NationStates Jolt Archive

So Milan will be hosting the Expo 2015.
While moderately happy for the local economy of my city - the Expo will be located outside the city borders, in the suburb towns of Rho and Pero, and the jobs created by the Expo will be temporary ones - I'm afraid that this is going to be the continuation of the architectonical massacre of this city - new motorways, unnecessary skyscrapers, parking lots and a general reduction of the precious few green spaces and cultivated fields we still got.

So what do you think?
Also, for those living in cities that have already hosted the Expo in recent times (let's say the last 20 years), care for sharing your experiences?

i say more green and less cars everywhere and anywhere on general principals. i know nothing about milan (i mean other then its in italy obviously) and don't claim to. this expo 2015 is like a worlds fair kind of thing like that expo whenever it was they had in seattle back in the 60s or 70s some time and that one in montrial canada, whenever it was in the mid to late 60s?

i like the idea of world's fairs. the only thing, from what i've seen of the literature from previous ones, is way to much walking. instead of walking from building to building and ride to ride, the need to have rides that stop at all the buildings and other attractions, i mean all of them, and not just a few widely scattered stops, and connect to all the outside world public transportation too.

then again of course, its transportation infrastructure tecnology that mostly interests me anyway.

i'm happy for milan if milan is happy for milan about it.

in 2015 i'll be 67, if i'm alive then. never having left the us further then victoria b.c. and that only once in my life, so i'm not exactly expecting to be there. unless wealth beyond my wildest dreams of avarice were to fall into my lap out of a clear blue sky. and i think we all have a pretty good idea how likely THAT is.

but if milan wants to do something like, i think whatever the real people on the ground everywhere, whatever THEY, not some corporate exploiters, actually want, then that's fine with me, other then hurting each other or making themselves unhappy, which most poeple, uncoerced and left to their own devices, pretty much invariably don't want anyway.

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I doubt this will have any long term effect - the UK government tried similar things in the 1980s such as "Liverpool Garden City". Complete waste of many with no long term benefits. I tend to think of the whole idea of regeneration schemes as of unproven benefits bordering on scams. For actual World Fair Expos the last one in Britain was 1862 - the building it was housed in had the two biggest domes in the world (maybe something rather Freudian in that) and was described at the time as "a wretched shed", "two colossal soup bowls", and a "national disgrace" - the whole event generally agreed to be a failure. Things haven't changed much.

I have been to Milan and can say it is fine the way it is. It is a good mix of Italian and northern influences. As for traffic I don't recall it being really bad because it seemed everyone walked or took the tram. I don't think an expo will do much for the city. It doesn't need it really.

I live on the remnants of an Expo, a manmade island in the middle of the SF Bay.