Italy’s first carbon-neutral social housing development, L’Innesto Milano, is about to become a reality

The City of Milan’s municipal council’s approval of the Scalo Greco-Breda Implementation Plan marks a significant milestone for ‘L’Innesto’, the project that won the 2019 Reinventing Cities international competition.

L’Innesto will regenerate a former railway yard in a strategically important area in the north-east of Milan. The project involves transforming a 63,000 sqm site in the Greco-Precotto district into a new zero-emissions social housing neighbourhood where over 60% of the total area will be dedicated to green spaces and public areas.

The Innesto project will reconnect the surrounding neighbourhoods by creating a new cycle and pedestrian link between Bicocca, Precotto and the university district. This will restore connectivity to an area that has historically been cut off by the railway yard, creating an accessible, inclusive, zero-emission part of the city.

The project includes:

▪️ 21,000 sqm of social housing, including affordable housing, co-housing, and student accommodation;

▪️ 39,000 sqm of public spaces, including parks, squares, footpaths, and cycle paths;

▪️ the planting of around 700 new trees.

Mobility has been a key consideration throughout the project, acting as a structuring element of urban quality. The redevelopment of Via Breda will transform the existing street into the central pedestrian axis of the new district, with the new vehicular road running alongside the railway line.

This approach is particularly relevant in the context of regenerating a complex railway yard, where the transition between infrastructure and city requires a multi-layered planning vision. Key aspects include flow management, continuity of pedestrian routes, safe crossings, a hierarchy of access points, and the integration of active mobility, public transport, and new urban attractions.

This development is a model in which social housing, public space, infrastructure and sustainability converge to create an integrated vision of the contemporary city.