Inside Italy: Is the ‘efficient’ north really a better place to live in than the south?

Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip from Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Is northern Italy really a better place to live in than the south?

Italy’s financial newspaper of record Il Sole 24 Ore published its latest quality of life survey earlier this week, crowning Bergamo, Lombardy, the ‘best’ Italian city to live in.

Besides major year-on-year drops for a number of big cities including Florence, Rome and Turin, the findings showed a marked north-south divide in quality of life standards, with just one southern city – Sardinia’s capital Cagliari – figuring in the top 50. 

Furthermore, all of the 20 worst-ranked cities (positions 87 to 107) belonged to southern regions.

These results may not come as much of a surprise as southern cities consistently fare much worse than their northern counterparts in quality of life rankings and reports. 

But is life in the north really better than in the south?

While available data does suggest that public services ranging from healthcare to public administration to public transport are more efficient in the north (and I do not intend to dispute it), I think that some quality of life features can’t be measured. 

Aspects like the hospitality and friendliness of locals, natural and architectural beauty, cultural customs, culinary traditions, and slow living can’t really be put into an Excel spreadsheet.

And I believe that many parts of the south outperform the north when it comes to these piaceri della vita (‘pleasures of life’).

All of this is to say that while surveys can give us an accurate idea of where public services work better or job markets are more robust, there’s more to ‘quality of life’ than mere numbers. 

I know plenty of people who wouldn’t trade their life in the south for anything in the world, and are adamant that they could never put up with the hectic pace or crowds of some northern cities.

But I also have friends in the north who say they could never deal with less efficient public transport, healthcare or public administration in some parts of the south.

Ultimately, I think quality of life may have just as much to do with subjective sensibilities, tastes and needs as it does with concrete public services.

Will Milan’s ban on outdoor smoking ever work?

Milan made international headlines this week after city authorities announced that smoking outdoors will be almost entirely banned from January 1st, 2025 in a bid to improve air quality and clamp down on second-hand smoke.

The ban will encompass “all public or public-use areas”, with smoking outdoors only allowed in isolated spots where smokers can keep a distance of at least 10 metres from other people. Those caught flouting the rules will face fines of up to €240, according to local authorities. 

Unsurprisingly, the announcement caused quite a stir among residents, with many taking to social media to express their views on the upcoming ban.

While some backed the new rules, saying they should be extended to the rest of the country, others condemned them as “insane”. Some users even went as far as saying that the new regulations were “fascist” and typical of a “dictatorship”. 

As a long-time Milan resident who’s found himself practically enveloped in a thick haze of secondhand smoke in countless social settings and situations – from bar terraces to football stadium stands to public transport stops – I think the ban is far from a totalitarian rule arbitrarily limiting people’s freedom.

I believe that smokers’ freedom to light up outdoors should only stretch so far as the point where it starts breaching my right to breathe clean air. And I sure welcome the city council’s commitment to cracking down on secondhand smoke.

That said, I’m afraid that the ban may be very hard to enforce, if not completely unenforceable. 

Let’s start with the obvious: actually implementing a ban of such scale in a metropolitan area as big as Milan’s would call for the deployment of police forces and resources that no Italian (or perhaps European) city could reasonably muster up.

But if authorities are banking on strict rules and steep fines acting as a deterrent (which I think they are), I sure hope that the new ban will have better luck than existing restrictions. 

In January 2021, authorities introduced rules prohibiting smoking in a number of open-air public spaces, including parks, playgrounds, public transport stops and sports grounds. 

But you couldn’t possibly glean that such rules exist if you walked into any one of the above-mentioned spaces in any part of the city. 

Will the upcoming full ban on outdoor smoking have more success than current rules? Chi vivrà, vedrà…(only time will tell).

Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news and talking points in Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.