Introduction
The debate on the future of San Siro in Milan is about much more than football. It affects cultural heritage, urban regeneration, neighbourhood quality of life and the use of public resources. Faced with alternatives between a new stadium, preserving the Meazza and different redevelopment scenarios, decisions should not be reduced to a clash between club interests, real estate projects and local committees. They need a participatory framework that makes trade-offs explicit and traceable over time.
This article outlines a multi-criteria decision framework for comparing demolition, transformation and “re-think” options, integrating benefit-sharing and compensation for residents and local businesses, heritage protection, accessibility, non-sport uses and the symbolic value of the Meazza. The approach is directly linked to the Concorder proposal «Nuovo stadio di San Siro: demolire, trasformare o ripensare il progetto?», which provides a structured overview of context and alternatives for public debate.
Why a participatory framework matters
Major stadium projects concentrate many typical tensions of large urban developments: tight timelines, significant private investments, cultural and environmental constraints, and social impacts that are often underestimated. A structured, transparent method brings at least five concrete advantages.
- Clarity on who gains and who pays: a public analysis makes visible costs, benefits and trade-offs between profitability, heritage conservation and urban quality, reducing the perception of backroom deals.
- Legitimacy and trust: when citizens, associations, clubs and institutions deliberate on the basis of shared criteria and evidence, the final decision – even if controversial – gains democratic legitimacy.
- Fewer conflicts and court cases: clear criteria and published data make it harder to challenge decisions for lack of justification or unequal treatment.
- Better targeted compensations and public value: if impacts on noise, traffic, accessibility or economic activity are measured with clear indicators, compensation measures can be focused on those most affected.
- Long-term perspective: a multi-criteria assessment helps shift the focus from the construction phase to how the area will function and be shared in the next 20–30 years.
The OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes provide a useful benchmark here: they describe ten steps to design, implement and evaluate citizen participation processes, and discuss several methods (from open meetings to representative deliberative processes) that can be combined to support complex decisions like stadium redevelopment.
How the framework works in the Milan case
The goal of the framework is not to replace political leadership but to make choices more transparent, evidence-based and accountable. It can be summarised in four operational steps.
Step 1 – Define the decision scope and scenarios
The first step is to define publicly what is really being decided and which alternatives are on the table. For instance:
- Scenario A – Demolition and new stadium with high commercial volumes and a complete redesign of the area.
- Scenario B – New stadium with partial preservation of the Meazza, turning parts of the existing structure into mixed cultural and community uses.
- Scenario C – Regeneration without a greenfield stadium, reusing the current facility, reducing volumes and increasing green and community services.
- Scenario D – Time-out to clarify legal and heritage issues, with a clear timeline and no “eternal limbo”.
For each scenario, proponents, funding sources, phasing, non-negotiable conditions and potential lock-ins should be clearly documented and made publicly available.
Step 2 – Set public criteria and weights
Instead of a binary “for or against the new stadium”, the framework relies on multi-criteria decision-making. Typical criteria include:
- Economic value: jobs, tax revenues, long-term financial sustainability.
- Urban and environmental impacts: land take, greenery, noise, congestion, emissions.
- Heritage and memory: protection of the existing structure, recognition of the Meazza as a historical landmark, public access to spaces.
- Accessibility and sustainable mobility: integration with metro, tram and cycling, safe pedestrian access on match days and in everyday life.
- Quality of compensation and benefit-sharing: local services, support for small businesses, community spaces, affordable access for residents.
The OECD report «Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave» documents hundreds of deliberative processes where citizens use such criteria to weigh complex policy options in fields like urban planning, infrastructure and environmental policy.
Weights can be defined through a mix of political leadership and digital participation – for instance via an online deliberative forum where residents and stakeholders indicate which criteria matter most to them. This is where platforms like Concorder add value, making preferences and trade-offs visible and auditable.
Step 3 – Inform, deliberate and improve the project
A credible process requires more than one-way presentations. A practical sequence could be:
- publish an accessible evidence pack with maps, traffic modelling, financial projections and heritage assessments for each scenario;
- organise public forums and thematic workshops (heritage, mobility, local economy, housing), with neutral facilitation and publicly available minutes;
- open a digital participation space where stakeholders can comment on scenarios and criteria, propose amendments and cluster ideas;
- produce a deliberative synthesis that clearly shows convergences, disagreements and conditions to be integrated into the planning process.
For inspiration on how to design such participatory spaces, see our article «How to successfully organize a participatory forum» and the more general overview in «The principles of collaborative democracy».
Step 4 – Decide, set conditions and monitor
In the end, a choice must be taken. Within this framework, a legitimate decision:
- explains why one scenario scores better than the others, based on the agreed criteria and weights;
- translates compensation and benefit-sharing into enforceable conditions (e.g. specific commitments on green areas, noise limits, mobility measures, social programmes);
- includes a monitoring and evaluation plan with indicators, timelines and governance: who checks what, how often and with which corrective tools.
This approach is aligned with the European Commission’s Better Regulation guidelines and toolbox, which emphasise transparent impact assessments, stakeholder involvement and evidence-based policy choices across the law-making cycle.
Use cases beyond San Siro
While rooted in the Milan case, the framework is relevant for many other projects:
- Other stadium projects in European cities, where heritage, urban regeneration and mega-events are intertwined.
- Large transport or energy infrastructures near dense neighbourhoods, where benefit-sharing and environmental mitigation are crucial.
- Urban redevelopment of former industrial or railway areas, where local communities demand a say on housing, public spaces and services.
In all these situations, the combination of digital democracy tools and robust impact assessment methods can turn polarised controversies into structured negotiation processes. For a broader overview of how Italian regions have experimented with e-democracy and participation, see «E-democracy experiences in Italian regions».
The San Siro neighbourhood itself has been the focus of a long-term research-action project by the Politecnico di Milano, Mapping San Siro, which explores how community engagement and public space regeneration can go hand in hand in a social housing context – a valuable reference for any stadium-related urban transformation.
How Concorder supports participatory decision-making
Concorder is designed as a full-cycle platform for collaborative decision-making, from proposals to deliberation and voting. Applied to the San Siro case, it can:
- host structured proposals for each scenario, with clear sections for context, options, evidence and expected impacts;
- associate criteria and indicators to each proposal, enabling simple yet transparent multi-criteria assessments that can be shared with the public;
- provide discussion spaces where residents, associations, experts and institutions can comment, suggest amendments and prioritise conditions;
- support online voting and polls on key design choices (e.g. which compensation packages are more relevant for the neighbourhood);
- generate AI-assisted minutes and summaries that make the process legible and auditable over time.
Used in combination with offline meetings and institutional procedures, Concorder helps bridge the gap between expert planning, political decision-making and everyday experience on the ground.
Conclusions and call to action
The future of San Siro is not only about the architecture of a new arena or the fate of a historic stadium. It is a test case for how European cities manage complex trade-offs between investment, heritage and public value – and for how seriously they take digital democracy and citizen participation.
A clear, participatory decision framework – supported by platforms like Concorder – can turn a potentially divisive project into an opportunity to strengthen democratic practices, institutional credibility and long-term urban quality.
👉 Want to explore how Concorder can support participatory decisions in your city, organisation or project? Discover all the features on https://www.concorder.net or book a free demo.
