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This episode of the Urbanist is brought to you by arup. Arup, the firm behind some of the world's most iconic public and structural projects, works with leaders to plan and deliver the systems that shape how cities and societies function across transport, energy, water and buildings. Arup's approach to design is how complex decisions get made, seeing the whole picture and creating outcomes that work in the real world. Because the future does not just arrive, it's shaped by the choices we make today. Learn more at@arup.com Next Arup Design for what's next?
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The beginning of this has been really at Expo 2015, and I think it was really the wisdom of the government that decided to convert that into an area for technology development innovation.
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With the vision to attract new people, new talent, not only from abroad, but also from the rest of Italy, it's super important to have a unified campus.
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How can a blockbuster international event touching down in your city influence urban development for years to come? This is the Urbanist Monocles programme, all about the cities we live in. I'm your host, Andrew Tuck. This week we look at the legacy of Milan's Expo 2015 and the Olympic Winter Games to see how event infrastructure can be a boon for a growing city. We also see how Ottawa has dealt with a hard winter for its transport systems. And we look at how Hong Kong is planning to develop 120 hectares of its protected wetlands. That's all ahead right here on the Urbanist, with me, Andrew Tuck. We head to Milan firstly today, where the Paralympic Winter Games wrapped up last month. Monocle's Tom Webb was in the city during the Games and he sent us this report exploring how the legacy of both the Winter Games and Expo 2015 has transformed the city.
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Hosting a global event is more than medals and prestige. It's an opportunity for urban regeneration. Set in the northwest of Milan, the Mind Milano Innovation district, once home to the Expo 2015, is slowly transforming into a mixed use net zero urban innov district. On the rooftop of the headquarters of human technopole, 15 km from the Duomo, at the junction of all main highway corridors connecting Milano to the rest of Italy and Europe, I met some of the new residents, planners and startups behind one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Italy.
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I'm Marino Zerial, I'm the director of Human Technopol.
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E
Can you give our listeners a flavour of what that is? Who may not know?
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B
So, Human Technopol is a research institution that has been funded by the ministries in Italy and it works on research applied to human health, which means we have a very translational approach to research.
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And how have you ended up here in mind?
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B
Well, it's been really the beginning of this has been really the exhibition in Expo 2015 and it was, I think it was really the wisdom of the government that decided to convert that into an area for technology development innovation. And so therefore, because life science are undergoing a revolution in technology approaches ability to study human biology, for example, it was decided that Human Technopole will be a research centre for human health.
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And what's the benefit for you being here?
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The benefit of course is that exactly the concept of campus, because we are not isolated. We have our institutions like the Hospitale Cati, Galeazzi, the university industries coming here services. It makes the campus more attractive. We would not be the same type of competitive if we were not really together. So therefore this provides bigger attraction and
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beyond the meeting of the minds, they've physicality, the exact location. What is special about it?
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Well, it's actually a pleasant area. I mean, if people really want to work here, they have the ability to stay in Milan, which is of course as a city is beautiful, but is connected also by very good infrastructure. The metro here is very efficient. In the morning there is a metro every two and a half minutes. If you want to stay here instead, you can live in very pleasant little villages here around the area. So as a location it's quite effective. Indosa is very well serviced by infrastructure and you know, supermarkets and shops and things like this.
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And how good are your research facilities here in terms of leading technology funding? What kind of state are you in?
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So the concept of human Technopol is to do research again for human diseases. And we are very interdisciplinary, which means that we have different technologies under the same roof. And this is important because if you have to do a project, you cannot just use microscopes, or you cannot just use computers, or you cannot just use genomics and sequencers. You have to use them, all of them. And that is difficult because they are very expensive. So we have an excellent infrastructure funded by the ministries. But interestingly, we also share it with the entire scientific community in Italy, which makes it also very cost effective. Because that means really that Italian scientists that do not have the luxury of this technology, they can nevertheless access it by coming here or sending samples here, or sending students to the experiments here. So that's why it's an interesting model also because the projects are funded by our budget. So therefore we do provide almost like a granting agency funds really for conducting research in Italy, accessing technology, which will really be very hard to find anywhere else in the world.
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I am Monica Di Luca. I am the Vice Rector for Research and Technology Transfer at University of Milano. I'm a full professor of pharmacology and particularly my background of research is in neuroscience.
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And how long has your relationship gone back with mind with this location?
