On each day of the Giro-E, at the starting point of the stage, the ANCI workshops bring new themes and topics to the attention of the participants, with a focus on the engagement and involvement of young people in these areas.
This is in fact one of the main objectives of the series ANCI workshops which runs throughout Italy, as part of the broader support and financing program for Italian municipalities, based on the National Youth Policy Fund.
It was no different for the works sessions of Saturday 18 May in Montichiari and Sunday 19 May in TiranoWhere ANCI Lombardy brought a range of local experiences to fuel a Network between public and private which allows the development of investments and opportunities available to young people, the main recipients of these initiatives and the related evidence.
On Saturday 18 May in Montichiari the macro-theme was that relating to Artificial Intelligence and monitoring of the SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) for Municipalitieswhile on Sunday 19 May in Tirano we talked about world of sustainable mobility and possible tourism developments in Valtellina, also in view of the upcoming Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.
The framework of the initiatives is clear in the words of Mauro Savini, Head of the ANCI Innovation, Digital Transition and Youth Department national: “With the ANCI workshops at Giro-E we are trying to combine the link between territory and young people in various aspects. In Montichiari we talked in particular about technological innovation, artificial intelligence applied to the territory and what the Municipalities could use AI tools for. It is an area in which institutions must inevitably have the ability to intercept the young population, on the one hand as an important pool of skills, on the other because they are bearers of needs and interests on which to build the development of the territories and the vision that must then characterize the political direction of the administrations”.
An opportunity for discussion explained in the introductory phases of the meetings by General Secretary ANCI Lombardy, Rinaldo Redaelli: “The themes are current and are of particular interest to our young people. We turn to them so that they can receive input that can help them in their life plans and their expectations for the world of work. Initiatives like this are welcome: for ANCI Lombardia going to the territory and involving local administrators is important to better understand territorial problems and this certainly also applies to the rest of the national territory”.
Continues Gianpiera Vismara, Coordinator of the Department of Youth, Sport, Culture, Tourism, Sport and Youth Policies of ANCI Lombardy: “These workshops represent an extraordinary opportunity, which already began in Turin with the meeting of the ANCI Next Gen Community. We thank ANCI for these opportunities for discussion which highlight the love of our administrators for their territory and which will certainly be the harbinger of new initiatives that we will carry forward as ANCI Lombardia. The two stages in our territory talk about the themes of ‘eco-sustainable Lombardy’: in particular in Tirano we talked about development opportunities for tourism and local issues, just as in Montichiari we talked about Artificial Intelligence, because with the Lombardy Region we are starting a working table precisely to activate a series of opportunities for the involvement of new administrators. With ‘Sport & Youth’ we are also following the call ‘Lombardy belongs to young people 2024’, financial resources made available so that territories can build networks and provide young people with new opportunities to be protagonists”.
Saturday 18 May, the Mayor of Montichiari started the work by recalling the potential that Artificial Intelligence in Public Administration can represent for programming and predictability, providing innovative tools for analyzing data that are already available but to be managed adequately with software applications and with the coordination of political, technical and human components that can guide this path of innovation.
The interventions in the room were coordinated byEngineer Giuseppe Magro, Italian President of the International Association for Environmental Impact Assessment (IAIA): “The contributions at the table were of great substance: we talked about AI applied to the PA and the strategic function that the Municipalities will have in the future as institutional subjects closest to the territory. There was talk of a shared vision that starts from the needs to build network services in a coordinated and functional way, of the extraordinary impact that AI will have at a territorial level and on the entire technological, organizational and functional park of a society”.
The first part of the interventions also involved the Mayor of Lodrino and President of the Small Municipalities Department of ANCI Lombardy and the Vice President of the Environment Department of ANCI Lombardy.
Among the experiences described during the day, the one presented by Massimiliano Gaffurini, PhD student at the University of Brescia and involved in the projects of MOST, the National Center for Sustainable Mobilitywhich addressed the topic of smart e-bikes and how they can change the way we use the bicycle: “The importance of Artificial Intelligence was discussed, but also of data, both quantitative and qualitative, which are fundamental to be able to implement AI models. Today, smart e-bikes with their sensors allow us to collect a truly significant amount of data, which is still not used optimally. This is why it is important to create a chain that allows you to make the best use of this data to ‘train’ the algorithms and allow the optimization of the experience of using the bicycle”.
As in Montichiari, the Tirano workshop had as its cap the concept of “eco-sustainable Lombardy”, on this occasion declined towards world of sustainable mobility and possible developments in tourism in Valtellina. On this occasion, ANCI Lombardia wanted to give the territories the opportunity to discuss ongoing experiences.
The Mayor of Tirano introduced the institutional interventions of Deputy Mayor of Tirano and Provincial Councilor of Sondrio, of the Councilor for the Environment, Sustainability and Sport of Tirano, of the Commissioner of the Mountain Community of Valtellina di Tirano, of the Mayor of Teglio And of the Mayor of Mazzo in Valtellina.
Interventions that allowed us to delve deeper into the topic of mobility in mountain areas, where logistics make the transition towards less use of one’s own car difficult, outlining some fundamental drivers that should guide the administrations, including local public transport, tourism development and trade flows.
There are several cases of interest such as the Sentiero Valtellina, the Bernina Express or the imminent construction of the Tirano ring road, a location where today, according to data, 10 million vehicles pass each year and over 1,000 trucks a day. There was also talk of the Mortirolo, a mountain which in the last thirty years has become part of the history of cycling but which already played an important role in Italian history in the mid-twentieth century, an intangible heritage that can become a driving force for local development.
The theme of strengthening local public transport in Valtellina was also addressed with the presence of thePerego automotiverepresented by Carlotta Perego: “The challenges have changed a lot in recent years and today we are working to get ever closer to sustainable transport that is linked to multimodality, therefore not only with road transport by coach, but also with ancillary services such as bicycles or other transport services. access to the mountain. It is not an easy context, having to manage different tourist seasons, but we are happy to collaborate with the territory and partner companies to facilitate access to our mountains by increasingly embracing green policies”.
The stages of the Giro-E also started from Montichiari and Tirano in which an ANCI team participated, led by the former skier Giorgio Rocca and made up of local administrators and ambassadors of the territory, who were thus able to live the experience of covering the last kilometers of the Giro d’Italia stage.
