The RiMaflow Project: A Laboratory to Study the New Cultural Meanings of Industrial Places

This chapter proposes an investigation on the socioeconomic and spatial transformations that followed the decommissioning of an automotive production plant in the southern outskirts of Milan. The production stoppage, due to a relocation policy, obviously had an impact on the workers, who (as often happens) found themselves at a crossroads: they could either follow the production plant abroad or remain in Italy without an income for their family. In this specific case, they chose a third way by occupying the empty factory and starting a completely original process of industrial regeneration. This case study presents many elements of interest, which can be studied from economic, social and cultural points of view. The geographical perspective of this study focuses on its value for introducing a practice that is capable of activating a type of place making acting in tension with local government and with factory owners. In particular, the case study shows how an industrial site can assume a specific cultural value based on the creative performances of the actors that actually become performances of the place. Through qualitative interviews with local actors, factory workers and people who are involved in the process, this chapter aims at studying a peculiar postindustrial place in a performative sense by focusing on bottom-up practices for the refunctionalization of an automotive factory. The attempt is to understand the new meanings that this place is taking on in relation to the performances of the actors of a nonconventional refunctionalization process.