Project objectives:

Until 1994 the area known today as La Goccia of Bovisa (literally, "the Drop of Bovisa"), located in the north-west of Milan, was home to an industrial complex for the production of gas, causing very high levels of chemical contaminants in the soil. Over the last thirty years the area has spontaneously renaturalized, becoming an urban forest, a perfect example of urban wilderness.

Near the forest, the Polytechnic University of Milan has begun work on the creation of a new university campus, whose Master Plan was created by architect Renzo Piano.
The La Goccia project will include a study of a mechanism of bioremediation in the degradation processes of contaminants, the results of which will be used to design new Nature-Based Solutions. In fact, unlike most bioremediation projects, this project starts from an existing spontaneous ecosystem, structuring the monitoring of biodiversity and environmental ecosystem services to develop an innovative management of an urban natural area.

The expected results are:

• Accessibility to a new large green area for the citizens of Milan;
• Validation of a remediation process design;
• Involvement of citizens in processes of citizen science;
• Consolidation of a quintuple helix governance model, which considers the environment as stakeholder;
• Development of a interspecies approach to design thinking.