RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY: THE SOCIAL AND URBAN IMPLICATIONS OF PEOPLE CHANGING LIVING PLACES IN MILAN
(A.A. 2024/25)
Urban and metropolitan populations are constantly on the move. People get in and people get out of cities and their urban regions. They often come from very far, as both national and international migration fluxes target them. And they often go very close, as households look for better and more affordable housing by moving to peripheries, if not outright suburbanizing within the same urban region. This is a matter of residential mobility. By this concept, demographers and sociologists refer to the movement of individuals or households from one residential location to another. It encompasses changes in where people live, the housing types they choose or can afford, and the geographies of their daily lives. Residential mobility can be voluntary, driven by changes in the life paths and preferences of people, or involuntary, due to circumstances like displacement and eviction. And, naturally, it has a lot to do with the social division of space and the inequalities it brings. In the 2024/25 course, students explored the local impacts of residential mobility within the city of Milan by looking at a variety of neighbourhoods, experiencing varied processes of gentrification, densification, or decline.
Reflecting upon the change we bring: gentrification in the Dergano area in Milan.
The Dergano neighbourhood has recently seen an increasing influx of new residents. Historically a destination for first internal and then international immigrants, it is now undergoing gentrification. The neighbourhood’s original village-like character is gradually being lost in the face of ongoing urban transformations. Yet, this sense of community persists and coexists with the changes taking place. This video – through interviews with shop owners, real estate agents and residents – sheds light on the ambiguities, controversies, and perceptions surrounding these processes.
The steady neighbourhood: the peculiar case of the Taliedo area of Milan
Neighbourhoods can be on the move or, alternatively, can be very steady. Studying residential mobility also means studying residential immobility. People can have reasons, intentional but also unintentional, to stay put in certain neighbourhoods. And places too, the building stock they host as well as the norms that regulate the use of it, can be conducive to a certain steadiness. This video explores the case of a post-war Milanese neighbourhood whose population proved to be quite steady over time.
Housing policy and the filtering of urban populations: the case of Lambrate
The district of Lambrate, in Milan, is witnessing a slight increase in the population with Italian citizenship and a decline in the one with foreign citizenship. This has brought observers and local activists to talk about the risk of gentrification. But where are the new residents settling? Are they pushing previous residents out? Looking at what gets built and by whom, the video explores the complex relationship between a changing housing supply and the changing social composition of the neighbourhood.