MUSA Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action is a three-year Innovation Ecosystem project funded by the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), an economic recovery and regeneration programme of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PNRR, Mission 4, component 2, investment 1.5). MUSA sees the collaboration between the University of Milano-Bicocca, the promoting body, Politecnico di Milano, Bocconi University, Milan University and numerous public and private partners. The project addresses the multiple challenges that the Milan metropolitan area faces in the transition towards environmental, economic, and social sustainability and is based on new models of public-private collaboration to generate positive impact at local and national level.

The research group operates within Spoke 5 - Sustainable Fashion, Luxury & Design, and it is actively creating an incubator for innovative projects to develop new distribution and retail models oriented towards sustainability, catalysing regeneration processes and enhancing urban cultural, creative, and productive capital. In particular, the project investigates the potential of servitisation of physical and digital retail spaces as a mechanism to implement circular economy processes, influence corporate responsibility, create new revenue streams, gain competitive advantages, and increase consumer awareness.

In this context, the project’s main objectives are:

- Accompanying companies towards piloting innovative, sustainable and circular retail formats and concepts and services;

- Experimenting with innovative distribution models for products and services with high cultural content (design, fashion, lifestyle);

- Defining support protocols and effective tools to activate transferable design processes;

- Activating processes for training and enhancing human capital;

- Setting up meetings, conferences and workshops with companies, retailers, start-ups, professionals, designers, trade associations, citizens and municipalities to share and co-design sustainable solutions.