Rivers, landscapes, public spaces and complexity: the case of Olona and Pogliano Milanese

Abstract

The state of complexity of the watercourses that flow through the most densely urbanised areas in the European and global context has typical features that present challenges in river restoration, landscape transformation, social impact, and the construction of public spaces.
In fact, river situations have a strong social and anthropological connotation because of the link that can be established between the river space and its intensive anthropic use, its transformation, and its environmental and water pollution.
Every river is the result of long-term processes that, over the years, have led to the occupation and exploitation of the water space, reducing its richness and diminishing what was characteristic of a distinctive, established, and original ‘river culture’. In addition to the loss of landscape quality in this crisis, there has been a stigmatisation and rejection of watercourses.
Today, these factors continue to have a negative impact on the state of rivers despite deindustrialisation and the widespread use of wastewater treatment, which have increased opportunities for the recovery of hydraulic landscapes.
The text analyses these conditions by referring to aspects of a generalisable nature that are useful for establishing a dialectical comparison with similar situations. It then focuses on the river Olona and, at a trans-scalar level, on the PLIS Basso Olona and the specific situation of the municipality of Pogliano Milanese, which has been the subject of research and specific design experiments.