Many of the approximately 180,000 students who attend Milan’s universities live outside its Municipality. Some of these students reside permanently in Milan during the academic year and are able to attend classes regularly. Others would very much like to be in the same position, but do not have the financial means necessary even for a room, let alone an apartment. These, of course, are students who live outside the Milanese metropolitan area and who cannot therefore reach their university every day by means of public or private transportation. As a rule, a university system should not admit students who cannot attend regularly, and in any case it should not be a matter of doubt that the regular attendance of university courses leads to the best educational outcome in the shortest time. The majority of enrolled students should, therefore, throughout the academic year, be able to live on the university site itself (or in its immediate surroundings). This is notoriously not the case in Italy. Every university should thus ensure by means of the University Institute for the Right to Study (ISU), individual initiatives, and interventions on the part of public bodies and of foundations, that all students who so wish can regularly attend university.

This is even truer for Milan’s universities which have in fact established a complete local university system and which could reasonably be expected to seek a common response to what we may term manifest and latent requests by students for accommodation.
It certainly cannot be denied that the universities, albeit to differing extents, have sought an answer, via the ISU and personal initiatives, to what we have referred to in the project title as the accommodation needs, namely the housing and day-to-day requirements of their enrolled students. Nonetheless one cannot confidently assert that these answers are sufficient or sufficiently coordinated.
Naturally, the first step towards seeking a broader and more coordinated response than what has been done up to now to meet the needs of non-resident arriving students in Milan, consists in understanding the size of the corresponding demand, both manifest and latent, for accommodation. As far as we are aware, no survey has been specifically conducted on this question. And it is to fill this very gap, that the present project has been created.

The study has three principal objectives. Firstly, to determine how many students are enrolled at Milan’s universities, and how many are non-residents who wish to live in Milan during the academic year.
Secondly, to determine the financial and environmental conditions necessary for non-resident students to be willing to live in Milan.
Thirdly, to assess the size of what we may call the unmet explicit accommodation requirements in Milan.

It is therefore necessary to calculate the number of enrolled students at Milan’s universities who have embarked upon finding accommodation in Milan, but have not been successful. To these three listed objectives another may be added. This concerns the problems encountered in accommodation-seeking and, regarding current living situation and expectations, gathering opinions about hospitality services for newly-arriving students, from those who come from outside Milan and its immediate suburbs, and yet live here throughout the academic year.

To accurately assess the demand for services, explicit or implicit, it is necessary to know their supply, both by universities and ISUs (Right to Study Institutes) and by other public organisations. This would refer therefore, to lodgings, halls of residence and guest houses located in Milan or its immediate surroundings, the number of rooms and beds. Estimating the number of apartments obtained by students is more difficult when it comes to the free market. In this regard it may be possible to obtain some information from estate agents and tenants’ associations. Nor should the convention between ALER (the Lombardy Residential Housing Agency) and ISUs be forgotten whereby a small amount of subsidised housing was made available to students. Associated with the problem of accommodation is that of mobility: on the one hand, efficient public transport can, within a certain distance, reduce residential needs; on the other hand the difficulty in finding lodgings leads to stressful

commuting journeys which impact negatively on traffic entering and leaving the city, especially during the rush hour. In this regard the survey conducted by the Milan Transportation Authority ATM in 1995 on mobility over 38 suburbs gave a figure of over 42,000 people entering on a daily basis for study purposes.
Based on this, and more current data, it will be possible to study the links between mobility and residentiality. Other services, offered to the entire student population, are of major importance for non-residents – for example areas for study and training within the university which enable time between lectures and the participation in study groups to be maximised and thereby foster interpersonal interaction.
Another essential service for residentiality is that of the university canteens which mean less expense for students and, above all for those at external sites, less commuting.

Roberto Camagni
Chairman of the MeglioMilano Technical Committee
Lecturer in Urban Economics. Politecnico di Milano. Head of research

Antonio Schizzerotto
Lecturer in Sociology. Università Statale Milano Bicocca
Head of the survey into student enrolments at Milan’s universities

Sabina Amato Molinari
MeglioMilano • Internal coordinator

Eugenia Bernabei
MeglioMilano • Researcher

Franca Rossi
MeglioMilano • Project Secretary

Università Bocconi
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM
Politecnico di Milano
Università Vita e Salute S. Raffaele
Università Statale Milano Bicocca
Università Statale Milano
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera
Conservatorio di Milano "Giuseppe Verdi"

Lombardy Region
Municipality of Milan