Seeing Milan beyond the thousand lights of Christmas and governing crisis, poverty and innovation
Milan means the thousand lights of Christmas, in Montenapoleone and in the crowded streets of the fashion and shopping district. Milan means the long line of men and women entering the Caritas Ambrosian Refectory in the square of the Greco district, passing under the portal sculpted by Mimmo Paladino, the cross, the loaves, the fish, the symbols of hospitality.
Milan, luxury. Milan, poverty. And in between, hundreds of thousands of people every day in the restless metropolis who build what’s needed for a better common destiny: work, business, knowledge, social relationships, support, the essential structures of the values that make up a community. A civitas and no longer just an urbs of streets and squares, grand buildings and shops, a group of people, not a crowd of them, people who deserve attention, consideration, and respect.
There’s “a social malaise that puts the Milan model in crisis”, writes Aldo Bonomi accurately in Il Sole24Ore (19 December), noting how post-Expo dynamism is running out and how “the premium city” of the so-called “first circle”, the city centre, doesn’t “trickle” further down, ceasing to generate cohesion and widespread opportunity and instead leading to new poverties, more accentuated inequalities.
Tourism, real estate investment, events: they produce wealth, it’s true. But concern is growing about the cracks, now conspicuous, of a system that has always characterised Milan’s innermost nature: the ability to constructs original syntheses of economic growth and the civil virtues of solidarity, competitiveness and social inclusion.
Of course, those who portray Milan as “the winter of our discontent” are wrong, those who exacerbate the tangle of social problems (starting with security, be it real or merely perceived), forgetting the characteristics of fragility and complexity typical of every metropolis. Those who rely on the “Quality of Life Ranking” (Il Sole24Ore, 4 December) for consolation are equally wrong. Again this year, this sees Milan among the top ten provinces (the first is Udine, followed by Bologna and Trento), especially thanks to the indicators connected with the dynamics of the economy and business. But of course, in this complexity of contrasts, it is necessary to locate a meaning, a direction, a vocation: to acknowledge that current opinion no longer considers Milan “the place to be”, as The New York Times proclaimed a few years ago, but not a city to be challenged, harshly criticised, or condemned either.
It’s been under discussion for some time now. And perhaps precisely this capacity for critical analysis and self-criticism is one of the vital stimuli for rethinking Milan, setting aside the idea of a “model” (lived as the arrogant claim to primacy of a city that ends up being envied and detested) and thinking instead of sustainable development, hospitality, the process of social mobility and opportunity. Less hasty and overpowering communication, more culture. Less propagandistic storytelling and more political imagination to attempt to build, also through good metropolitan governance, a new and fairer economic and social balance.
On the other hand, Milan’s ability to face its history and current situation with severity is a widespread attitude. It’s the opinion of Piero Borghini, mayor for too short a time in the political and institutional storm of the early 1990s (the time of Mani pulite affair) and then, in any case, an intellect that has always been clear-sighted and lively: “There’s no city in the world that studies itself the same way as Milan. Rome gets photographed because it’s beautiful. Milan doesn’t get photographed but studied. The books on the economy of Milan, the research… there’s an intellectual class that studies, and that makes proposals. It would be enough to read them, those books…” (Il Foglio, 14 December). Because “Milan is going through a phase of reflection, but it’s not a lost city. At the most, the politics are lost.”
What’s needed is not to stop at the late-19th-century myth of “moral capital” built “on the spirit of entrepreneurship, work ethic and good governance” and to think, if anything, about how to combine the knowledge economy with environmentalism and productivity.
These are challenging issues, which are increasingly echoed in public debate (including the meetings of the Centro Studi Grande Milano, chaired by Daniela Mainini: how to avoid, as you walk along the ridge, plunging into crisis rather than taking the paths, albeit demanding, down to recovery?). They must also be explored and directed towards political and social responses, with that “courage” and that exercise of “trust” that the Archbishop of Milan, Monsignor Mario Delpini, indicated as necessary virtues in his speech to the city in Sant’Ambrogio, asking politicians and citizens to “start again from young people, demography, immigrants”. Development, hospitality and integration, in fact. Certainly not just the lights….
