A motion asks Lugano to make the arrival from the station count

The city councillors of Avanti con Ticino&Lavoro, led by Giovanni Albertini, have tabled a motion on the welcome offered at Lugano's railway station. The observation behind the text is simple: the city invests in culture, in events and in public space, but for thousands of people the first contact with Lugano happens as they step off the train, and that place could be better used in terms of hospitality, comfort, information and urban identity.

The motion does not call for large works. It proposes targeted measures to turn the passage from the station towards the centre into what the text calls a small urban experience. Among the concrete requests is an interactive information point, with maps, public transport connections, current events, weather and route suggestions for new arrivals.

The second element concerns the city's memory. Albertini asks for a discreet tribute to Marco Borradori, the mayor who died five years ago on 11 August. The same anniversary underlies the trophy the city dedicates to him each year.

Lugano's station sits in an unusual position compared with those of other Swiss cities: it stands above the centre, and the link downwards runs via funicular or through pedestrian routes that are not always legible to those who do not know the city. That is why the question of wayfinding is not purely aesthetic. It should be added that the area has for years been the subject of a redevelopment project on a far larger scale, tied to the reorganisation of the district and to work by the federal railways, and that the motion deliberately operates on a different plane: what can be done now, without waiting for the bigger building site.