Local governments increasingly recognize the social and environmental significance of public spaces. The pressures of urban development and population growth underscore the need to strategically create new public spaces, ensuring they reach their potential without compromising economic progress.
Across the world, local and regional governments are already innovating in public space development. This article highlights the cases of Piazze Aperte in Milan, Italy, and Al Yarmouk Park in Mosul, Iraq. Both cases illustrate that public spaces serve purposes beyond being grassy areas with benches.
Milan: Piazze Aperte
The Municipality of Milan, together with the Municipal Agency for Mobility and Environment, launched the Piazze Aperte program, implementing citywide tactical urbanism to create new public spaces. The program reallocates road space to prioritize pedestrians, cyclists, and vulnerable users. Temporary interventions serve as real-world tests before committing to permanent upgrades.
The Piazze Aperte program aims to introduce new public spaces to residential districts lacking them, provide residents with community gathering places, improve street safety, and make local businesses and attractions more accessible to residents and visitors.
The program is embedded within Milan’s wider urban strategies: the Neighborhood Plan and the Milan 2030 Urban Master Plan. It works alongside Milan’s Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan.
Credit: the Municipality of Milan
Context
The Municipality of Milan faced two critical issues before the implementation of Piazze Aperte:
- Limited accessible, safe, and welcoming public spaces
The city of Milan faced intensified pressure on public space due to population growth. Existing squares and intersections were dominated by traffic, limiting their environmental and social functions. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in lower-income districts, where narrow pavements and unsafe streets restricted outdoor play, social interaction, and active mobility.
- Structural environmental pressure
High traffic volumes led to air pollution and urban heat island effects. Concurrently, there were limited green and permeable areas, lowering the city’s resilience to climate change.
Responding to the demand for safer, greener, and more inclusive public spaces, the Municipality of Milan launched the Piazze Aperte program to transform existing urban areas into welcoming community hubs.
Programme content
Under the Piazze Aperte programme, the following actions are being taken:
- Creation of new squares and pedestrian areas: by modifying the street layout and traffic regulations, sections of the roadway are reclaimed as new public spaces. Interventions include limiting vehicular access, redesigning intersections, and converting parking areas into pedestrian-priority zones.
- Activation of underused public spaces: areas previously dominated by parking or lacking social functions are enhanced with seating, greenery, shade, play areas, and other flexible elements that can host cultural and community activities.
- Construction of cycling lanes and infrastructure: prefabricated materials, road markings, and signage enable rapid installation of new cycling lanes.
- Extension and enhancement of pedestrian areas: narrowed car roads, redesigned intersections, and traffic-calming elements increase pedestrian priority.
Credit: the Municipality of Milan
Implementation
A key characteristic of the Piazze Aperte program is tactical urbanism, which relies on low-cost, short-term, and scalable interventions in the built environment. By testing temporary, reversible layouts before committing to construction, the Municipality of Milan reduces time and material costs while creating opportunities to refine solutions.
A five-step approach is taken:
- Analysis and design: assessing pedestrian, cycling and traffic flows, accessibility needs, safety conditions, noise levels, and the spatial performance of the street network.
- Tactical testing: temporarily reconfiguring the area using low-cost materials like paint, modular planters, and temporary furniture. In a few weeks, the area takes shape as a new square, pedestrian area, or community zone.
- Monitoring and evaluation: actively monitoring the temporary layout using qualitative and quantitative data, including traffic volumes and behavior, safety perceptions, social use patterns, and user feedback.
- Permanent design: developing long-term designs based on monitoring results and community input.
- Capital construction: establishing the permanent works.
Credit: the Municipality of Milan
Community participation
The Municipality of Milan uses a tool called the Collaboration Agreement to establish formal community stewardship. Grounded in Milan’s Common Good Regulations, the agreement defines the roles and responsibilities of community stakeholders for maintenance, shared management, and small-scale improvements. To date, it has established long-term stewardship in 35 public spaces.
The municipality has actively listened to community requests. From 2020 to 2021, 22 of the 60 transformation proposals were implemented. In 2023, 80 proposals were received and were scheduled to roll out in the 2025 implementation cycle.
Credit: the Municipality of Milan
Impact
The Piazze Aperte program has resulted in about 60 tactical urbanism interventions, totaling about 56,000 square meters of new pedestrian areas. Additionally, 175 bike racks, 700 benches, 600 potted plants and trees, 85 picnic tables, and 70 ping-pong tables have been installed.
