Former military sites and post-Covid-19 city in Italy. May their reuse mitigate the pandemic impacts?

Abstract

The presence of former military settlements, along with other abandoned spaces in the Italian cities, constitutes an opportunity for developing inclusive and green cities through a good governance, especially after the 2020 pandemic outbreak. This paper develops an analytical matrix for comparing and evaluating the redevelopment projects of a number of case studies in the Italian metropolitan cities of Bologna, Milan, Rome, and Turin in the face of the challenges of the post-COVID-19 issues. Although the difficulties to evaluate still ongoing redevelopment projects, I found two main results. First, the Italian political and economic context is what most influenced the redevelopment process and not so much the intrinsic characteristics of former military sites.  Second, it seems that the reuse of these urban voids will not match a couple of features of the so-called post-COVID-19 features, i.e. inclusive and good governance, though the redevelopments can seemingly develop green cities.