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I started my interest in 2016 when my university took the decision to invest in this district to relocate a very large component of our scientific community. And in those years I was Vice Rector for International Strategies. And I strongly contributed to developing really the idea of moving our life science, heart science and part of medicine campus.
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And do you strongly believe it was a good decision?
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Yeah, I'm fully convinced. Our university, our scientific community traditionally is spreading down and in some cases we are really far one to each other. And we are also growing very fast also for our young people, for our young PI. And with the vision to attract new people, new talent, not only from abroad, but also from the rest of Italy. It's super important to have a unified campus in which to develop education, in which to develop research and innovation in a proper manner. So, yes, I'm strongly convinced that this will be a leverage for our research, for our university. Our university has a tradition in research as a vocation in research quality. We are part of very important international leagues of universities that are dedicated to research. So we would like to pursue this goal, this ambition also in the next year and to develop this vision, let's say, in 20 years from now, we really needed a new campus, a new strategy, also an environment in which we can identify, find and elaborate on new synergies and new collaborations.
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Universities around the world are struggling accommodating students. Universities are spread out. What does this do to address some of those wider issues that universities face?
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This, for us is a very important question. The vast majority of our students are very simply out of the region, Lombardy. So they need relocation, housing and everything. And Milan. Milan became very expensive cities, not only for Italian students, but also for foreigners. It's the same. So we are growing up in the number of international students, but also international faculty outside of Lombardy students. And we needed to relocate also these kinds of issues and needs of our community in a different district. Mind will offer this. We will have new building, new housing at a price that is highly convenient for the students particularly. So I strongly believe that this would be an incentive and not a problem for the students to stay a little bit outside the town, but extremely well connected in time, if they wish, with the city. So it would be an advantage for sure.
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And how Far are we away from welcoming student number one to this space?
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Our ambition is to bring the academic here 27, 28 here. So we are not that far.
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You're not that far. And will this be a great place for them to live and to work and to thrive?
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Yeah, I believe that this will be an important opportunity and a unique chance to develop their future career. And we are not only talking about academic career, because we are educating students for many different career pathways. And here there would be the possibility to interact with different sectors for entrepreneurship. So to develop a mindset for entrepreneur to develop something more linked to industry and different kinds of, let's say, career path. And the fact that here we have all these stakeholders linking the same space to me is favoring this aspect. So if I would be a student, this place will be an asset for me.
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I'm Diego Valazza, I'm the business development director for Lend Lease and I also have a role in the federated innovation netmind model, always in the business development.
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Mauro Capitano, Operation Director of Principia, the owner of this area.
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So we were talking earlier about the timeline and the relationship between the Expo and then when the planning started going in 2021. Could you give us a bit of a background and take us as concisely as you can to present day?
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Okay. Kind of a roller coaster, of course. But let's say that soon after Expo, the public components started with the public bid, of course, and we were capable and lucky in some ways enough to win it at the time. And we immediately started a shared vision on this site, almost based on life science, but as we already discussed, not only related to life science.
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And well, Life Science Hospital first completed structure, three years it took. How did that get pushed through so quickly and completed so efficiently?
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This is the main key of this kind of partnership because we realized that the important factor was to choose a strong private partner able to share this kind of vision. And also is important the role of the public leadership of Principia, because Principia as a public company is able to translate the complex language of the Italian bureaucracy, helping the private partner to reach his target. So probably the man in the middle, able to speak the public language and understand the private needs is a key factor of this kind of success. To realize this project in the right timing.
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And how has mine been thought about in the rest of the city, in the fabric of Milan, where does it feel fit in?
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Well, let's say it started becoming perceived as an essential component of the city, quite ironically in the last years the perception is that it was most famous and known abroad that on the domestic landscape. Luckily now that we are more physically present now with the construction side of the campus and the building growing up almost on a weekly basis, it has been started perceived as something real. So we are attracting attention also on the domestic side as well. So Milanese are considering this area as a brand new development of the city of Milan.
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Absolutely.
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Talking about attracting attention. Why should people relocate here? Why should startups come? What does it offer?
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This is a strategic place in Milan because it is near to metropolitan area to the airport and is attractive mainly because private company and startup are searching in Italy talents. And with the arrival of university resource center, you can have proximity to the talent playground. And also for students and universities important the proximity with startup and private market because they can see the target or their learning path. So it's very attractive. And consider that this is a very big area. We speak about 1 million of square meters, but 50% of this area is a green area. And together with the social housing, the student housing, the university we are building, we are planning some big park inside this area. So it's attractive also because it's a green area. So it's a very interesting mix of work and life is the right probably balance of private work and family life.
