The epidemic still generates mourning and petrifies the cities, towns and villages of Italy. But one day we will start again and that day Milan, once again, wants to offer a model to all of Italy of a new normal. It is not known when the crowded Navigli will be seen again, the Quadrilatero boutiques stormed by tourists, the stadiums and theaters will fill up, the Fair will welcome hundreds of thousands of people. What is certain is that it will not happen all at once, it will be a gradual restart in which we will have to experiment how to use public spaces in a different way and think about supporting the small economic and cultural realities of the city.
This is how Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of the lighthouse city of Italy for trends, fashion and economy, imagines it. A situation that now in the midst of an epidemic "is premature" to imagine, as he explained in a video posted on social media, because it is still unknown when it will be possible to reopen, but despite the uncertainty about the times the city "must not be found unprepared "when the time comes. So much so that Sala is already working on possible solutions, on a sort of Milan model for the restart.
The watchword will be graduality, one step at a time, even considering that nothing will be the same as before. After the emergency, the way to take the subway, to go to the stadium, to the cinema or to the theater will inevitably change. When the time comes "it will probably be re-openings in time, in steps", explained the mayor who is working on three issues in particular. The first is "how to remodel infrastructures, from those of mobility such as metros, to digital ones, for example the availability of broadband".
When the emergency is over the way to occupy public spaces will change and now is the time to think, for the stadium, for the cinemas, for the theaters "how to enter, how to exit, how to manage the moment in which you it is close, it is not easy you have to think about it first ".
The Municipality of Milan, with its employees who are now in smartworking, could also experience a gradual return to normal. The first to return to the office may be the younger ones. Finally, the economic recovery. "I assume that the government will take care of big companies," said Sala, "but I have to deal with that small economic and cultural fabric that is largely the life of a city like Milan."
Citizens who commented on social media are divided, there are those who say "enough to deceive people by talking about reopening, so it seems that we are close to freedom while we are groping in the dark", while others think it is "important to think immediately afterwards because we will have we need a city that welcomes us with open arms, even if with new rules ".
If the mayor thinks about how to face the reopening of the city for the vice president of the Lombardy Region, Fabrizio Sala, "there are still too many variables for the restart - he commented -. It will reopen as soon as possible as soon as we reach the peak and the descent", then "continuous monitoring" will be required to avoid "rebound" risk. It is "absolutely premature" then for the deputy governor to talk about fairs or events: "for a big event like a fair, in a place that looks like so many people, it is now difficult to make a prediction".
