The redevelopment of railway yards in Italy
Where today there are tracks and old warehouses for goods, parks, houses and services for the city will be created. In all 8 million square meters in Italy ready to redevelop. From Turin to Naples, from Rome to Verona. The project launched in the former Farini railway yard in Milan represents just one of the many conversion plans that Fs Urban Systems, the FS Italiane company involved in the management of these areas, is carrying on. An urban regeneration, which is worth at least 2 billion in the budget, together with the other areas deemed no longer functional. And whose main objective is to heal an open wound made up of dozens of tracks that are no longer used. To mend parts of neighborhoods divided by walls and run-down buildings. Or rethinking entire city areas.
The airports to be reconverted
As in Turin, where Fs has to rethink 7 former airports. Or in Verona Porta Nuova, where he is working with the municipal administration to transform the area into a large urban park. And again in Bologna, where they were placed 45 hectares available to the city. Or Florence, where the sale of the former major repair shops will make it possible to reassemble a piece of the centre.
The challenges of Rome and Naples
Rome represents, like Milan, the biggest bet of this plan. Either for the attractiveness of the square in commercial terms, or because there are to be reconverted about one million square meters near the Tiburtina station. Also in the capital, an international competition will also redesign the Piazza dei Cinquecento area. Work will start shortly to be ready for the 2025 Jubilee.
Thanks to the urban variant, it will also be possible to intervene on the former Naples airport Corso Lucci, which will become a mobility hub, with the A3, the Naples-Salerno motorwaywhich will arrive in the basement, relieving current traffic congestion, while a park-and-ride car park will be at the service of cars and public transport.
The FS project
Large construction sites within cities in the name of sustainability, urban redevelopment and intermodality. An investment opportunity for real estate operators, but not for everyone. Because in order to compete in these areas, at least three characteristics are needed. “You need quality and technical ability – he explains Umberto Lebruto, managing director of FS Sistemi Urbani -. In fact, the operator must be able to develop, plan and ensure that the investments are profitable. It must have the legally required quality of reputation and honour. It must have the economic capacity to be able to invest”. In some cases, a few billion euros.
Operators interested in the areas
This is why for FS the former airports can become a business to be developed jointly. “From a selfish point of view, the turnkey business can be convenient – adds Lebruto -, in the sense that whoever comes becomes the owner of the area and assumes responsibility for everything from day one. From a pragmatic and realistic point of view however, it is unthinkable that such a complex operation should be carried out without the help and collaboration of the railway world. Because the constraints that exist are important constraints, which we will carry forward regardless, but for which there is still a need for railway expertise to be able to manage them”.
Parks, public utility services and a real estate section, which then represents the real attraction for those who invest. But with a guarantee: the choice of the reconversion of the area passes from the Fs and the municipal administrations, who will always try to maintain the right balance between the remuneration for the operator and the spaces for the citizens, “because if the investor does not remunerate his investment he will not use his own money”, summarizes Lebruto.
There will also be a remuneration for the railways coffers. Based on the industrial plan, the areas to be decommissioned will generate 2 billion in value for the balance sheets. A figure, at the moment, symbolic, to be validated on a case-by-case basis and also on the basis of the type of development that the former airport could have. But in the meantime the train of urban redevelopment has left, as Milan teaches.