As a result, the programme yielded the following benefits:
- Promotes neighborhood vitality and encourages informal social interaction in public spaces.
- Fosters a stronger sense of community belongings by enabling local activities in these areas.
- Reduces traffic accidents by lowering speeds, especially near schools and other areas with a high concentration of vulnerable users.
- Promotes active mobility by supporting safe, continuous cycling routes.
- Supports small commercial activities by helping them gain visibility and customers through pedestrian and cycling foot traffic, thereby increasing engagement with local services and shops.
Following the implementation of the project, a 47% increase in cyclist and a 30% rise in pedestrian use have been observed.
Credit: the Municipality of Milan
Mosul: Al Yarmouk Park revitalization
The Mosul Municipality in Iraq implemented area-based integrated urban recovery projects in Al Yarmouk Park in West Mosul as part of the “Supporting Recovery in Iraq through Local Development” program. The project aims to enhance community stabilization by revitalizing Al Yarmouk Park, ensuring it is accessible to people of all ages, interests, and abilities.
Credit: Arab Urban Development Institute
Context
Al Yarmouk Park was once an iconic social area that subsequently experienced two decades of neglect and war following conflicts that began in Iraq in 2011, which degraded the environment and reduced security in the area.
As Iraq and the Mosul Municipality began recovery planning, the rehabilitation of open spaces and public amenities emerged as a key priority. Green areas and public spaces are increasingly valued by residents, especially given Mosul’s low ratio of green space per capita.
The project therefore aims to rehabilitate Al Yarmouk Park as a hub for a wide range of public initiatives, sports activities, environmental actions, and recreational activities that benefit more than 500,000 citizens. The park will play a crucial role in creating socio-economic value, improving health and quality of life, and enhancing social inclusion, cohesion, and peacebuilding.
The project was funded by the European Union (EU) and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat).
“The rehabilitation of Al Yarmouk Park is a great example of how we can contribute to the quality of life in cities in inclusive and participative ways.”
Mr. Tomas Reyes Ortega, Deputy Head of the EU Delegation to the Republic of Iraq
Community engagement
Since the beginning of the project, participatory sessions have been held to enable community co-design. In a 2019 focus group discussion, older people were consulted to identify the park’s uses and the factors contributing to its gradual deterioration. Children and youth also expressed a demand for playgrounds and sports activities.
To boost local employment, a strict policy of recruiting only from local neighborhoods was enforced. The project also engaged local women in the park’s horticultural activities. 30 women were trained in planting and nursery gardening. They were subsequently hired to plant trees in the park.
“I was jobless, sitting at home depressed with no plans. The training brought hope back into my life. I have learned new skills that will help me to find a job in the park or elsewhere.”
Nafla Mohammed Ali, an unemployed woman who participated in the training
Credit: UN-Habitat
Implementation
The project resulted in the completion of a five-a-side football pitch, a multi-purpose sports court, and an outdoor fitness facility. In 2021, the second phase of Al Yarmouk Park rehabilitation was launched, where children’s and youth playgrounds would be installed. Quiet areas for families and older people, as well as spaces for kiosks, toilets, and signage, would be provided.
Various activities were held within Al Yarmouk Park to establish it as a core place for Mosul residents to gather. For instance, a ten-day festival titled the Yarmouk Athletic for Peace Initiative convened 200 child participants and 1,250 spectators.
Other equipment and facilities include:
- Two water wells for irrigating crops and trees.
- A solar power system.
- More than 300 trees were planted, among which were 40 fruit trees and 60 palm trees.
- 800 square metres of grasslands
Credit: UNDP
Conclusion
Milan’s Piazze Aperte program and Mosul’s Al Yarmouk Park revitalization project are situated in vastly different contexts, but both aim to foster community interaction, enhance environmental resilience, and improve the overall quality of life for residents.
Whether through low-cost tactical urbanism that reclaims busy streets for pedestrians or through the comprehensive post-conflict rehabilitation of a historic green space, these initiatives highlight the transformative power of public spaces. Ultimately, they show that when local governments prioritize inclusive design and active community participation, urban spaces transcend theirries to become vital engines of social cohesion, sustainable mobility, and long-term civic recovery. physical bounda
