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Milan is not closing streets to cars, it is opening them to people

The city’s open spaces have become destinations for parents, babies and young children.

October 11, 2024

Anya Groner, Writer, Journalist, Teacher

Ask him about urban design and there’s a good chance that Demetrio Scopelliti, Director of Urban Planning and Public Space in Milan, Italy, will get personal. His childhood neighbourhood had no sidewalks, so he roamed his neighbourhood streets, bouncing between his house and his school, friends’ homes and the basketball court behind the local church. His mobility habits changed abruptly at age 18 when he learned to drive. It’s a typical story: coming of age and transitioning from footpower to horsepower. But keep listening and Scopelliti will share how a family tragedy reversed that trajectory and inspired him to give up driving and devote his life to restructuring how city dwellers, including his own three-year-old son Elia, use Milan’s sidewalks and streets.

In Italy today, most streets are built for cars, not people. This point was made jarringly clear to Scopelliti when he was a young adult, finishing university, and an SUV hit his Aunt Paola, Uncle Francesco, and their 10-year-old son Marco. Their deaths were devastating. 3,000 Italians die in car crashes each year, a tragedy that Scopelliti believes is built into his country’s car-centred infrastructure.

As a public servant, his goal is to make his city safer for pedestrians and bikers and most especially children, like his son, who he walks to and from school each day. “The city that’s good for kids is a good city for everyone,” he told me. Yet for years, his dream of converting parking spaces and asphalt into public parks and walkways felt elusive. Habits are hard to change. Ask people to stop driving and Scopelliti says they become aggressive and sharp, more aware of what they’re losing than what they’re gaining. “It’s polarising.”

After the car crash, Scopelliti stopped driving altogether.

A personal narrative can inspire change

Scopelliti felt frustrated that institutional communication wasn’t working . In his experience, the Milanese don’t connect to technical policy language. Increasingly, he found himself telling his family’s story at public meetings, “especially after stressful moments where we were debating about a solution and couldn’t find something satisfactory.” Sharing his story, changed the conversation. “The empathy that you can create generates a different level of communication between people.”

Scopelliti was invited to participate in the Urban95 Academy. The programme brings together city leaders, planners and urbanists to learn how urban design impacts child development. That’s where he encountered Dr. Savvas Verdis, co-director of LSE’s Executive Master’s programme in cities. Verdis’s research aims to bridge political divides in order to promote sustainable development. To work, policy conversations need to activate commonly held values. The best way to do that, says Verdis, is through personal narrative.

During his studies in London, Scopelliti was developing a TEDx talk about how tactical urbanism can transform Milan’s streets. Verdis’ insights were a revelation. “I was in a moment where I was talking, understanding things. The exercise that I did [with Verdis] of building my public narrative was very impactful.” Scopelliti ended up crafting his TEDx talk using a framework designed by Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz. Ganz’s public narrative has three parts: story of self; story of us; and story of now. In his TEDx talk, Scopelliti connected his family’s tragedy to Italy’s annual traffic fatality statistics and presented the possibility that those deaths are preventable. He ended his speech with a call to action. “Reimagine what you can do with some road paint and volunteers who want to change things. Plant flowers. Put in tables. Redirect cars. Kids come out of school and parents are on benches talking. They can joke and play. We’re not closing streets to cars as much as opening them to people.”

A city of stories

Stroll through Milan today and there’s a good chance you’ll encounter Scopelliti’s “story of now” in action. Piazze Aperte, Milan’s open spaces programme which Scopelliti spearheads, has been hugely successful. Hundreds of benches, potted plants, bike racks, and even a few dozen ping pong tables populate Milan’s reclaimed streets and intersections. The reactivated public space mitigates urban heat islands, expands green infrastructure, depaves streets, creates bike lanes, improves air quality, and increases street safety. The change is immediate. Everyone benefits. “That’s the magic of public space,” says Scopelliti. Close a road and the space fills with kids running, couples playing, and grandparents sitting on benches. “You design something and you get surprised every time about what happens there.”

Scopelliti says his story is a constant work in progress, “everyday changing and increasing and improving.” These days, when he talks about Milan’s streets, he mentions his role as a parent, how important it is for kids like Elia to move independently and safely. His message resonates. The city’s open spaces have become destinations for parents and caregivers of babies and young children.

Around the city, volunteers paint whimsical designs onto repurposed asphalt and arrange planters, activating their own narratives of public space and transformation. Neighbourhoods are applying to the municipal government to begin their own tactical urbanism projects and cities across Europe are asking how they can replicate the programme’s wide-spread enthusiasm. “It’s a project made of stories,” says Scopelliti, smiling. “And among these stories [is] mine.”

Scopelliti says: “We will be successful the day we have a national or even European law that would make space in front of schools car-free.”

Anya Groner’s award-winning writing explores the changing environment’s impact on community and equity. Her journalism and essays are featured in Guernica, The New York Times, The Oxford American, Orion Magazine and The Atlantic.