Milano Metropoli was set up in 2005 and effectively grew out of the former local development agency, known as ASNM. Since 1996 to 2005, ASNM had managed the re-industrialization and socio-economic re-conversion of North Milan, the area considered the powerhouse of Italian industry until the 1990s.

The North Milan re-development scheme was consolidated in just a few years and achieved impressive results: a rise in employment and in both profit and non-profit making businesses, the provision of new services and innovative territorial structures, urban re-development, experimentation with new models of partnership and governance and the creation of a new territorial image.