Speaker
Description
In the city of Milan, the gap between salaries and housing costs continues to widen. As the divide deepens, homeownership (by those who already own or inherit) or financial support are becoming almost necessary conditions for living and working in the city. For those who cannot rely on either of these conditions, the almost constant upward trend of property values and rents has a strong impact on housing affordability, even for broad groups of workers whose net wages don’t grow but are well above the absolute poverty threshold. The risk is a progressive expulsion of low-income individuals and households from the municipal perimeter to hinterland municipalities, and at the same time, a blockade to the immigration of low-income individuals and households, with the result of a selective turnover. In Milan, as in the case of other attractive cities, the distance from the city centre generally corresponds to a cheaper housing supply. Nevertheless, our perspective is to uncover the articulated framework of relationships that run between the urban region and the central city, to open a broader reflection on the concrete and contextual conditions in which those excluded from Milan would find themselves living ‘outside Milan’.
This contribution presents the outcomes of the second year of research activities of OCA, the Housing Affordability Observatory in Milan, focusing on the ‘Milan inside-out’ conditions of affordability between the central city and its urban region. The territory we have defined as ‘outside Milan’ includes administrative and analytical perimeters, in a square of about 60 kilometers around Milan: the equivalent of a ‘section’ of territory incorporating about 300 municipalities and most of the urban region. By analyzing the affordability conditions of the territory surrounding the attractive city, this work offers the elaboration of public and open data to represent and discuss the reality of this diverse territory. The densely populated urban region, affected by a strong commuting component to Milan, seems to offer some more affordable settlement opportunities, but with criticalities related to commuting costs and the value of time spent on transfers.
| Keywords | housing affordability; housing observatory; housing policy; Milan |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
