Rho - Bridges, hinges and management models for urban regeneration

The area involved in the project is bordered by the railway, the A4 motorway and the Olona drainage canals, and includes the hamlet of Lucernate and the San Michele and San Martino neighbourhoods: a part of the city that is particularly lacking in services and has few links with the city centre.

The project aims to reconnect the area in question with the city centre by creating “bridges” (both physical and intangible) that can foster physical and social connections between different parts of the city and between different communities through the sharing of activities and uses of urban space. The objectives of the strategy are the redevelopment and development of the city's physical facilities and infrastructure, the enhancement of services for education, social aggregation and cohesion, culture and leisure, and housing, and the strengthening of a sense of common belonging.

The objectives of the Strategy are:
» Places, communities and functions that are currently distant, fragmented and unconnected must be connected
» Connections must be both physical and social: based on the creation of a network of public spaces and facilities designed to enable new social relationships with which to shape and enrich this part of the city with collective meaning
» To reconnect the physical and social components within the area and connect them with the outside world, towards the attractions (city centre and MIND)
» Facilitate travel to increase opportunities and possibilities for using services
» Create new services that generate urbanity by developing the themes of living, social assistance and support, culture, and education

Create actions that serve as bridges, namely:
» Physical and thematic areas that enhance what already exists by implementing and bringing everything into synergy
» Places and spaces located within an overall vision that goes beyond the context of the agglomeration and elevates them to points of reference, attractions and aggregators of the city
» Initiatives and actions that create a sense of community through training and educational activities, socio-cultural and sports services, and innovative forms of temporary living

The project identifies three places in which to intervene, linked in turn by three lines, or cycle and pedestrian paths. Places and paths create a network that connects different neighbourhoods and these to the rest of the city: Lucernate, the Sports Centre and Via Tevere.

The mission of the project can be summed up in a motto: building bridges/creating links.
» Physical bridges: bridges between parts of the city. Places that unite. Not places to pass through but hinges, in which to live and create communities
» Social bridges: bridges between individuals, between generations, between services and welfare provisions
» And finally, a bridge between the physical and the social: integrating social housing policies with community-building policies and arriving at the construction of new integrated and inclusive models of intervention