Milan is giving streets and open spaces back to children

Author: Sarah Sabry and Anupama Nallari at the Urban Hub @ Save the Children

New blog series: Child-friendly cities in Europe

Across Europe, cities are reimagining urban spaces to better support children’s health, learning, play, and safety. In this blog series, we speak with key stakeholders in city governments to understand how this change is happening on the ground and to share inspiring stories, practical ideas, and lessons from cities leading the way toward more child-friendly urban futures. If you are a European city that has made significant progress, please get in touch to discuss being included in this series.

Milan’s journey to becoming child-friendly

Since 2018, and over the span of just seven years, Milan has made big changes to become more child-friendly. It has given over 70,000 square metres of public space back to the city’s residents, in the form of:

• 60 squares or pedestrian streets, including 26 school streets
• 700 benches
• 850 bike parking stalls
• 85 picnic tables
• 70 ping pong tables
• 600 potted plants, planters and boxes for raised vegetable gardens.

How did this happen?

We spoke with Demetrio Scopelliti, Director of Urban Planning and Public Space at Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente Territorio (AMAT), a city-owned consultancy firm in Milan, Italy, to gain a deeper understanding of how the city is becoming better for children, through their Piazze Aperte, Municipality of Milan initiative.

Car-centric cities have become the norm. But some cities like Milan are on a journey to reclaim streets from cars and give them back to people. This has enormous benefits. Safe, green, walkable and cyclable streets with places for play and community activities improve children’s health and well-being, enhance air quality, reduce road traffic deaths and injuries, contributing to more inclusive and vibrant cities and societies.

What is Piazze Aperte?

Piazze Aperte, or “Open Squares,” is a Milan initiative that transforms streets and plazas into vibrant, child- and community-friendly spaces. The program started with neighbourhood plazas but quickly expanded to include “School Streets” and a piazza for every school, responding to growing demand from residents for safer, more playful, and engaging spaces for children around schools.

Using simple, low-cost interventions such as seating, planters, and colourful designs, the program repurposes streets and underutilised open spaces, making them safe for socialising, play, and active mobility. Piazze Aperte brings people of all ages into public spaces, strengthening neighbourhood life and giving children and families more opportunities to explore, connect, and enjoy their city.

Inspired by our conversation with Demetrio, we highlight the key steps that helped Milan reimagine its streets and piazze as vibrant, people-centred places.

9 steps to start and scale a public space transformation in your city

1. Co-create a vision: Big change starts with a shared dream. Milan’s 2030 vision is to become a greener, more climate-ready, and socially vibrant city. The plan puts people at the centre, expanding public spaces, planting trees, and making it easier to walk, cycle, and use low-emission transport. By pairing environmental goals with participatory planning, the city is working toward healthier, more connected, and inclusive neighbourhoods for everyone.

“I have a dream that one day outside every school will be a playground. We need a law, such as an European law to make this happen. It should be a right for every kid to have a place to play outside their school.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

2. Get inspired: Explore examples from other cities to see what’s possible. Milan’s Piazze Aperte was inspired by tactical urbanism interventions in New York, and Barcelona which demonstrate how low-cost, playful interventions can transform streets and plazas into safe and engaging spaces for children and families. Studying such initiatives can spark ideas for your own city, and learning from their successes and challenges saves time and resources.

“We realised that when we take cars away and just put in some basic things like benches, plants etc kids pop up naturally.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

3. Get technical support: Effective public space transformations need design expertise, data, and technical guidance. Milan’s Piazze Aperte benefited from early support from Bloomberg Associates, NACTO, and the Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), which helped shape the approach and shared best practices. There are also many online and open-source tools and resources available for cities looking to transform streets and plazas, making it easier to adapt successful ideas to local contexts. Cities Alive: Designing for Urban Childhoods, Proximity of care design Guide, Designing Streets for Kids, and Star Rating for Schools are a few examples.

4. Identify champions: Strong leadership is essential. Demetrio Scopelliti leads Piazze Aperte. Demetrio’s personal passion for giving his child a better city and childhood drove the initiative forward. Champions like him are determined and unwavering, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and tremendous obstacles to bring transformative ideas to life.

