Urban Historyhttp://journals.cambridge.org/UHY

Additional services for Urban History:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

From boomtown to bribesville: the images of the city, Milan, 1980–97

John M. Foot

Urban History / Volume 26 / Issue 03 / December 1999, pp 393 - 412DOI: null, Published online: 08 September 2000

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0963926899000346

How to cite this article:John M. Foot (1999). From boomtown to bribesville: the images of the city, Milan, 1980–97. Urban History, 26, pp 393-412

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/UHY, IP address: 137.222.114.245 on 26 Sep 2013

Fromboomtown to bribesville:the images of the city,Milan,1980^97J O H N M . F O O T *Centre for Italian Studies, UCL, London

abstract: This article examines the changing images of the city of Milan over aperiod of two decades spanning the 1980s and 1990s. The article considerstheoretical debates concerning city images. Milan is then analysed through thevarious spatial forms which encompass this modern city ± political space,populated space, geographic space, urban space and economic space. The nextsection assesses the changing images of the city through shifting historical phasesand crises. Finally the article draws together the fundamental economic andsocial changes which have marked the deindustrialization and reinvention ofMilan.

This article will look to analyse the momentous changes in Milan duringthe 1980s and 1990s, above all through the mapping of the changingimages of the city within a period marked by a succession of crises.Milan was the `capital of the miracle' during the economic boom of the1950s and 1960s as Italy transformed itself rapidly from a rural to anindustrial society. The 1980s saw Milan again at the centre of Italy's so-called `second miracle', based upon the transformation away from heavyindustry and towards a whole series of post-industrial activities. Thisperiod was marked by a speci®c kind of political domination andcultural change in the city, with Bettino Craxi's Socialist Party at thehelm from 1976 to 1993. Massive and deep-rooted systems of politicaland economic corruption were unmasked by the dramatic `clean hands'investigations in the city, which began with the arrest of a mid-levelSocialist of®cial in February 1992, and led to the disappearance of theSocialists from the political scene that they had controlled for so long. In1993, the regional Northern Leagues won a crushing victory in themayoral elections, but this relatively new grouping was unable orunwilling to attempt a revolution from above in the city, in part becausethe channels of mediation which had been constructed by the previousadministrations had been broken, and in part because of blocks on

* I would like to acknowledge the support of the British Academy through its City andIdentity collaborative research project, based at UCL, the UCL Graduate School for helpwith travel costs and John Dickie, Bob Lumley, Antonio De Lillo, Paolo Natale, GiulioSapelli and Mario Bof® in Milan for their constructive comments and assistance.

Urban History, 26, 3 (1999) # 1999 Cambridge University Press Printed in the United Kingdom

public projects imposed after the scandals began to spread to the higherlevels of Italian politics. In 1997 the Lega's Mayor was heavily defeatedby an industrialist backed by a right-wing alliance of post-fascists andBerlusconi's Forza Italia! grouping. This period of political upheaval sawrapid territorial and industrial changes to the city and its hinterland, anda series of moral, economic and cultural crises rocked the city and its(declining) population.

In order to have any success in outlining and analysing the changes inthe city over this complicated period, it is crucial to try and understandwhat is meant by `Milan' and to adopt some conceptual and morpholo-gical tools.

Images of the city

What is the image of the city? First, it is essential to move into theplural. There is never one image of any one city, but a whole series ofcompeting and complex images that are never ®xed and are continuallybeing created and re-created. Second, it is obvious that these images aresubjective images, mediated through language, the mass media,memory, photographs, ®lms and the environment. It is not necessary tohave lived in or even visited a city to have an image of that city inone's mind ± on the contrary. Often, these images are stronger in thosewho have never seen a city ®rst hand. The examples of Naples, or ofthe Bronx, are classic instances of cities (or neighbourhoods) whichhave extremely strong images amongst those who have never seenthem. Given these premises, a sort of typology of city images can belaid out drawing on the work of architects, planners, urban theorists,sociologists and historians. First, there is a strong connection betweenthe images of the city and identity (of the city, of each individual). Dailyexperiences, local events, the habitat, the media all combine withpersonal interactions and meetings to help produce a system ofsymbols, signs and reference-points. Mental maps have been particu-larly useful here in identifying the variety and complexity of subjectiveviews of the city.1 For Lynch, the mental image of the city `is theproduct both of immediate sensations, and the memory of past experi-ence that is used to interpret information and as a guide to action'.2

Concretely, people are identi®ed with their neighbourhoods and theiridentities linked to the dominant images of certain areas. This process isparticularly strong with negative images ± of a `bad' neighbourhood, adangerous place, a crime-ridden area. Every city has its `Bronx', its`Moss Side', its `Quarto Oggiaro'. Often, residents of these areas

1 See K. Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass., 1960) and U. La Pietra, `L'uso dellacittaÁ', InpiuÁ (1973).

2 Lynch, The Image of the City, 26.

394 Urban History

disguise their origins to escape the image-stigmatization associatedwith certain places.3

Second, more positive images can be linked to a myriad of events,structures and morphologies: physical space (upper and lower parts ofthe city), wealth, cleanliness, building-types, views, light and, of course,the kinds of inhabitants present. With positive images, there is often areal attempt to link personal identities to place and space ± as with thegay quarters of San Francisco, or the ethnic (public) tourist-basedidentities associated with many US cities ± Chinatown, Little Italy,Greektown. Builders and planners make conscious attempts to imposetheir own image of the city upon its residents. This can be at a tiny,micro-level ± a park, a road, a statue ± or at a mass, macro-level ± townplans, monuments.4 Over 2,000 years the Catholic Church has rebuiltand redesigned the territory in its own image ± dominating the skylinesand the backstreets of most Italian cities. Mass tourism is crucial to thesedimentation of certain images and to the connection between key`attractions' and places. Certain buildings are set up as (or simplybecome) the symbols of certain cities, or of certain epochs in certain cities± for example, Canary Wharf in London for the Thatcher era, or therevamped centre of Birmingham side by side with the classic symbol of1960s planning, the Bullring, or the Piccolo Teatro in Milan as (negative)symbol of political corruption. Organizations are formed to promotecities, to reinvent their images ± with logos, slogans, research projects,festivals and conferences.5 Films and books also become associated withcertain images and certain urban areas ± for example, Blade Runner withLos Angeles, The Bon®re of the Vanities for New York. Of course, all ofthese images and the physical and mental constructions linked to theirpromotion are contested, are never ®xed, are continually being reformedand deconstructed.6

Milan: geographies, space and populations

It is useful at this point to divide the analysis of Milan into a series ofdifferent (but overlapping) forms of space: geographic space, political3 For this stigmatization with relation to the suburbs of Paris and the south side of Chicago

see L.J.D. Wacquant, `Urban outcasts: stigma and division in the black American ghettoand the French urban periphery', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research(1993), 366±83.

