Back to the Future? Evolutions in Land Management in Neo-Liberal Milan

Land has become the priciest cost factor in the production of housing in large metropolitan regions in Europe. Therefore, the ability of public authorities to control this cost factor appears to be critical in the management of the current conditions of housing crisis engulfing much of the continent’s urban areas. Land-owning and management systems variate across the continent but – almost in all contexts – we have observed a pushed towards the privatization of land, also as a tool to support cities’ growing budget needs. In Italy, an instance of southern European housing systems, the statute of land has always been a politically contested matter as reformist attempts over the time have consistently failed to impose state control over land in the context of development processes. However, the return of the housing questions is leading to a renewed push to discuss land issues in urban development. The paper focuses on the case of Milan, where a consistent neo-liberal approach to spatial planning has been experimented in the last thirty years. Such approach has seen the emergence of an array of new tools aimed at easing the city’s transformation such as the introduction of a homogeneous building index across the entire territory, the development of a building rights’ market and a linked perequation system that allows developers to move building rights to more convenient locations. Under this new regime, land controlled by public actors has been privatized in the context of the implementation of large masterplan at very convenient terms for private developers. This has contributed to the growing attractiveness of the city for international developers, without contributing to ensuring the affordability of the new housing produced. In the context of rising housing costs, the city is currently remobilizing public land to sustain the production of more affordable housing also recurring of devices and tools put apart under the neo-liberal regime, such as public land leasing and cooperative housing. The paper discusses these recent evolutions questioning their abilities to put into question the continuity of the neo-liberal regime in planning and housing.