Issue #8 - SUMMER/2011

"Those, leaving Rome or the sleepy cities of the South of Italy, only understand living amongst us, and they form unpleasant first impressions finding out about our bustling selves, our preoccupied and impatient characters just out to earn money. It seems like our pragmatism is a little spiritual and one could get frightened, but we need to give into it, in light of the evidence of our wrong doings, and recognise who we are in this modern world, to match up to these times and those which are necessities."

In 1906, with these resounding words, a renown journalist told his story for the national press at the start of the "Expo" in the city of Milan. Only two years prior to this event, a giant general strike had paralysed the country, announcing the rise of the "challenge of classes" - he would stay on the scene for nearly the whole century.
Today, we can say that in any form the story repeats itself: on one hand, a new Expo is coming to Milan. On the other hand, it's impossible not to be aware of the fact that since the economical crisis of 2008, the Western world has profoundly changed.
The development of the metropolis, as the topic of dispute, is at the centre of this complex situation. From this point of view, we, here at MilanoCittàAperta, have tried over the last few years to convey the fact that our city is living, month by month, day by day. The result, this current issue, is a perspective of the theme of construction, of development, of the structural, urbanisation, and environmental changes happening in Milan.
Builders, born to destroy and rebuild. Profit-orientated thinking that changes entire zones, leaving only the memory to re-live those times that have passed. Abandoned factories, stuck in an unbalance between ruin and rebirth. A city that changes everyday, through the good and the bad. Overall, this is an issue that builds awareness. But one that also reacts.
Enjoy.

INDEX
• Milano Porta Nuova
by Susanna Venisti
Photographic accounts of the asthetical and structural transformation of the city from a view alongside the relentless work on the construction sites.
• Il vuoto riempito
by Marco Garofalo
Work that has been documented (by commission) of the development and change of a landscape, (a zone) from a piece of the city that has been taken apart and been rebuilt according to business propisitions.
• Rovine contemporanee
by Alberto Locatelli
The building sites, as incomplete places, become (poetically and educationally) a promise of something to come.
• Ex SISAS
by Daniele Pennati
Between the hope of a new life and an ever-widening chasm of an environmental disaster, the ex-chemical factory (SISAS) offers a unique photographic focal point from its desolate and unsettling abandonment.
• Isola untitled
by Virgilio Carnisio
The past cannot be re-lived. Except through those people that remember, with or without regret, that which was the quarter of Isola then but is no more.
• Naviglio, cuore di Milano
by Il Multiverso
Milan the "city of water" is re-lived in these surreal images. Not just to remember the past, but to make it possible to have hope for the future.

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