The Piazze Aperte programme and the institutional practice of tactical urbanism in Milan

Abstract

Tactical urbanism emerged as a bottom-up, subversive, and spontaneous mechanism for creating public space in the last decade. Various public administrations promptly adopted it as a design tool for transforming public spaces. This contradiction is the framework for analysing this institutionalized version of tactical urbanism through Milan’s Piazze Aperte programme. The selected case study is Piazza Gasparri in the peripherical neighbourhood of la Comasina. That participated in this program guided by the neighbourhood’s local committee. The analysis describes the transformation process and produces a series of considerations about this emerging practice.