I was in Florence in the mid 80s. It was a beautiful ancient Tuscan city, with plenty of tourists, but it seemed authentic.
I went again last year, and vast areas have turned into a glitzy shopping mall, with many international brands represented. (Also, so many leather goods shops.) It looks like the same disease that affects Prague: popularity has attracted high-end commerce and changed the city completely, destroying the original character.
Anything worth looking at in Florence and Prague turned into a theme park. There is no casual life happening there. Personally I feel I saturated for lifetime the urge to look at real estate of any kind and value, partially the worldwide real estate hysteria contributed to it. I only want convenient dwelling for myself and that's it.
In the close neighbourhood of Florence you have at least 3 mid size cities that would be important tourist attractions by themself if they were more far.
And around Florence there is am huge industrial area (gas turbines, fashion, pharmaceutical, textile, etc.)
> The decision by the mayor, elected in June, arrived a few days after activists from the Salviamo Firenze ("Save Florence") association affixed red stickers to the city's key boxes to symbolically make their use more difficult.
You don’t seem to be considering that city leadership might not want the easy rent money, because it goes to absentee landlords and raises the market rent for people who actually live in their units. Tourists are not a “richer resident;” they don’t support the same subset of the local economy.
The plot twist is that city leadership are the absentee landlords and "people actually living there" are a problem to be pushed aside. Why sustain any "local economy" when you have free money reliably incoming and begging to be taken?
Florentine here: this is not completely true.
Is true that there are a group of historical families that own lot of properties in the city center (they are mainly poors because the maintenance of those buildings is crazy expensive !) but Florence has a major and local elections won traditionally by left wings.
Even the former Italian PM Renzi started his political career as Florence major.
Yeah, I mean I don't think these places would be happy if all the tourists left either. They want tourists, but on their terms. Fair enough. But it reminds me of my mom's florist friend that complains that everyone wants flowers at Valentine's Day and not the rest of the year; it'd be so much easier for her if they spread the demand.
There are two kinds of tourist destinations. There's the overt and proud to be tourist destination places like Vegas and then theres the myriad of "look how quaint we are" places for people who wanna be a tourist without feeling like a tourist.
Florence is in the latter camp and so of course from time to time they're gonna ban overt markers of tourism along with anything else that runs contrary to their brand image. Places like this exist in an equilibrium between two types of terrible and also terribly stupid people. The first knows the gig. They want to lighten the tourist pockets and they want to do business things that go with that. The second group believes their own bullshit and is constantly trying to get the municipality to move in the direction of some "traditional" past. Banning lock boxes is what a victory for the latter group looks like.
Source: Grew up in one of these places. They make resource extraction economies look like paragons of virtue and honest business.
Florentine here.
It's a good decision, but it's just a small step to stop overtourism.
Authorities should convince people to move again in the city center, but the house prices are skyrocketing even outside in the suburbs pushing people far away. Many shops are gradually closing or converting to restaurants/bars.
It's not a popular decision, but they must ban AirBnB and all the short term house rents as next step and heavily increase the tourist tax, especially for whom that are staying one or two days.
In the US, key boxes seem the exception and smart locks are the rule. Nothing to lose, can be programmed to not work past a certain time, etc.
That works well for a single deadbolt. Many years ago we stayed in a friends apartment in Madrid. There were 3 keys for the locks, each at least a foot apart, and the door jamb was lined with metal to make it more difficult to break in. So it might not be simple and/or cheap to replace key boxes with smart locks.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] threadI was in Florence in the mid 80s. It was a beautiful ancient Tuscan city, with plenty of tourists, but it seemed authentic.
I went again last year, and vast areas have turned into a glitzy shopping mall, with many international brands represented. (Also, so many leather goods shops.) It looks like the same disease that affects Prague: popularity has attracted high-end commerce and changed the city completely, destroying the original character.
Key boxes aren’t the problem.
This feels like rewarding vandalism.
Florence is in the latter camp and so of course from time to time they're gonna ban overt markers of tourism along with anything else that runs contrary to their brand image. Places like this exist in an equilibrium between two types of terrible and also terribly stupid people. The first knows the gig. They want to lighten the tourist pockets and they want to do business things that go with that. The second group believes their own bullshit and is constantly trying to get the municipality to move in the direction of some "traditional" past. Banning lock boxes is what a victory for the latter group looks like.
Source: Grew up in one of these places. They make resource extraction economies look like paragons of virtue and honest business.
That works well for a single deadbolt. Many years ago we stayed in a friends apartment in Madrid. There were 3 keys for the locks, each at least a foot apart, and the door jamb was lined with metal to make it more difficult to break in. So it might not be simple and/or cheap to replace key boxes with smart locks.