Paolo Manfredi’s outburst on glistatigenerali.com: today, at 45, he looks around and can no longer find himself in Milan that surrounds him
«Milan, I loved you so much but it’s TIME TO LEAVE EACH OTHER»
# “Milan, I love you but…”
If there is a common thread that dominates a part of the Milanese chronicle in these last months, it is the number of people who manifest two incompatible positions: their love for Milan and the desire to leave this city.
Now is the time of the writer Paolo Manfredi, who delivered his personal outburst to the website “Gli Stati Generali”.
Milanese, Inter fan, 45 years old, he presents himself as “moderately satisfied and rather optimistic”. He is not new to extreme polarizations: he has built his career around his passion for manufacturing and innovation, two seemingly opposite elements.
In an open letter he puts on the table two other very strong feelings, his love for Milan that will probably lead him to leave this city.
Let’s see what are the reasons that lead him to this choice, in some ways dramatic.
# Enogastronomic civilization replaced by “shitty” clubs
Paolo Manfredi’s considerations are inspired by the news of the Pont de Fer definitive closure. The historic Milanese restaurant, «one of the few custodians of aesthetic and Eno gastronomic civilization» in an area that Manfredi today describes as «a theory of the shitty clubs that Navigli have become».
Strong expressions, suggested by equally powerful feelings towards Milan, which the author can express in his reasoning.
Manfredi presents himself as a Milanese Flâneur, who likes to explore the city on foot. In his slow walks, in which he focuses on understanding how Milan is restarting after Covid, he no longer sees the historic venues that were there in 2019 but encounters dehors and new clubs that have in common only “cheap” choices, almost always food related. A discovery that Manfredi considers «not very edifying».
# The monstrous urban stomach that feeds itself with a “cheap” offer
According to Paolo Manfredi, Milan is a “gigantic stomach” if you experience it living on its streets, fed by an endless array of culinary offerings, never diversified. Poke at lunch and aperitivo for dinner, the choices of the youngest.
In his analysis, the 45 year old author rails against the “hit and run” economy, the trend of clubs that open, take advantage of the scary mark-ups and with an average life expectancy of 18 months.
Manfredi then turns his hand to the quality of the products associated with these activities, judging the cocktails to be shoddy.
But is it the demand that creates this supply? Or are the young Milanese who adapt to consume the “cheap” offers?
# The place to be: increasingly less accessible for those who aren’t rich and don’t live downtown
Milan’s problem is not only the decay of its culinary offerings. Milan is “the place to be”, it is the city where people come to study, to build a life project, a family.
But it is a city that, according to Manfredi, drives away from the “area well” all those who do not have the economic strength to stay in the districts that really matters.
The real estate market has restarted, request for housing is very high, as is the economic demand to satisfy it.
Not only the real estate market excludes. According to Paolo Manfredi Milanese politics is creating the conditions to make the simple possession of a car an extra-luxury good, imposing «a colossal violation of market laws», for example by transforming parking lots into boulevards.
# New portions of Milanese (and not) on the sidelines
The core of Paolo Manfredi’s meditation he that Paolo Manfredi gives to the web, is that if this city will continue to grind economy relying on the real estate market that no one dares to question, pre-Covid dynamics will be established again. That is, those in which only those who are potentially rich can afford to buy a house and establish themselves in Milan.
All the others, who have come with the «hope of being ingested by the monstrous city stomach» will either be able to make it or will have to be content and settle a bit on the sidelines.
# Gotta stops and slow down
The outburst author catches a glimpse, in this restart, of a dog biting its own tail. Families and students who come to Milan in search of fortune, but who «spend too much money to remain near the source of that same money».
Gotta stop, slow down and «introduce something that accompanies or modifies events and restarts the engine».
What happened to the project announced by the current Administration, on good jobs for the mid class, what happened to the manufacturing re-launch projects in Milan?
Manfredi asks these questions to an Administration in which he claims to have believed, to have supported, but in which he seems not to find himself today.
So much so that he openly confides that he is preparing to collect all his sweet affection, preferring to love from a certain distance not living in Milan anymore.
As soon as possible.
Thus, he concludes his bitter letter, «But I loved you so much, Milan, and I think it is always better to leave us than never to have met»
Continue reading: The MUSEUM of BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS
LAURA LIONTI
