Milano-Shanghai? Not really

Dear Dr. Severnini, I am writing to you in regards to your recent article aboutMilan becoming a city only for middle-income young people. Your short statement is already one of many that are repeated on this topic, because it is obvious to those who live inMilan that the city is becoming too expensive relative to average incomes and especially unaffordable in terms of housing. Your statement is a call for the city (but to whom?) to take a "leap" in addressing this issue, as has happened recently with the Expo and other city events.

It seems to me that this call doesn't understand the big difference between such a complex topic and the ones you mention, which are mostly organizational and management issues.

First of all, I would like to emphasize that everything inMilan is becoming more expensive because of the high price of real estate, which is reflected in high rents for all commercial businesses and then transferred to all the goods and services that these businesses offer. This phenomenon has been repeated for several years in all large cities that attract economic activity and education. This phenomenon has already been widely studied, and it has been found that the only concrete action to deal with it is to build new homes, greatly increasing supply and trying to keep that supply as long as possible in rentals rather than sales. In fact, the sale immediately contributes to a speculative market.

InMilan, available space for new construction is very limited and therefore very expensive, so there can be no solution in the city. But it can be built outside the city if the appropriate infrastructure, adequate connections and, above all, overcoming localism are created, although everyone knows that this overcoming is very difficult because of the persistence of local interests, as the practical inactivity of the Metropolitan shows.

South ofMilan has extensive areas dedicated to agriculture and it is not clear why the townspeople need them. When I bring it up, everyone associated with the industry whispers that turning farmland into residential neighborhoods is politically impossible, but no one can adequately explain why it's unreasonable. In addition, there is an opportunity to create a real unity betweenMilan and Turin, which are two cities with similar characteristics and perfectly connected by high-speed rail. Turin is a beautiful city that has the advantage of low housing costs due to the wide availability of former industrial land within the city itself. Turin has never seized this huge opportunity that has allowed Berlin to thrive and attract talent from all over Europe, becoming a global center of innovation.

(...)

I will stop here because I am not an expert in this field, but I would like to ask you, Dr. Severnini, and everyone who has the power to shape public opinion, to stop telling us how difficult the situation is, and instead interview politicians, intellectuals and entrepreneurs and ask them how they want to solve the problem, and most importantly, to do a proper vetting of these approaches. Instead, this topic about dearMilan comes up from time to time as if it were a surprise, and almost in such a way that politicians and the so-called elite are also surprised; they, who should know the problem well, but above all should have some ideas how to solve it. It seems to me that this situation might be called the collective intellectual dishonesty in which we swim.

Luciano Balbo, [email protected]

Dear Luciano Balbo

You are known as the founder of Oltre Impact, the first and most important social investment fund in Italy. I'm just a journalist with a passion for social phenomena, not a city planner, civil servant or politician. I report what I see. And sometimes - not always - I see right.

Frankly, I don't see how you can admit that you "are not an expert in this area" and then propose the development of farmland aroundMilan. Let's plant more trees that are good for the air and the mind, instead of building up fields and endlessly expanding the city. Megacities - Shanghai, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles - are hard to manage as we know.

But that's not all. I come from a family of farmers, and I know four things about this area. Do you know what "hydraulic coincidence" is? It is the principle that the runoff generated by drainage in a particular area should remain unchanged after a change in the use of that area. Translation: fields absorb rain; concrete does not. That's why in Lombardy by law we must - must! - create systems (basins, reservoirs) to prevent flooding during heavy rains. As has happened before and continues to happen, unfortunately.

To solve the problem of the cost of living inMilan (which does not depend only on property values!), we can use rail links to Turin, of course; and above all, modernize links to nearby small towns (including my Crema!). But piling concrete around the Lombard capital doesn't seem like a great idea to me. Milan-Shanghai? Not either.