The archipelago of urban health. A vision for Milan from the railway yard regeneration

The aim of the paper is to envision urban open spaces as a strategic system for the health of the citizens, experimenting with innovative interpretation tools and design-oriented approaches. The focus is on walking, considered by medical sciences to be the best therapy for preventing the cardiovascular and osteoporotic risks associated with sedentary urban lifestyles. According to the Italian Higher Institute of Health, half an hour of uninterrupted walking a day is the main preventive measure. Milan could be a pilot case thanks to the “human scale” of its urban form combined with the potential of the ongoing transformation of its railway yards. The proposed vision is inspired by the concept of "archipelago" and developed by intertwining the model belonging to ecology (MacArthur and Wilson) with that of urban morphology (Ungers and Koolhaas). The hypothesis of work is that the regeneration of the railway yards could offer “stepping zones” to build a spatial matrix based on 30’ of continuous walking (the contemporary urban health good practice), linking urban parks to the peri-urban countryside and, across the city, connecting pedestrian urban centralities among them. The qualitative interpretation is integrated with the elaboration of data-driven spatial maps, to support urban strategies that can respond to the post-covid demand of public health, thanks to the therapeutic power of walking.