So discussion, free of prejudice, making good use of the tools of knowledge and dialectics, steering clear of the hasty simplifications of propaganda and keeping the lesson of great Milanese native Umberto Eco in mind: “Freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.”
One can rightly attempt to value the past, as seen in the idea (dear to finance expert Francesco Micheli, a sophisticated, cultured man) of proposing the historic centre of Milan as UNESCO heritage, lending due recognition to that whole of monumental and cultural treasures ranging from the Duomo to La Scala, from Brera and the Palazzo Reale to the Poldi Pezzoli, the Gallerie d’Italia, the Museo del Novecento and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana with drawings from the Codex Atlanticus by Leonardo da Vinci.
It is also possible to insist on linking urban planning projects in Sesto San Giovanni and Lambrate, in the former railway stations of Porta Genova, Scalo Farini and Porta Romana and in the former Expo area to social housing commitments and services of value to the public as well (the Comune is already moving in this direction). And above all, it is worth considering the political and administrative choices and responsibilities of social actors, starting with companies, that can make Milan a smart city, of knowledge and innovation, a metropolis of processes that, between Europe and the Mediterranean, connects people, ideas, business, research and relationships, involving the whole rich fabric of intermediate cities: from Turin to Genoa (along the lines of the GeMiTo project promoted by Unione Industriali in Turin, Assolombarda and Confindustria in Genoa), from Bergamo to Brescia and the North East, from the Como–Varese route to Emilia. An area of companies, universities and communities committed to combining innovation and inclusion, wealth creation and the spread of well-being: liberal democracy and social market economy, in short, with a European outlook.
We therefore need decisions that promote entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as knowledge and skills, to support everything that develops and spreads new environmentally and socially sustainable technologies.
If this is the outlook, Milan must once more start learning how to maintain a connection in the new generations, how to enact hospitality and inclusion, in short, how once more to become able to make everyone who comes here from the rest of Italy, from Europe, from the great basin of the Mediterranean, including the coasts of Africa, “become Milanese”.
It’s a grand project, built, to quote Bonomi once again, on “civic virtues and social passion”, a far-sighted strategy of intelligent politics and effective public administration, with respect to the urban management and services of “greater Milan”: the good governance of transformation.
Milan means the thousand lights of Christmas, in Montenapoleone and in the crowded streets of the fashion and shopping district. Milan means the long line of men and women entering the Caritas Ambrosian Refectory in the square of the Greco district, passing under the portal sculpted by Mimmo Paladino, the cross, the loaves, the fish, the symbols of hospitality.
Milan, luxury. Milan, poverty. And in between, hundreds of thousands of people every day in the restless metropolis who build what’s needed for a better common destiny: work, business, knowledge, social relationships, support, the essential structures of the values that make up a community. A civitas and no longer just an urbs of streets and squares, grand buildings and shops, a group of people, not a crowd of them, people who deserve attention, consideration, and respect.
There’s “a social malaise that puts the Milan model in crisis”, writes Aldo Bonomi accurately in Il Sole24Ore (19 December), noting how post-Expo dynamism is running out and how “the premium city” of the so-called “first circle”, the city centre, doesn’t “trickle” further down, ceasing to generate cohesion and widespread opportunity and instead leading to new poverties, more accentuated inequalities.
Tourism, real estate investment, events: they produce wealth, it’s true. But concern is growing about the cracks, now conspicuous, of a system that has always characterised Milan’s innermost nature: the ability to constructs original syntheses of economic growth and the civil virtues of solidarity, competitiveness and social inclusion.
Of course, those who portray Milan as “the winter of our discontent” are wrong, those who exacerbate the tangle of social problems (starting with security, be it real or merely perceived), forgetting the characteristics of fragility and complexity typical of every metropolis. Those who rely on the “Quality of Life Ranking” (Il Sole24Ore, 4 December) for consolation are equally wrong. Again this year, this sees Milan among the top ten provinces (the first is Udine, followed by Bologna and Trento), especially thanks to the indicators connected with the dynamics of the economy and business. But of course, in this complexity of contrasts, it is necessary to locate a meaning, a direction, a vocation: to acknowledge that current opinion no longer considers Milan “the place to be”, as The New York Times proclaimed a few years ago, but not a city to be challenged, harshly criticised, or condemned either.
