The Municipality of Milan and the Ministry for Environment have already financed the first four of ten projects. It is an absolutely new experience for our city,  within the frame of largely developed European experiences.

In those ten zones, where about 48.000 families live, owning 64.000 cars (estimated by Automobile Club Italia)  the way in which people move and live inside the quarters will change. New speed limits (less than 50 km/h) are introduced, in order to achieve the objective of a better road safety, reducing by 30% the amount of road accidents and improving urban mobility. The new roading system favorizes residents and pedestrians, giving the quarters vital space and improving safety and livability (it is worth to notice that that in the last years we had in Milan an increasing amount of road accidents, from 22'031 in 1995 to 24'480 in 1999).

The European model which the Isles projects are inspired to, is represented by the areas that are overall defined as "Zones 30", with an evident reference to the speed limit imposed  to the vehicles. In the last decade an acceleration in experimenting those policies on a European level occurred. After Germany (1980), Switzerland (1989), France (1990), Britain (1992) the turn of Italy has finally come: the new Road Code (1992) and the Directives for the draw-up of Urban Traffic Plans (1995/96) introduced the possibility, for the local authorities, of realize the Environmental areas. The first step was a "radiography" of the quarters, that allowed collecting important data about mobility, of residents and not, in order to build a detailed image of displacements and life in the quarters.
The Environmental areas are precisely defined by the Minsterial Directives for Predisposition and Actuation of Traffic Plans, as the urban sectors surrounded by the major roads network, a defin ition that fully integrates with the definition of quarter itself.  
Environmental areas (IA Isole Ambientali)), Limited Traffic Zones (ZTL Zone a Traffico Limitato) and Pedestrian Areas (AP Aree Pedonali) are nothing but urban sectors of the same quarter. We could define a quarter as the whole of one ore more IA, inside which are located the ZTL and the AP. Following this definition, it is possible to affirm that the realization of IA, ZTL and AP comes trough the interventions involving the whole quarter's street network.

The approach to the reorganization of urban spaces and streets, is structured on the basis of a well defined hierarchy that defines the role of each site, street, place, and sets out the interference and priority degrees for the different displacement modalities (pedestrian, cyclist, automobile, public transport).   
The results expected by this approach (easily perceptible where it has been actuated) consist in a global improvement of the urban and architectural context, in the reduction of noise and air pollution, in the reduction of the conflict pedestrians vs. cars, while everyone acknowledges precise rules to respect in the use of the public space.   
The examples realized in other cities are to be observed not as reproducible models but as contexts showing an innovative approach to conjugate functional traffic features with a policy of environmental clearance and urban retraining.

The intervention necessary in order to achieve an environmental improvement will concern:

• general remodeling of circulation within the quarter
• rearrangement of strategic street crossings
• recovery of places for the pedestrians’ rest along the residential streets
• recovery of some historical ways, keeping them free of trough traffic flows, and reorganization of the parking
• displacement of some stretches of public transport, in order to favorize first level flows;  
• identification of areas for building underground and above-ground parking lots.

A mix of  policies (prohibitions, one-way streets, speed limits, parking rules, improving public transport), urban design (landscape, lightening, traffic calming devices such as raised crosswalks, speed humps, diverters, etc.) completes each intervention.
Following this approach, the preliminary projects for a group of ten Environmental areas have been undertaken with the coordination and the supervision of the Agency.