Policies and strategies in the Metropolitan Region of Milan. How to enhance the city's competitiveness

Abstract

The present report aims at describing policies and actions carried out in the Milanese Metropolitan Area in order to foster the creative and knowledge-based economy.After a brief introduction to the ACRE project, a theoretical framework is presented, by illustrating the features of the governance approaches and the methodology used in the report.In the following chapter the Milanese Metropolitan Area is presented as the Italian leading region in terms of innovation and technological research, and as an important hub for creative and knowledge industry, with internationally known brands and a huge concentration of economic activities.Despite high economic performances, the region is not able to attract large numbers of foreign talents, and, worst, it suffers from an endemic brain drain of young brilliant workers.The so called hard factors (labour market, concentration of economic activities, infrastructures, path dependency) are main reasons underlying the economic high performances of the region; on the other hand, soft factors play an important role when impeding/expelling processes of workers are taken into account.The quality of social and physical environment, for example, is very low in the region.What could be considered as a very important soft factor is the image linked to the city itself.Another positive factor, which is worth mentioning, is the strong capacity of the city to build networks and relations, which enable to find solutions to problems and to develop business projects.However, personal trajectories (e.g. the family presence) seem to play a very important role in workers' location strategies.The third element, event policy, can be associated with the fact that Milan has increasingly been focussing on the creation of big events (Expo 2015), the realisation of huge interventions (Citylife) and the resolution of particular emergencies (Ecopass) which have rarely been interrelated and have hardly communicated to one another.Sectoriality and separation are the main characteristics of these actions.

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