Shops, the crisis of historic centres. 20% of the total closed
I historical centres of Italian cities are increasingly bare, i shops continue to close and the data is truly alarming, so much so that the president of Confcommercio Carlo Sangalli decided to raise an alarm. “We must intervene immediately, we risk the desertification of cities“. Between 2012 and 2023, in eleven yearsin Italy they are over 111 thousand retail stores disappeared (il 20.2 percent of the total) and 24 thousand street trading activities, partly replaced by accommodation and catering activities (+9,800). A phenomenon much more accentuated in historic centers than in the suburbs. In the 120 municipalities at the center of the analysis in the last 10 years – we read in Il Giornale – the commercial density went from 12.9 shops per thousand inhabitants to 10.9 (-15.3 percent). A sad phenomenon, the B side of the appeal exercised by Piazza San Marcodal Colosseumfrom the Uffizi and the designer shopping of Via Montenapoleone: Venice, Florence, Rome, ultimately also Milan and Naples, cities of more recent tourism, they have centers that are increasingly tourist-friendly.
Read also: “In Sanremo only farmers who are friends of the government. Lollobrigida resigns”
Read also: Putin-Xi phone call, axis against the USA: “They want to contain our strength”
I residents they are disappearing. Venezia is a clear example of this: in 2022 – continues Il Giornale – the city scoured every day by tens of thousands of visitors, is for the first time it fell below 50 thousand inhabitants (to be precise 49,665). In 1951 there were 174,808, more than three times as many. The municipality, which also includes the estuary (Lido, Malamocco, Murano, Burano, Torcello etc.) and the mainland (Mestre, Marghera, Carpenedo etc.) has 253,704 inhabitants, which in 1971 were 363,052. Citizens are replaced by tourists and shops by hotels and b&bs.