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Then finally, where are we in terms of the project development?
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We reached 30% of the development and we expect the completion by 2032 as already mentioned. So we are getting closer and closer. Of course we will have a boost up very soon as the campus will land here at Main.
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My thanks to Tom Webb for that report. We head to Ottawa now, where a chilly winter has proved tough for transportation in Canada's capital city. So how did this happen in a place that is no stranger to cold weather? And how has the city been addressing the problems? Journalist Stephane Dabowski sent us this report.
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The winter, spanning late 2025 and early 2026 was awful for OC Transpo, the municipal transit agency for Canada's capital city, Ottawa. During this particularly snowy and cold season, the city's aging buses and its problem prone light rail train system couldn't keep up, stranding frozen passengers at windswept stops and busy platforms. Many bus trips canceled, trains running with fewer passenger cars than planned. How did this happen? Actually, it's just the latest issue for OC Transpo. The agency has been on a quest to make Ottawa's public transit system more efficient. But at this point, Ottawa residents seem fed up with the way this transformation is Unfolding. Ottawa used to have a sophisticated bus transit network, including dedicated bus only roadways that enabled the vehicles to slice across the city. But the bus system had problems, especially downtown, where thousands of commuters jostled to get on board. Crowded vehicles and buses were trapped in long lines of, well, buses. Adding more buses wouldn't help. Time to try something new. A train. Like a subway, a metro, Something with cars on rails. Something that would carry more people more quickly. So in 2012, Ottawa decided to build a new light rail train system. That's when the trouble began. The light rail construction project was plagued with problems from the start. There were delays, construction accidents, and lawsuits. By the time OC Transpo opened the first line of the new system in 2019, line one running east west through downtown, it was as if the fledgling network was cursed. The trains didn't work properly. Wheels broke, doors broke, trains derailed. The agency had to shut the line down time and again for repairs. It still isn't running with all the trains it's supposed to have, so travel times are longer than they should be, and riders are annoyed. Meanwhile, there were problems with the buses. These aging vehicles were pressed into greater use to shuttle train passengers whenever the train failed. OC Transpo couldn't buy new buses fast enough, and the agency had trouble keeping bus mechanics on staff, leading to a backlog in the repair shop. Cue the bus cancellations. January 2026 saw 9,000 canceled bus trips, many due to maintenance issues. Things looked better in February with just 6,500 cancelled trips, which is 3.6% of all trips. Plenty of news stories about people waiting at stops and complaining about the service. OC Transpo seems to be working hard to fix things. The agency is still trying to buy new buses, it's hiring mechanics, and it's working with the companies that built the LRT line and the trains to improve reliability and capacity. And believe it or not, ridership is actually up. By the end of 2025, ridership had increased by 3.9% compared to 2024. Levels still aren't as high as they were before the pandemic, but they are improving. Ottawa's attempt to bring its public transportation system in line with current and future demand has been rough, but it could be an important step toward helping Canada's capital reduce car usage and become more pedestrian friendly. For city lovers, it's an exciting journey, even if it's far from smooth.
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My thanks to Stefan Dabowski for that report. Finally today, we are in Hong Kong, where the city recently closed proposals to develop 120 hectares of protected wetlands. For a city known for towers and density, it's an unusual and important moment. It also poses an answer to a bigger question. What do cities do with their last natural edges? I was recently joined by Matthew Potter, the director of the Hong Kong Office of Architectural Practice, Wilkinson Eyre. And I began by asking Matthew, considering we're likely more familiar with the urban density of Hong Kong, where and how significant these wetlands are, it's a really
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good description of Hong Kong and Hong Kong really is that fascinating mix the duality that you can be in the, you know, one of the densest cities in the world and then walk out of it for half an hour and suddenly you're into really deep forest. And that's particularly true on the island. So the peak everyone is very familiar with is this green heart at the center of the island. Now, Hong Kong as a whole is about 70% green. And if you start to go further north towards the border, towards Shenzhen, there are these hugely important wetland areas that have been identified, quite rightly, as a great opportunity of creating this metropolis between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and identified as part of the 15th year five year plan of the Chinese government as a major area of development linking these two cities. And absolutely, it's a phenomenal site. It's an area of wetland. And there are also interested parties in creating an eco tourism element. You know, really being able to get people to go out and see the wetlands that there. So we and others are all saying the same thing. We just need to be very careful that we hold on to what is so special about this site. And it doesn't just become an extension of the city. We retain the greenness, we retain the ecological benefit. There are some incredibly rare migrating birds, some 50,000 to 80,000 water birds use these wetlands in the Inner Deep Bay Ramsar site in particular. And it's just about making sure that we get, and we've said in conversations, let's put the eco before the tourism. Let's make sure that we identify what's important and that we work our infrastructure around it. And it sort of links into something that is very prevalent, very popular in this part of the world, is thinking about the sponge city concept. It's not about concreting over and making sure that we've got really big drainage ditches that can cope with all the rainfall. It's actually working much more with the landscape to create a more balanced response, something that works holistically and that we start to treat landscape as part of the infrastructure, rather than as something that gets in the way of those concrete ditches.
