The analysis aims to address questions related to implemented recovery strategies of brownfield sites and dismissed ex-industrial area in the urban context, by focussing specifically on 2 cases in Milan: the so-called ex-Bicocca-Pirelli area and the new residential district called Adriano, where once the Magneti Marelli industrial buildings insisted. Our thesis is that the “dismission-regeneration dynamic”, in its complexity, cannot be tackled solely with sectorial technicities and methods, but it rather requires innovations of the substantial pattern which currently orientate urban planning and local development: a mix between public management and private financial interests. We rather underline how a new public policy on an urban scale can fix guarantees on the effective regeneration of public spaces and urban texture implantation.