Cities and their hinterlands are critical engines of national economies – more agile and able to control their environment than the nation state. Milan – Italy’s economic driver – is clearly one of Europe’s prime cities with a vast and interdependant productive hinterland. At the crossroads of Europe, the city has key strategic connections to global trade.

The idea of the nation state – seemingly in decline since the second half of the last century – has recently found new vigour. With the reappearance of Nationalism, progressive urban areas have found themselves on the defensive as the hinterland votes for protectionist trade rules and insularity. In contrast to this introspection, China has been exploring a reinstatement of the ancient Sino-European Silk Road. Last month a freight train completed the 12,000km journey from east China’s Yiwu City to London.
The economics of late capitalism has seen cities boom – and resultant rises in land value and demand for growth has brought into contention enclaves of industrial land that has previously been too marginal. Most European cities have seen a catastrophic decline in urban productive space as markets drive the production of development monocultures.

Rather than removing one monocultural use (railway sidings) from the city only to replace it with another, we will explore a strategy of superimposition, creating an industrious city as part of a rich urban situation and exploring new relationships between the city and its productive hinterland.

We will be considering this theme at a number of scales, from the strategic (map) to the hybrid structure (physical model).