Florence bans key boxes, a symbol of overtourism

Too little too late.

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.

Key boxes aren’t the problem.

> 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.

This feels like rewarding vandalism.

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.

That agonizing feeling when you desire easy rent money from tourists but without tourists. Can you just send money without coming over?

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.