4 See D. Harvey `Monument and myth. The building of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart', inidem, The Urban Experience (Oxford, 1994; 1st pub. 1989), 200±28; J. Dickie, `La macchinada scrivere. The Victor Emmanuel Monument in Rome and Italian nationalism', TheItalianist, 14 (1994), 261±85 and M. Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air (London, 1993;1st pub. 1982), 287±348.

5 During the 1980s a number of organizations were formed in Milan to promote differentimages of the city, for example, SocietaÁ Civile (1985) and the Associazione degli InteressiMetropolitani (1987).

6 For a synthesis of work regarding city images, see A. Mela, Sociologia della cittaÁ (Rome,1996), 149±63.

From boomtown to bribesville 395

space, urban space, economic space and populated space. Milan is a citywithout clear boundaries and with no river or natural hills. Its ¯atlandscape is ®lled with a myriad of urban forms, landscapes, buildingsand open spaces. Concentric (traf®c-dominated) circles radiate out fromthe centre of the city that is dominated by the Cathedral ± Il Duomo, itsenormous Piazza and the glass-covered Galleria. Part of the image of thecity and its hinterland is bound up with this ¯atness, with the unendingand monotonous nature of the landscape, with the ubiquitous nature ofthe milanese climate ± especially its fog, La Nebbia ± and with thelabyrinth-like character of the hinterland.7 Mountain ranges should bevisible from many balconies in the city ± but rarely are ± due to the smogthat hangs over the city. This `lack' of a view increases the sense ofanomie for many milanese and immigrants. Many commentators notethat even locals get lost frequently on their way into the city, thatnewcomers are disorientated by the sameness of the urban environment± its lack of landmarks ± that streets lead nowhere, or turn back uponthemselves, or simply take you round the city but not towards theintended destination. There are hundreds of signs reading `Milan' or`Centro' which merely move the driver further around the city limits inone direction or another. This alienated/alienating nature of the urbanlandscape is a re¯ection of and a contribution to the declining image ofthe city, and Milan's constant crisis of identity.

Political space is far easier to pin down. There are three political spaceseach with their own resident populations and clearly marked carto-graphic boundaries. The Comune of Milan takes in the city itself, theProvince encompasses 188 local comuni, 3.7 million residents and 1,980km2, the Lombard Region stretches for 23,857 km2 and over 1,500 comuniand can count on nearly 9 million inhabitants. All these political spacescontain elected local governments, electorates, different powers andgoverning of®ces. Further boundaries mark the edge of Italy itself and,looking deeper, those of the EU, the European Free Trade Area and theSchengen Agreement. Each political organization has various responsi-bilities concerning the management and administration of the territory,the city, traf®c, immigration, housing, industry and planning. These clearpolitical spaces begin to break down when actual policy and urbanbehaviour are taken into account. The latter rarely make a clear distinc-tion between province, region and city. Tensions between the variouspolitical bodies controlling the vast semi-urban territory of northern Italymake co-ordinated planning and policy-making an extremely dif®cult, ifnot impossible, task.

These bureaucratic political spaces are not the only ones which occupythe minds of those who live or work in the areas at the centre of thisdiscussion. Other borders are constructed and reconstructed over time.

7 See G. Bocca, Metropolis. Milano nella tempesta italiana (Milan, 1993), 10, 25.

396 Urban History

The northern leagues have, at different times (and often at the sametime) built political alliances on the basis of borders dividing the `North'and the `South' and those dividing the region of `Padania' from the restof Italy. The `red belt' around Milan saw the Left dominate politics in thezone just outside the immediate urban periphery for most of the post-war period. Catholic parties controlled large parts of the `white' territoryaround Bergamo, Brescia and Como for decades both before and after1945.

Milan as a political space can also be looked at in more parochial terms± as a power-base for politicians and parties working at a national level,and as a source of ®nancial and political resources, as well as industrialand ®nancial in¯uence. Milan became a key player in the 1980s with therise of Bettino Craxi ± a politician who had made his name in the cityand who was the local power-broker for the ruling coalitions from themid-1970s onwards. Craxi's four years as Prime Minister saw him useMilan as a source of votes, contacts, ®nance and local prestige. For the®rst time since uni®cation, Milan's political weight began to rival that ofRome. Craxi used Milan as his political space, only living in a hotel inRome whilst maintaining of®ces and contacts in the former city. Thispolitical weight continued throughout the 1980s, with the formation ofthe regional northern leagues (the only big city they have controlled isMilan), the anti-Craxi movements of SocietaÁ Civile and La Rete and, in1994, the birth of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia! organization with itspower base in Milan. Finally, the far-Left Rifondazione Comunistagrouping can mark Milan out as one of its strongholds and the same istrue of the main trade union federations. Almost all the new politicalforces of the post-Tangentopoli era originated in Milan or have had their®rst real impact in the city. It would be no exaggeration to describe thecity as an intense and dynamic political laboratory in the 1990s.

It is here that many of the most interesting changes have taken place inthe 1980s and 1990s. It is crucial to see `Milan' as a diffuse urban areawhich can be looked at in a series of different ways ± moving (withoutcreating hierarchies) from the city centre to the urban periphery to themetropolitan area to the urban sprawls across to Turin, Genoa andVerona and Venice on to huge urban networks which stretch from, forexample, London through the Rhine Valley (the so-called `blue banana')or from Barcelona through southern France and Munich (the `sun-belt').8

Little advantage is to be had by privileging one of these spatialinterpretative forms over another. There is no reason why a whole seriesof different ideas and views of urban space cannot be employed, in orderto move away from the suffocating centralism of much analysis of Milan.This is an urban space without real boundaries ± a peri-urban area ±where new forms of territory and spatial identi®cation are mixed with8 I have taken these terms from M. Revelli, `Crisi dello stato-nazione, territorio, nuove

forme del con¯itto e della convivenza', Il ponte della Lombardia, 1 (1997), 7±13.

From boomtown to bribesville 397

older, more traditional places and spaces `in a series of forms ofsettlements, airports, shopping malls, residential neighbourhoods,leisure-based structures, and simple bundles of buildings of varioustypes around streets, motorways, stations and other service centres'.9 Itis also clear that any understanding of the milanese or Lombardeconomy needs to place the territory at the forefront of its world-view.Whereas in the 1960s to understand Milan ®lm directors and writerswaited patiently outside fog-bound factory gates in the city, it is nowclear that this fordist centrality has disappeared. Only through a more¯exible analysis can the contradictions and complications of economicdevelopment and urban change in the 1980s and 1990s begin toemerge.10 The variety and spread of new urban forms also makescomparisons between `cities' extremely dif®cult ± the very de®nition ofThe City is forced into crisis by territorial developments.

