Parco Nord Milano, in the words of Director Riccardo Gini: sustainability is a concept that comes from far away.
A long green strip pushes its way towards the centre, in the north of Milan.
Seen from above, it seems to hold its ground against the vast neighbourhoods of large apartment blocks built from the 1960s onwards.
It seems to carve out space and press up against the A4 motorway, the Northern ring road, and the high-traffic arteries.
It seems to insist with its long rows of trees, its wild woods, its lakes and little hills and to tell us: “Do you know that another city is possible?” A green city. One where, at the centre, there is… empty space.
This is not an idea from the future. Nor is it a child of today’s green trends.
No: we are talking about an idea from the past. The idea of founding a park in a place where every interest pointed to building more.
This is the story of Parco Nord Milano, told by Riccardo Gini, Director of the Park since 2000 and technical director of the “Forestami” project.
The story of how a vision from 50 years ago is inspiring our present.
Hi Riccardo!
Let’s start right away with two simple questions: who are you and how did you arrive at Parco Nord Milano?
First of all, I’m an agronomist. Right after graduating, I was hired by Montedison, in the Agricultural Services sector. We’re talking about the late 1980s in Europe, a period of strong agricultural overproduction, when farmers were paid to leave land fallow. In those years we were working on the implementation of two landmark European regulations: Set-Aside and the Rural Areas Regulation. It was an important, formative period, during which I travelled all over the country, seeing first-hand the variety and biodiversity of our rural areas.
My experience in the public sector began as an officer at the Municipality of Milan. From December 1994 to 2000 I worked in the Parks and Gardens department, dealing with spatial planning and the management of public green spaces.
In 2000 a public competition was announced for the Director of Parco Nord, and I won it. Since 1983, Parco Nord had had only one director before me, Francesco Borella, with whom I worked side by side for a year.
Can you tell us the history of Parco Nord Milano?
It’s the 1960s: imagine cities growing out of control, without any urban planning tools.
There is no PGT (Territorial Governance Plan, ed.), there is no PRG (General Municipal Master Plan, ed.). The only insight Milan has is to create the Inter-Municipal Plan of Milan, which tries to design the greater city around this intuition: that within the great conurbation being born, a large regional park could also be born Parco Nord Milano.
In 1970, the Prefect confirms the plan. Ernesto Breda, who owned all the land, scales back its ambitions: before the Parco Nord Milano project, there was a strong push for development there were plans to build shopping centres and a district for 50,000 people.
On 11 June 1975, the Lombardy Region which had been established only the year before recognises Parco Nord Milano as a regional-level park. But it is a desolate wasteland.
If you rewatch Antonioni’s “La notte”, filmed around the Park at the time, you’ll see there isn’t a single tree only warehouses, scrap yards, and fields: a “backyard of the built city”.
The first President of the Park Roberto Confalonieri who was not yet 30, decides to purchase the land, i.e. to expropriate Ernesto Breda of the first 200 hectares from which the Park would be born.
But the municipalities, in a period of particularly high inflation, go into debt and no longer have a penny. The Park remains on stand-by.
Until the first director, Borella, arrives.
He has an insight: either we plant trees, or this Park will never be born. It is 1983 when the first reforestation plot is planted.
From 1983 to 2025 we never stopped and carried out 42 reforestation plots: not a single year went by without Parco Nord continuing to acquire land and plant it.
When I arrive in 2000, I find around twenty people working in the Park which, at that time, had been realised to about half of the original plan.
Within a few years, from 2000 to 2008, we grow to 40, in addition to the many essential and well-organised volunteers within the framework of the Volunteer Ecological Guards.
From the initial 640 hectares, we have reached 960. Inside, there are areas we manage as green space, and built areas for which we define urban development.
It’s “just a park”, someone might say – but what makes it so different from others?
There are two recipes.
First, there is credibility in action: when Parco Nord Milano steps in, it is a reliable institution.
And then, we share with citizens: there is a technical direction that knows what it’s doing, but citizens and neighbourhood associations are always involved.
Actually, maybe the recipes are three. The last one was strongly championed by me: it’s important that the Park creates culture. The Park is not only an environmental fact, but also a cultural one.
It is a social engine and a driver of sustainability.
When there is an empty space waiting to be built on, it is difficult to navigate everyone’s wishes: instead, empty space is the heart of the Park. Free soil is the Park’s strength.
This small public “company” we created also has appeal for other municipalities outside the immediate area that need to implement the PNRR. For example, Corsico, which called us to manage five new parks.