“The most important time I spent with my son, which is walking him to school every day, was filled with parked cars – I wanted to change that.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

5. Engage the community: There is a real demand for inclusive and vibrant public spaces among Milan’s residents. In 2019, the “Piazze Aperte in ogni Quartiere,” (Open Squares in every neighbourhood) call attracted over 60 proposals, resulting in 45 new plazas. In 2022, “Piazze Aperte per ogni Scuola”(Open Squares for every school) attracted 87 proposals involving 250 schools. Each open square that is developed is unique and closely linked to its neighbourhood and/or school, and made lively by activities organised by the community.

6. Start where there is demand: Target areas where residents are asking for change. In Milan, the demand was strongest for safer and more playful streets and open spaces around schools. Starting where there is enthusiasm ensures early wins, generates visible impact, and creates a model that can expand to other neighbourhoods.

“When these open spaces are created every day, twice a day at least or even more, children have a party entering and exiting from school and then people stay and people enjoy and experience their life and create community around schools.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

7. Make it for, with and about children: Children are powerful catalysts for change. It was easier to convince residents to transform streets when the message highlighted children’s safety and health. School-front streets became social, playful spaces, and children were positioned as owners of these spaces.

“We realised that children and schools are accelerators and catalysts for transforming public space…not many people want to say ‘no’ to what is good for children – who are the present and future.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

8. Test and reimagine with tactical urbanism approaches: Temporary, low-cost interventions allow cities to test ideas without heavy investment. Piazze Aperte had a limited budget and didn’t want to spend heavily on an unproven initiative. Quick, cheap, and temporary changes, like movable seating, painted play areas, and pop-up installations, helped people reimagine streets and plazas, demonstrating possibilities without the weight of major construction costs.

“We try to make it possible through tactical urbanism to imagine change, because not everyone can understand or imagine what space is, how space can be reused…that we can leave a better place than one we found.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

“We don’t need great investments. We just need to bend the rules and make the streets and public spaces free of cars.” – Demetrio Scopelliti

9. Establish active and collaborative partnerships: Collaboration across departments and organisations strengthens impact. In Milan, multiple city departments contributed to Piazze Aperte, including urban planning, mobility, parks, and education. Partnerships with schools, NGOs, and local communities brought programming, resources, and expertise that made the spaces lively, inclusive, and sustainable.

Milan demonstrates that reimagining streets for children is not only possible but also powerful. By starting small, listening to communities, and putting kids at the heart of design, cities can create healthier, safer, and more joyful neighbourhoods. Every painted bench, planter, or play street is a step toward a future where children thrive and communities come alive.

What could your city’s first Piazze Aperta look like?

You can read more about Piazze Aperte from these sources:

1. Comune di Milano, Piazze Aperte Report (2022): Official city report detailing objectives, methods, and impacts of the programme. PDF link
2. Global Designing Cities Initiative, Piazze Aperte Report (2022): Overview of how tactical urbanism scaled citywide, with data on interventions and reclaimed space. Link
3. Urban95, “Milan is not closing streets to cars, it is opening them to people” (2021): Emphasises people-focused framing and child-friendly benefits. Link
4. Forbes, “The Miracle of Milan” by Carlton Reid (2022): Media feature on quick, low-cost transformations with paint, benches, and play. Link
5. Cooperative City, “Reclaiming Public Space through Tactical Urbanism” (2023): Discusses tactical tools, citizen collaboration, and community uses. Link
6. URBACT, “Citywide Tactical Urbanism Programme” (2021): Presents Piazze Aperte as a European good practice in citywide, participatory placemaking. Link
7. City at Eye Level, “Milan Before and After: Citywide Placemaking” (2021): Visual and narrative account of Milan’s transformation through before-and-after stories. Link

About the Author 

This blog was written by Sarah Sabry and Anupama Nallari at the Urban Hub @ Save the Children International. Many thanks to Demetrio Scopelliti for speaking with us and sharing valuable insights and experiences about the Piazze Aperte initiative in Milan. Thanks also to Tim Gill for reviewing this blog.

The Ideas for Action Series showcases ideas for action, innovation, programmes, policies and practices that make public spaces child-friendly. Read more of our blogs here. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. When re-sharing this content, please ensure accreditation by adding the following sentence: ‘This blog was first published by the Global Alliance – Cities4Children (www.cities4children.org/blog)’