This article is part of by POLITICO Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Chapter 1 of the project is presented by AirBnB.
MILAN – Not so long ago, Milan’s trendy Isola neighborhood was a no-go zone.
Originally a popular area for people who came to work at the local Pirelli factory, by the 1960s it had been overtaken by the Milanese mafiawhich ran drugs, prostitution and gambling dens from its streets.
“It was seen as the most dangerous place to go,” said Liat Rogel, a longtime Milanese who is lead expert for Europe’s URBACT program and runs the Impact Housing Foundation. “But now it’s one of the most attractive neighborhoods in the city.”
But this rapid transformation also had its downsides.
The challenge facing Isola, and so many other gentrifying neighborhoods across Europe, is what to do when the public and private investment that revitalizes an area makes it unaffordable for existing residents.
“It’s a slippery and complicated question,” said Antonella Bruzzese, professor of urban planning at Politecnico di Milano.
“Renovating buildings in poor condition, bringing in new people, making neighborhoods more mixed, that’s positive,” she said. “The problem arises when this regeneration excludes people in weaker economic and social circumstances.”
Isola is safer now, but the cost of housing has soared exponentially and the scope of business activity has narrowed to restaurants and entertainment, Bruzzesse said.
Those higher prices can pose a real problem for existing residents, Rogel argued. “In Italy, more than 75% of people live in a house they own, and rising prices could encourage them to sell,” she said. “Blue-collar workers inevitably see the opportunity to earn substantial income by selling their apartments, and so they end up doing it and moving.”
To counter this trend, the city must “ensure that in redevelopment areas, housing – or part of housing – remains affordable”.
This will be crucial in the area north of Loreto Square, dubbed NOLO, where community activists are pushing for city officials to redevelop the area, Rogel added. Despite their good intentions, the changes will inevitably also cost some of the neighborhood’s low-income residents unless the city steps in, she warned.
Milan is not alone in struggling to find a way to improve the quality of life in its neighborhoods without pushing people out.
“No big city has found a solution to this problem,” said Pierfrancesco Maran, Milan’s deputy mayor in charge of housing, pointing out that measures to ensure affordable housing, such as rent caps, have not managed to solve the problem in cities like Paris and Berlin. .
Milan reserves between 30 and 40% of all new apartments for social housing, according to the deputy mayor. But he pointed out that the city’s population has grown by more than 10% over the past decade and that demand continues to outstrip the availability of affordable housing.
Milan’s attractiveness as a tourist destination – which has grown since hosting the World Expo in 2015 – represents an additional problem, according to Maran, as it has increased the popularity of homestay platforms like Airbnb.
“In the time it took us to create 8,000 new social housing units, AirBnb registered 16,000 apartments on its platform in Milan,” he said, suggesting that these apartments could be better used as housing for people. residents. “It’s not something we can afford.”
Giacomo Trovato, Airbnb country manager for Italy and Southeastern Europe, said Airbnb is willing to work with cities to develop regulations, citing examples in Greece and Italy.
Trovato said the overwhelming majority of flat-sharing is “not done by property speculators, but rather by normal people earning an average of €3,000 a year.”
He said that of the 1.3 million hosts who use the platform in Europe, 1 million share a single property and argued that the platform was a net positive for cities as it collected taxes from stay which had contributed €300 million to EU cities.
This money will not solve the problem, according to Maran.
“We need to change the way we run the system in order to give it a future,” Maran said, adding, “I’d rather have half a million fewer tourists if it meant being able to provide more accommodation for students and workers. “.
This article is part of by POLITICO Global Policy Lab: Living Cities. Chapter 1 of the project is presented by AirBnB. The article is produced with complete editorial independence by POLITICO journalists and editors. Learn more on editorial content presented by external advertisers. You can sign up for Living Cities here.
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