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 in Milan 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 in Milan 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.

In Milan, 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 of Milan 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 between Milan 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.

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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 dear Milan 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.