A smart city future for the development of Milan and Palermo, between common cultural roots and projects for production businesses
Identity does not reside in the subject, but in relationship, as Emmanuel Levinas, a major 20th-century philosopher, taught us. Not “in oppression and desire to annihilate the Other”, but in the dialectic of exchange, in sharing. Identity is therefore not remotely closed, exclusive or hostile, but rather open and in dialogue. This is also demonstrated in the history of Mediterranean civilisation, where Italy has played a decisive role, with the aptitude for building bridges rather than threatening walls, to adopt the far-sighted thinking of Pope Francis.
It is precisely the words of Levinas that come to mind as the “Genio Mediterraneo” (Mediterranean Genius) Forum is launched in Milan (presentation at Palazzo Marino on Wednesday, two-day conference at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in November): an initiative promoted by the mayors of Milan and Palermo, Beppe Sala and Roberto Lagalla respectively. They differ in political alignment (centre-left and centre-right), but have similar origins in “civil society” (the business world for Sala, universities for Lagalla, former rector) and above all a shared interest: discussing the strategies and content of a sustainable development project which focuses on the two “frontier cities” but concerns Italy as a whole system, while the entire surrounding geopolitical context is in flux – an EU seeking greater balance so as not to be crushed by US and Chinese competitive decisions and a Mediterranean torn by conflicts old and new.
Milan and Palermo are of course different cities, in terms of history, economic weight and growth prospects. For greater comprehension of their characteristics, it is also helpful to browse the pages of Città. Milano, the wonderful, cultured magazine founded years ago by Guido Vergani and now edited by Giangiacomo Schiavi, and dwell on the reflections of Romanzo urbanistico, published by Sellerio and written by Maurizio Carta, architect and Palermo city councillor.
They are nonetheless cities united by a series of strong connections, in their shared sensitivity to the dynamics of change and in the second half of the 20th century also for the essential contribution of Sicilians to Milan, distinguishing themselves in the sectors of economics, business and culture. A few examples are banker Enrico Cuccia, who monitored the fortunes of Italian capitalism from the offices of Mediobanca, and writer Elio Vittorini, due to his “polytechnic” capacity for cultural and editorial innovation, as well as Leonardo Sciascia, with his love for Manzoni and Stendhal, cornerstones of literary wisdom and civic passion. Milanesi si diventa (one becomes Milanese) was the title of a great eighties novel by Antonio Castellaneta. And one remains Sicilian, even in Milan, despite everything, even when the island’s borders have been long crossed to seek different living and working conditions. But one remains more tied to the island than ever, by complex networks of roots and love.
The culture of relationship, à la Levinas, and the “sweet patriotism” of open identity help to keep roots and future together, to plan and build economic and social growth initiatives in the name of a true “future of memory”. This is also a very Mediterranean inclination.
Making the best use of one’s social capital represents a starting point. In Milan, there’s an insistence on entrepreneurship and solidarity, competitiveness and inclusion, “polytechnic culture” as a synthesis of beauty and innovation and of humanistic and scientific knowledge. In Palermo, it’s about a special attitude to getting busy, to building work and business (being ‘mprisiusi, in dialect) despite all the environmental and indeed familial and clientelistic resistance. It’s about a sophisticated inclination towards good culture with a European scope, with the elegance that comes from a sharp critical intelligence. It’s about the still vigorous tendency to be “Sicilians of the open sea”, that is, anything but inclined towards the “terrible insularity of spirit” condemned by Leonardo Sciascia. It’s also about valuing legality and good administration, areas in which history of extraordinary civic intensity has been made precisely in Palermo: we remember Piersanti Mattarella and Pio La Terre, Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and Ninni Cassarà, to name just a few of “men of the state”, killed by the mafia. These are good underlying principles to promote and reaffirm, social capital certainly worthy of pride.
For the Forum on the “Mediterranean Genius”, today it is worth discussing Italian and European industrial policy decisions for facing the twin environmental and digital transition: Milan as the focal point for innovation in the heart of Europe at its most productive and competitive and Palermo as a potential logistical, cultural and educational platform with a European scope, in the heart of the Mediterranean and as a European gateway to the push from Africa. This is a fundamental perspective precisely in this time of ever-spreading Artificial Intelligence, which is radically shifting the paradigms of knowledge, production and exchange.
Mediterranean wisdom, European values.
Milan, a welcoming city, is at the heart of the networks of values, interests and cultures across which the future of the EU extends, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with awareness of the responsibilities of the West and attention to the tensions arising in other areas of the world and calling upon Europe. Palermo has an extreme need to feed on the values of business culture, efficiency and productivity precisely from the perspective of sustainable development. It needs an ethic of work and responsibility that has had a space, in Sicily, in seasons of high entrepreneurial quality (the history of the Florios, before the decline caused by excessive aristocratic emulation, clearly demonstrates this and deserves reflection).
