Malcolm Eadie joins the challenge to make Milan greener
The CRC for Water Sensitive Cities’ Commercial Manager, Malcolm Eadie, had a unique opportunity to co-create as a ‘solution provider’ with the City of Milan in early June. He helped develop innovative, replicable and scalable ideas and solutions to improve the city’s urban resilience to the climate crisis through forestation.
Malcolm joined international experts and innovators spanning all sectors, as well as officials from the City of Milan, for the C40 City Solutions Platform Online Workshop: Milan’s Urban Greening Challenge on 4–5 June.
The fast-paced interactive workshop was in two parts:
- unpacking the challenge and identifying barriers
- co-creating solutions in small groups and pitching the ideas to a panel of Milan’s city officials.
Milan plans to plant three million trees in its metropolitan area by 2030, with the goals of reducing flood risk, mitigating the urban heat island effect, increasing carbon dioxide storage, improving air quality, and making green spaces places for socialising.
The city sees the most urgent, relevant and promising opportunity for supporting and facilitating the forestation process as creating an educational plan for urban forestation. So, it tasked workshop participants with answering: How might we activate local schools as strategic trigger points for citizens’ engagement?
Malcolm’s contribution focused on the first of the two interactive workshops. Participants employed a human centred design approach to frame five key design challenges of greening Milan’s schools and deliver multiple community benefits. On day two, workshop participants co-created design responses to each design challenge and “pitched” their final ideas to city officials.
“This well facilitated event showcased how we can use digital collaboration platforms to effectively connect a diverse group of participants, from all parts of the world, in a fast paced deliberative co-creation process”, Malcolm said.
“Preparing and disseminating background materials before the workshop meant we were all on the same page from the start, which kept us focused on outcomes and the process moving.
“It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and a great way to network with a diverse group of passionate practitioners.”.
The C40 City Solutions Platform is a forum for enabling collaboration across sectors, and empowering C40 member cities to co-create climate solutions safely and effectively with different innovators while becoming global thought leaders for innovation in climate solutions.
C40 Cities connects 94 of the world’s leading cities committed to taking bold climate action to create a healthier and more sustainable future for all. Representing 700+ million citizens and one quarter of the global economy, mayors of the C40 cities are committed to delivering on the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement at the local level, as well as to cleaning the air we breathe. The current chair of C40 is Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti; and three-term Mayor of New York City Michael R. Bloomberg serves as President of the Board.
To find out more from Malcolm Eadie, contact him at malcolm.eadie@monash.edu.