Urban Elites and the Making of the Eventful City: Non-State Governance and Spatial Coalitions in Olympic Milan

This paper examines the role of private real estate and financial actors in Milan’s urban transformation through the case of the redevelopment of the former Porta Romana railway yard, site of the Olympic Village for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games. Focusing on three key actors — Coima, Covivio, and Prada Holding, gathered within the Porta Romana Fund — the paper investigates their relationships with local public institutions in a context of hybrid urban governance. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach that combines mapping of real estate and non-real estate activities, interlocking directorate analysis, and semi-structured interviews, the study reconstructs the multidimensional urban presence of these actors. They emerge not only as property market operators, but also as influential participants in Milan’s cultural, environmental, and symbolic production. Between 2014 and 2025, they promoted numerous real estate projects in strategic urban areas while simultaneously engaging in cultural and social initiatives. Network analysis reveals a small-world structure, suggesting the existence of a cohesive urban business elite well positioned to facilitate information flows and strategic coordination. Local government appears primarily as an institutional enabler, helping to create regulatory and symbolic conditions favourable to private capital, rather than as a redistributive steering actor. Mega-events thus operate less as exceptional ruptures than as policy windows that accelerate existing valorisation trajectories and legitimise a market-led model of urban development. The Milanese case points to the consolidation of a loosely structured but sufficiently coherent urban coalition capable of exerting sustained influence over the city’s development trajectories.