Addomesticare la wilderness. Nature tossiche e green gentrification a Corvetto, Milano

Abstract

The article will present some snapshots from the ethnography of beautification processes and the politics of the unwanted in the suburban neighbourhood of Corvetto, addressing the production and exploitation of an imaginary of urban nature within regeneration projects, highlighting processes of green gentrification currently occurring in the neighbourhood. I will present the case of Porto di Mare, a peri-urban area of spontaneous wilderness on the outskirts of Corvetto, which in the past has been strongly stigmatized and criminalized due to the presence of an area also known as 'the drug forest'. Closely linked to deindustrialization, this is an openfield area once used as an urban dump that has undergone a long process of renaturalization, now at the center of brand-new regeneration projects, which on one hand have expelled undesirable presences, and on the other have endorsed the interests of big capital for the construction of the new facilities for the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina. In this space, urban green aesthetics have been mobilized, in a scenario in which a dominant green-sustainable imaginary is becoming both exploited as a justification for urban transformation, and at the same time as a battleground for the political struggle over the maintenance of public green spaces.