Boroughs of Milan

The current administrative division of Milan, Italy comprises nine zones (zone di decentramento, "decentralization zones") numbered from 1 to 9. The organization was established in 1997 and implemented in 1999; prior to that the city was divided in 20 administrative zones.

Zone council

Each zone has a local government called "Consiglio di Zona" ("zone council"). The council has 41 members for zones exceeding 100,000 inhabitants, and 31 members for smaller zones (no zones currently fall in this category).^[1] Each council elects its own president.

While the 1997 plan was intended to ascribe several rights and functions to zone councils, this has been largely unattended, so that zone councils have, in practice, little power and few duties.^[2] Some of the actual functions of zone councils are:

• expressing opinions on urbanistic and social issues such as public works, town planning, maintenance of green spaces, regulamentation of street markets. These opinions are not binding for the higher level city government.
• managing funds (if any) provided by the city government for specific purposes, such as those intended to guarantee the right to education for poorer families.

Every council has to elect a President; since 2011, presidents are:

The nine zones

With the exception of Zona 1, which corresponds to the historical centre of the city (defined as the part of the city that used to be surrounded by the old Spanish walls, now mostly demolished), zones are organized in a sunburst pattern, and numbered from the north-east zone clockwise (see picture above). While zones are mostly referred to by number, each zone also has an official name, usually a list of its main districts or areas.

Current zones are described in the table below, along with their names, area and population (as of December 2006), as well as a list of the main districts comprising each zone. Note that districts (quartieri) are informal (they are not administrative divisions).^[3]

Footnotes