Mayor Raggi gave herself 7,5. Her management team essentially gave her a "6-political" but it is clear that they do not judge her a good administrator, rather a problem. Finally, Roman citizens, at least according to the polls of a few months ago, do not seem to give him enough. There is who, like Franco Locatelli on these columns, with biting irony, gives him 10 cum laude as proof of the inconsistency of the grillini when they govern. The city is not cleaner, or more orderly, or with better transportation.
In reality Rome asks for more than an efficient administration: it asks for a city project with which to face the new century and at the same time heal old and new wounds (among them, the spread of organized crime). The only sign of attention (but decidedly not innovative and quickly revoked) of the Raggi junta on problems that are not exclusively management of the city, apart from the bullshit of the circular economy, was recorded in the crucial matter of territorial planning: he appointed as councilor a top-level urban planner, albeit a representative of the "old planning school", Paolo Berdini, except not to follow him on the orientation in favor of the Olympics and then push him to resign due to dissent in the stadium affair, judged by Berdini as a sale to speculation.
However, it must be said that even on the other side of the political scene there is an absolute void. In the debate around the election of the secretary of the Roman Federation of the PD there is no trace of an idea of the city, of a serious reflection on the unfortunate urban planning choices of the Veltronian season, of the possible interventions to arrest its decline, taking into account the disastrous financial situation where the debt itself is of uncertain amount. And the forces that can push for change are uncertain, since those that have always been linked to land rent cannot be considered as such: on the other hand, if there are no ideas, it is difficult to mobilize voters. Someone dreams of a Roman Macron: but they are precisely dreams.
Nor are there any significant signals from Forza Italia. In the meantime, the constituency of the grillini, represented by voters who live in districts far from the centre, by workers and the unemployed as well as by municipal employees, supported by the new junta, cannot fail to take advantage of the hitherto persistent weakness of the traditional political offer. This is indirectly confirmed by the consensus gathered in the province (in Guidonia and Ardea, a few kilometers from Rome, the grillini won the ballot). It is by no means certain that Raggina's ignorance is enough to cause Casaleggio and its associates to lose the next elections in the capital.
Thus the capital's economy continues to rely on the development model based on tourism which seems to have no alternatives. We offer the tourist who spends a few days in the Eternal City more or less what they ask and expect: colors and monuments of incomparable beauty and "typical" (so to speak) catering in every corner of the historic centre, now a large mass refectory. Property prices are falling more than in the rest of the country, an unequivocal sign of the loss of attraction.
Thus the city continues to occupy a position very distant from global cities in international rankings; among the many available I mention that of the IESE which aims to measure the quality of life in the big cities of the world and if and how they are preparing for future sustainability: Rome is eighty-first (forty places behind Milan). With this local political situation there is no need to be optimistic about the possibility of going back up.