Looking at Milan in this way, the analysis begins with the peri-urbanterritories of the extra-urban periphery. These are the urban formsidenti®ed by Stefano Boeri in his work from the mid-1990s, and inte-grated into the work of urban sociologist Guido Martinotti. In manyways, these sprawling urban spaces are similar to those seen as `edgecities' in the US.11 Parts of these spaces have become known as `non-places' ± following the work of French anthropologists and sociologistssuch as Auge and De Certeau. These new developments which charac-terize the non-traditional-city landscape are de®ned as places withoutidentity (to cite Auge `if a place can be de®ned as relational, historicaland concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be de®ned asrelational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place . . .supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which are notthemselves anthropological places and which . . . do not integrate theearlier places') ± classically shopping malls, motels, stations and airports,new cinemas, motorways and autogrills.12 Yet, non-places are not simply`there', but anthropological creations ± their non-placeness is closelyrelated to the way in which they are experienced by individuals andgroups. Non-placeness or placeness cannot just be assigned to variousconstructions merely because they function in a certain way or arelocated in a certain place. Non-places are thus not con®ned to the extra-urban periphery or the hinterland. The historic centres of Italian cities ±areas with recognizable identities, histories and `placeness' for many ±can be `non-places' for those who visit as part of mass tourism packages

9 S. Boeri and G. Martinotti, `Oltre i navigli', presented at the conference Milano: dritto erovesciare, 16±18 Oct. 1997, Triennale, Milan.

10 For the importance of the peri-urban, see the innovative work of Stefano Boeri: above allhis work with A. Lanzani and E. Marini, Il Territorio che cambia (Milan, 1993) and withthe photographer G. Basilico, Sezioni del paesaggio italiano (Udine, 1997).

11 See J. Garreau, Edge City. Life on the New Frontier (New York, 1991).12 M. AugeÂ, Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London, 1995),

77±8; originally Non-lieux (Paris, 1992).

398 Urban History

which reduce a city to three or four well-known landmarks. As Licatahas put it `a place for some can be a non-place for others'.13

From here the analysis moves on to the more easily de®nable urbanperiphery ± with its familiar swathe of public housing, wastelands, openex-industrial space and road networks. The next `stage' towards the citycentre is constituted by the ex-industrial peripheries, characterized byfamous ex-cathedrals of work, big and small, classic working-classhousing and older public projects. The ex-industrial areas ± all recogniz-ably `neighbourhoods' with some residual sense of belonging ± are allundergoing transformations or awaiting projects. Many are now home tothe new Milanese urban underclass ± (mostly) undocumented immi-grants from outside the European community. Finally, within the originalcircle of canals, there is the classic Milan with its monuments, itsshopping streets, its fashion district, its night life and bars. This voyagehas been towards the centre, but it is only by looking beyond the centre,and even the city, that the economic, social and political changes whichhave transformed Milan in the 1980s and 1990s can be understood.

Economic space comes in multi-layered forms. Aldo Bonomi's recentanalysis of northern Italian capitalism has identi®ed seven economicnorths ± and even these categories are broad brush-strokes.14 Here, twoconclusions can be drawn. First, the region is an economic powerhouse.Lombardy claims 40 per cent of Italy's businesses and half her jobs in theinformation sector, and 30 per cent in terms of research and develop-ment. The area of `Padania', identi®ed by the Fondazione Agnelli in 1992and made up of eight northern regions, produced 54 per cent of ItalianGDP in 1990, attracted 53 per cent of all investment and contained 80 percent of Italy's individual businesses. Nearly three-quarters of all exportsand 64 per cent of imports either originated from or were directedtowards this area, whose living standards were (and are) amongst thehighest in Europe ± only behind Hamburg, Ile de France and Brussels.Of course, these broad statistics mask huge variations, specialization andchanges over time in terms of individual industries, the territory and theother forms of space identi®ed in this paper. Pockets of poverty existalongside huge tracts of wealth, small and tiny industries are oftenprisoners of ®nanciers and banks, public squalor and inef®ciencies affectmost Lombard citizens.15 In addition, the dynamism of the 1980s and1990s has not been a linear process, and masks traumatic changes inidentity and production ± above all the rapid and unrelenting deindus-trialization (of big industry) which hit the city of Milan and its hinterlandin the 1980s and 1990s.

13 S. Licata, `Nonluoghi ed eterotopie. Indagine sui luoghi dell'altrove', Urbanistica, XLVIII(1996), 200.

14 Il Capitalismo molecolare. La societaÁ al lavoro nel Nord Italia (Turin, 1997).15 This poverty is concentrated above all in certain peripheral zones: see F. Foti, Milano:

metropoli frammentata (Milan, 1993), 14 and 83.

From boomtown to bribesville 399

The last form of space relates to the presence in the city and thehinterland of diverse populations ± most of whom are no longer merelyresidents. The presence in the city, at different times, of various popula-tions, has been identi®ed by Martinotti as a central feature of modernurban morphology.16 Of®cial statistics, and in general, public politicaldiscourse and debate, tend to concentrate upon the sleeping population ±that is, the restricted number of people who remain within the city atnight ± the residents (although, even here, there are many gaps ± forexample, the thousands of immigrants who sleep rough or who have nolegal residence rights ± and therefore it would be more accurate to callthis group legal residents). Martinotti has mapped out four urban popula-tions who gravitate around the city on a regular basis. First, there arethese legal residents, around whom most of the debates concerning thefuture of the city take place, who vote in local elections and who use thecity on a daily basis to live, shop, work or as students, children andpensioners. This group dominates all the available statistics ± and yetrepresent a minority both numerically as well as in terms of their impactupon the city. In an earlier phase of the industrial city, the sleepingpopulation and the daily population were far more similar, althoughthere were always complicated and shifting relationships with thecountryside and rural work. The demolition of the city walls (Milan'swere removed in 1873) represents a key moment in the shift towardsdiffering populations and institutionalized commuting.

