning. In the whole session of
1755, there is but one allusion to Jacobites, and that took the form of
a wish that, ten years before, Scotland had been as heavily
oppressed as England was,—in that and many a succeeding year,—
in one special respect. Mr. Robert Dundas, in the Commons’ debate
on speedily manning the Navy, insisted on the legality and propriety
of pressing seamen, and remarked: ‘How happy it would have been
for Scotland, in 1745, if all her seamen had been pressed into the
public service, in order to man a few guard-ships, to prevent the
landing of those who, at that time, raised such a flame in the country;
and yet I believe that a press could not then have been carried on
without the aid of the military.’
 At this time there was one especial trouble in the
SUSPICION
royal family. The dowager Princess of Wales had as AGAINST THE
much dread of the conqueror at Culloden, as if he had DUKE.
been the Jacobite prince himself. Her dominant idea
was that the really good-natured and now corpulent duke would act
Richard III. towards the prince, her son, if opportunity should offer.
Bubb Dodington says, in his Diary, May, 1755: ‘On my commending
the Prince’s figure, and saying he was much taller than the King, she
replied, yes; he was taller than his uncle. I said, in height it might be
so, but if they measured round, the Duke had the advantage of him.
She answered, it was true; but she hoped it was the only advantage
that he ever would have of him.’
In the following year, 1756, electioneering politics THE ANTI-
found violent suggestion and expression. Walpole, JACOBITE
referring to the clamour raised by the Jacobites, PRESS.
speaks of ‘Instructions from counties, cities,
boroughs, especially from the City of London, in the style of 1641,
and really in the spirit of 1715 and 1745, (which) have raised a great
flame.’ On the other hand, Jacobites and their manifestations were
treated by the Whig press with boundless contempt. For example,
the ‘Contest,’ in 1757, flung this paragraph at the supposed few
Jacks now left in London to read it:—‘The word Jacobite is vox et
prœterea nihil. The Name survives after the Party is extinct. There
may be a few enthusiastic Bigots who deem Obstinacy a Merit, and
who appear to be ungrateful for the Liberty and Security they enjoy
under the present Government, and insensible of the Calamity and
Oppression of the Government they would be willing to restore. But
their Power is as inconsiderable as their Principles are detestable.
And many of them, had they an Opportunity of accomplishing their
proposed desires, would be the last to put them in Execution; for
they are mostly influenced by an idle Affectation of Singularity, and
the ridiculous Pride of opposing the Common Sense of their Fellow
Citizens.’
In the same year, the ‘Independent Freeholder’ turned the
question to party account, and divided the people of England into
three classes. It admitted the diminished numbers of Jacobites,
recorded their disaffection, and also accounted for it. The three
classes were—Place Hunters, Jacobites, and English Protestants,
whether Whig or Tory. The ‘Freeholder’ described the Jacobites as:
—‘An Offspring of Zealots, early trained to support the divine
hereditary Right of Men, who forfeited all Right by persisting to do
every Wrong. They are not considerable in Number; and had
probably mixed with the Mass of rational Men, had not the continued
Abuses of the Administration furnished cause of Clamour, enabling
secret Enemies of the Constitution to cherish a groundless Enmity to
the Succession.’
As the reign of George II. drew to a close, in the THE CITY
autumn of 1760, a change came over the City of GATES.
London, which, to many, indicated a new era; namely,
the destruction of those City gates in the preservation of which timid
Whigs saw safety from the assaults of Jacobites. Read announced
the fate of those imaginary defences, in the ‘Journal’ of August 2nd:
—‘On Wednesday, the materials of the three following City Gates
were sold before the Committee of Lands, to Mr. Blagden, a
carpenter, in Coleman Street; namely, Aldgate, for 157l. 10s.;
Cripplegate, for 91l.; and Ludgate, for 148l. The purchaser is to
begin to pull down the two first, on the first day of September; and
Ludgate on the 4th of August, and is to clear away all the rubbish,
&c., in two months from these days.’ In two months, a new reign had
begun, and the old gates had disappeared.
But before proceeding to the new reign, there remains to be
chronicled how the ordinary London Jacobites obtained news of their
King, James, and their Prince of Wales, Charles Edward.
 CHAPTER XIII.

(1751 to 1761.)
uring this decade, there was great
THE OLD
anxiety, on the part of the Jacobites in CHEVALIER
London, to have news of their Prince. Of AND THE
their ‘King’s’ whereabout they knew as CARDINAL.
much as the papers could tell them. These anxious
Jacobites who eagerly opened the London journals for news from
Rome, of ‘the King’ or ‘Prince of Wales,’ were not often rewarded for
their pains. The ‘London Gazette,’ which chronicled the veriest small
beer, had not a word to say as to the Chevalier or his sons. The
other papers recorded, for the comfort or diversion of readers, such
paragraphs as these; namely, that Cardinal York, on his brother’s
birthday, had given a grand entertainment to a brilliant company of
Cardinals and Ladies; and that Rome was more crowded with
English nobility than Hanover, even when King George was in his
electoral dominions. Some sympathy was excited in Jacobite
company, at the intelligence that the Cardinal was recovering from
‘an attack of Small Pocks,’ which had carried off thousands of
victims. As for Prince Edward, as the Cardinal’s brother is often
called in the papers, ‘his place of residence is not known, there being
no other proof of his being alive but the rejoicings of his father on his
son’s birthday.’ Next, ‘Read’ announced, no doubt for the pleasure of
some of its readers, ‘We hear from Rome, by authentick hand, that
Henderson has been formally excommunicated for his “History of the
Rebellion.”’ ‘No one can tell in what place Prince Edward resides,’
says another ‘authentick hand,’ ‘it is currently reported that he is
actually in Italy;’ and again, ‘Some are ready to believe he is still
incog. in France.’ Then came ‘authentick’ news to London, of ignoble
quarrels between the Chevalier and his younger son, squabbles
about money, squabbles among their friends in trying to reconcile
them;—the Pope himself being mixed up in the turmoil, and getting