Milan’s Assembly uniquely integrates inclusive deliberative practices into municipal climate governance through Incremental Systemic and Methodological Innovations within the policy domain.
Role in the Policy Cycle: Beyond the Agenda Setting phase, the APCC is integrated into the Implementation and Monitoring phases.
Institutionalization: The APCC transcends episodic initiatives by institutionalising civic participation until 2030.
Holistic Citizen Engagement: i) a two-phase civic lottery selection captures participants' multidimensional diversity; ii) Citizens present actionable recommendations within the PAC.
Government Responsiveness: The Municipality provides written responses to citizens' proposals, cooperating on proposals deemed inadmissible.
These operational aspects ensure that the Milan model is at the forefront of promoting inclusiveness, representativeness, and concrete civic engagement in long-term climate governance.

After a year-long pilot phase spanning 12/2022-12/2023, Milan’s Climate Assembly is transitioning to full-scale implementation, undergoing refinements to its operational model by incorporating insights from rigorous multi-stakeholder evaluations.
While the pilot phase revealed promise in fostering inclusive dialogues and bottom-up recommendations, it also highlighted complex trade-offs. Key concerns included participant drop-out rates, uneven engagement across groups, limitations in incorporating minority voices and delivering feasible proposals.
In response, redesign efforts have focused on optimizing engagement, pluralism, and policy impacts. Notable changes include increased interaction with individuals to enhance involvement, compensation to enable participation from lower-income residents, and enabling greater integration by aligning the Assembly’s mandate to match municipality priorities. Overall, the innovation is strengthening its frameworks to fulfill its potential.

The APCC is integrated in an ecosystem of local actors created through a public participation call active until 2030. This ecosystem is composed of officials and technicians within the municipal administration, municipal companies, associations, universities, and local businesses working on environmental research and the provision of services facilitating ecological transition. At the international level, the APCC is part of various networks, including FIDE, KNOCA, and the EC-JRC.

The main beneficiaries are Milan citizens, directly engaged in climate policymaking process through the Assembly. Government officials also benefit from citizens' inputs and local knowledge to inform sustainable policies. External stakeholders like civil society groups provide information and oversight, while companies benefit from clarity on the city's environmental priorities. Overall, the model fosters collaborative climate actions to drive an equitable transition for all.

The APCC is assessed through indicators established by the Municipality in PAC’s Monitoring System and two external organizations measuring its social impact following OECD guidelines. As it is still in its pilot phase, tangible impacts are still emerging. However, initial outcomes show heightened public awareness and acceptance of the city's sustainability policies due to improved understanding of climate complexities and local governance processes. Two comprehensive qualitative evaluation sessions indicated citizens feel empowered to shape climate action based on ground realities. Expected future impacts include accelerated sustainable development driven by context-specific, socially supported policies co-created through the Assembly

The major challenges faced by the Assembly have been those related to the engagement and subsequent retention within our participatory body of the most vulnerable segments of the population. For us, these segments are represented by the very young (under 20 years old), the elderly (over 75), and the non-European migrant population. To overcome this difficulty, we have implemented a series of supporting mechanisms such as: customer care services, whatsapp communication, babysitting services and ticket transport reimbursement.