The second group can be termed commuters ± those who use the city(usually daily) for different forms of work. Of course, commuting is not anew phenomenon. In the early part of the century, thousands of rural-based building workers commuted to the city on a daily basis. In the1950s and 1960s, commuters were a common sight on the early morningand late evening trains which run from the city to the hinterland.Certainly, over time, the nature of commuting has changed ± both interms of the transport used (from public to private) as well as in terms ofthe type of work involved. In the 1960s, estimates of the number ofcommuters stood at more than 300,000.17 In the 1990s, up to one millioncommuters come into the city every day (in trains, buses and 600,000cars) via the 250 entry points to the city.18 One of the key characteristicsof the commuting category (which often distinguishes them from cityusers) is that the vast majority enter and leave the city during the classicworking day. Many city users enter the city at night. The days of theweek are also different, often Monday-to-Friday for commuters, Sa-turday or Sunday for city users. City users can often be residents as well,

16 See Martinotti's Metropoli. La nuova morfologia sociale della cittaÁ (Bologna, 1993), 137±98.17 See G. Bocca, `In treno operaio verso la cittaÁ', Miracolo all'Italiana (Milan, 1980; 1st pub.

1962), 84±90 and G. Petrillo, La capitale del miracolo. Sviluppo, lavoro, potere a Milano,1953±1962 (Milan, 1992) 64.

18 Bocca, Metropolis, 14.

400 Urban History

as with the young people from the vast urban periphery and provincewho come to Milan to shop, to meet people, or just to sit around. Thiscentre-periphery divide is particularly strong in Milan.

The third group described by Martinotti is a much more disparategroup made up of those who enter the urban area to carry out a series offunctions not linked either to residence or to work (in the narrowestsense). These people can be termed city users ± and include shoppers(and window-shoppers),19 theatre, ®lm, exhibition, night-club andconcert-goers, football fans, tourists, 40,000 students (who could also becharacterized as commuters) and those who need to visit one of thebureaucratic centres located in the city (motor administration, localgovernment, business centres). Included within this category is also awhole series of more shady, even `underground' activities which arenonetheless highly visible ± clients for prostitutes (an activity whichextends right around the vast ring-roads which surround Milan), drugsand those who just drive in and around. Here, the city becomes similarto a vast, illegal theme park (or video game) where the city user isalways one step ahead of the police in his or her attempts to exploit thepleasures offered by the urban `services'. Obviously, it is extremelydif®cult to measure the extent of `city use', despite the fact that more andmore research on urban morphology is moving away from a resident-based analysis of the city. It is worth noting the frequent and complicatedinterchanges of the populations identi®ed thus far. During holidayperiods vast numbers of Milanese residents leave the city for holidayhomes. In August, up to 75 per cent of the residents are absent ±becoming `city users' of a certain type in other cities ± or simply tourists± or residents elsewhere.20 In these periods, the resident population iseven more marginalized and marginal. These urban populations are thusmarked by extreme and complicated levels of mobility, and not justacross the borders of the city of Milan. The advent of mass privatemotorization is one of the central factors behind the shift towardsdiffering urban populations, and has been crucial in the shape andlandscape of the new urban territories outside the city.21 In 1987, it wascalculated that, every day, over 4.9 million trips were being made in thearea of the province, with 62 per cent (2,481,000) being entirely withinthe city itself.22 One million and eight hundred thousand daily journeyswere made into Milan and out again. Half a million return journeys weremade from the city to the province and beyond.

Finally, following Martinotti, there is a fourth urban population ± thebusiness users ± those people who visit the city for business reasons but19 The city of Milan itself accounted for 95 per cent of consumption in the Province of

Milan: Foti, Milano, 21.20 On 15 Aug. 1997, only 320,000 of Milan's residents were still in the city: Milano in

Comune, 2 (1997).21 Boeri et al., Il territorio che cambia.22 9.8 million litres of petrol per day was needed to `fuel' this movement: Foti, Milano 121.

From boomtown to bribesville 401

who, unlike commuters, do not come in on a daily (or even a regular)basis. Business users are a mix of commuters and city users, with speci®cconsumption (and business) needs and often with high disposableincomes. Business users generate a whole series of services ± which arenecessarily ¯exible and ef®cient and often seasonal (based, for example,around certain trade fairs). Milan's fashion weeks ± when up to 70,000business users and city users descend upon the city (buyers, models,journalists) ± represent the peak moments for these categories ± themoments when they dominate the urban space ± economically andvisually.23 One of the key problems concerning both city and businessusers is their lack of responsibility towards the city ± as non-residents.Residents have some responsibility towards their environment imposedupon them by their continuing presence there. They pay taxes, and electrepresentatives to run the city. They prefer (to generalize) some sort oflong- or medium-term strategy towards the city. City and business users(and, to some extent, commuters) have different needs and a far moreshort-term view of the city and its problems. Martinotti has identi®ed aform of disenfranchisement of residents due to the increasing weight ofcity and business users. It is also true the latter may well be forgottenwithin the more parochial, bounded and electoral strategies of localpoliticians. Finally, certain problems have an impact on all four popula-tions ± albeit in different ways. Traf®c jams affect everyone ± the driversstuck in them, the children who breathe the fumes, the bus passengerswho cannot reach their destination, the pedestrian who cannot cross theroad, the pensioner who cannot get past the cars parked on thepavement.

Clearly, this separation and identi®cation of urban populations allowsa far more ¯exible and nuanced analysis of developments in the city.Evidently, these are not hard and fast categories whose boundaries aredistinct and immutable. A person can be part of all four populations, ornone, or one, or two, or three. There is scope for a critical approach to thedivisions imposed by Martinotti, and for the opening up of new types of`population' categories. These divisions could also be looked at indifferent ways ± such as via the terms `the city that works', `the city thatconsumes' or through the analysis of various time periods (the city atnight, the city by day, the city in August) or places (the street population,the in-car population, the static population). It is worth noting at thispoint that many of the debates on the crisis of Milan concern (above all)its residents ± as with the panics over depopulation and deindustrializa-tion. Very few analysts have taken a wider view ± beyond the city'sboundaries, beyond the population statistics ± which is the only way tounderstand the dynamics and workings of any modern city.

23 La Repubblica, 3 Oct. 1997.

402 Urban History

Milan as bribesville (Tangentopoli): 1976±92

Politically, and culturally, this was the period of `Socialist' hegemony ±Craxian mayors (Socialist Party mayors under the hegemony of the partyleader, and the Prime Minister from August 1983±March 1987, BettinoCraxi) ran the city from 1976 onwards. This period was characterized bythe full functioning of Tangentopoli ± bribesville or kickback city but notthe judicial inquests which exposed Tangentopoli after 1992. Tangentopolican be de®ned as an almost scienti®c system, involving all the politicalparties and many other civil organizations, whereby public contracts andfunds were divided between their intended destination and kickbacks tothe parties, and local contracts, building permits, etc., were awarded viaa system of party funding via bribes (which were distributed accordingto well-de®ned percentages). This system was just that ± a well-oiledsystem ± which the politicians saw as `normal' and even essential to thefunctioning of the economy. Newcomers to various public posts acceptedwhat they called the `environmental situation' in place. Personal as wellas political fortunes were made, in an extraordinary mix of pre- andpost-modern corruption ± sacks of cash were transferred by hand whilstelaborate Swiss bank accounts were created. Yet, despite the widespreadacknowledgement of and participation in this illegal system (or perhapsbecause of this), the dominant image of the city of Milan in the 1980s wasnot one of a corrupt city. This was the period of Milano da bere, anadvertising slogan for an after-dinner drink which became the symbol(at ®rst positive, later negative) of a whole epoch and political style.24

