In March, the old and new mayors joined the Greens. Now he wants to make Milan even more modern, environmentally friendly and livable.
(Photo: ROPI)
Milan The Greens are marginalized in Italy: The party is not represented in parliament, and in surveys they have so far remained below the three percent threshold. But now they rule Milan, the second largest city in Italy, the heart of the economically strong north. With 57 percent of the vote, Mayor Beppe Sala clearly won against the right-wing camp – and is entering his second term in office.
The former manager, who ran the tire manufacturer Pirelli and was CFO at the telecommunications company Tim, came to the town hall in 2016 as a non-party candidate for the Social Democrats. Now he wants to make Milan even more modern, environmentally friendly and livable – in March he joined the Greens.
“I’ve always followed my ideals,” he said in an interview with Handelsblatt at the time. “If I should lose, it will not be a tragedy for my life.” But he wanted to understand whether the Milanese are ready for the “ecological revolution”. Apparently they are.
Sala wants a pollution-free city with fewer cars by 2030. He is a staunch climate activist and pro-European, which he also showed in the election campaign, which he led calmly and prudently, without attacks on the opponent from the right-wing camp – who positioned himself against bike paths that Sala expanded so vehemently during the pandemic.
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The election is historic, not just for the Greens, who are ruling a large city in the country for the first time: since 1993, no candidate from the center-left has won without a runoff.
“The next five years will be the hardest in the city’s recent history,” Sala announced after his triumph. The city is still in the midst of the pandemic, the billions from the EU reconstruction fund have to be properly invested and the Winter Olympics in 2026 must be prepared. Sala, who studied business administration in Milan, wants to involve the whole city and promises “even more courage in facing the environmental challenge”.
Sala was brave as early as 2010 when he left the corporate world for the Milan administration. Later he was in charge of the Expo 2015, which changed the city forever: Since then, Milan has been much more modern, greener, more digital. Start-up hubs, parks and universities have now sprung up on the old Expo areas.
Sala wants to make Milan a role model for Europe and the world
The 63-year-old Sala now wants to make Milan a “role model for Italy”, but also for “Europe, for the world”. Milan’s bike sharing system, for example, now has almost 5500 bikes with 320 stations. 1000 of the bikes are already e-bikes today. There are also 60 buses that are purely electric, and all 1200 vehicles are to be electric by 2030.
Milan urgently needs the green turnaround. There are days in winter when the emission limits are significantly exceeded, the air pollution is higher than in many other cities in Italy. Sala’s answer to this is his “Milan 2030” climate project, with which he wants to expand the rail network by 50 percent.
The “city of 15 minutes”, a concept that metropolises all over the world are currently implementing, is also making progress. Sala wants to turn the individual quarters into centers of life, with schools, medical care, parks and sports. “This automatically reduces mobility,” believes Sala.
Sala, who dedicated the election victory to his mother, who died in summer 2020, also wants to further strengthen social housing: In Milan there are already around 70,000 social housing with 150,000 residents. A high figure for a city of 1.4 million. Most of the houses were built in the 1930s and after the war. The city is currently investing a lot of money in renovations, making the buildings more energy-efficient, and removing asbestos. The city administration wants to digitize Sala further. Already today, a good 70 percent of documents for citizens can be downloaded digitally, and more and more services are possible online.
More: Green hydrogen, CO2 capture, battery factories: Italy is looking for the ecological way out of the crisis