Bars filled with revelers spilling onto congested streets. Takeaway drink consumed by drunk tourists and students. Deafening volumes in once-quiet residential neighborhoods long after midnight.
When Milan authorities embarked years ago on plans to promote the city as a lively destination by taking advantage of its reputation as the Italian capital of fashion and design, the resulting noise and noisy overcrowding may not have been quite what they had in mind. .
Now, after years of complaints and a series of lawsuits, the city passed an ordinance to strictly limit the sale of takeout food and drinks after midnight (and not much later on weekends) in “busy” areas. ”, a Spanish term that Italians use adopted to describe outdoor nightlife. It will come into effect next week and will be valid until November 11.
Outdoor seating at restaurants and bars will also end at 12:30 a.m. on weekdays and an hour later on weekends, so people who want to party longer will have to do so indoors.
Companies that have benefited from Milan’s success in promoting themselves as a fashion city complain.
A trade association complained that the ordinance was so strict that Italians could no longer take an evening walk with an ice cream in hand.
Marco Granelli, Milan councilor responsible for public safety, said such fears were exaggerated. Eating ice cream on the go wouldn’t be a problem, he said.
The ordinance, he said, was intended to address “behavior affecting residential neighborhoods” and takeout alcoholic beverages, which are seen as the main reason late-night revelers linger on certain streets and squares. “It is clear that ice cream, pizza or brioche do not create overcrowding,” she said.
Marco Barbieri, secretary general of the Milan branch of the Italian retailers association Confcommercio, said his group would fight the ordinance, which he estimated would affect about 30 percent of the city’s 10,000 restaurants and bars. The new rules, he said, would penalize retailers for poor customer behavior.
But residents have been complaining about Milan’s nightlife for some time.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Gabriella Valassina of the Navigli Committee, one of several citizen groups formed to address the rising crowd numbers (and decibel levels) in Milan’s historic neighborhoods.
He detailed a list of complaints: noise pollution (peaks of 87 decibels, well above the 55 allowed, according to municipal limits); streets so packed with revelers that it is difficult to walk or even get to the front door; an exodus of fed up locals that is changing the character of the picturesque neighborhoods.
With the new rules, the city has allocated 170,000 euros, just over $180,000, to help bar owners hire private security services to prevent revelers from loitering on the streets in front of their establishments. And he is working with police unions to modify contracts to allow more officers to work night shifts to enforce the new rules.
The city may have been motivated to act more forcefully after local and national court decisions in Italy sided with residents who sued city administrations for failing to control the nighttime chaos.
Elena Montafia, spokesperson for the Milano Degrado neighborhood association, is one of 34 residents of the Porta Venezia neighborhood who sued the municipal government and requested compensation for damages, alleging that inaction on their complaints had put their health at risk. .
“Living in Milan has become really difficult,” she said, adding that it was only after a decade of pleading with unresponsive local administrators that she and other residents decided to go the legal route.
Still, she and others doubted the new ordinance would change much and that enforcement would be a problem.
“When there are so many people around, there is no law that forces them to return home; “It’s impossible,” especially since the crowds usually far outnumber police officers, said Fabrizio Ferretti, manager of Funky, a bar in Navigli, one of the affected neighborhoods. He acknowledged that he was persona non grata with the owners of the apartments above his bar.
The situation Milan finds itself in today comes after years of efforts by leaders to expand the city’s image from Italy’s financial and industrial capital to one that is more service-oriented and tourist-friendly.
A succession of municipal governments has also encouraged the development of the city’s less central neighborhoods, said Alessandro Balducci, professor of urban planning and policy at Politecnico di Milano.
One of the inspirations was Fuorisalone, the extensive network of events related to Milan Design Week, the world’s largest annual global design event, which “brought new life to neighborhoods that were in the shadows,” he said. “Also for the Milanese it was a rediscovery of their city.”
There was also an increase in the number of universities in the city (eight now), as well as design and fashion programs run by private institutes. Milanese universities are also increasingly offering courses in English to broaden their international appeal.
Today, students have replaced many of the workers who once worked in now-closed factories — automobiles, chemicals and heavy machinery — that had turned Milan into an industrial powerhouse, Balducci said.
The University of Milano-Bicocca, for example, opened its doors about 25 years ago on the site of an abandoned Pirelli factory.
That increase in students is clearly evident in terms of how nightlife has evolved, he said.
On top of that, he added, after the coronavirus pandemic, bars and restaurants replaced stores in many neighborhoods, accelerating the change in the face of those areas.
Last year, about 8.5 million visitors came to Milan, not counting those who didn’t stay overnight, according to YesMilano, the city’s tourism site. That figure far exceeded the 3.2 million visitors who slept in Milan in 2004 and the five million who did so in 2016, according to Istat, the national statistics agency.
The Navigli neighborhood, a former working-class area built around two of Milan’s most picturesque remaining canals, has undergone one of the city’s most profound transformations, evolving from a charmingly run-down district crisscrossed by picturesque bridges to a neighborhood modern full of restaurants and bars.
Stores that served residents closed, in part because rising rents and general chaos forced many to leave, including artists and craftsmen, residents say.
“The soul of the neighborhood is very different now,” said Valassina, of the Navigli Committee. “Municipal administrations favored the idea of gentrification, thinking it was a positive objective. Instead, they altered the DNA of the neighborhood.”
On a recent evening, crowds of tourists, students and locals strolled along a canal, passing signs offering beer, wine or cocktails to go. The bars quickly filled up and the crowd moved to the adjacent street, forcing passersby to slalom through the crowd.
Some young revelers said they had doubts about the effectiveness of the new law.
“Young people are going to do what they do anyway; they will find different ways around it,” said Albassa Wane, 24, originally from Dakar, Senegal, who interns at a fashion brand and has lived in Milan for five years.