Since my first years at University and then in my further working and research experiences as well as in my personal life I have always been committed to community development issues, in order to foster the regeneration of blighted neighborhoods and the socio- economic growth of local communities. I recently completed a research period at the Hunter College of the City University of New York, where I had the opportunity to investigate and enhance my understanding about New York City’s community development and affordable housing production issues. My research was mainly aimed to reconstruct the experience of two community development organizations in order to highlight the tools, resources and public policies they can rely on to design and implement their affordable housing development projects.
Actually I am trying to trigger a community development process within a blighted low-income in Milano, Italy, but at the same time I am also looking for new employment opportunities worldwide.
Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, US, VISITING SCHOLAR
• Bibliographic and online-based research about New York City’s recent history, govenance frameworks, zoning, land-use and urban policy processes and issues, and community development organizations;
• Through in-field analysis, online research, budget analysis, and interviews to key-players and public agencies representatives: reconstruction of two community development case-studies selected by their capacity to develop affordable housing units, to protect low-income communities from gentrification and to foster social and economic growth of deprived neighborhoods;
• Writing of a paper entitled “Community Development as a Way Out from Crisis. Some Hypothesis for Milano starting form New York’s Experience” which was aimed to highlight tools, strategies and policies that are actually applied in New York for the regeneration and development of low- income communities and neighborhoods and that can potentially be adopted also in the Italian and Milanese context.
Comune di Bergamo, Bergamo, IT, COLLABORATOR
• Designed and implemented the communication strategy through which the Municipality of Bergamo publicly presented the “Contratto di Quartiere” (a regional program for the revitalization of social housing and low-income neighborhoods) for Grumello al Piano, and in particular:
• Produced maps and graphic representation of the neighborhood and conceptual schemes aimed to visually explain the program’s actions;
• Wrote explanatory and descriptive texts;
• Managed the overall design and implementation of a dedicated section within the Municipality’s
website;
• Designed and formatted a printed informative booklet.
KCity s.r.l., Milano, IT, COLLABORATOR
• Researched and synthesized socio-demographic and physical features of two different low- income neighborhoods in Bergamo (Italy), led through facts analysis, in-field observation and interviews to local community’s representatives and inhabitants;
• Designed and formatted the graphic representation of these analysis for submission to clien
Consorzio SolCo Città Aperta, Bergamo, IT, INTERN
• Produced texts, images and posters aimed to aknowledge the local community about the resources provided within the Social Cohesion section of the “Contratto di Quartiere” for Grumello al Piano and to involve people in these new activities.
Studio Architetto Roberto Giudice, Milano, IT, INTERN
• Researched and synthesized socio-economic data and facts in order to support the planning of new commercial settlements in the Municipality of Viarigi (Asti, Italy)
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, IT, Masters, Urban Planning & Policy Design
The graduation thesis, "Regeneration Via Padova. From a lack of policies to the proposal of a collaborative policy" aims to analyze the transformation process that in the last decade affected the milanese neighborhood of via Padova, either concerning socio- economic change and new uses of the territory, either regarding the approach of public policies both to the neighborhood itself and to its relationship with the whole urban system, in order to highlight local problems and resources and hence possible future development scenarios on which basis to design a possible strategy of intervention.
The work is then divided in three sections: from a first in-deep analysis of neighborhood-related literature have been defined the main fields of interest upon which to base-on the subsequent spatial analysis. The last section, then, tries to infer from the analysis the more likely possible future scenarios and some potential strategies to activate a regeneration process, and finally studies the feasibility of an hypothetical project especially concerning its governance framework and economic issues.
The supervisor of the thesis has been Professor Alessandro Balducci (vice-rector of Politecnico di Milano)
