We’re almost there, in just over a month the works for the redevelopment of Corso Buenos Aires, the one and a half kilometer artery that connects Porta Venezia with Loreto, should finally start.
As we have seen, in the previous article, for the redevelopment of Piazzale Loreto we will still have to wait another few months, while for Corso Buenos Aires the bulldozers and shovels seem to be finally warming up to begin in about a month (between June and July), finally after the many postponements and announcements of the start of work.
The construction site will be activated in stages and will only involve the sidewalks, keeping the traffic of the course and the surrounding streets intact. Therefore the entire course will not be a construction site for its entire extension, but in portions, in order to minimize inconvenience for traders. Starting roughly in the middle of this year, the work should be completed in the autumn of 2025 (hopefully). The most complex work will be watering the pots with the plants that will beautify the course.
The first areas affected will be those included between Lima and Piazza Argentina, and will see the closure of the sidewalks between via Ponchielli, via Scarlatti and via Piccinni. Subsequently, the works will progressively extend towards Piazza Oberdan, and then conclude with the section in the direction of Piazzale Loreto (which in turn will see the start of the relevant construction site, according to a project Nhood Italy.
The greenery that will be placed between the sidewalks and the cycle path will be of two types: bushes and hedges, where the presence of underground infrastructure and the subway does not allow planting vegetation with deeper roots, and taller trees, where conditions allow it . Along the stretch towards Piazza Oberdan, we will opt for more developed trees, while proceeding towards Loreto we will give preference to smaller hedges and bushes. The greenery will be contained in tanks made with simple stone artefacts. Particular care will be taken to ensure that the arrangement of vegetation does not obstruct shop windows, a major concern for traders. Alternating plants of different heights should help solve this problem.
As always, the problem will be the construction sites that will make the old “shopping” street a difficult life for over a year and above all the overlap with the construction site, also ready to start, for the redevelopment of Piazzale Loreto. The concentration of construction sites between Loreto and the sidewalks of Corso Buenos Aires up to Piazzale Argentina could be lethal for traffic. On the other hand, we have to start, right?
One of the problems that the Corso, one of the main shopping streets, has been experiencing for some years, in addition to having lost its luster in the last ten years, is seeing its attractiveness decline. In fact, for years many shops have closed and have not been replaced, leaving empty shop windows. Certainly the series of construction sites that have taken place in recent years to create the cycle path, which is very used (perhaps the most used in Milan) but which has clearly divided the citizens into two factions, has not helped.
The Corso had been redeveloped by widening the sidewalks and paving them in stone in 2010, with a solution that we at Urbanfile never liked: a stone pavement, no street furniture, no flower boxes (the few that were there [e vi sono] were an unfinished and then semi-abandoned experiment at the end of the nineties), no street lights, nothing that could embellish and make identifiable this artery once defined as the Fifth Avenue of Italy and today a chaotic shopping street like a mall.
We hope that this project, not yet revealed, will finally make this route more beautiful and attractive. Many hope that the administration will have the courage to make even more ambitious choices towards closing the street to traffic, even if this would mean other construction sites.
For those who wanted, we had told a bit of the history of the Course and its particularities.
- Image references: Google map; Roberto Arsuffi
- Corso Buenos Aires, Piazza Oberdan, Piazzale Loreto, Porta Venezia, Street furniture, cycle path, redevelopment
