Milan is trying to look ahead, and hopes for a restart of construction sites, after the request for dismissal for the most prominent suspects in the urban planning investigations, the mayor Giuseppe Sala, the star architect Stefano Boeri and the builder Manfredi Casella. And while the 'Suspended Families' are waiting for politics to intervene, with a clarifying law to unblock the houses after the Salva Milano shipwreck months ago, the investigations continue, with proceedings still open amid hypotheses of building abuse and corruption, with dozens of suspects or accused. There is the investigation into Bosconavigli, in which Boeri himself is under investigation, that into the Park Tower, that into the Scalo House project. The next appointment is November 27th for the preliminary hearing on the case of the 'courtyard' in Piazza Aspromonte, the first on urban planning to be opened in 2022.
In the summer of 2025 the arrest of six people, including the former councilor of the Municipality Giancarlo Tancredi, had caused a real political and administrative earthquake, with the Municipality having implemented a series of measures, defined as "remedial", to try not to run into new investigations. Measures that have inevitably slowed down the offices, where there has also been a real exodus of employees. After the investigations and arrests, there are in fact those who have left the Urban Planning department, perhaps asking for transfer to other offices.
The fear of the signature among officials has had serious consequences, as the deputy mayor with responsibility for urban regeneration, Anna Scavuzzo, admitted last October 29th in the commission, where she spoke with the families who are waiting for answers. Last year was "not painless" for the offices and there was also the loss of "dozens of officials: we had to appoint new managers and replace those who had left - he admitted -, then there were reorganization activities". Now the proceedings "are starting to have an acceptable, perhaps not satisfactory, pace".
With the remedial measures, the Municipality wanted to provide guidelines to standardize the methods of approving building interventions, already carried out or to be carried out, to prevent a hypothetical condemnation of confiscation and demolition of the building. The goal now is to review those lines.
And today, after the requests for dismissal, even the suspended families are once again asking for intervention from the Municipality and politics. "For some the judicial nightmare ends, for us the nightmare continues", comments Committee spokesperson Filippo Borsellino, according to whom the Municipality "no longer has an alibi" and can issue building permits. The parties "of all sides" instead receive a request for a "clarifying rule" on urban planning, "which gives certain rules on an urban planning discipline that has its roots in 1942. Not an amnesty".
Meanwhile, after the Milan Prosecutor's Office's requests for dismissal, we can perhaps leave behind "the climate of uncertainty of the first phase of the investigations which effectively paralyzed the Municipality's activity", observes the Regional Councilor for Territory and Forza Italia exponent Gianluca Comazzi, according to whom "it is time to look forward".
