Urban-Rural Symbiosis 02"Turning the City's Prime Land into an Agricultural Park: How Was Milan's Miracle Achieved? Civic Groups Join Forces to Let Agriculture Make the City Shine

(Continued from the previous article) In Taiwan, China, farmland grows houses and factories; conglomerates hunt for land to speculate on, and politicians build bridges and pave roads to rack up achievements. Local officials in areas with large tracts of farmland sigh that they are "restricted in development." Greed is human nature, but not everyone is short-sighted and profit-driven. Milan is Italy's commercial and financial powerhouse, with developed industry in its surroundings; each year, its fashion week and furniture fair draw over a hundred thousand visitors in just a few days. Incredibly, ambitious Milanese set aside the enormous profits of building towers and carved out about one third of the land for farming and cattle raising, while still firmly holding the nation's economic top spot.

The agricultural park south of the Milan metropolitan area covers 46,000 hectares. To put it in perspective, it is as if all of Wulai and Shiding, adjacent to central Taipei, were designated as farmland.

Starting from Small Things, Citizen Groups Large and Small Form a Network to Protect the Southern Park Together

At the beginning, this too was an impossible task. "The key is not to neglect small things just because they are small. The few of us started with insignificant local matters, linked together all kinds of very small associations, and then cooperated with national civic groups." Renato Aquilani shared his insights from more than thirty years of experience. In 1988, he took part in drafting the bill, designing the blueprint and organizing activities, witnessing the Milan Southern Agricultural Park grow from nothing.

After retiring from Eni, Italy's largest energy company, Renato devoted even more effort to the Milan Southern Park and served as the association's chairman. As a geologist who had been tempered by a large corporation, Renato knew well that a well-intentioned grassroots movement without organizational mobilization is merely a castle in the air. The organization need not be big, but no opportunity to hold on to supporters should be missed. Civic groups of different natures worked on their own day to day while keeping in touch, and at critical moments they united their voices and took action, weaving a flexible network to protect the Southern Park.

Small-town cultural associations, rural farmers' organizations and community environmental groups are small in scale but rooted locally, knowing their places inside out, which helps solve concrete problems. "Each local group solves one small problem, keeps working at it, and over time this brings change," Renato continued. "For broader, more general issues, we work with national and international groups, such as the long-established environmental league Legambiente and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)."

Renato gave an example: the Lambro River in the eastern part of the park runs through the industrial cluster north of Milan and has pollution problems. More than twenty young people formed a patrol team, regularly searching along the river basin to see where people dump garbage, where waste piles up, where sewage treatment is questionable and where dangerous substances may be flowing into drainage ditches.

Recruiting Citizens as Teammates, Talking with Opponents, Helping Find Ways to Balance Environment and Development

Renato said, "New problems always emerge, and we must keep paying attention." Besides exposing environmental offenders, community associations around the river basin also set up five or six "oases," taking children on outings to watch birds and teaching people to plant trees and understand the diversity of riverside ecology. Over time, the once deserted riverside grew livelier and livelier, and more people protected the Southern Park. "We did not persuade anyone; rather, we let them feel it for themselves and become our teammates."

Lombardy, the region where Milan is located, is one of the richest areas in Europe. Renato understands the importance of economic development and does not treat industry as an enemy; instead, he tries to understand the other side's position and find a balance. He said, "We are interlocutors. When we find questionable situations, we communicate with them and explain that we are doing this for the good of this land, and that Milan's upgrading also helps corporate image."

The Milan metropolitan area covers 134 towns and municipalities, and the Southern Agricultural Park also spans 61 towns. The government has a management unit for coordination, but bureaucratic work is often half a step behind, so most of the work of protecting the park falls on associations run entirely by volunteers.

"Land is money," and some town and township heads inevitably face development pressure and temptation. "After all, as cities develop they keep expanding," Renato said. "Volunteers of the Southern Agricultural Park Association are in close contact with township and town heads, understand the problems, and also help them find ways to carry out the goals we propose. We do not seek to take part in governing, but we insist on our arguments and make them believe that protecting land and promoting production can go hand in hand and reinforce each other."

The Milan Southern Agricultural Park Act passed in 1990 was drafted by the association, and even the planning blueprint was proposed by the association. When encountering opponents, the association also persisted in communicating. "We asked them one by one what they disagreed with and revised the provisions until they could hardly refuse." In the representative council after the Southern Park was established