The development of a large metropolitan city like Milan cannot be reduced to a simple economic calculation or a sum of building projects. Living a city is a cultural and solidarity question, a collective exercise of vision and responsibility. Milan, in its history, has always been able to be a city of ties, welcome, opening. Today, in front of the challenges of contemporaneity, that vocation must be relaunched.
Figures such as Cardinal Martini and Cardinal Tettamanzi often remembered him and today the Archbishop Delpini also reiterates it: The city is not only an agglomeration of houses, but a place of thought, an intertwining of relationships, a laboratory of solidarity. A Milan faithful to itself cannot give up its solidarity tradition. It is a question of memory, of historical consistency, but also an urgent necessity in a world crossed by social, environmental and economic crises.
Poverty, for example, can no longer be considered an emergency to be addressed with isolated care initiatives, which are compensated for inequalities. Rather, it is necessary to go beyond the extraneousness that characterizes the relationship between urban policies and socio -economic unease. Milan must put the fragility and weakness at the center as keys to rethink. This means looking at the city starting from the elderly and children, improving public transport, breaking down architectural barriers. A city is made of everyday life, of small and concrete choices, but above all of the gaze that orientates them.
In this perspective, The places that generate links become central, such as the House of Charity, born with the idea that security is not obtained with control, but with the reception. It is there that a livable city is built: in the Solidarity Shipyards, such as those dedicated to “After us”, designed for people with disabilities and for their family members, now increasingly transformed into the idea of “During us”.
Milan needs to start from poverty and margin to generate positive visions. It is a cultural and political effort. It means giving up the controversy and ads to courageously choose new strategic directions, capable of putting social cohesion back to the center. We need a thought that recovering the spirituality of the city, understood as conviviality, as daily hospitality, not only dictated by urgency.
An example comes from Naples, from the Sanità district and the experience of Don Antonio Loffredo, where beauty, art, culture have become redemption tools. Milan can also do it. It is about inventing, recreating, starting again with momentum. Because profit cannot be the only parameter. We need legality, of course, but also imagination. It is time to give life to a new urban project with strong roots and long vision. With people, beauty and social justice in the center.
