Milan: a high price to pay for quality of life. The EIU report

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s new Global Liveability Index 2026 measures the liveability of 173 cities worldwide using thirty indicators grouped into five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and the environment, education, and infrastructure. It is not, therefore, a ranking based on beauty, charm, the ability to attract tourists or to go viral on Instagram. It is a more dispassionate – and therefore more interesting – ranking: it seeks to understand where people live best, not on holiday but in everyday life, the reality of hospitals, schools, transport, safety, public services, air quality, housing, energy, water and telecommunications. Each city is given a score from 1 to 100, and the final result serves to measure the degree of ‘comfort’ a city offers its residents. In 2026, the global average score remained steady at 76.1 out of 100. But behind this apparent stability lie significant shifts: stability is declining, healthcare is improving, Western Europe remains the most liveable region in the world, but is no longer growing as rapidly as it once did, whilst Asia is on the rise. Copenhagen tops the list, ahead of Vienna and Melbourne.

The EIU’s public report does not allow for a precise reconstruction of the positions of Italian cities in the full ranking. Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Florence and Naples do not appear in the public tables dedicated to the top ten cities, the bottom ten, the biggest risers and the biggest fallers. But it is precisely this absence that helps to raise a useful question: what does a ranking such as The Economist’s tell us about urban Italy? It tells us that our country has many desirable cities and few that are truly liveable. It has cities that are loved, visited, photographed and written about, but which are often less capable of transforming beauty into efficiency, heritage into services, culture into accessibility, and quality of life into quality of life for all.

Italy starts with a huge advantage in the most intuitive category: culture and environment. Few nations have a comparable density of museums, theatres, landscapes, historic centres, universities, food, social interactions and street life. But liveability, according to the EIU’s logic, is not the same as wonder. A city can be marvellous yet exhausting. It can be full of monuments yet poorly maintained. It can offer a very high quality of life to those who own a home, have an income and time on their hands, and a low quality of life to those who have to navigate it every day to work, seek medical care, study, take their children to school, look for a flat to rent, catch a train or breathe decent air. And this is where Milan comes in. Milan is the Italian city that comes closest to the global liveability model: infrastructure, universities, hospitals, businesses, airports, the underground, events, culture, human capital and international appeal. If Italy is to identify a city capable of competing with European metropolises, it can look no further than Milan. Milan is the place where the country strives to be more productive, more connected and more modern. It is the city that realised before the others that urban competition is not just between states but between ecosystems: whoever attracts students, talent, capital, start-ups, trade fairs, doctors, researchers, high-end tourists, property investments, creatives, technicians and managers wins a part of the challenge of the future.

The problem is that Milan, precisely because it works so well, has also become the Italian city where the paradox of liveability is most evident. It works very well, but it is very expensive. It offers a great deal, but it is highly selective. It attracts, but it also repels. It creates opportunities, but it constantly raises the price of access to them. And so the question is no longer simply: Is Milan liveable? The question becomes: Is Milan liveable for whom? For an international professional, for a couple with two high incomes, for those who bought a home twenty years ago, for those working in the wealthiest sectors, Milan is probably the most efficient city in Italy. For a student living away from home, for a young worker, for a teacher, for a nurse, for a single-income family, for those looking for a home today, Milan can instead become a tough, expensive and unwelcoming city.

This is the Italian perspective. Our discussion of cities is often trapped between two caricatures. On the one hand, there are those who celebrate Milan as if it were already Zurich with a side of risotto. On the other, there are those who detest it as a symbol of predatory capitalism, gentrification, the never-ending aperitif and arrogant wealth. Both interpretations are simplistic. Milan is Italy’s most serious laboratory for the contemporary city. And that is precisely why it must be taken seriously: because it shows what happens when a city grows faster than the political capacity to manage its social consequences. Italy needs many Milanos, but not many inaccessible Milanos. It needs cities capable of attracting investment without driving out residents. Universities capable of attracting students without turning a room into a luxury commodity. Excellent hospitals without unmanageable waiting lists. Of vibrant historic centres without reducing them to mere tourist backdrops. Of efficient transport not only in the heart of the metropolis but in the outer suburbs, where the real lives of millions of people are shaped. Of green spaces that are not merely ornamental but serve a climatic purpose. Of security that is not merely touted but effectively managed. The EIU report reminds us that liveability is built on five pillars: stability, healthcare, culture and the environment, education, and infrastructure. In Italy, we tend to be strong on the narrative side and weak on the administrative side. We are very good at talking about quality of life, but less good at delivering it. The lesson from "The Economist", as seen from an Italian perspective, is this: the liveable city of the future will not be the one with the most events, the most tourists, the most impressive skyline, the most restaurants or the highest rankings. It will be the one that manages to do something far more difficult: transforming attractiveness into liveability. Milan is our test case. If it manages to remain competitive without becoming exclusive, if it manages to grow without losing its accessibility, if it manages to be European without ceasing to be a city for those who live there and not just for those who invest in it, then Milan could truly be the Italian model. If, on the other hand, liveability becomes merely another name for privilege, it will remain Italy’s most modern city, but also the clearest evidence of our inability to make quality of life democratic.