MILAN HOUSING STORIES
This website was created with the aim of sharing the results of an educational project carried out within the integrated Urban Planning and Sociology course in the M.A. in Architecture – Built Environment Interiors at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering of Politecnico di Milano. The course was dedicated to the analysis of contemporary housing issues and dynamics. We focused on different topics each year.
After acquiring both theoretical and methodological tools in the broad, interdisciplinary field of housing studies, students had to design a short-term research project focusing on a case study or broad issue related to the yearly topic in the city of Milan. Under the guidance of filmmaker Tommaso Stingo, students both performed their project as video research or turned the results of their more traditional research into a video.
Visual media has proven to be a powerful tool for disseminating research findings on socially relevant topics to non-expert and broader audiences. It helps raise awareness of these issues, share knowledge, and advocate for political action and policy intervention. This website is both a form of recognition for the engaged work of students and a tool to know more about pressing housing issues that Milan, like many other cities around the world, currently faces.
LIST OF YEARLY
RESEARCH TOPICS
Every year students had to develop a video based on a new theme
Meet our team
Alessandro Coppola
Associate Professor in Urban Planning and Policy. His research focuses on housing policy, neighborhood dynamics, and area-based policies. Currently, He
the principal investigator of “MetroMosaic. Patterns, processes and motivations of residential (im)mobility in Milan and Rome” https://www.metromosaic.polimi.it, funded by the Cariplo Foundation, and the coordinator of an action-research project on Lombardy’s internal areas area-based strategies (https://www.altrelombardie.polimi.it/)
Carlotta Caciagli
Junior Researcher (RTDA) in Urban Sociology. Her research focuses on socio-spatial inequalities, social and political participation in contemporary cities, and the impact of digitalization on social inclusion in the context of welfare transformations.
She is currently involved in the interdisciplinary project “E-Welfare in the City: Digital and Physical Spaces in the Metropolitan Area of Milan”, funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), and contributes to the Cariplo-funded project “EDIN—Understanding the School Effect.” She teaches in the course “Sociology of the Environment” at Politecnico of Milan. She is the author of several international publications, including the book “Housing Movements in Rome: Resistance and Class” (Palgrave, 2022).
Marta Cordini
Senior Researcher in Urban Sociology. Her research focuses on housing, educational inequalities, and school and residential segregation. She has held visiting scholar positions at Rutgers University (NY) and at the Autònoma University of Barcelona at the GEPS Research Centre. She has contributed to several high-profile projects, an Horizon 2020 initiative on territorial inequalities and social cohesion (COHSMO), an Erasmus+ project addressing school segregation (ECASS). She is the principal investigator of the PRIN project “Unravelling School Segregation: Causes and Effects Towards an Italian Urban Model” and is also involved in the Cariplo Project “EDIN—Understanding the School Effect”.
Rossella Asja Ferro
Rossella Ferro is an urban researcher and planner focused on urban inequalities, housing justice, and the dynamics between central and peripheral territories. Her work bridges academic research and community engagement, experimenting with knowledge co-production with youth, marginalised communities, and local networks to advance more equitable urban futures. She has been active in social movements in Milan and Berlin, exploring how the interplay between society, spatial practices, and policies shapes urban democracy.
Rossella is a member of the research group CURA Lab at Politecnico di Milano, which manages a community/university centre in a public housing neighbourhood, and co-founder of the collective Frange Mobili, which interrogates migrations and shrinking territories in Southern Italy through spatial and cultural actions. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning at GSAPP, Columbia University.
Nilva Karenina Guevara
Researcher in urban planning, design and policy and member of the Board of Mapping and Urban Data Lab, of Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano. Her professional focus regards urban design with a focus on housing, residential mobility, and socio-spatial inequalities. She has contributed to several CRAFT (The Center of Competence for Anti-Fragile Territories) pilot projects on data collection, analysis, mapping and on the visualization for urban and territorial studies. She is involved in the Cariplo Project “Metromosaic – Patterns, processes and motivations of residential (im)mobility in Milan and Rome” and the project on Lombardy’s internal areas area-based strategies.
Tommaso Stingo
Content producer and educator with over a decade of international experience across Europe and the United States. Holding an MA in Screen Documentary from Goldsmiths College, he bridges the gap between technical production and media theory.
His versatile career includes serving as a University Instructor at Politecnico di Milano and leading media workshops for community-based labs. As a multi-disciplinary creator, he specializes in filmmaking, photography, and web design, producing a wide range of commercial and documentary projects. Currently based in Berlin, Tommaso continues to leverage his background in visual storytelling to develop engaging digital content and educational programs.
Paola Piscitelli
Paola Piscitelli is a documentary filmmaker and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie researcher between PoliMi, the Sensory Ethnography Lab of Harvard and the Institute of Geography of Universität Hamburg. She holds a PhD in Regional Planning and Public Policy at IUAV-University of Venice (Italy)
She has conducted fieldwork and filmed in various global souths. Her publications include: Mobile Urbanity (Planum Publisher, 2018), Città, noun plurale (Feltrinelli, 2019), Atlas of cities. Nine urban (re)portraits for a planetary journey (Feltrinelli, 2020). Her films include: Radio Riders (2020), Io non vedo il mare (2022), Waithood (2025) selected in competition at the 66th Festival dei Popoli.