Saturday, January 14, 2023

The District With By Far The Highest GDP In Europe? It’s In Italy. In Milan.

Posted by Peter Quennell


Context

A 15-minute walking tour of Porta Nuova in Milan.

This is the richest single district within any city in the European Union. With a GDP of over 400 billion euro, and the City of London no longer in the club, no other single district in any city in Europe comes close

It is also right now the most sustainable neighborhood in the entire world.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/14/23 at 02:32 PM in Hoaxes Sollecito etc

Comments

Perhaps it says more about others: how the rest has gone down during the last couple of years. And yes, the Russian war games being played in Ukraine.

South Asia has suffered a lot in the last two years. But just see the report:

https://www.telegraphindia.com/business/indias-breaking-all-records-for-buying-russian-oil-but-who-is-the-surprise-buyer/cid/1910044

who can stop a good business?

I am sure you will forgive me if I am sounding pessimistic.I do not think we have gone over the pandemic. We need to struggle for a couple of years more.

Posted by chami on 01/15/23 at 10:16 AM | #

Hi Chami

Spot-on! I suggest that there are two great development challenges in the world, as we have often discussed.

1. Sparking new systems that create great economic surges. Think Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China (twice), Japan (twice), the UK, the Central and South American civilizations. And maybe above all: Rome.

2. Starting afresh, preferably before those value curves have run their course. Escaping the “stickiness” of mature systems and mindsets as described in The Innovator’s Dilemma, the breakthrough book I most commend.

You describe the stickiness very well there, and how hard it is to make systems change (eg to stay on top of COVID) piecemeal (what was thought to be the name of the game when I went to work for the UN.)

Neo-liberalism (trickle down, austerity) is still the ideology of the US’s far right (and the UK’s governing party, and the World Bank) but adherents are a dwindling, aging, results-free crowd now.

(Neo-liberalism is right in one very narrow sense: there IS a supply-side problem. But it is that of fresh new systems and creative groups, not of incentivizing a few billionaires as their pet power-mad economists suggest.)

I’m pretty positive for the first time in years. Legacy systems are not much loved. Democracies are fighting back, and seemingly almost everybody who is not yet middle aged takes readily to searching for new value and working on systems in groups.

I see this as the career that Meredith could have had, of course. Chami, you have students, right? If so, do them all a favor, and buy every one a copy of that book. You’ll save India that way. 😊

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/15/23 at 10:32 AM | #

Porta Nuova $400-plus billion GDP proves that, with a fresh playing field, the Italians still have the knack. And its population is not even a million and a half.

For comparison greater New York and greater Tokyo each have GDPs well over $1 trillion.

But the population of greater New York is 22 million, and of greater Tokyo it is 37 million. So comparing apples to apples:

Porta Nuova is the leading district in Europe. It seems to me that globally only downtown Tokyo and downtown New York may have it beat.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/15/23 at 10:53 AM | #
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