The strategic centrality of training has great weight in this context, with open dialogue between the universities of Milan (a university city of growing international value) and the universities of Palermo and the south, rich in dialectical but also inclusive cultural tensions and traditions of exchange that have also developed in recent times.
There is a common responsibility: to offer job prospects and a better quality of life to the coming generation, fundamental precisely at this time of demographic decline and brain drain, phenomena which affect both the north and south of the country, albeit in different ways. This also has to include a critical rereading of the investments underway through the PNRR funds (ultimately, this is a debt borne by the coming generation).
In short, the aim is to rewrite the maps of the intersections of knowledge and production between Milan and Palermo: reflecting on networks, flows, exchange and movement, and not just places, with the administrative, political and cultural baggage that limits their potential. The aim is also to discuss these issues while promoting the keys to environmental and social sustainability and, as we said, legality.
We need a project for a high-tech south, including innovative industry, for services, for education and the environment, and not for tourist attractions alone, important as they are.
This is the crux, which concerns Palermo and Sicily and drives the dialogue, aware of the role of Milan, focal point for relationships with a European scope involving industry and finance, high-tech services and culture, training and the green and digital economy. The ongoing experiences, such as BIP’s investments in Palermo (Business Integration Partners, the large Milanese consulting company led by Nino Lo Bianco of Palermo) and in other cities in southern Italy by Microsoft, Pirelli, etc. are good examples of how to best use the talents and skills of well-educated young people in a system of national and international production networks precisely thanks to digital technologies.
The issues that the mayors of Milan and Palermo are debating will concern the new industrial supply chains, between north and south (aerospace, mechatronics, construction, automotive, high-tech components, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, as well as agro-industry, fashion and clothing), material and immaterial infrastructure for development, with a logic of public-private collaboration, urban regeneration, housing policies and environmental strategies to protect and promote the areas themselves, but also for better economic growth. They will also address policy for health and well-being and scientific research, cultural and creative enterprises and new knowledge technologies, the knowledge economy, with a logic of lifelong learning. And of course, they will discuss the complete package of civic virtues required to lend substance to the economic and social processes that are underway.
Territorial and cultural relations and concrete economic projects. In a changing Europe, amid tensions and opportunities, it’s also up to Milan and Palermo to be smart cities: not just technological, but elegantly intelligent, in ideas and in spirit.
Identity does not reside in the subject, but in relationship, as Emmanuel Levinas, a major 20th-century philosopher, taught us. Not “in oppression and desire to annihilate the Other”, but in the dialectic of exchange, in sharing. Identity is therefore not remotely closed, exclusive or hostile, but rather open and in dialogue. This is also demonstrated in the history of Mediterranean civilisation, where Italy has played a decisive role, with the aptitude for building bridges rather than threatening walls, to adopt the far-sighted thinking of Pope Francis.
It is precisely the words of Levinas that come to mind as the “Genio Mediterraneo” (Mediterranean Genius) Forum is launched in Milan (presentation at Palazzo Marino on Wednesday, two-day conference at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in November): an initiative promoted by the mayors of Milan and Palermo, Beppe Sala and Roberto Lagalla respectively. They differ in political alignment (centre-left and centre-right), but have similar origins in “civil society” (the business world for Sala, universities for Lagalla, former rector) and above all a shared interest: discussing the strategies and content of a sustainable development project which focuses on the two “frontier cities” but concerns Italy as a whole system, while the entire surrounding geopolitical context is in flux – an EU seeking greater balance so as not to be crushed by US and Chinese competitive decisions and a Mediterranean torn by conflicts old and new.
Milan and Palermo are of course different cities, in terms of history, economic weight and growth prospects. For greater comprehension of their characteristics, it is also helpful to browse the pages of Città. Milano, the wonderful, cultured magazine founded years ago by Guido Vergani and now edited by Giangiacomo Schiavi, and dwell on the reflections of Romanzo urbanistico, published by Sellerio and written by Maurizio Carta, architect and Palermo city councillor.
They are nonetheless cities united by a series of strong connections, in their shared sensitivity to the dynamics of change and in the second half of the 20th century also for the essential contribution of Sicilians to Milan, distinguishing themselves in the sectors of economics, business and culture. A few examples are banker Enrico Cuccia, who monitored the fortunes of Italian capitalism from the offices of Mediobanca, and writer Elio Vittorini, due to his “polytechnic” capacity for cultural and editorial innovation, as well as Leonardo Sciascia, with his love for Manzoni and Stendhal, cornerstones of literary wisdom and civic passion. Milanesi si diventa (one becomes Milanese) was the title of a great eighties novel by Antonio Castellaneta. And one remains Sicilian, even in Milan, despite everything, even when the island’s borders have been long crossed to seek different living and working conditions. But one remains more tied to the island than ever, by complex networks of roots and love.