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What's interesting is, I guess in many cities now, they see these wetlands as not just a nice place to host birds and natural diversity. They're also seen as essential to the resilience of a city. They take in flood water, they mitigate floods coming into a city. They're important parts of the metabolism of a city as well. So when people talk about development of these sites and adding buildings and adding tourism, what kinds of things would you like to be top of mind as Hong Kong thinks about developing this land?
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I think it's absolutely right. And it's not a case of trying to sit back on our hands and say, oh, it's lovely as it is, let's not do anything. We absolutely see the opportunity for combining the ecological imperative and the significance of these sites with development. And the opportunity of the two working together, rather than you do one or you do the other, seems to be a much more interesting way of working. Obviously, the environmental impact assessments are really, really key and they've got to be done properly and they've got to be done honestly and we' got to stick to them. We can't just say, well, we'll get rid of the trees and we'll plant them somewhere else, because trees take a long time to grow, being, you know, ridiculously simplistic about it. A tree that stays in the same place is far healthier than the little one that you build further down the road to replace it. So really, let's try and identify what the assets are, what the really key valuable places are, where the birds are, you know, most likely to be able to continue to do what they do without being affected, and then start to plan the infrastructure around it, rather than put it a network of roads across it, and then try to mitigate the impact of where that infrastructure has gone in. I think it's just really trying to identify value in a slightly different way. And we've got to see, exactly, as you were saying, the opportunity of these spaces in cities to offer resilience, to offer blood defence, to offer this huge ecological benefit and say, well, that's important as much as our glass buildings are.
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Wilkinson Air, obviously a firm that was established here in London but is very active in Asia. You're a director of an architectural firm. What leads you to be wanting to talk about birds and wetlands and not building maybe sometimes. Where do you come into this story of promoting a more sustainable vision of how we develop?
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So I was fortunate a long time ago to work on Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. So that was a project that we won in competition with Grants Associates, extraordinary landscape architects based in the uk, but also now have an office in Singapore and working also with extraordinary engineers in terms of providing a really integrated approach to not only the landscape, but also the building began. This sort of interest in terms of how we get the two to nuzzle up against each other a little bit closer, if that makes sense as a word, the landscape can start to permeate the insides of the buildings, and maybe the buildings don't need to be so hermetically sealed. So that was something that was very passionately driven into me when I was working in Singapore. Guns by the bay, completed in 2012. Since then, I've remained keen on GRE and really tried to think a little bit about how we soften that boundary. And I think it's probably been really reinforced for me, being in Hong Kong, living and working in Hong Kong for the last 10, 11 years. So Hong Kong's different Singapore, insofar as we do have seasons. We always used to joke in Singapore that you've got four seasons which are hot, hotter, wet, wetter. But in Hong Kong, we do have some cooler months. But there was very much the sort of typology of building where it's a glazed box with not very good facades, and it gets far too hot in the summer, so you have to crank up the air conditioning and people sit inside with blankets on because it's so flipping cold to sit at your desk. And then some of the year, it's actually quite nice outside, but there's no opportunity to open the windows and feel the breeze or see the clouds go by. And I think that opportunity of, yes, let's do buildings and let's do extraordinary buildings, but let's just be a little bit more intelligent about how we think about their facades, rather than it being glass box with inside, inside and outside kept at arm's length outside. And also this interest with landscape not just being the nice thing outside the buildings or the thing that you put around the buildings when it's completed, but that it becomes a sort of a vital part of the infrastructure of the building and of the city itself, that we all know that it's far nicer to sit under a tree when it's a sunny day than sit on the pavement. These are obvious benefits. You get the cooling, you get the environmental benefit, both in terms of the shade, you get a much more sensible use of water, rather than it having to be ever bigger concrete ditches and In Hong Kong, it does rain as enthusiastically as it rains in Singapore. And can we find a more intelligent way of dealing with the weather than simply trying to keep it arm's length and fight against it, work with it rather than fight against it?