What was Milano da bere? What kind of city was projected by thatimage? The buzz-words of that period can help us here ± modernity,development, European-city, `the post-industrial lift-off '.25 Craxi oftenreturned to Milan in his speeches in the 1980s (texts which were to takeon a whole new meaning after the explosion of the Tangentopoli scandalsin 1992).26 More negatively, Milan was described as a yuppy-citydominated by money. Some commentators identify Milano da bere as aperiod of euphoria `when even the masses and housewives bought ``24ore'' [the Italian Financial Times] to check the share prices as they shot up. . . when Craxi came from Palazzo Chigi [the presidential residence inRome] to Palazzo degli Affari [the Milanese Stock Exchange] to receiveapplause'.27

This image was a mixture of two strategies ± on the one hand, a

24 There are very few analyses of `Milano da bere' which go beyond mere description, orthe simplistic link between `cittaÁ da bere' and `city to be consumed', but see E. Mora,`Stili di vita e consumi a Milano: cittaÁ da bere?', in E. Zucchetti (ed.), Milano '94. Rapportosulla cittaÁ (Milan, 1995), 164±78.

25 See the book by leading Socialist Ugo Finetti, Socialismo milanese. Il confronto politico per ildecollo postindustriale (Milan, 1985).

26 B. Craxi, Il progresso italiano (Milan, 1985), 434±43.27 C. Petruccioli, `Hanno spinto Milano lontano dall'Europa', L'UnitaÁ, 30 Mar. 1992.

From boomtown to bribesville 403

celebration of wealth, of consumption, of form over content ± as in thekey `moments' (and places) of the image's construction ± the SocialistParty congresses (especially that of May 1989 held within the vast ex-Ansaldo factory at Milan and dominated by a huge television screen inthe form of a pyramid), the opening night of La Scala, the construction ofthe new Piccolo Teatro (which later became a symbol of scandal), theadaptation of the PSI's symbol from a hammer and sickle to a red rose.These occasions made a virtue of kitsch, of vulgarity, of new wealth, ofpower ± values often in symmetry with those of the consumer-led boomof the 1980s, and the changes associated with that period in its capital,Milan. The Milano da bere image also attached itself, triumphantly, to thedeep economic changes taking place in the city. It made a virtue ofdeindustrialization and of the `new' industries which were becomingdominant ± fashion, advertising, private television. Milan was presentedas the city of the future, the cutting edge of transition away from an `old'industrial society. At the time, this image was received favourably, oftenby those very people who were scandalized by the extent of the scandalsuncovered after 1992. Notwithstanding its corrupt underlying character,the Milano da bere image captured the essence of the social and politicalchanges underlying the 1980s and 1990s in Milan and Lombardy ± theshift away from big industry, and the deep crisis of the traditional Left.28

It was this which explained the image's success in the city. Very fewspoke out as Milan was `sacked', and a whole series of projects werebegun which were either later abandoned, or which took years to ®nish.

It was only after 1992 that those isolated voices which had identi®edand condemned the reality behind Milano da bere began to have anaudience (but not power). Almost immediately the image of Milano dabere began to take on negative connotations. History was written, andrewritten. A whole epoch was condemned as `vulgar' ± as if thesefeatures could be overcome simply by the removal of a group of corruptpoliticians. Craxi, leaving aside the system of corruption he utilized andhelped to create, had understood what was happening in Milan beforeanyone else. He understood the importance of the media, the non-importance of traditional party structures, the power of the local over thenational and the centrality of public resources even in a city like Milan.29

Despite the obvious break in Milanese political life after 1992, underlyingprocesses were transforming the city and its territories. Milano da bere isnow the object of scorn, but its legacy is immense.

28 Looking at one Communist Party (now Ds) `section' in the centre of Milan, the ex-Sezione Togliatti in the Garibaldi Zone, this crisis has been a long time coming. In 1947there were 1,800 members in this section, by 1978 478 and in 1994 less than a hundred:L. Fantini, Milano, 1994. Percorsi nel presente metropolitano (Milan, 1994), 159.

29 For the importance of local power during Tangentopoli, see D. Della Porta, `Politicalparties and corruption: re¯ections on the Italian case', Modern Italy, 1 (1995), 97±114.

404 Urban History

The exposure of Tangentopoli and the Lega Administration:1992±97

In February 1992, as Italy lived through its most dramatic electioncampaign for years and the city of Milan was covered in huge posters ofBettino Craxi with the slogan, `Milan at the centre of Italy's progress', arelatively unknown Socialist Party of®cial was arrested immediatelyafter taking a bribe of 7 million lire. Nobody could have predicted theportent of that arrest, but since then the names involved have becomehousehold ones. The arresting public prosecutor was called Antonio DiPietro, the arrested of®cial, Mario Chiesa. Within months, after a succes-sion of confessions and arrests, the whole Tangentopoli system at Milanhad begun to unravel. Within ®fteen months, the Socialists, the ChristianDemocrats and the ex-communists had been humiliated in local elec-tions. A political ruling class had been removed (with a few exceptions),and a relatively new political grouping, the Northern League, wasrunning Milan by June 1993. Italy's `quiet revolution' had begun, in whatwas to become known as its `ex-moral capital', Milan.30

It is worth taking some time to examine the origins of the `moralcapital myth' in the light of the events after 1992. The myth of Milan asItaly's moral capital began to take concrete shape with the industrialexposition of 1881. This huge explosion into the public sphere ± the Expo(l'Esposizione nazionale delle arti e delle industrie) covered an area of162,000 square metres and over 8,000 businesses were represented inrooms of `new machines' and `galleries of work' ± was a consciousattempt to demonstrate and spread this `myth'. Huge volumes werepublished to coincide with the Expo ± most notably the comprehensivesurvey of all aspects of the city and its industry in Mediolanum. But whatwas the content of the idea of a `moral capital'? On the one hand, Milanwas the true capital because Rome was not ± the myth was a negativeassessment of the contribution of Rome and the south to Italy's industrialprogress. Milan was modern, industrious, hard-working, honest, pro-ductive; Rome was corrupt, unproductive, lazy and pre-modern. Romewas the political capital, Milan the real driving force of the nation, itsmoral heart.31 Yet the myth was also a celebration of these values inthemselves ± a series of character-traits and concrete realities pertainingto the Milanese worker, entrepreneur and industrialist ± once again,modernity, hard work, thrift, legality, the self-made man (Pirelli was theultimate example, his ®rst small factory was opened in the city in 1872,

30 For an intelligent and synthetic account of the state of the inquests in 1997, see G.Barbacetto, `Mani pulite. La rivoluzione eÁ stanca', Diario della settimana, 18±23 Dec. 1996.By the start of 1997 2,346 people had been investigated by the `clean hands' team, 890had been sent for trial and 713 sentences had been passed, with only 4 per cent beingabsolved.

