Give us an idea of the cost of living there ? I doubt there is any building going on, what you see is what you get. Like housing costs ? food ? utility's ? . I bet the same family's have lived in the same house for years.Housing in Lerici and Portovenere is hideously expensive !
What was a mere fishing village in the 1950s became a nice place to go for your Sunday stroll in the 1960s, discos opened in the 1970s and...
...well, a modern apartment with a view will easily go for 7000-8000 Euro/sq.meter, so a medium-sized apartment (80sq.m. = 800 sq.ft.) will retail for 600
thousand Euro.
That's ...
... 7x8=56... x 1,35 = US $ 750.000 !!!
Gasoline is currently at E.1.30 (regular) and E.1.45 (premium) to one liter, multiply by 1.35 and multiply again by 3.85 to have $/gal. prices
(warning: Do not do this without medical assistance!) $7.50/gal ..
Utilities such as electricity are about 10-11 Eurocents/Kilowatt.
Water is... rainwater, riverwater collected and driven in public plumbing, of course we pay for public water works but it's cheap.
Internet is one of the cheapest in Europe, the average is a flat E.20/month for unlimited ADSL (4-5Mbits) and free local calls, everybody with a computer will have this kind of connection.
Only those without a computer will still have the "old" analogue phone lines, which by the way are actually more expensive...
So nobody has dialup any more, it's simply obsolete and has been phased out.
My Dad's apartment is valued in the range of one million Euro, that's $1.4million, not because he's rich (he bought it in the mid '70s when housing was affordable) but because prices have skyrocketed.
Mind you, I'm talking about a top floor 3 bedroom apartment with a double dining room+living room, garage, cellar + terrace upstairs, it's most unusual.
He was just lucky he bought a house with a view. BTW he still has dialup...
Similarly, I house hunted in Ronme until I found a top floor apartment in a condo with a (relatively) large estate, so from my windows I can see a good half mile away over treetops, no rooftops nor anybodyelse's windows to block the view !
I have ADSL with two phone lines and 10MBit link, E.40/month flat rate with unlimited calls nationwide
Again, unusual.
BUT in Italy the average "dwelling" will be a 750-800 sq.m. two bedrooms apartment in a 5-10 story condo, car parked somewhere in the street, with other 5-10 story condos all around you.
Just roam with Google Earth or Google Maps Street View and see what Lerici is like ("walk" the narrow alleys and have fun!)
The outskirts of Rome, or Milan (or Paris) are completely different.
We have a tradition of multi-story condos, way back in ancient Rome there was a neighborhood called "Centum Cellae" it still survives today as "Centocelle", the name means "the one hundred condos", even in ancient Rome they had 3, 4 story buildnigs in brickwork, shops on street level, the well-off would live on the second floor, the only one with a brickwork floor, so you could actually have a fireplace and cook your own food, 3rd floor and on up the floor was made of planks and straw, so there was no way anyone could cook their own food, people would go to the local bakery and other shops and buy ready-made dishes.
Hey !
The Romans invented fast food joints !!!
BTW my house is at 41º56'34"N, 12º34'45.50"E on GoogleEarth; the pic was taken last summer so it's all yellow and dry, the estate has buildings set up in a fashion to look like a huge "G" with green lawn and birch and poplar trees; you will notice my view from the top floor looking SouthEast will go a looong way compared to the neighbors !!!
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