After the “City 30”, in the wake of the idea of representing the most progressive city in Italy, a peculiar initiative emerges in Bologna. This time it is proposed by the Metropolitan Chamber of Labor of the CGIL of Bologna, which launches “Social investigation into the costs of the city”.
This project, although it shares some ambitions with the concept of Digital Twin, in which the mayor Matteo Lepore and the Municipality of Bologna are investing, stands out for its marked focus on investigation, emphasizing in particular, regarding the CGIL, the social aspect.
The Digital Twin, or digital twin, is a digital replica of a physical system, such as a city, which allows you to simulate, analyze and optimize urban systems. Cities such as Singapore, Amsterdam and Helsinki have adopted this technology to improve urban management, development planning and environmental sustainability. Through the Digital Twin, these cities are able to create more functional, efficient and responsive environments to the needs of citizens, from traffic management to the distribution of energy resources, up to the prevention of environmental risks.
Michele Bulgarelli, secretary of the Chamber of Labor of Bologna, explains to us that the CGIL intends to use a similar approach to develop a plan that investigates the social, cultural and financial aspects of citizens, creating a sort of mapping of the socio-economic fabric of the city.
This approach aims to return, from the collection of data, models based on the real needs and requirements of the citizens of Bologna, drawing from the idea of efficiency and functionality typical of digital twins, but with a focus towards a broader citizen investigation to explore the social, cultural and economic fabric, with the aim of making it available for more inclusive policies aimed at social justice.
Bologna has experienced an enormous change due to the action of the city, in particular its strategic position located between Florence, Milan and Venice, and the Marconi Express railway station guarantee the city a centrality on a tourist level. This centrality has changed the characteristic features of the Emilian capital, transforming it into a sort of Italian tourism hub.
This transformation has been accelerated by tourism and the strong attraction towards wealthier Erasmus students, creating a phenomenon that has already emerged this summer: groups of workers, such as nurses and teachers, who decide to live and work elsewhere, effectively being expelled from the social fabric and economical of the city. The increase in housing costs and the change in the economic fabric, now oriented towards serving a “transient citizenry”, are forcing these professional categories to look for other destinations for their activity.
Furthermore, a strong presence of families made up of singles contributes to an imbalance in services to the detriment of families. It is no coincidence that Bulgarelli talks about the governance of tourism and the phenomenon of growing costs for the new generations as one of the main objectives that this social investigation aims to address.
The project, coordinated by Ires, a CGIL research center with years of experience in social studies, aims to conduct an accurate investigation through a detailed questionnaire. This investigation aims to involve a wide range of subjects, starting from the large pool of members of the CGIL of Bologna, the metropolitan city and Imola, and then extending to students, those under 35, and those groups less represented in the trade unions, such as foreigners and precarious workers.
Bulgarelli explains to us that the CGIL of Bologna intends to adopt this analytical approach to develop a plan that explores the social, cultural and financial aspects of citizens, creating a sort of mapping of the socio-economic fabric of the city. The objective is to use the data collected to create models based on the real needs and requirements of Bolognese citizens.
In addition, a fundamental part of this project is to involve large private individuals in the area in a collective corporate social responsibility initiative. The idea is to ask companies to contribute 1% of the salary base of employees, thus creating a subsidiarity fund intended to support services to citizens, with the aim of improving the liveability of the city, to make Bologna is a more livable, accessible and inclusive city.
The investigation focuses particularly on disparities in access to essential services, such as transport, healthcare, schools and nursery schools, highlighting how these can exacerbate social inequalities. The proposal put forward by the CGIL to modulate the costs of these services based on well-defined economic parameters represents an innovative attempt to make the city more inclusive and fair.
The novelty lies in integrating into the evaluation not only the earnings deriving from work or business, but also property income, including financial and real estate income. This approach emerges from the observation that in Bologna there is a large portion of the population, specifically 108,000 subjects, who declare an income of less than 15,000 euros per year. This data reveals a worrying trend: more and more families are relying on income from income, such as property rental or savings management, to make up their income base.
The CGIL of Bologna therefore aims at a system of access to services that takes into account both of these economic realities, with the aim of guaranteeing equity and sustainability in the provision of public and private services. This model of endemic progressivity, based on extensive data collection, allows us to project an improvement in the quality of life in Bologna, following the principle that the CGIL hopes to implement wherever possible.
Progressivity, understood as an economic model, guarantees the sustainability of the system, emphasizing the ability to respond more effectively to citizens' needs through widespread and intelligent data analysis. This not only increases demand, generating development, but also promotes social and economic progress that goes beyond simple state taxation.
This approach is in stark contrast to the concept of a flat tax, which advocates uniform access to services for all citizens, regardless of their income. While the flat tax and neoliberal policies tend to favor formal equality, ignoring substantial disparities between citizens, the progressive model aims to recognize and mitigate these disparities, ensuring equal access to services and contributing to a more just society.
With the aim of reaching a base of 10,000 users, the Chamber of Labor of Bologna therefore aims to think about innovative models to be extended beyond the borders of the Emilian city, involving the broadest segments of society in an inclusive and constructive dialogue on future direction of cities.
#Bologna #tourism #inequalities #maxisocial #investigation #CGIL