Not only with the public sector, but also with the private sector: with companies that have finally become sensitive to sustainability and help us plant trees, come for team building, or simply donate as citizens can do too.
Can you tell us more about the relationship between sustainability, private organisations and Parco Nord?
We have a catalogue of different activities that companies can do in the Park. For example, team-building activities. These are hands-on, practical activities, such as planting new woodland, cleaning Park areas, guided tours for employees, or activities in the community gardens.
On ESG-related aspects, instead, we propose that companies contribute to new plantings and/or the activities we carry out, supporting us financially and becoming partners who help develop this place and make it more beautiful.
In 2015, the Park expanded from 640 hectares to around 800 because it incorporated 150 hectares of an agricultural area called “Parco della Balossa”, between Novate and Cormano. For this area we launched a campaign called “Insieme per la terra” (“Together for the Land”), which aims to transform a building called Hangar Balossa into a new centre for Art and Land, where artists can express themselves through the languages of contemporary art. This is another call for shared responsibility from companies that want to implement ESG not only environmentally, but also socially and artistically.
We can respond to the needs of many types of companies, from small ones that want to contribute or bring their employees to the Park, to large ones that can even co-manage spaces, transforming them into community services: accommodation facilities, hostels, cafés, restaurants, co-working spaces, and so on.
Were companies asking more, or did you create the demand?
It was mostly companies. Five years ago we introduced a role in our team dedicated to interfacing with and taking care of these needs. We remain focused on completing and maintaining the Park, but the support of these organisations is vital.
Let’s talk about the “Forestami” project: in a Milan that keeps building, the challenge of this initiative whose slogan is “3 million trees planted by 2030” is fascinating and countercultural.
“Forestami” was born with this slogan, but in reality our goal is to increase tree cover by 5%, and to maintain the green that is planted and that already exists, because there is no point in planting if there are no resources to water and care for it.
Does that sound like a lot? In 2018, a satellite survey study carried out by the Politecnico showed that 5 million trees could potentially be planted in the area.
We are in contact with the 133 municipalities of the Metropolitan City, one by one, and we have signed 70 business and participation protocols with them (another 18 should arrive within the year). In these protocols we share objectives and “put on green glasses”, meaning we look at the potential for increasing natural capital in each municipality’s territory, in areas not already destined for development. This allows us to map areas that could potentially be planted.
We would like “Forestami” to be not only a slogan, but also a way to help citizens discover the Nature that surrounds them in the city.
You used a beautiful expression: “natural capital”. How would you translate it?
If we want to be simplistic, when we talk about “natural capital” we mean trees, shrubs, and so on.
But why do we call it “capital”? Because it has great value!
Natural capital has increasing value because, in countering climate change, absorbing CO₂, draining soils, and cooling urban areas, natural capital keeps growing and producing benefits.
Think about it: when a tree is planted, it may be only about a metre tall. Yet as it grows, its capacity to improve the surrounding area increases exponentially.
It is a very convenient investment because planting a shrub costs relatively little around 40 euros but what it returns over time, as it develops, is enormous in terms of quality of life, air, and soil.
What do you hope people learn from Nature?
From Nature we must learn patience. Plants have their own growth time, their own response time.
Secondly, we must learn that Nature is not only the idyllic, pastoral Nature of Virgil’s Georgics. It is a Nature we should not domesticate, because what is wild has its own reason to exist.
A few days ago, for the Park’s 50th anniversary, we had the mayors of the Metropolitan City municipalities sign a pact: “How do we imagine the Park in 2075?”
We imagine it as a place different from the city, with different rules and rhythms than the built environment.
A place where citizens can learn to respect Nature and take that new awareness with them once they leave the Park.
We would also like companies to understand this: that profit-driven logic can coexist within an ecosystem in which the built environment is sustainable.
To do this, it is important that Nature is better known and recognised: most of us can name at least ten car brands, but how many could recognise ten tree species?
Nature follows a cycle that does not necessarily match the human one: and a park like Parco Nord Milano needs, for example, to be dark at night to protect nocturnal wildlife. So it is not a matter of crime or lack of safety, because crime does not develop in the dark, or in the woods, but in the half-light of street lamps, along city streets.
On that note, in recent years the perception of the Park seems to have changed a great deal. It is now truly frequented and lived: a place inside Milan, yet far from the city.
After so many years, do you feel you have changed too?
After 25 years, I still get emotional: it is truly exciting to work every day in a place like this. This work reconnects you not only to Nature, but also to yourself.