La città ambientata. Idee e pratiche di nature nel quartiere Isola di Milano

The thesis is concerned with exploring the relationship between man and the environment in contemporary urban landscapes. It was written following my ethnographic research, conducted between May 2014 and December 2015 in the Milanese “Isola” district, located near the city centre, whose geography was greatly changed in recent years due to a grand urbanistic project. This work is meant to analyse discourses and practices produced by social actors, who contribute to the social construction of the Isola environment to various degrees: the city council, but also architects, planners, and citizens leading ordinary lives. I wished to examine environmental representations of nature and knowledges that emerged from planning two public green spaces, managing a community garden, acts by a solidarity purchase group, a mobilization against cutting down certain trees in the neighbourhood, and floods from a nearby river that flows underground. The first chapter is concerned with the theoretical outlooks that lay the foundations for my research questions. I especially focused on presenting the social and cultural process of denial of relatedness with the environment, which is rooted in the contemporary urban reality. The second chapter is concerned with analysing representations that essentially identify nature in town as urban greenery, facing the different meanings this notion would assume when perceived by people living in the neighbourhood and city councils; moreover, it faces ideas and visions on contemporary town embedded in projects for urban greenery. The third chapter is concerned with projects and ideas to stem the flow of the river Seveso and the floods that run through the neighbourhood periodically (three times in 2014 alone). I wished to analyse the relationship between man, technology and environment during a crisis, when techosocial imbroglios (Latour) stop functioning properly, causing problematic natural agents kept far from people and their lives to reemerge.