Staging Corvetto, the pre mega-event neighborhood: ethnography of urban beautification in the age of aesthetic capitalism

What does it mean to live in the pre-mega event district? The thesis elaborates the results of the urban ethnography conducted between the autumn of 2022 and the beginning of 2024 in the south-east quadrant of Milan, one of the areas of the city undergoing rapid transformations, suspended between well advanced gentrification processes and areas that are still heavily criminalised and stigmatised in public opinion. Situated right in the middle of this area, the peripherical district of Corvetto connects the two largest works currently under construction related to the next Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics: the Olympic Village at the Scalo di Porta Romana and the new Palaitalia in Rogoredo. This area is represented as the new frontier of change in Milan, or even ‘the district of the future’, a specific imaginary well embodied by the panorama of cranes and scaffolding that surrounds it. However, behind these narratives heralded in celebratory tones, today Corvetto's present still seems to be disturbing. The research seeks to understand the aesthetic mechanism governing urban transformations, focusing on the so-called beautification processes. By observing the production of a specific urban desiderio and its related imaginary, both inscribed in the dynamic of what is called ‘aesthetic capitalism’, the thesis reflect on the politics of the wanted/unwanted in the production of the ideal beautiful city, analyzing the policies and decisions of administrations that can choose what - and who - should be visible and what should not (Zukin 1995: 7), understanding the visual domain as a new field as a new arena for inequality (re)production.