31 See G. Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale. Letteratura e pubblicistica a Milano fra Otto eNovecento (Milan, 1982), ch. 7.

From boomtown to bribesville 405

by 1920 his plants occupied a vast sector of the northern urbanperiphery). In Milan `here by day there is always much to do: people go,come back, rush, make themselves busy, they study and they work'.32 Inaddition, Milan was a moral capital because of its cultural strength andits intellectual classes ± the Corriere della Sera, the publishing houses,the writers and poets ± and its scientists, its universities, its engineers.Milan was the city of urban planning, of order, of productive intellec-tuals, the only real Italian city and the only European city in Italy ± a citynot of no government, but of good government. Not everything wasreduced to money and work and the moral `correctives' introduced bythe most powerful urban socialist reformist movement in Italy ± with itsvast network of welfare institutions ± meant that capitalism, it wasargued, had a human face at Milan. The moral capital ideal was thus anorganic mix of dynamism, modernity, gesellschaft-values, paternalism,collective enterprise and humanity. For all these reasons, and despite thedark side of Milan revealed in journalistic inquests such as Milanosconosciuta (Unknown Milan) in 1880, `Milan, twenty years on fromUni®cation, was secure that it really was the ``moral capital of Italy'''.33

Since the 1880s, what Spinazzola has called `the only serious ideolo-gical myth, not empty and rhetorical, elaborated by the Italian bour-geoisie after uni®cation . . . the myth of Milan, the myth of the ``moralcapital''' ± has entered into crisis on numerous occasions.34 Fascism,although born in Milan, made Rome the centre of its political andplanning projects. A variant on the myth was reproposed during the war,when Milan became the `capital of the resistance' and later a model ofreconstruction and honest local administration. As the `capital of themiracle', the myth became reality for hundreds of thousands of migrantswho ¯ooded to the city in search of work. Milan's moral elements ±dynamism, hard work, innovation ± were once again at the centre ofItaly's development. The Tangentopoli scandals brought the whole ques-tion to the centre of political and intellectual debate. The loss of industryand its proletariat had already left many of the virtues of the myth intatters. The 1980s Craxian boom was the reverse image of that of 1881 ± aboom where money took precedence over work, where form was farmore central than content, where waste was exalted and `greed wasgood'. Milan as Tangentopoli was, as many commentators have pointedout, an ex-moral capital.35 The values of `MilanesitaÁ' had been crushedby those of the protagonists of Milano da bere. With the judicial inquestand the scandals themselves, the situation became more complex. Somesaw the origins of the clean-up in the city as con®rmation that the moral

32 D. Papa, Giornali e giornalisti . . ., Mediolanum 1 (1881), cited in Rosa, Il mito, 42.33 Ibid., 21.34 V. Spinazzola, `La ``Capitale Morale''. Cultura milanese e mitologia urbana', Belfagor, 3

(1981), 317.35 For example G. Barbacetto and E. Vetri, Milano degli scandali (Bari, 1991), xiv, xv and 47.

406 Urban History

capital's values ± at least amongst a virtuous elite ± were still in place.Other analyses detected the ®nal death of the myth in the arrests ofleading Milanese politicians and businessmen, and the exposure ofsystems of corruption in the city. In reality, the myth lives on, and is notlinked to one industrial epoch. Milan is hard-working, productive andinnovative ± and is seen as such by commentators and most Italians ±despite the end of industrial work in the city. Milan is certainly an ex-industrial centre, but many of the myths which began to take shape morethan a hundred years ago are still going strong, and represent importantreference points for any analysis of the city and the changes in its image.

Despite appearances, therefore, the relationship between the Tangento-poli scandals and the image of Milan is a complicated one which haschanged over time. One indicator of this change is the word itself ±Tangentopoli. Dictionaries from 1991 only carry the word tangente,de®ned as `a bene®t extorted following bene®ts or illicit favours'.36 By1992 the word Tangentopoli was in circulation and in daily use ± innewspapers, on television, in conversations. At ®rst, the word seemed tobe linked to Milan itself, to the territorial nature of the city and its systemof corruption. Milan was Tangentopoli (with a capital T). Very quickly,however, the word's meaning began to shift. Other scandals began tobreak out across Italy ± in Rome, in Naples, in Turin. Tangentopoli nowbegan to lose its capital letter, as it began to be associated with the capitalcity. It now signi®ed a more dislocated system of corruption, a period oftime, or (later on) the speci®c period of the inquest and its domination ofpublic opinion. Thus the phrases `uscire da Tangentopoli' (exit from . . .)or `dopo (after) Tangentopoli' or `durante (during) Tangentopoli' becamepossible. Dalla Chiesa, one of the ®rst to expose the corrupt system, haswritten of Milan as the `capital of Tangentopoli'.37 For Sergio Turone therewere `other Italian Tangentopolis'.38 With time, the `opoli' began to beused in a similar way to `Gate' in the US, as `the mother of all scandals'.Thus, in 1996 there was `af®ttopoli' linked to rent-controlled politician'shouses (mainly in Rome) and in 1997 `medicopoli' associated with amassive `false prescriptions' scandal in Milan, involving 270 doctors and80 thousand million lire.

At ®rst, therefore, and perhaps for more than a year (until July 1993)Tangentopoli was associated with Milan. But the messages transmittedabout the city as Tangentopoli were contradictory and confusing. On theone hand, the city was identi®ed with corruption ± with a system ofbribes ± and with the arrests and humiliation of its political andeconomic elite ± Craxi, the ex-mayors Pillitteri and Tognoli, the buildingtycoon Ligresti, the heads of all the major municipal corporations, fromthe airport authority to the transport administrations. The key Milanese

36 Lo Zingarelli (Milan, 1991), 1958.37 N. dalla Chiesa, Milano-Palermo. La nuova resistenza, ed. P. Calderoni (Rome, 1993), 163.38 S. Turone, Politica ladra. Storia della corruzione in Italia. 1861±1992 (Bari, 1993), 356.

