Page 39 - Investing in Bergamo EN

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SERVICES AND QUALITY OF LIFE

A high-income territory with over one million inhabitants and 100,000 activities across
all sectors, Bergamo offers a wide range of high-quality services that cannot be summed
up in a few lines. The excellences and some projects are briefly mentioned below.
The new “Papa Giovanni XXIII” Hospital was opened in 2012 and is now the most
important health facility in the region of Lombardy. In 2013, the Italian newspaper
Sole24Ore ranked it first out of 113 hospitals in Italy. A testament to the quality and
coverage of the local health system that is also based on a strong presence of private
hospitals, the hospital of Seriate – not too far away – was ranked third in the same year.
The Academy of the Guardia di Finanza (Finance Police) will move to the seat of
the old hospital. Present in Bergamo since 1984, it is the highest organ of training for
officers of the Corps and a reference point for economic and financial studies.
It was determined that one of the three campuses of the Secondary School for
Magistrates. Also in this case, a dissemination of knowledge is expected from this
investment.
These services, mainly public, operate in one of the territories with the lowest density of
civil services and it was noted that, apart from some staff shortages in some structures,
this is a virtuous model that generates efficiency.
A role of subsidiarity, especially in the field of personal services, is done by
volunteers: over 100 thousand, one every 10 inhabitants compared to the national
average of 8 and 8.4 in Lombardy.
Each year the Italian daily newspaper “Sole24Ore” puts together a classification on
the quality of life. In 2014, Bergamo ranked 11th in Italy for services and environment.
In 2013, Bergamo was beaten by other cities in the bid for the European Capital of Culture,
which was awarded to Matera. At the same time, another initiative was launched, the
“Bg 2.035 a new urban concept” (Fondazione Italcementi, Harvard University, REAL
and University of Bergamo – 2014), which consists of 10 projects (vision, health,
creativity, logistics, mobility, consumption-production, responsibility, technology,
urban design and governance) aimed at transforming ordinary citizens into agents of
change and providing them with new technologies. The common goal is to go beyond
the “smart city” and identify the best short-term prospects that can be achieved from
the bottom up.
Finally, the “Venetian Walls” that surround the Upper Town were nominated as a World
Heritage Site.