New Milan metro-line M4. From infrastructural project to design scenario enabling urban resilience

Resilience is an attitude of a system to cope with shock or stress and to guarantee its continuity. Referring to a city or a neighborhood, a resilient system is an urban body that can sustainably adapt to natural and climate hazards, economic, social, and technological shocks. Moreover, it can sustainably transform solving chronic problems such as traffic, air, and noise pollution. The city of Milan is the case study where trial the re-designing of sustainable, safe, and resilient urban space. The Green-blue backbone project re-shapes a chain of public spaces according to the development of the new metro line M4. The Green-blue backbone is a network of paths and public spaces for pedestrians and cyclists that cross the city center and connect two parks. Its design and implementation are tuned with historic heritage and peripheral neighborhoods and facing their resources through active mobility development. The paper discusses the Masterplan proposal aimed to convert a simple infrastructural project into a well-organized urban space design. Urban design priorities were a high visual appeal, easy and simple maintenance, high ecological function, cultural heritage protection, and sustainable mobility. The Green-blue backbone project pushes Public Administration to re-consider urban space design to implement new local connections and new metropolitan identities according to a sustainable transport system, and to re-think the common background where the community might be resilient. In particular focusing on ecological, functional, and perceptual aspects that are effective elements in creating urban resilience. From an urban planning perspective, Milan’s Green-blue backbone is the opportunity to realize safer and resilient public spaces and sustainable mobility, looking at the time-space design of the public transport and ecological network.