Small Towns, Big Commonplaces
This is a shortened English version of my article originally published on Esco quando voglio.
A recent article in Milano Finanza presented a proposal for a new “ZESpro” designed to support shops, essential services and economic activity in Italy’s small municipalities and inland areas.
A ZES, or Zona Economica Speciale, is a Special Economic Zone: a defined area where businesses may benefit from tax incentives, simplified procedures and faster authorisations in order to attract investment and stimulate development. A ZESpro would adapt that logic to proximity economies — local shops, services and small businesses operating in weaker or less populated territories.
On paper, the proposal contains many sensible ideas. Tax relief, administrative simplification, support for local shops, slow tourism, remote workers, digital nomads, walking routes, cycle paths, scattered hotels, sustainable mobility, multifunctional service points and microcredit all appear in the same framework.
The problem is not that these ideas are wrong. Many of them are useful, some are necessary, and I have been discussing them for years through ITS Journal, Smart Working Magazine, Esco quando voglio and other projects. The problem is the way they are piled together, as if collecting every fashionable solution in one place were enough to produce a coherent policy.
The first mistake is linguistic and political at the same time: not every small municipality is a romantic Italian “borgo”. Some are compact historic centres. Others are made up of scattered hamlets, settlements built along provincial roads, isolated mountain communities, former industrial towns or small administrative areas close to larger cities. They have different populations, economies, property markets, services and development potential. Treating them as one category inevitably produces generic solutions for radically different places.
Tax incentives can reduce costs, but they do not create customers. A shop serving a shrinking population and a highly seasonal market does not become profitable simply because it pays less tax. Some businesses need to evolve, combine several functions or serve a wider area. Some provide an essential public service and should be paid for that role. Others may simply no longer be economically viable. Supporting a community should not mean preserving every existing business model indefinitely.
The same applies to tourism. Visitors cannot be redistributed from Venice or Florence as if they were freight containers. Smaller destinations need accessibility, accommodation, services, marketing and a genuine reason to visit. More tourism does not automatically create more residents or stronger year-round services. A place can be full for three months, empty for nine, lose permanent housing and still see its only hardware shop close.
Walking routes, cycle paths, historic trains, scattered hotels and digital nomads are also too often presented as automatic solutions. A walking route requires maintenance, signs and services. A cycle path must be safe and connected. A historic train does not replace ordinary transport. Empty houses do not automatically become a viable hotel, and remote workers do not settle permanently just because broadband and a picturesque view are available.
There is still a lot worth saving in the proposal. Differentiated taxation, multifunctional local shops, support for essential services, remote work, property regeneration and slower forms of tourism can all help. But they need to be selected, tested and managed according to the specific territory.
What is needed is less attractive as a slogan, but more useful in reality: classify territories properly, distinguish essential services from ordinary commerce, finance measurable integrated projects, create accountable managing bodies, support those already working locally and stop treating tourism as the universal answer.
The challenge is not inventing another acronym. It is building models that connect economic viability with everyday life — preferably after spending a month in one of these places in November, when the bar closes at six, the bus does not arrive and the digital nomad has already left for Lisbon.