A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #199 - The Sacking of Cities: Milan Like So Many Others (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

As yet another Milanese scandal shakes the country, the concern 
shouldn't be so much the legal issue as the underlying concept of the 
city. Land management, along with the design of a new and modern urban 
model, has been one of the flagships of the cultural development of the 
so-called historical left, aimed at defining the strategies for 
transformation and governance of the city, shaping its social policies. 
What has been achieved, and is still being achieved, represents the 
left's betrayal of the reference models developed by the fathers of 
modern urban planning (Atengo, Samonà, Detti, etc.) from the postwar 
period until the 1980s. The ideology of deregulation combined with the 
allure of market economic interests has produced the idea of the city 
that the "left" has now embraced and embraced. This is one of the 
reasons for the shift in consensus away from its core constituency, an 
expression of its interests, insofar as it empties the city of its 
native population, expelling it to new areas.
When urban planning was an expression of a rigorous ideological 
discipline, it studied the development of the city from a class 
perspective. It was responsible for ensuring the social objectives of 
urban development were met, ensuring the maintenance and development of 
public green spaces, ensuring that historic centers were not emptied by 
property speculation, and ensuring balanced development that maintained 
the presence of the diverse social figures of the inhabitants, thus 
making the urban fabric a living corpus, capable of expressing belonging 
and identity, while preserving the specificities of historic centers.
Conversely, for reasons that are not merely speculative, an idea of an 
"efficiency-driven" city has taken hold, characterized by the expulsion 
of the most vulnerable population from historic centers and areas with a 
strong sense of identity, who are increasingly pushed towards the new 
outer areas. This has transformed the city center into an environment 
primarily devoted to speculation and tourism, dotted with B&Bs, deprived 
of productive activities, so-called neighborhood shops, small artisan 
workshops, greengrocers, small supermarkets, and bakeries. Above all, it 
has eliminated meeting places such as bookshops, historic cafés, and 
cultural venues, favoring the flourishing of restaurants and sandwich 
shops, transforming the city center into a gigantic fast food 
restaurant, open 24 hours a day to satisfy the rapacious demands of 
tourists, turning the city squares into open-air bivouacs, frequented 
primarily by social outcasts.
This city has become the electoral base of the left-wing parties that 
have become the ZTL parties.
Milan is today, and not coincidentally, one of three cities in Europe, 
along with Munich and Amsterdam, with one of the highest rates of urban 
development, where the expulsion of residents to the suburbs is most 
massive and evident.
It goes without saying that the days of the old property developers who 
made real estate speculation and the construction of middle-class homes 
their business are over. Those directing the transformation and managing 
the business are large economic and financial groups who, hidden behind 
anonymity, invest their capital in gigantic speculations,
investing to create representative offices and residential spaces 
without the possibility of discussing in public forums the urban 
planning decisions and their social and structural impacts on the city. 
In Milan, replacing the implementation plan with the SCIA (Certified 
Notification of Initiation of Activities) isn't a technicality, but 
rather a substantial renunciation of urban planning. It's the loss of 
the City Council's power to control infrastructure, public green spaces, 
services, and mobility, in favor of the construction of taller and more 
voluminous buildings, with fewer landscape and environmental 
constraints-meaning more profit for developers and less quality for 
residents.
And the ill-fated Salva Milano law, unfortunately approved by the 
Chamber of Deputies, including the Democratic Party, should give rise to 
serious reflection. It is now stalled in the Senate, where it is hoped 
it will remain buried. This is a genuinely interpretative law on urban 
planning and construction, which would have been applicable throughout 
the country, even retroactively. It provided for the extension of the 
definition of "building renovation," including demolitions and 
reconstructions with shapes, volumes, and heights completely different 
from pre-existing buildings, provided they are located within "built-up 
and urbanized" areas.
In this competitive landscape, time plays a crucial role, influencing 
and stimulating the success of the investment. Therefore, it is 
necessary to act promptly, efficiently, and effectively, without 
creating obstacles to the bureaucratic red tape that can hinder real 
estate operations, bypassing the lengthy waiting times for 
authorizations and permits to obtain the necessary building permits. 
This explains the not-so-sophisticated system of consultancy, which is 
just one possible way to compensate for the time-consuming workarounds 
associated with authorizations.
If we add to this the maximization of the use of available areas and 
spaces, by multiplying the volumes, we grasp the scope and 
