ForestaMi: Milan, a sustainable city

Milan, a sustainable city, with ForestaMi aims to include public green spaces to contain the effects of global warming and noise pollution. It is an urban forestry project that involves, in addition to the Metropolitan City and the Municipality of Milan, various subjects including the Lombardy Region, various urban parks, the Polytechnic, the Milan Community Foundation, the Falk Foundation and FS Sistemi Urbani. The contribution of the Politecnico di Milano was very useful for mapping areas with environmental emergencies, from heat islands to the presence of hydrogeological instability. The president of the scientific committee is the architect Stefano Boeri who leads the strategic vision carried out by public parks for the development of the Milan area.

In relation to noise pollution, Milan boasts the fifth place nationally and rather high levels of guard. Urban greenery contributes significantly to improving liveability by lowering the noise level The sound, reflected and refracted by trunks, branches, twigs and leaves, is absorbed and dissipated, lowering the typical frequencies of road traffic. The sound energy is partly muffled by the green and the residual, transformed into heat, is absorbed, together with the other heat coming from the city, by the same vegetation. The green improves the permeability of the soil and assimilates rainwater with root-like foliage, and naturally reclaims polluted soils. The plants, in addition to the aesthetic function performed by the branches of the trees and the various inflorescences, play an important role in the psychophysical well-being of the population.

Milan has been included among the “Tree Cities of the World” by FAO and the Arbor Day Foundation, and represents a great result since the great Milan involves 133 municipalities of the Metropolitan City. With the ForestaMi project it is expected, by 2030, to plant a tree for each inhabitant, to reduce the CO2 present in the Milan area by 4/5 and to lower the temperature in the summer by 2 or 3 degrees. In addition to the new plants, the project plans to survey and enhance the existing vegetation and to increase the green surface in the area through the garden roofs, to convert the courtyards of public spaces to green, to create environmental corridors to connect parks and gardens of the city . ForestaMi provides for a crowdfounding phase, with the possibility of adopting trees through the platform activated by the Fondazione di Comunità Milano Onlus "For Funding".

Urban forestation is one of the means used by cities all over the planet to reverse the course of climate change and that of Milan is an ambitious project, it is an area of ​​about 700 hectares and over 250 areas identified to be restored for renaturalization which aims to involve citizens, public bodies and companies by intertwining with the redevelopment projects of the suburbs, the urban mobility system and environmental education in schools.

Visit the ForestaMI website: https://forestami.org/