Milan is the city where I have lived for over 40 years, here I got married, immediately after the university, my three children were born here, here my grandchildren come to visit me, I work here, I live, I enjoy, I suffer … In short, for me Milan is a question of the family, and also the urban scandals that are going through the city (I was about to write “overwhelming”, but for now it is not so: we hope … These urban scandals are also a question of family policies. Among the many “collateral damage” of the sad Milanese events there are also the hundreds of families who have confidently purchased the apartments under construction in recent years, with contracts in which it was “all right”, from the point of view of municipal authorizations, and who today find, for who knows how many years, their savings, their life projects, with the “Some not to know” When the question resolve (months? years?), And with the concrete possibility of remaining significantly damaged even economically. In short, Let’s remember as the first point that the first injured party are concrete families, today “pending”, who had bet on the living in Milan.
The second point is precisely “to live from family to Milan”: Last year the CISF had dedicated its annual report to the home theme (Family -sized houses and cities, San Paolo editions), and in comparing it with the Milanese context it had emerged immediately that Milan is a city that is also growing as a population, but this growth excludes families, especially those with children. Also The young Milanese, when they marry, go to live outside Milan, sometimes by choice, but more often for cheap constraints: a square meter in Milan costs too much, and of course they grow proportionally, if you have to add a bedroom for your childand consider a larger room, a wider kitchen, etc. : let alone if there are two or three, the children! Without forgetting, then, the other emergencies of Milan, such as the persistent deficiency of housing for university students, together with the tumultuous growth of the private housing offer of tourist receptivity (the famous B&B). In the end, this Milan post Expo, which is certainly divided, which is an attractive pole also tourist throughout the year, where young people still find work much more than elsewhere, where the best national and international business are done, looking in the mirror you find yourself having to ask: “Where are the Milanese? Where do our families live? Where do our children play?”.
Unfortunately – and this is the third point of reflection – that all the mayors and the municipal councils, on the right as on the left, say it, Milan is a city system that self-regission, well before the rules imposed by the Municipality, because i players economic that act and modify Milan have economic and financial resources (and “para-political”) higher than those of the municipal administration. The municipality would be a reasonable task – of governance and guarantee of the rules, without deluding to be the engine and the unique director of the city. But this is a task that cannot be abandoned. Here, perhaps the main illusion of the municipal administrators of Milan of the last few years has been that this ability to self -make the city could be guided by old rules and procedures, by the urban operating protocols applied bureaucratically, while economic subjects arrived who do not beat an eye if they have to buy an entire building with several floors by paying it 28,000 euros per square meter (!). So the Municipality was the victim of the “Moscow Cocciera Moscow syndrome”: he thought of leading the diligence, but others were guiding (perhaps even with the agreement of a few complacent officials). A centralized and managerial urban policy would be illusory today. But the free market alone, in terms of living, does not work, generates imbalances, inequalities and depopulation: A subsidiary governance is needed, in alliance with the best social and economic forces, but with the rigor of a public machine that knows how to “leave” at the right time, but also to say “no”, when necessary, without if and without but without any favoritism for economic, political or cultural belonging.
A fourth point concerns the applicant “absence of scruples” (I use a neutral expression, but I would have other words in mind …) which unfortunately characterizes too many economic actors, unscrupulous in not respecting the rules, in order to make profit. While listening to the news on the case of Milan (whose truth will be judicially reconstructed, certainly not in an online post), Two episodes came back to me: the first are the laughter and jokes of those so -called “entrepreneurs” who on the night of the Eagle earthquake exchanged jokes on the next flourishing business they could have done, while the victims were still counted; The second is “The hands on the city”, a 1963 film-dice of the director Francesco Rosi, who described (in Naples of sixty years ago, but does not really seem so far from the Milan of 2025 …) the way in which underworld, underworld and bad politics could be intertwined. Of course, the administrative system of the city is also under investigation: but first of all it should be put under investigation-and denounced with force-a way of doing business that does not respect the rules, which seeks paralegal creative solutions (when not decidedly extra-legal), which does not worry about the impact of its own profit. It is not inevitable to do business like this: there are ethical requirements, there are profit subjects who make business in legality, there are non -profit economic actors who have so much to say and also to do on urban and housing policies, cooperative subjects of which Milan is rich in Milan. In short: It is certainly right to worry about how the municipal administration works in Milan: but no economic actor can be justified because Business is businessor because the company must make profit. The rules are used for a fair market, and to direct everyone to act to the common good.
I allowed me to be a last personal reflection: on my identity card under the item “Residence” there is written “Milan”, but as a “place of birth” it is written “Assisi”. And for the vast majority of residents in Milan it works like this (Milan would be the second city of Puglia, second only in Bari, for numbers of inhabitants born in Puglia …). This is the genius locithis is the truest identity of Milan: a welcoming city, a metician city since its origins, a city that knows how to assimilate everyone, also in these seasons of international migrations, within its own very specific distinctive culture, made of values and defects, frenetic but well done work, of exaggerated punctuality, of submerged but real solidarity, of gyms together with the oratories and the listening centers, of a certain arrogance, “Imbruttita”, tempered by irony. And even if the Milanese dialect speak it now, difficult not to “become Milanese”, if you choose to live here. But in the last decades (with right and left junits) the city is going in a completely different direction, led by an economic development that does not generate common good, but profits for a few. A soul must be urgently restored to the city, as well as an urban plan: but this can only be done together with its citizens.
