As Dalla sang, ‘Milan, a city close to Europe’: the new underground lines and the shadows cast by the property boom
Singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla took a prescient view when he wrote ‘Milano’ in 1979. The song presents the city in a multitude of ways, as ‘lost’ and ‘far from heaven’, but also ‘within reach’; it proclaims its ‘fatigue’, its emotions, its condition as a city ‘thronged by millions with the breath of a single lung’. It is summed up by the words: ‘Milan, a city close to Europe…all those banks, all those exchange rates’, and ‘Fortuneless Milan, take me with you/underground or to the moon’. Those were difficult times, known as the ‘anni di piombo’ (‘years of lead’). And yet there was a vitality about them – waiting in the wings were the glittering eighties of the ‘Milano da bere’ (‘high-flying Milan’), flourishing economic prosperity, success in fashion and luxury, the great entrepreneurial figures and the captivating advertising campaigns of commercial television.
Artists possess a special sensitivity, a sharp creative intelligence that means they not only grasp the signs – albeit faint – of new times but can also immortalise longstanding periods in words and music. And so anyone listening to Dalla’s portrait of Milan today finds not only the bittersweet pleasure of nostalgia, but also a powerful sense of the contemporary.
Milan, a city that is indeed close to Europe. Its vocation is confirmed by the news we read today. News that is packed with figures on foreign investment – not only from multinational companies (5,000 of the 7,000 in Lombardy are based in Milan, half the national total), but also from millionaires leaving London to buy houses in Milan, driving up property market values. On 15 September, Il Sole 24 Ore noted that ‘Milan and Liguria are among the top ten destinations for the 128,000 individuals with a net worth of more than a million dollars who are changing their tax residence in 2024’. The paper put a figure of 2,200 on the new taxpayers who are forking out 100,000 euros per year in all-inclusive taxes, benefiting from an advantageous flat tax established by a law passed by the Renzi government. Although this has now been raised to 200,000 euros by the Meloni administration, it remains as attractive as ever.
And what about the Milan ‘that takes you underground or to the moon’? Aerospace industry aside, it is the ‘underground’ part that is most topical. That’s because at the end of last week the second stretch of the M4, Milan’s fifth underground line, connecting Linate airport to the outskirts of San Cristoforo, on the Naviglio Grande canal, was inaugurated; the 15-kilometre ‘blue line’ takes half an hour to ride, with trains running every 90 seconds and transporting 86 million passengers a year. And on the very day of the inauguration, after ten years of work (carried out by WeBuild, the Italian large-scale international infrastructure giant), Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, raised the bar yet further, talking about the ‘dream’ of a new line, the M6 (still to be designed and financed), and the extension of the existing four lines to the new destinations of Monza, Segrate and Baggio. This would be a huge upgrade to public infrastructure in a metropolis that already matches the standards of major cities – or, in Dalla’s words, is already ‘close to Europe’.
That was underlined by WeBuild’s chief executive and majority shareholder, Pietro Salini: “Milan is ‘the gateway to Europe’, and by building there we contribute to the growth of a city that has increasingly become the engine of Italy, a European leader and a cosmopolitan metropolis.”
It’s an apt description. Milan is international, ambitious and demanding. It’s a city that can dream, but it also has its feet on the ground. It can be severe, but also welcoming. Used to dealing in facts and figures. But cultured by tradition, well-spoken, with a host of writers, musicians and publishers. This is a hyper-critical city, including of itself. It provides frequent headaches, therefore, to those who govern it and plot and oversee its direction. On the other hand, this is precisely what characterises a civitas in which the historically rooted habit of good administration coexists with the enterprising and creative spirit of individuals, and public power is measured against private powers and organisations. Here everyone knows that they must reckon with an Enlightenment and reformist style of pragmatism.
While it may be true that ‘you become Milanese’ (just as hundreds of thousands of us have done since the post-war period), it is equally true that social inclusion and participation by a conscious citizenship require solid civic virtues and generous social qualities if we are to bind competitiveness to solidarity, achieve productivity in business and farsightedness in building a robust fabric of virtuous relations between legitimate interests and values.
And here is where the critical point lies. Over the course of time, due partly to complex cultural and social changes with origins far beyond Milan, the city has begun to transform itself. It has fewer citizens but more ‘city users’, with neither the culture nor the inclination to take responsibility for communal needs and values. And soaring house prices and the cost of living has accentuated this trend. The new wealthy, in nature highly international and far removed from the bourgeoisie (where the term relates not only to income, but more importantly to values, culture and lifestyle, where ‘fashion’ counts less than a solid sense of ‘elegance’, a great deal of sobriety and little time for appearances), are increasingly a feature of customs and consumption in Milan, neurotically sensitive to events and with little interest in long-term structures and institutions.
The risk is that ‘income consumes development’, as you might put it, paraphrasing the results of a survey by Dario Di Vico, on the back of data from Assolombarda and ‘Your Next Milano’ and published in the Economia of the Corriere della Sera (30 September) – in other words, that the interests of homeowners trump the very Milanese virtues of enterprise, culture, innovation and research: ‘Under the Madonnina multinationals and foreign students are diminishing in number. And where once there were captains of industry, homeowners now dominate.’
