Living? Not Really, Not Everywhere. In Italy, You Survive Where You Can and Sell the Rest, but - at least - Something is Changing
Overcrowded cities, abandoned territories, and villages turned into products: the issue is not depopulation, it’s the lack of real intention to address it.
Questo articolo è la versione inglese di quanto pubblicato su Esco quando voglio 👇
I listened carefully to the first episode of “Urban Contrasts”, the new series by Will Media within the Città podcast. It’s a solid, well-structured conversation, featuring voices I respect — from Paolo Bovio to Paola Pierotti, Federico Sartori, and the mayor of Turin, Stefano Lo Russo — and grounded in an analysis that is hard to disagree with.
The premise is clear: living and not living — inhabiting and abandoning — are not simple phenomena. They are layered, multi-scalar dynamics that shift depending on whether you look at a country, a region, a city, or even a single neighborhood. Every territory has its own trajectory, its own logic, its own explanation.
The data helps frame the picture. Milan continues to attract people. Turin is undergoing a structural transformation. Mid-sized cities are finding new relevance. Meanwhile, smaller municipalities and large urban centers alike are losing population, and the South and the Islands are paying a higher price.
None of this is new.
And that’s precisely the point.
If the dynamics are so clear, so well-documented, so widely discussed, then the problem is no longer understanding what is happening.
The problem is: why do we keep letting it happen this way?
There is a narrative in Italy that works remarkably well because it reassures everyone. It tells us that the country is evolving, adapting, transforming. Cities grow, territories reinvent themselves, villages come back to life, people move.
It sounds balanced. It sounds natural.
It isn’t.
The reality is far less elegant. Some areas are becoming increasingly unlivable for anyone without high income or extreme flexibility, while others are steadily left behind. And in between, instead of building real alternatives, we keep producing narratives.
Milan is the perfect case study. It keeps attracting people, yes. But this attraction is now highly selective. It doesn’t welcome — it filters. If you can afford it, you’re in. If you can’t, you either stay out or struggle to remain.
This is not just a side effect. It’s an implicit choice.
When living in a city becomes a luxury rather than a basic condition, that city is not evolving — it is narrowing.
Then there is Turin, often described as a city “changing its skin.” That may be true, but not every transformation is inherently positive. Smaller households, shifting demographics, new urban balances — all valid observations.
But the real question remains largely unasked: who is this change actually working for?
Because the risk is always the same: describing movement without addressing its consequences.
Meanwhile, mid-sized cities are emerging as a sort of refuge. Not because of a national strategy, but because of systemic inertia. They work because they haven’t yet reached saturation — not because they have been deliberately positioned as viable alternatives. That distinction matters, because it also reveals their fragility.
And then we arrive at the most uncomfortable part of the picture: the South, the Islands, and the internal areas.
Here, the conversation becomes less sophisticated and more blunt. These territories are not emptying by accident. They are emptying because, for years, it has been acceptable for them to do so. Services disappear. Transport fails. Opportunities never arrive. Young people leave and rarely return.
And when they do return, they often have to build something fragile, not integrate into something functional.
At the same time, these very territories are suddenly rediscovered in public narratives. The “authentic village.” The one-euro house. The return to roots. The slower life.
But more often than not, this is a dream for those who arrive — not for those who remain.
Because there is a distinction we continue to ignore: turning a place into a destination does not make it livable. It makes it usable.
And those are two very different things.
There are territories today that are not being regenerated. They are being repurposed. From communities into products. From lived environments into consumable experiences. From social systems into backdrops.
Homes that no longer host residents, but flows. Services designed more for visitors than for inhabitants. Local economies that function only as long as external demand exists.
It may generate value in the short term. In the long run, it empties even more of what is left.
And at this point, it’s only fair to say this clearly.
Over the past few years, working on the ground with ITS ITALY — not in conferences, but in projects, municipalities, and real situations — one thing has become increasingly evident:
this is no longer primarily a real estate problem.
There is no shortage of properties. Quite the opposite.
The issue lies elsewhere.
For years, regeneration has been framed as a housing problem: acquire, renovate, sell, fill. A mechanical logic. But reality is far more complex. You can renovate a hundred properties, but if there is no life around them, they remain empty containers — or, at best, intermittently used spaces.
What truly makes the difference between a territory that recovers and one that simply gets repackaged is something else:
the ability to support communities that regenerate themselves.
Not flows.
Not temporary presence.
But continuity.
This is why we keep insisting on something that is far less appealing from a storytelling perspective:
we need more services for residents, and less narrative about destinations.
We need people who live in these places, not just visit them.
Who belong, not just consume.
Who participate, not just observe.
Because the difference between regeneration and exploitation lies entirely there — in continuity.
And this is the hardest part to accept, because it challenges a very convenient narrative: it is not enough to bring people in.
You need to create the conditions for them to stay.
This is where the debate often stops just short.
Because this is not a matter of awareness. It is a matter of will.
We already know the variables: transport, healthcare, education, work, connectivity, housing. We have been listing them for years. Analyzing them. Discussing them. Putting them into strategies and panels.
But then?
We keep treating them as separate elements, when in reality they are a single system. Without mobility, there is no work. Without work, there is no population. Without population, there are no services. Without services, there is no livability.
Either you address it as a system, or you don’t address it at all.
Instead, we keep acting in fragments. Housing incentives without context. Policies without ecosystems. Projects without continuity. Narratives without accountability.
The outcome is clear: extreme concentration on one side, gradual emptiness on the other, and in between territories surviving more by chance than by design.
So the real question is not whether these dynamics can be managed. Of course they can.
The real question is whether there is any real intention to do so.
Because managing them means redistributing opportunities, investments, and attention. It means accepting that not everything needs to happen in the same places. It means stopping the habit of treating entire regions as either hinterlands or themed experiences.
And that is far more difficult than talking about it.
So yes — discussions like this are valuable. Analyses are necessary. Conversations with competent voices matter.
But at some point, the choice becomes unavoidable:
stay within the narrative, or engage with the reality of decisions.
Because today, the problem is not understanding what is happening.
The problem is deciding whether we are willing to let it continue.