From boomtown to bribesville 407

institution here was San Vittore ± the ancient and crumbling prison nearthe city centre ± where most of the arrestees were taken and where anumber of interrogations took place (it may be too early to assess thelong-term in¯uence of these repetitive images on the corruption-Milan-bribesville connection in the public mind). On the other hand, however,Milan was taking a lead in cleaning up the widespread corruption whichall Italians knew was to be found right across Italy. Here the image was adifferent one ± the investigating prosecutors Di Pietro and his colleagues± and the stock footage of the huge and imposing Fascist-built Palazzo diGiustizia, with its permanent group of journalists and TV camerasoutside. At one time or another, from 1992 onwards, the most powerful®gures in Italy were all to pass through those of®ces or courtrooms inCorso di Porta Vittoria, two minutes walk from Piazza del Duomo.

The shift from the importance of the ®rst image ± Milan as Tangentopoli± to the second ± Milan as centre of the `Clean Hands' investigations ±had other contributing factors. First, much of the blame was laid at thedoor of the parties ± particularly the PSI and DC (who were effectivelydestroyed by the scandals) ± and not at that of `Milan'. Hence, thedemonization of the Milano da bere period as a negative one, often bythose who had been enthusiastic supporters or at the very least passiveadherents to the myth. Second, many intellectuals began to argue thatMilan was the only place where such an inquest could have been begunand had so much effect ± that `mani pulite' proved the extent of legality inMilan compared to the rest of the country and the strength of thevirtuous elites there.39 Third, the central role of the Northern Leagues inboth the downfall of the old system and the management of the newtended to shift the blame again away from Milan. The Lega's insistenceon `Rome the thief ' (Roma ladrona) moved the focus of attack away fromMilan and the north towards the capital and the south. The ethnicaspects of the Leagues' propaganda and mobilization are not to beunderestimated. In some cases, the Leagues attempted to link theincidence of scandals to the ethnic origins of those involved. Finally, withtime the focus of the scandals shifted away from Milan to other, morestereotypically `corrupt' cities. The particular nature of the enormouspersonal corruption involving the health ministry was an importantmoment, as was the indictment of seven times Prime Minister Andreottifor Ma®a links in 1993. By 1994, Tangentopoli was no longer identi®ed inthe public mind either with Milan or even with speci®c territorialphenomena, but with a generalized system of corruption linked tospeci®c personalities and certain political parties.

Certain militants, journalists and intellectuals took a different view.Pressure groups like SocietaÁ Civile attempted to paint a picture of a cityleft fundamentally untouched by the investigations, of an urban territory

39 V. Foa and P. Ginsborg (eds), Le virtuÁ della Repubblica (Milan, 1994).

408 Urban History

controlled by the Ma®a where there had been no real moral or politicalrevolt, from below, against corruption. According to these critics Milanwas (and is) a sinister place, an ex-moral capital, which rejected the chanceof real change (speci®cally in the 1993 mayoral elections) in favour ofcontinuity and closure. The most eloquent exponents of this position arethose who ®rst identi®ed and spoke out against corruption in the mid-1980s. There is no doubt that these analyses certainly contain elements oftruth. The attack against corruption began in the Palazzo di Giustizia,not on the streets, and those ready to demonstrate against their politi-cians were, even at the height of the scandals, very few. The problemwith this picture of Milan is the confusion between popular support forthe scandals and a shift to the Left politically. Milan is a right-wing city(and this includes all of its four populations) ± and it has become so inresponse to deep economic, social and cultural changes which havetaken place since the mid-1970s. The backing for the judges, which hadnot been demonstrated via `left-wing' forms of political protest ± such asdemonstrations ± was clear from the voting patterns after 1992 whichsaw the near-disappearance of the PSI and DC (and the decline of the oldLeft).40 The failure of the Milan-as-Ma®a image to make any impact onpublic opinion derives partly from a particular view of the Ma®a linkedto the south, and partly from the everyday experiences of Milan's fourpopulations. The deep crisis of the traditional Milanese Left, triggered bythe precipitous decline of its main social reference point ± the industrialworking class ± was not halted by the corruption scandals after 1992.Milan remains one of the few cities out of reach of the broad centre-leftL'Ulivo coalition, and the Milano da bere period was not just aboutcorruption, but also represented a sea change in values, society andculture in the city and its hinterland.

Year zero: social, economic and cultural change

As the ®lm director Paolo Virzi has written, `The crisis of the factory isalso a crisis for the form of cities, of their landscape, of their make-up'.41

The most important, traumatic and dramatic change to Milan ± itslandscape, its identity, its rhythms ± has been rapid and completedeindustrialization and industrial decentralization. The latter processbegan in the 1960s, the former in the 1970s. By the 1980s all the historicfactories in the city and its hinterland had closed or employed tinyfractions of their former workforce. The names are like a litany (and theirfounders are all buried in that extraordinary temple of industrialachievement ± Milan's Monumental Cemetery) ± Pirelli, Falck, Breda,

40 In the 1993 local elections, the PSI vote fell to 2.5 per cent (it had never been lower than14 per cent since 1945). Before long, the central of®ces of the Party and another 37 partysections had been closed.

41 L'Espresso, 25 Mar. 1994.

From boomtown to bribesville 409

Alfa Romeo. In the 1950s the biggest employer in the city was Pirelli,today it is the Comune di Milano.42 Bovisa, the working-class neighbour-hood par excellence, saw its last big factory close in 1996. Industrial jobs inthe Province of Milan fell by 280,000 between 1971 and 1989. Thoseemployed in factories with over 500 employees fell to 163,991 by 1991(the ®gure in 1981 had been 272,507).43 Employees in businessesemploying between two and nine employees rose from 496,003 (32 percent of the total) to 656,805 (41 per cent) between 1981 and 1989. By 1989,the main union federation in the city ± the CGiL ± could count on only90,971 members, a fall of 41.11 per cent from 1981. In 1997, in an initiativeheavy with symbolism, Fiat, the owners of Alfa Romeo, offered itsfactory for sale ± with one proviso, for every 200 square metres boughtthe purchaser was obliged to employ an ex-worker.44

Many of these factory closures were accompanied by heroic rearguardstruggles, in which the formerly militant working class went through themotions of opposition without any hope of success. Symptomatic of thesemoments of loss for the city and for those employed in these famousindustries was the dispute at Innocenti. Here a worker, Ubaldo Urso,climbed to the top of the huge factory chimney and threatened to throwhimself off if a number of sackings were not withdrawn.45 In reality, mostof those laid off by these closures were re-employed or promised re-employment. Many ex-workers have formed extremely successful smallindustries and service businesses, often in co-operation with their ex-colleagues. Nonetheless, it is clear that the end of so much large-scalefordist production, which had dominated the physical and economiclandscape in the city for so long, represented a dif®cult moment. Nolonger would the streets be ®lled by thousands of blue-suited workers ona shift change (even street signs ± with their warnings of uscita operai!(workers' exit) ± became redundant). No longer would Milan be asso-ciated with factory work, with smoke and chimneys. A new identity wasin construction. As Giuseppe Turani has written, Milan is now

`a city in which nobody really produces anything (not bolts, not saucepans, notbicycles, and certainly not cars) . . . they produce thoughts, opinions, shows, legalcases, advertising campaigns, ®nance . . . a city of talents . . . different from a city oftens of thousands of blue collar workers . . . Milano was something precise, well-de®ned: it was a great industrial centre, with a strong working class and a strongruling class. Both were proud of their own work and their own missions'.46

42 In 1985 in the Province there were 70,000 teachers, 32,000 people were employed inhealth services and 66,000 in local authorities (and in Milan itself 26,000): Foti, Milano, 64.

