When a crisis comes to your city and the reason sleeps
In Bologna, the city’s “magnificent and progressive fortunes” (Giacomo Leopardi’s ironic verse) can be glimpsed in the Tecnopolo Data Manifattura, an international center for Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. If optimism about technological progress is forced, we lose sight of essential goods. Among these is well-being, which goes beyond survival. It is a general state of health and happiness. Bologna will be progressive if it focuses on holistic health, as defined by the World Health Organization as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being,” for a harmonious life, rather than merely the absence of disease. Well-being includes that essential good: the home where we live. “Home, sweet home!” is the Italian translation of the title of the American song “Home! Sweet Home!”, written in 1823 by John Howard Payne and Henry Rowley Bishop. The emotional bond is delicate, and the sense of comfort, stability, and absence of anxiety that comes from being in one’s own home is a pleasant experience. Well, in the city, “sweet home” is turning into “salty home,” overly flavored by skyrocketing rent prices. Moving along this path, we will encounter the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.
Conquest is the knight on a white horse with a bow in his hand, the B&B. Using digital services, Conquest collects abundant data that feeds on it and whose reach continues to expand. This is the surveillance capitalism that scrutinizes homes and commodifies their data. This gives rise to commercial practices that extract value through short-term rentals. Long-term leases are torn up and replaced with short-term ones for the benefit of tourists. Thus, homes are conquered.
War, the second horseman, astride a red steed, brandishes a large sword. This symbolizes money. With this knight, Bologna enters the era of Econocracy, as predicted by sociologist Edgar Morin: an economy governed by money, an instrument of power even more than a means of exchange, which ignores our legitimate aspirations for an autonomous and communal life. Prices, money, and profits are magic potions whose scent is an irrepressible passion that drives apartment owners to war with their regular tenants. War shows us Bologna as Zenith. This imaginary American city of the 1920s, described by Sinclair Lewis, was home to George F. Babbitt, the prototype of the real estate agent whom War so admires. Both characters ignore the collateral damage the conflict inflicts on the needs and aspirations of many residents.
Famine, the third knight, on the black horse, holds a scale that symbolizes food shortages and rising prices. Skyrocketing rents, paid by tenants to ward off the invasion of B&Bs, force them to significantly reduce their food expenses as well. The Antoniano cafeteria and similar institutions must intervene to prevent malnutrition.
Death is the last knight, riding the greenish horse, following the other knights and representing cultural and democratic death. The adoption of B&B-style values and lifestyles is taking precedence over indigenous ones. Indifference to Bologna’s cultural heritage is evident. Democratic ideals are fading. As we’ve noted in previous articles, Galileo rented rooms to students not only to supplement his professorial salary, but above all to help them develop as individuals who utilize their intelligence to generate ideas. Fast forward to the present day, in San Francisco, only permanent residents are allowed to host short-term guests. To be a permanent resident, you must live in the unit for at least 275 nights per year. Owners who live in San Francisco for less than that amount of time are not allowed to rent short-term. Renting out your accommodation for more than 90 days incurs a daily fine of $484, which increases to $968 for repeat offenders.
These two examples alone raise questions about what hasn’t been done so far in Bologna and Italy. Fear of the slumber of reason, which breeds monsters by turning to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, seems to be absent.
