There were some dozens of walking that morning along the construction sites of the Porta Romana airport, led by Pietro Basile of Libera Milano and Elisa Orlando of the Common – Libera school. Citizens, activists, exponents of Milanese associations, students, journalists: a small group, collected between blue barriers and bulldozers, to closely observe a piece of cities that transforms. Not just any walk, but a “monitoring walk”, a way to train the gaze to read the urban signs, promises and contradictions of Milan-Cortina 2026.
In front of the excavators that sink into the earth, the memory was intertwined with the painting of Umberto Boccioni. In 1910, the picture Officine in Porta Romana He immortalized the Milan Milan, the city that grew on the shoulders of the workers, between workshops and sheds. Then the sirens played at noon and hundreds of blue aprons came out en masse for the lunch break. Today, in their place, Torri, Rendering and the Olympic village.
“The airport told of a city that no longer exists,” explains Basile. «It was the place where the freight trains stopped to supply the city market. Now, however, it has become a land of real estate development ». A lady adds a personal memory: “I grew up here, I came back from school and saw rivers of workers with blue suit. Every time I come back I seem to see them again, even if there are now construction sites and cranes in their place».
Walking along the blue barriers, the same color that occurs in all the Olympic construction sites, the participants noticed the panels decorated with street artist. “It’s not spontaneism,” Basile observes, “But construction site communication: it serves to make what would otherwise be perceived as an invasion acceptable».
Behind those poles take shape six buildings, destined to host 1,400 athletes. The costs estimated initially in 100 million have risen to 140. “Forty million in several covers with public money»He underlines Orlando. “We are used to reading the numbers in the abstract, but between 100 and 140 million there is the difference between a kindergarten or not built, between an open or closed hospital department”.
After the party, the area will become the largest study in Italy, with 1,700 beds. But the management will be private. “It is not a question of public construction,” clarified Basile. «They will be private operators to fix the rents. We don’t know if the students can afford it ». UNa question that is reflected on the wider issue of the Olympic inheritance: what benefits will they really remain in the hands of the community?
Not only Porta Romana. In Santa Giulia, the 16 thousand seats will be born without inheritance: no agreement with basketball or volleyball to use it after the games. “It is a system symbol of this logic »he writes Lavialbera«Great works commissioned to private entities, removed from public control, intended for an uncertain future».
The investigation of the magazine, presented by the director Elena Ciccarello, showed the distance between the promises and reality. “The word sustainability appeared 97 times in the candidacy dossier,” he remembered. «But the betrayals are evident: the new Bob track not expected, over 120 million expenditure, nineteenth century cut trees, plants built on fragile land. In Cortina a cable car is created on an area with an active fault, entrusted to a society without experience ».
Social costs also emerge. “In Cortina the selected volunteers do not find accommodation, “said Ciccarello. «One night on Airbnb costs three thousand euros. Many will have to sleep a hundred kilometers away and travel two hours every day. And they don’t even know where to place the police ». This in the face of over 5 billion and 720 million euros of the cost of the event . One billion and 600 million for the creation of the games and another 4 billion and 120 million for connected works (68% absorbed by 45 road works for a cost that exceeds 2 billion and 816 million euros total). Lombardy alone absorbs about half of the works (52%) and related costs (47%)
Milan and the mountains share a problem: the lack of transparency. The Olympic Committee in charge of supervising was established only in 2024. His first report, just fifteen pages, was written in enormous characters. “Even the name of the transparency portal was wrong: Openlinkics instead of openlympicsThe director ironized.
The walk ended in front of a large mural that covers the buildings already completed. Orlando offered the most effective synthesis: «If instead of six buildings they had built a park, a school, a public health center, it would have been perfect. Instead we saw what was chosen. And above all what has been discarded ».
Soì, the “one hundred steps towards the Olympics” have also proved to be a hundred steps inside a Milan in the balance, suspended between Boccioni’s worker memory and a future of privatized spaces. A city that risks losing its public breath behind the reassuring colors of the construction sites and the deceptive numbers of the promises.
