The “Sala model” divides Milan: between expensive housing, security and urban transformation, a political challenge opens up for the center-right called to build a credible alternative
I don’t know how the investigations concerning the mayor of Milan will end, Giuseppe Sala and, however delicate they may be given that they concern urban planning and the sale of San Siro, I do not intend to anticipate verdicts of a judicial nature. The issue I would like to discuss is purely political and is no less important than the one that comes before the courts. Is the Beppe Sala model, after two mandates, a model that must stay afloat or not?
This question anticipates the second: what political idea does the center-right have to recover a city that is getting out of hand after such a guilty inaction? As far as I’m concerned, I completely reject the model Room: a mixture of ingredients that are incompatible with each other, flavored with spices that today we can define as cloying. The green mayor, LGBT, the mayor of skyscrapers, of cycle paths, the manager mayor: definitions that have consolidated themselves in the narrative due to the absence of clear political contrast.
Beppe Sala he has in fact worked to exclude rather than include. Aside from the rainbow socks, Palazzo Marino has raised the bar of accessibility and liveability, disadvantaging many categories of citizens: middle class, workers, university students, young couples, workers in training or on internships cannot live in Milan except for parts of the day, essentially working or recreational. Talk to those who do the markets and hear how difficult it is for them to access the areas designated for their stalls. Talk to VAT people who come into the city for work, maybe they stay for an aperitif, but then they have to escape because the cost of houses is prohibitive. As it is for university students and now for the middle class, once the lungs of the city, the soul of the Ambrosian spirit, which has also become elitist. Talk to mothers in nurseries, elementary schools, outdoor common areas…
Milan has always been able to keep high and low, the popular soul and that of the gods, in balance cumend and even of that phenomenon that went under the label of rampantism, of the yuppies. All things we know very well. It wasn’t Room to exalt the international soul; the Bolognese Lucio Dalla he wrote it in 1979: «Milan close to Europe (…) Milan close at hand, he asks you a question in German and answers you in Sicilian», and many other extraordinary verses of inclusion. A trait that, with the center-left and with this mayor, the city has lost.
The theme of houses: skyscrapers, expensive rents, properties seen as a bargain, speculation. In the days of the Olympics you went down on the subway and campaigns financed by Airbnb made clear the new rules of the globalist and neoliberal game. The spirit of Milan to the highest bidder, who must leave as soon as he arrives. But Milan grows with those who arrive and would like to stay. Young people who live in the city do so as foreigners, unless their (parents’) income allows for certain rents. Look at what Isola has become, a neighborhood with a popular soul that is now in the portfolio of real estate developers. What will happen to Città Studi? There is no redevelopment in Milan that does not have funding behind it, mostly foreign and perhaps Arab.
And safety? You want to build houses for the elite when, then, Milan today is the capital of insecurity due to predatory crimes, brawls, settling of scores between gangs of young people (many immigrants, the “maranza”) and violence against unfortunate people. Milan is among the most polluted cities in the world and, therefore, all the draconian measures were of no use. We have an efficient and important public transport network, but it is not enough to open underground lines if the car parks in the external areas are empty. Take Lampugnano: there is a car park belonging to the Milanese company which would need modernisation; and then there is a hub for long-distance coaches, a service that is doing very well in times of crisis. Well, early in the morning or late at night, those who use the car park or have to take buses cannot help but come across groups of foreigners who feel like they are masters of the area. Not far away is San Siro.
This has gotten worse over the years Roomwhose encore could have been better countered if the center-right had committed itself to serious action in the area. Not only with a strong and credible candidate, but one that is based on a policy innervated in the territory and substantiated at Palazzo Marino. In these years of opposition, a ruling class had to be born and assert itself that would counter the actions of the majority and not limit itself to isolated battles. I don’t see in Milan the first piece of that proposal that will have to try to govern. Maurizio Lupi he says he is available: credit should be given to him for having proposed himself and having opened a debate on the profile, that is, whether a politician or a member of civil society. I agree: he must be a politician, because politics not only must not hide but must also wake up. Enough with candidates chosen with haste and therefore lame: the Milanese center-right should return to playing with courage. What model do you plan to propose? Which evolves that of Room or that gives a soul back to the city? Politics feeds on meetings, debates, challenges between issues: here we see little. Milan is not a little game that ends in divisions.
