We asked Piero Pelizzaro, chief resilience officer of the City of Milan, whether he believes a more sustainable world can emerge from this crisis.
The health emergency we are living through has allowed us to understand many things. We have learned that having the people we love by our side truly makes a difference. That we need to devote more time to the relationships we tended to neglect. That a television series cannot replace the beauty of a meadow in bloom. We have suffered: some more, some less. We have watched nature rejoice in the face of our suffering. But we have not experienced this as an act of revenge. Or as a farewell. We have felt it as a promise — the promise that a brighter future exists: we have finally managed to see it. And it is an invitation that carries the scent of hope.
Piero Pelizzaro, chief resilience officer of the City of Milan and head of the Città resilienti directorate, shares this conviction. The Lombard capital, like other urban centres leading the transition towards sustainable development models, had already placed its bet on this future before it could even see it. Now that it has glimpsed it on the horizon, it will move faster to try to reach it.
We know that, to address phase 2 of the coronavirus emergency, the City of Milan has presented the Strade aperte plan. What does it involve? Is it only the first step towards an even more sustainable Milan in the post-Covid-19 era?
Strade aperte is one of the proposals that were put forward in a document, Milano 2020. Strategia di adattamento, published by the City, which you can comment on until the end of May, also submitting proposals of various kinds, especially those related to sustainability — so we are very pleased to receive them. One of the proposals is precisely Strade aperte, which involves the creation of emergency cycle lanes, because today we are required, given the conditions in which we are living, to maintain social distancing, and so it is necessary to create more space to allow people to walk or cycle while keeping a safe distance. These 35 new kilometres of cycle path — 23 of which will be ready shortly, with some works already under way — are in fact a continuation of the work carried out in recent years by the various administrations that have succeeded one another at the City of Milan.
So let us say that this is not something new, but rather a continuation of the transition the city is making towards more collective mobility. Public transport has played an important role up to now, and we are confident it will continue to do so in the years ahead, but this is also a city that moves through car sharing and bike sharing services, and one that wants to promote cycling more and more. It is an important transition when you consider that twenty years ago Milan had 80 cars per 100 inhabitants, whereas today we have 49 per 100 inhabitants. These figures already speak to the work being done, which is now being accelerated for emergency reasons — an acceleration of a path that had already begun, and of the city's determination to be increasingly sustainable and accessible to all.
Read also: Cosa prevede Strade aperte, il progetto di Milano per ridurre l'uso dell'auto nella fase 2
The mayors of C40, the network of cities committed to tackling climate change, of which Milan is also a member, argue that returning to "business as usual" after the pandemic is not possible. Has this crisis made it even clearer that a paradigm shift is needed, one that guides us towards new development models and more resilient lifestyles?
I would say that, in reality, it is not so much that this crisis has given things a push forward. This crisis has given us a clear message and a clear signal. The loss of biodiversity at a global level, a world that is increasingly polluted — these create the conditions for viruses to live and proliferate more rapidly. Those of us who work on climate often say: "We must save the planet." But the planet saves itself. It has already done so in previous geological eras. This is a struggle for survival that we humans must face, by creating the conditions for humanity to live in harmony with nature, and so I believe there is today a clear signal of the need to reconnect with nature in a more balanced and more equitable way.
The lesson we must learn is that we need to make this planet healthier, more breathable too, because there is also a major issue around pollutants. Today there is no certainty about the correlation between air pollution and the virus, but there are many indicators that might lead us to think that the most polluted areas are also those where the highest concentration of cases has been recorded.
What the C40 mayors are telling us — and I will cite in this case one of our fellow citizens, Caterina Sarfatti, who will be the coordinator of the task force's work — is that we have today the opportunity to make a real transition, and we must do so because first and foremost there is the health of our fellow citizens and our communities. So I believe the message is above all to guarantee better health even beyond the emergency. In any case, if one looks at the number of deaths that occur on an annual basis due to air pollution, they are far greater than those recorded in these months — and so, just as I believe we have managed this emergency very well, we must learn to manage the air pollution emergency in the same way, because the deaths involved are far greater than those from coronavirus.
Beppe Sala, Mayor of Milan, was chosen by C40 to chair the Global mayors Covid-19 recovery task force. What does this mean? What will the task force do?
The mayor was asked by the president of C40 to chair this task force. We have the fortune — or misfortune, depending on how you look at it — of being one of the front runner cities in managing the emergency; after Wuhan, we were the first major city at a global level to go into lockdown, and so we had those two or three weeks' head start on the others. From this came the idea of building a task force to define guidelines, a recovery plan that is as common as possible to the various cities, identifying first and foremost what the needs are and then working from there, with climate change, the development of renewable energy sources and investment in sustainable mobility as pillars, but also the need to strengthen equity within our communities — because this crisis has increased inequality within them, both from an economic standpoint and, I would argue, from a digital one as well.
