Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Almost 1.000 square meters of surface area returned to soil and vegetation. Maran: "Not an isolated action but the launch of a widespread plan in the city"
 

Milan, 5 December 2019 - Milan celebrates World Soil Day announced by the United Nations by 'depaving' a road space in Viale Suzzani to bring the underlying soil to light. It is a large, double traffic island that has always been paved with asphalt, which in the next few weeks will become a lawn bed at the entrance to the Parco Nord Milano: in total, 900 square meters of impervious surface to be returned to soil and vegetation.
 
“Milan increasingly needs greenery, not only in the parks, but in the streets and squares, on the roofs and on the walls – declares the councilor for Urban Planning, Greenery and Agriculture Pierfrancesco Maran -. Today's action is not just a way to celebrate World Soil Day by promoting an idea of ​​city development that calls for less concrete and more greenery - the Territorial Government Plan provides for a 4% reduction in land consumption compared to to the Previous Plan - but it is also the demonstration that more can and must be done to increase permeable surfaces in highly urbanized areas, with benefits for health and the environment. Precisely for this reason it will not be an isolated intervention. For 2020, together with the Mobility and Public Works Department we are working on a depaving plan spread throughout the city's neighborhoods."
 
The ecological accounting of the depaving intervention implemented today is significant. According to data processed by Ispra, although it concerns only 900 square meters returned to the ground, it corresponds to the restoration of the capacity to manage a volume of rainwater corresponding to over one million liters of water: that is, how much it rains in a year, on average, on a similar surface area of ​​Milanese soil. In other words, it represents the quantity of annual water consumption of 5 families, made up of clean rainwater forced to enter the sewer pipes, diluting the dirty water and needlessly burdening the costs of its purification. Furthermore, the soil that will be restored in these two new plots of land, in its fertile layer, will be able to accumulate organic substance equivalent to 15 tons of CO2, as much as a small car that travels 10.000 kilometers a year for 15 years emits: a soil that regains its fertility and behaves like a real 'sponge' of climate-altering gases.
 
Today's is not an impromptu initiative, but the launch of a broad urban revitalization program. In 2020, the Administration plans a dedicated contract for depaving interventions that will collaborate in mitigating the thermal discomfort linked to the urban heat island and which will help improve Milan's climate-altering emissions balance. A public objective which also concerns private development: the new rules on soil permeability introduced in the Territorial Government Plan provide that new buildings must necessarily reach a climate impact reduction index (RIIC), to be achieved through depaving interventions on the soil and the creation of green walls and roofs.

How it is and how it will be: photo gallery