The Complexity of the Metropolitan Planning and Governance in Milan: The Unintentional Innovations of an Implicit Urban Agenda

In the city of Milan, in Italy, complex processes of redefinition and rescaling of the urban agenda have been taking place for the last 15 years, reshaping the urban identity through a mix of social mobilization and innovation, private investments and public policies. Referring to this context, this chapter specifically analyses how processes of redefinition and rescaling of both urban planning tools and issues, and metropolitan government and governance, have been working with complex multi-scalar urban phenomena. Consequently, it reflects on how recent institutional rearrangements (beginning with the establishment of the new Milan Metropolitan City) are or are not able to face multi-scalar urban dynamics.