For those who enjoy a certain level of economic wellbeing, have internet access and a computer, switching to smart working mode has been fairly straightforward, but there are very many — thousands — of people who do not have the good fortune of having digital tools, and so there is also a risk of leaving people behind. I therefore believe that the task force also wants to ensure that no one is left behind, and that this recovery plan can in fact be an opportunity to rebalance inequalities within cities as well. However, it is clear that the main objective remains climate change and how, through the fight against climate change, we can restart the economy. Some signals are also coming from our government, with the recent news regarding the ecobonus and the strengthening of incentives for the purchase of bicycles — in short, I believe there are some good prospects in this.
Read also: Con il coronavirus aumenta la richiesta di mobilità ciclabile
Have we realised that the health emergency and the climate emergency are two sides of the same coin, and above all that the health of the planet and our own are closely interconnected?
Well, they say that the best opportunities arise in times of crisis. This is certainly an opportunity to rediscover — as Pope Francis also said in his encyclical Laudato si' — an individual, personal, ethical relationship with nature as citizens, rather than thinking we need to delegate, that someone else will tackle the problem, because our behaviour also influences that of the rest of the world.
I believe that the opportunity we have today is to rebalance our relationship with natural resources, with nature, and here we have a couple of elements that I think are important: one is the principle of care — not just healthcare, but also care for relationships, for people. Perhaps, instead of leaning out of a balcony to criticise someone who is out running, walking their dog, or taking their children for a walk, the moment has come to lean out and ask people how they are, whether they need anything, because if we learn to nurture our relationships we can also take greater care of the planet in general.
On the other hand, I think there is also a great need to capitalise on the experiences we have had over these weeks: we have learned to go shopping on foot — something many of us already did, but not all — we have learned to shop at the local store near home, perhaps going to the greengrocer and thereby recovering the value of a shorter supply chain. Over these weeks we have probably also regained the idea and the desire for public space, for parks and green areas, something we took for granted and which, only when it is taken away from us, do we understand its importance.
These are all opportunities being offered to us, and I think the greatest one is seeing how, if we change our habits, the climate and the environment change too. The air we have been breathing these days — these months by now — in Milan as in the rest of Italy, is unique, and why? Because there are not many cars on the road. I believe this is precisely the signal that, if we want to, we can change things.
During this very particular period we have asked our followers and some figures from the world of entertainment and media to imagine the post-emergency world by sending a postcard from the future. What would you write on this postcard? What message of hope would you like to send from the future?
"How are you?" [laughs, ed.]. More than anything, I hope that in the future what we have learned will have truly come to pass. We have lived through this dramatic, exhausting, and for many painful experience. Let us hope we have learned our lesson and that we leave to those who come after us a planet that is better than the one we found before. That is what I would write, and I think we Italians in particular have a great opportunity. We Italians, in my view, are not very good at managing public affairs in normal times — there are people who handle it better. In times of crisis, however, we manage to bring out the best in ourselves and in our community: we saw it starting with those startups that invented in 48 hours a way to print components for ventilators at the hospital in Brescia, we saw it in the solidarity of citizens — we had more requests for volunteering than we could handle — and we saw it in the willingness of many shops, bars and producers to help those in difficulty, as well as in the very generous donations received from all private operators.
I believe this is the opportunity for Italy to return to what our grandparents taught us after the Second World War, after the experience of the Resistance: rebuilding a country because we feel it is ours. This phase has also brought us closer together; there is physical distancing, but a human drawing-together. We must be able to capitalise on this experience. So I want to make an appeal: many people have suffered over these weeks and in recent months, and unfortunately many more will still suffer because the crisis ahead of us will be significant — yet there are also many people who have not suffered and will not suffer. I ask these people to be happy; we have something of a moral obligation to be happy and to put our problems back in their proper perspective, because if we set off again with care, with a smile and with happiness, I am convinced that sustainability, equity and inclusion can become elements that arise naturally within the country, because we Italians are resilient by definition and we have seen our share of difficult situations.
The resilience policies adopted by the City of Milan are admired throughout the world. Which cities have drawn inspiration from the Milan model, and which instead boast best practices from which we ourselves can draw inspiration?
I believe we are one of the many cities striving to do well. We are looking closely at the experience of Paris, at how they have worked on schools, at how to create school oases, so that schools can become on the one hand a place of recovery — perhaps for the elderly too during the summer when it gets very hot — and on the other a meeting place, that intergenerational encounter which needs to