43 Yet 75,000 jobs were created between 1971 and 1989 in the Province, and by the 1990sthere were 450,000 small and medium-sized businesses in the city and its province: Foti,Milano, 10 and 30.

44 `Vendesi ex Alfa con operai', La Repubblica, 1 Oct. 1997.45 `La cittaÁ senz'anima ma con tante speranze': L'UnitaÁ, 3 Feb. 1992. Urso's story is told in

detail in Corrado Stajano's Il Disordine (Turin, 1993), 88±102.46 `I milanesi senza Milano', La Repubblica, 30 Dec. 1998.

410 Urban History

For the traditional Left, and for the ex-working class, the period `of thebig factory' began to be viewed with nostalgia. In a strange ideologicalshift, the same critics who had stigmatized the fordist factory as a darksatanic organization where men were reduced to beasts now pined forthe return of those factories.47 A kind of `new apocalypticism' began totake shape on the Left, which started to characterize the `1980s' in thesame way as critics had stigmatized the boom, thirty years before. Thisromanticization of the positive effects supposedly produced by bigindustry ± community, production, even legality ± was accompanied bya reappraisal of the ®rst economic miracle. Where once the immigrationof the 1950s was described as a disaster for the country and for theimmigrants, it was now seen as an example of virtue, of naive productivehonesty. The contradictions of the momentous changes of the 1980s and1990s were largely ignored in favour of a conservative, nostalgic andmyopic view of the past and the present.

The Milanese ruling class was transformed, as its famous workingclass disappeared. Media barons (Berlusconi), fashion designers(Armani, FerreÂ, Versace, Dolce e Gabbana), advertising companies(800,000 TV ads are produced every year in the city), ®nanciers (Milan ishost to 30 per cent of the national head of®ces of all banks with apresence in Italy) replaced the old industrial classes. A whole series ofnew jobs began to dominate the city ± most linked to the arrival of cityand business users and to the mass media. By 1987, Milan could callupon 800 DJs, 1,200 make-up artists and 4,700 ®lm dubbers.48 Thelandscape of the city changed, as huge empty spaces opened up wherefactories once produced cars, tyres and trains. Many factories weredemolished, some were re-used, or have elaborate plans built aroundthem (above all the Bicocca Project at the ex-Pirelli area). Others were leftto crumble, becoming the only available housing for thousands ofimmigrants.

At the same time, Milan's populations began to change. Since 1969 theresident, `sleeping' population has been in decline ± and ageing. Milannow has a negative birth rate (in 1990, for example, 9,529 babies wereborn in the city and there were over 15,000 deaths) and three grand-parents for every child. By 1997 25 per cent of this population were over65 and the average age of Milan's residents was 45. Of these pensioners,31.4 per cent live alone, as do 42 per cent of all residents. There are farmore resident Milanese over eighty than there are under ®ve.49 At thesame time, this resident population has been shifting away from thecentre of the city (a long-term process). Meanwhile, the other `popula-47 Foti describes the big factory in essentially positive terms as a `place of solidaristic tissue

for the working class, seat of democratic anima and con¯ict, territory of socialisation andpolitical and cultural education, important social stabiliser': Milano, 11.

48 Ibid., 113.49 Nearly 70,000 as opposed to 55,462: C. Lanzetti, `I cambiamenti nell struttura della

popolazione e nei comportamenti familiari', in Zucchetti, Milano '94, 29±56.

From boomtown to bribesville 411

tions' have been stable (commuters ± with far fewer workers and farmore service employees) or on the increase (city users and especiallybusiness users). This pattern of change creates its own problems andpatterns with, at night, the city resembling a form of urban drive-intheme park with its own, semi-forbidden, attractions.

In addition to these changes, which are cited time and again asevidence of the generalized crisis of Milan, the national mix of the urbanpopulation has also been changing dramatically. The 1980s and 1990ssaw the arrival of consistent numbers of immigrants from outsideEurope. This `®fth population', a combination of city users, commutersand residents (often without legal status) has probably found more of awelcome at Milan than elsewhere in Italy, not least because of thedemand for cheap, `dirty' labour in Milan's enormous service sector.This is not to say that there have not been tensions. Immigrants have alsobeen at the centre of an incipient urban cultural renaissance. The impactof Milan's second mass immigration in the last ®fty years is oftenforgotten in the interminable debates over the city's ubiquitous `crisis'(partly because, as with the city users, immigrants are often absent fromany of®cial statistics). The immigrant presence despite a static housingmarket is also evidence of the dynamism of the resident population (theactual sleeping population) despite evidence to the contrary from mostof®cial sources.50

Conclusion: the crisis of image

Milan's image is now in deep crisis. The Milano da bere formula maskeda system built upon systematic patronage and corruption. The scandalsunravelled by Milanese judges failed to provide the city with new hopeor, in the longer run, a new ruling class. The traumatic deindustrializa-tion of the city left scars which cannot heal overnight, or even overdecades. Many of these changes mirrored those in other cities, but therehave been crucial differences. Milan is no Detroit, and no Turin.Economically, the city has relaunched itself despite the lack of supportfrom political actors. Immense industries have their world centres inthe city: fashion and design, but also publishing, advertising andcommericial television. Yet the social and cultural bonding linked toindustrial society and classical work-urban relationships has gone, andmany are physically and socially excluded from the riches of post-industrialism. It remains to be seen whether those who promote the citycan reinvent an image which goes beyond the merely ephemeral, andwhich begins to tackle the concrete wastelands of the city's endless andbleak periphery.

50 For a detailed analysis of these developments see J. Foot, `Immigration and the city.Milan and mass immigration, 1950±1998', Modern Italy, 4, 2 (1999), 159±72.

412 Urban History