The culture of relationship, à la Levinas, and the “sweet patriotism” of open identity help to keep roots and future together, to plan and build economic and social growth initiatives in the name of a true “future of memory”. This is also a very Mediterranean inclination.
Making the best use of one’s social capital represents a starting point. In Milan, there’s an insistence on entrepreneurship and solidarity, competitiveness and inclusion, “polytechnic culture” as a synthesis of beauty and innovation and of humanistic and scientific knowledge. In Palermo, it’s about a special attitude to getting busy, to building work and business (being ‘mprisiusi, in dialect) despite all the environmental and indeed familial and clientelistic resistance. It’s about a sophisticated inclination towards good culture with a European scope, with the elegance that comes from a sharp critical intelligence. It’s about the still vigorous tendency to be “Sicilians of the open sea”, that is, anything but inclined towards the “terrible insularity of spirit” condemned by Leonardo Sciascia. It’s also about valuing legality and good administration, areas in which history of extraordinary civic intensity has been made precisely in Palermo: we remember Piersanti Mattarella and Pio La Terre, Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and Ninni Cassarà, to name just a few of “men of the state”, killed by the mafia. These are good underlying principles to promote and reaffirm, social capital certainly worthy of pride.
For the Forum on the “Mediterranean Genius”, today it is worth discussing Italian and European industrial policy decisions for facing the twin environmental and digital transition: Milan as the focal point for innovation in the heart of Europe at its most productive and competitive and Palermo as a potential logistical, cultural and educational platform with a European scope, in the heart of the Mediterranean and as a European gateway to the push from Africa. This is a fundamental perspective precisely in this time of ever-spreading Artificial Intelligence, which is radically shifting the paradigms of knowledge, production and exchange.
Mediterranean wisdom, European values.
Milan, a welcoming city, is at the heart of the networks of values, interests and cultures across which the future of the EU extends, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with awareness of the responsibilities of the West and attention to the tensions arising in other areas of the world and calling upon Europe. Palermo has an extreme need to feed on the values of business culture, efficiency and productivity precisely from the perspective of sustainable development. It needs an ethic of work and responsibility that has had a space, in Sicily, in seasons of high entrepreneurial quality (the history of the Florios, before the decline caused by excessive aristocratic emulation, clearly demonstrates this and deserves reflection).
The strategic centrality of training has great weight in this context, with open dialogue between the universities of Milan (a university city of growing international value) and the universities of Palermo and the south, rich in dialectical but also inclusive cultural tensions and traditions of exchange that have also developed in recent times.
There is a common responsibility: to offer job prospects and a better quality of life to the coming generation, fundamental precisely at this time of demographic decline and brain drain, phenomena which affect both the north and south of the country, albeit in different ways. This also has to include a critical rereading of the investments underway through the PNRR funds (ultimately, this is a debt borne by the coming generation).
In short, the aim is to rewrite the maps of the intersections of knowledge and production between Milan and Palermo: reflecting on networks, flows, exchange and movement, and not just places, with the administrative, political and cultural baggage that limits their potential. The aim is also to discuss these issues while promoting the keys to environmental and social sustainability and, as we said, legality.
We need a project for a high-tech south, including innovative industry, for services, for education and the environment, and not for tourist attractions alone, important as they are.
This is the crux, which concerns Palermo and Sicily and drives the dialogue, aware of the role of Milan, focal point for relationships with a European scope involving industry and finance, high-tech services and culture, training and the green and digital economy. The ongoing experiences, such as BIP’s investments in Palermo (Business Integration Partners, the large Milanese consulting company led by Nino Lo Bianco of Palermo) and in other cities in southern Italy by Microsoft, Pirelli, etc. are good examples of how to best use the talents and skills of well-educated young people in a system of national and international production networks precisely thanks to digital technologies.
The issues that the mayors of Milan and Palermo are debating will concern the new industrial supply chains, between north and south (aerospace, mechatronics, construction, automotive, high-tech components, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, as well as agro-industry, fashion and clothing), material and immaterial infrastructure for development, with a logic of public-private collaboration, urban regeneration, housing policies and environmental strategies to protect and promote the areas themselves, but also for better economic growth. They will also address policy for health and well-being and scientific research, cultural and creative enterprises and new knowledge technologies, the knowledge economy, with a logic of lifelong learning. And of course, they will discuss the complete package of civic virtues required to lend substance to the economic and social processes that are underway.
Territorial and cultural relations and concrete economic projects. In a changing Europe, amid tensions and opportunities, it’s also up to Milan and Palermo to be smart cities: not just technological, but elegantly intelligent, in ideas and in spirit.