In short, there is a risk – discussed at length even by that well-trusted guide to the reforming spirit in Lombardy, the Centro Studi Grande Milano – that the tendency to drive out the middle classes, students, young couples, elderly people in financial difficulty and aspiring new middle-income citizens from the city centre and former residential districts will only intensify and reach the point of no return, making way for the international millionaires happy to pay the €200,000-a-year flat tax and tourists in search of short-term rentals. ‘Rents up 22 per cent in five years as prices in Barona and Corvetto hit record levels,’ was the headline in Corriere della Sera on 9 October in reference to once working class areas that are now highly desirable.
This is a version of Milan which would see it lose its soul, its economic and social sensibility – its very attractiveness. A dangerous drift,
but an unavoidable one? Well, perhaps not. Indeed, scrolling through the local news, you come across stories about investments in accommodation for students and young academics – for example, south of Milan, where the Athletes’ Village for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics is being built. Or a ‘target of ten thousand affordable flats to combat the housing crisis‘ being set out by mayor Sala’s municipal council (la Repubblica, 24 September). We already know that ‘Edison is launching a housing plan to recruit new graduates’ (Corriere della Sera, 7 October). And there is hope for a general improvement in the quality of life thanks to the municipality ‘mapping out green areas, cycle paths and squares’ after taking the views of neighbourhoods into account. This will form part of the new ‘Area Administration Plan’, the main instrument for urban planning in the city.
Essentially, Milan is in the midst of a transformation. A period of flux. It might decline, amid the bright glow of skyscrapers and the dark shadows of social hardship (and crime). Or it might recover, as it has already done several times, including in its recent past.
A good example, which inspires hope, comes from a company celebration organised on the Olympic Village building site for the 50th anniversary of Coima, the property investment firm led by Manfredi Catella, a dynamic leading light in the new Milan: entitled ‘Inspiring Cities’, it featured a competition between eight universities in Milan and five in Rome to imagine the city of the future. The winner was the team from Milan’s Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, with a project called ‘Organism’, a view of an ideal, desirable and achievable city.
In short, a Milan choosing to dream and design. And doing so with intelligence and feeling.
That positive role played by feelings is important, because Milan is a thinking city; but, as locals say, it’s also an open-hearted city. ‘What if we went back to talking about love?’ is the title of the new season at Milan’s Franco Parenti Theatre, overseen by Andrée Ruth Shammah. Well, indeed. A love for one’s city.
Singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla took a prescient view when he wrote ‘Milano’ in 1979. The song presents the city in a multitude of ways, as ‘lost’ and ‘far from heaven’, but also ‘within reach’; it proclaims its ‘fatigue’, its emotions, its condition as a city ‘thronged by millions with the breath of a single lung’. It is summed up by the words: ‘Milan, a city close to Europe…all those banks, all those exchange rates’, and ‘Fortuneless Milan, take me with you/underground or to the moon’. Those were difficult times, known as the ‘anni di piombo’ (‘years of lead’). And yet there was a vitality about them – waiting in the wings were the glittering eighties of the ‘Milano da bere’ (‘high-flying Milan’), flourishing economic prosperity, success in fashion and luxury, the great entrepreneurial figures and the captivating advertising campaigns of commercial television.
Artists possess a special sensitivity, a sharp creative intelligence that means they not only grasp the signs – albeit faint – of new times but can also immortalise longstanding periods in words and music. And so anyone listening to Dalla’s portrait of Milan today finds not only the bittersweet pleasure of nostalgia, but also a powerful sense of the contemporary.
Milan, a city that is indeed close to Europe. Its vocation is confirmed by the news we read today. News that is packed with figures on foreign investment – not only from multinational companies (5,000 of the 7,000 in Lombardy are based in Milan, half the national total), but also from millionaires leaving London to buy houses in Milan, driving up property market values. On 15 September, Il Sole 24 Ore noted that ‘Milan and Liguria are among the top ten destinations for the 128,000 individuals with a net worth of more than a million dollars who are changing their tax residence in 2024’. The paper put a figure of 2,200 on the new taxpayers who are forking out 100,000 euros per year in all-inclusive taxes, benefiting from an advantageous flat tax established by a law passed by the Renzi government. Although this has now been raised to 200,000 euros by the Meloni administration, it remains as attractive as ever.
And what about the Milan ‘that takes you underground or to the moon’? Aerospace industry aside, it is the ‘underground’ part that is most topical. That’s because at the end of last week the second stretch of the M4, Milan’s fifth underground line, connecting Linate airport to the outskirts of San Cristoforo, on the Naviglio Grande canal, was inaugurated; the 15-kilometre ‘blue line’ takes half an hour to ride, with trains running every 90 seconds and transporting 86 million passengers a year. And on the very day of the inauguration, after ten years of work (carried out by WeBuild, the Italian large-scale international infrastructure giant), Milan’s mayor, Beppe Sala, raised the bar yet further, talking about the ‘dream’ of a new line, the M6 (still to be designed and financed), and the extension of the existing four lines to the new destinations of Monza, Segrate and Baggio. This would be a huge upgrade to public infrastructure in a metropolis that already matches the standards of major cities – or, in Dalla’s words, is already ‘close to Europe’.