characteristics of the ongoing speculation.
If judges and the law are interested in this aspect of construction 
activity, which could have criminal implications or simply be the 
expression of a climate of exchange of favors and influence between 
administrators and developers, we are not interested. From a political 
perspective, what's of interest is the impact such a building policy has 
on the city's structure, its inhabitants, its social role, and its 
quality of life. Indeed, the very alienation of citizens from the city 
is the byproduct of this approach and the cause of profound discontent 
among the population and the ever-widening disconnect between the city's 
political leaders and its voters. The construction of integrated 
residential complexes, corporate offices, and micro-residences in the 
city center has effectively created security fortresses that protect 
residents.
We will devote a series of articles to these aspects of the problem in 
upcoming issues. In the meantime, we will limit ourselves to developing 
a few considerations.
The city's historic center, often reduced to a museum, is the showcase 
in which the city reflects itself. Its streets are the hub of nightlife 
and the array of ephemeral social activities that make the city a 
showcase of progress and savoir vivre. The decision by many cities to 
outsource cultural facilities, especially university campuses, to the 
outskirts has led to the delocalization of the social fabric, consisting 
of the student population, which, by involving young people, should have 
contributed to revitalizing cultural and participatory activities.
This delocalization has not been matched by the construction of student 
residences or the increase in housing options for the student population 
settling in the area. Indeed, the increased demand for housing, albeit 
dilapidated, has increased competition between the outsourced population 
from the city center and the demand for housing from the additional 
population, students, resulting in a disproportionate increase in 
property prices, both for ownership and rental. The lack of a social 
housing policy and a complete disregard for the management of public 
housing have done the rest, creating an unlivable situation in the 
outskirts of large cities, including Milan. A political management 
system not subservient to the logic of the "market," but prudent and 
attentive to the proper use of the land, should have understood this. In 
the face of movements like the student movement, which used its 
encampments in public squares and parks as an opportunity to peacefully 
and civilly denounce the difficult conditions experienced by young users 
of university services, it should have acted promptly and politically 
responsible for the city's governance, implementing targeted 
interventions that have instead been completely absent or marked by 
significant delays.
This is especially true when there is nothing more or less different 
about the university residences that have been built, as they are often 
reserved for wealthy students and, in fact, a privileged segment of 
them, the wealthy and affluent segment of university users, who take 
advantage of the quality of the university education offered by the city 
to benefit from it, given that in Italy university education is still 
virtually free.
Adding to the lack of housing is the inconvenience resulting from a 
deficient and inadequate network of services, which makes transportation 
times and costs prohibitive for workers outsourced from the city center. 
This effectively transforms the outlying neighborhoods into dormitories 
devoid of services and recreational activities, fueling the 
tertiarization of the city center as a place to be exploited for 
nightlife and abandoned, following the incursions and incursions of a 
population effectively alien to the urban fabric.

Deterioration is growing.

This reorganization, this functional relocation of the population, 
entails an urban and territorial restructuring characterized by the 
reduction of public and collective spaces, the transformation of public 
green spaces into mere street furniture, often made with synthetic 
materials and excluding the presence of nature (installation of fake 
lawns on the pavement, flower boxes and trees planted in peat, creating 
pseudo-greenery, pseudo-gardens).
It's not surprising that in such a dehumanized environment, citizens 
experience profound discomfort and alienation, suffering from a city 
that is becoming unlivable, invaded by the dust of countless 
construction projects, disrupted by poor road conditions, the result of 
vague decisions and rethinks regarding the organization of city traffic, 
and all this while the overall interventions are reflected in the 
increase in living and housing costs.
While all this is happening, a sense of profound alienation, 
frustration, and resignation prevails, as we realize we have no tools to 
intervene and influence, even minimally, land management to make it more 
humane and livable. Any discontinuity between the activities of the 
alternating administrations in land management disappears, and what 
prevails is a continuity that reflects the persistence of the economic 
and speculative interests that govern land management.

Tonino Coscarella

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/07/27/il-sacco-delle-citta-milano-come-tante/
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