It’s been under discussion for some time now. And perhaps precisely this capacity for critical analysis and self-criticism is one of the vital stimuli for rethinking Milan, setting aside the idea of a “model” (lived as the arrogant claim to primacy of a city that ends up being envied and detested) and thinking instead of sustainable development, hospitality, the process of social mobility and opportunity. Less hasty and overpowering communication, more culture. Less propagandistic storytelling and more political imagination to attempt to build, also through good metropolitan governance, a new and fairer economic and social balance.
On the other hand, Milan’s ability to face its history and current situation with severity is a widespread attitude. It’s the opinion of Piero Borghini, mayor for too short a time in the political and institutional storm of the early 1990s (the time of Mani pulite affair) and then, in any case, an intellect that has always been clear-sighted and lively: “There’s no city in the world that studies itself the same way as Milan. Rome gets photographed because it’s beautiful. Milan doesn’t get photographed but studied. The books on the economy of Milan, the research… there’s an intellectual class that studies, and that makes proposals. It would be enough to read them, those books…” (Il Foglio, 14 December). Because “Milan is going through a phase of reflection, but it’s not a lost city. At the most, the politics are lost.”
What’s needed is not to stop at the late-19th-century myth of “moral capital” built “on the spirit of entrepreneurship, work ethic and good governance” and to think, if anything, about how to combine the knowledge economy with environmentalism and productivity.
These are challenging issues, which are increasingly echoed in public debate (including the meetings of the Centro Studi Grande Milano, chaired by Daniela Mainini: how to avoid, as you walk along the ridge, plunging into crisis rather than taking the paths, albeit demanding, down to recovery?). They must also be explored and directed towards political and social responses, with that “courage” and that exercise of “trust” that the Archbishop of Milan, Monsignor Mario Delpini, indicated as necessary virtues in his speech to the city in Sant’Ambrogio, asking politicians and citizens to “start again from young people, demography, immigrants”. Development, hospitality and integration, in fact. Certainly not just the lights….
So discussion, free of prejudice, making good use of the tools of knowledge and dialectics, steering clear of the hasty simplifications of propaganda and keeping the lesson of great Milanese native Umberto Eco in mind: “Freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.”
One can rightly attempt to value the past, as seen in the idea (dear to finance expert Francesco Micheli, a sophisticated, cultured man) of proposing the historic centre of Milan as UNESCO heritage, lending due recognition to that whole of monumental and cultural treasures ranging from the Duomo to La Scala, from Brera and the Palazzo Reale to the Poldi Pezzoli, the Gallerie d’Italia, the Museo del Novecento and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana with drawings from the Codex Atlanticus by Leonardo da Vinci.
It is also possible to insist on linking urban planning projects in Sesto San Giovanni and Lambrate, in the former railway stations of Porta Genova, Scalo Farini and Porta Romana and in the former Expo area to social housing commitments and services of value to the public as well (the Comune is already moving in this direction). And above all, it is worth considering the political and administrative choices and responsibilities of social actors, starting with companies, that can make Milan a smart city, of knowledge and innovation, a metropolis of processes that, between Europe and the Mediterranean, connects people, ideas, business, research and relationships, involving the whole rich fabric of intermediate cities: from Turin to Genoa (along the lines of the GeMiTo project promoted by Unione Industriali in Turin, Assolombarda and Confindustria in Genoa), from Bergamo to Brescia and the North East, from the Como–Varese route to Emilia. An area of companies, universities and communities committed to combining innovation and inclusion, wealth creation and the spread of well-being: liberal democracy and social market economy, in short, with a European outlook.
We therefore need decisions that promote entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as knowledge and skills, to support everything that develops and spreads new environmentally and socially sustainable technologies.
If this is the outlook, Milan must once more start learning how to maintain a connection in the new generations, how to enact hospitality and inclusion, in short, how once more to become able to make everyone who comes here from the rest of Italy, from Europe, from the great basin of the Mediterranean, including the coasts of Africa, “become Milanese”.
It’s a grand project, built, to quote Bonomi once again, on “civic virtues and social passion”, a far-sighted strategy of intelligent politics and effective public administration, with respect to the urban management and services of “greater Milan”: the good governance of transformation.