That was underlined by WeBuild’s chief executive and majority shareholder, Pietro Salini: “Milan is ‘the gateway to Europe’, and by building there we contribute to the growth of a city that has increasingly become the engine of Italy, a European leader and a cosmopolitan metropolis.”
It’s an apt description. Milan is international, ambitious and demanding. It’s a city that can dream, but it also has its feet on the ground. It can be severe, but also welcoming. Used to dealing in facts and figures. But cultured by tradition, well-spoken, with a host of writers, musicians and publishers. This is a hyper-critical city, including of itself. It provides frequent headaches, therefore, to those who govern it and plot and oversee its direction. On the other hand, this is precisely what characterises a civitas in which the historically rooted habit of good administration coexists with the enterprising and creative spirit of individuals, and public power is measured against private powers and organisations. Here everyone knows that they must reckon with an Enlightenment and reformist style of pragmatism.
While it may be true that ‘you become Milanese’ (just as hundreds of thousands of us have done since the post-war period), it is equally true that social inclusion and participation by a conscious citizenship require solid civic virtues and generous social qualities if we are to bind competitiveness to solidarity, achieve productivity in business and farsightedness in building a robust fabric of virtuous relations between legitimate interests and values.
And here is where the critical point lies. Over the course of time, due partly to complex cultural and social changes with origins far beyond Milan, the city has begun to transform itself. It has fewer citizens but more ‘city users’, with neither the culture nor the inclination to take responsibility for communal needs and values. And soaring house prices and the cost of living has accentuated this trend. The new wealthy, in nature highly international and far removed from the bourgeoisie (where the term relates not only to income, but more importantly to values, culture and lifestyle, where ‘fashion’ counts less than a solid sense of ‘elegance’, a great deal of sobriety and little time for appearances), are increasingly a feature of customs and consumption in Milan, neurotically sensitive to events and with little interest in long-term structures and institutions.
The risk is that ‘income consumes development’, as you might put it, paraphrasing the results of a survey by Dario Di Vico, on the back of data from Assolombarda and ‘Your Next Milano’ and published in the Economia of the Corriere della Sera (30 September) – in other words, that the interests of homeowners trump the very Milanese virtues of enterprise, culture, innovation and research: ‘Under the Madonnina multinationals and foreign students are diminishing in number. And where once there were captains of industry, homeowners now dominate.’
In short, there is a risk – discussed at length even by that well-trusted guide to the reforming spirit in Lombardy, the Centro Studi Grande Milano – that the tendency to drive out the middle classes, students, young couples, elderly people in financial difficulty and aspiring new middle-income citizens from the city centre and former residential districts will only intensify and reach the point of no return, making way for the international millionaires happy to pay the €200,000-a-year flat tax and tourists in search of short-term rentals. ‘Rents up 22 per cent in five years as prices in Barona and Corvetto hit record levels,’ was the headline in Corriere della Sera on 9 October in reference to once working class areas that are now highly desirable.
This is a version of Milan which would see it lose its soul, its economic and social sensibility – its very attractiveness. A dangerous drift,
but an unavoidable one? Well, perhaps not. Indeed, scrolling through the local news, you come across stories about investments in accommodation for students and young academics – for example, south of Milan, where the Athletes’ Village for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics is being built. Or a ‘target of ten thousand affordable flats to combat the housing crisis‘ being set out by mayor Sala’s municipal council (la Repubblica, 24 September). We already know that ‘Edison is launching a housing plan to recruit new graduates’ (Corriere della Sera, 7 October). And there is hope for a general improvement in the quality of life thanks to the municipality ‘mapping out green areas, cycle paths and squares’ after taking the views of neighbourhoods into account. This will form part of the new ‘Area Administration Plan’, the main instrument for urban planning in the city.
Essentially, Milan is in the midst of a transformation. A period of flux. It might decline, amid the bright glow of skyscrapers and the dark shadows of social hardship (and crime). Or it might recover, as it has already done several times, including in its recent past.
A good example, which inspires hope, comes from a company celebration organised on the Olympic Village building site for the 50th anniversary of Coima, the property investment firm led by Manfredi Catella, a dynamic leading light in the new Milan: entitled ‘Inspiring Cities’, it featured a competition between eight universities in Milan and five in Rome to imagine the city of the future. The winner was the team from Milan’s Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, with a project called ‘Organism’, a view of an ideal, desirable and achievable city.
In short, a Milan choosing to dream and design. And doing so with intelligence and feeling.
That positive role played by feelings is important, because Milan is a thinking city; but, as locals say, it’s also an open-hearted city. ‘What if we went back to talking about love?’ is the title of the new season at Milan’s Franco Parenti Theatre, overseen by Andrée Ruth Shammah. Well, indeed. A love for one’s city.