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Now, you were talking about Singapore, and another project you've been involved there is Sentosa, some people may know as a resort that they've been to, but there is a port facility there that's been dismantled, removed. Again, what would your intervention be in
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a project like that?
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So that's a project that we've been working on for a long time. We've been looking at the master plan, and because it's been a master plan that's developed over a long time, other bits have been added in. So the port that you're referring to is Pulaubrani, which is actually an island between Sentosa and the mainland. And you're absolutely right. Most people say, oh, yes, Sentosa, it's got a resort on it, but it's also got these amazing ancient forests, it's got these extraordinary beaches, it's got these heritage attractions. And I. I think our effort with the master plan, again working with Grant Associates, has been to try and get different people into the different parts of the island and to understand all that is on offer and not simply come across the bridge and say, okay, well, we don't want to go to the resort, so we'll go back to Singapore now. Thanks. And trying to get people to move around the island is one key part of the master plan. Another key part is actually saying, well, let's maybe keep the resorts where they are, but really retain that rainforest band that we've got wrapping around them. And possibly as you go a little bit further away, you start to get this disassociation with the city and something that people who live on Sentosa, people who work on Sentosa, are really proud of is the island ness, the fact that it is different to Singapore. And by the time you're onto the other side of Sentosa, you can't see Singapore anymore. You're looking out across the water. It really does feel like another place. So trying to keep that character and quality is something that we've been really working on. And then returning to the port, the port is an interesting one because it was built on Pulaubrani. Pulaubrani was a tropical island which then had a large concrete deck built around it. And whilst the coral has started to grow underneath the deck in interesting ways, and the coral is certainly present between Sentosa and Pula Brani, it was a very hard industrial port with containers and cranes and the like. Now if that is being relocated and the possibility of incorporating Pulaubrani part of the Sentosa Brani master plan, we start to think about how we can perhaps allow the landscape to soften those hard edges a little bit. And we've been considering the possibility of if there is rising water to do with climate change, then maybe it's okay. If that water starts to spill over that edge and we create pools of wetland, newly installed wetland on that concrete deck, or can we start to actually break away the concrete deck? Can we start to create floating islands just to soften that very, very hard edge and re establish the much more softer condition between the water and the land and do it in a way that accommodates people, that they can see this, that they can enjoy it, they can experience it without getting in the way of the natural systems.
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We began by talking about what do you leave alone, how much do you not interfere in a space? But we've ended up talking about fixing, repairing, allowing nature to come back into spaces. And you talked to us about in the planning stage for a project that we should be a bit more ambitious about how we entice nature to be in amongst the buildings and in the spaces that we're developing. Are you hopeful that that can really happen? That in very dynamic economies, especially in Southeast Asia, that there is still a space on the agenda to say actually maybe we don't do too much, maybe we do try and fix, maybe we try and deliver something else, even if it's only for quality of life for the people that live in those places?
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Absolutely. Definitely optimistic and definitely positive. I think it's not so much a question of doing less, it's the question of doing more with less. And I think people really do increasingly see the value of being able to connect more with the outside. It's something that we've seen particularly in the commercial sector in Hong Kong. And maybe it's a hangover from COVID that outdoor space is valued as much as indoor space now and tenants are asking for that connection to the outside. So it's not just a case of creating as much internal air conditioned space as you possibly can on the site. It's allowing those softer edges and those amenity spaces that are outside and a little bit more fresh air to come in. And as we start to set more and more ambitious targets towards net zero, we've got to be turning the air conditioning down. We can't be using so much energy to power our buildings. And I think that gives great opportunity to think about our buildings in a more intelligent way, not necessarily making them smaller or less effective, but making them better and making them more in tuned with the climate that's outside. So I definitely see there's great opportunities. We've just got to be a bit clever about how we do it and try not to keep nature at arm's length, but let it come in a little bit.
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Matthew Potter, many thanks for joining us. And that's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism, too. Just visit monocle.com the Urbanist is produced and edited by David Stevens. I'm Edge Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening.
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City lovers.