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OUR CAMPAIGNS

• Exodus: Venice without Venetians?
• A city on water?
• The "subway" under the Lagoon: a project against Venice
• Motorboat traffic — an ongoing battle
• Restoring the city
• The petrochemical complex
• Methane extraction: A battle won

Venice without Venetians?

Which future for Venice — city, or chaotic "Disneyland"?

In 1960, Venice had 145,000 residents. Today, fewer than 65,000 remain, many of them elderly. Young families and disadvantaged sectors of the population have to leave, as wealthy visitors buying vacation apartments drive up housing prices. The city government has encouraged new hotels, raising housing prices even further.

Italia Nostra calls for a change in direction: the city council should slow rather than promote the conversion of homes into hotels and vacation apartments. Venice should remain a living city - not become a chaotic and costly "Disneyland".

To Learn More:
Francesco Erbani, "Should the Lagoon Turn into a Club Méditerranée?" (originally published in La Repubblica, 13 April 2003. This translated version is on Prof. Edoardo Salzano's web site).

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Venice, as if it were a city on water!

Venice in the 1950s: in the foreground the "bridgehead" and the artificial island of Tronchetto in costruction

Since 1926, when mainland communities such as Mestre were annexed to Venice, planners and politicians have tried to turn this unique city into a modern metropolis. Large areas of the Lagoon were filled in for the industrial zone at Porto Marghera. An automobile bridge was built, along with the car parks of Piazzale Rome. The artificial island of Tronchetto was created as Venice's "Manhattan" of office buildings (it now hosts additional car parks for tourist cars and buses).

Despite decades of attempts to make Venice a mainland urban centre, it remains a true city because it has true limits, set by the presence of water. In contrast, cities in Italy and throughout much of the world have become sprawling urban areas without boundaries. Their extensive peripheries have come to dominate their centres. In Venice, water blocks sprawl.

Too many of Venice's planners and politicians, however, see the water as an obstacle, a problem to be overcome, and a factor that makes the city too different: for them, the lack of cars marginalises the city. These planners want to "innovate" and "modernise" Venice. They see mobility problems, and they propose conventional solutions (like a "subway" under the Lagoon) that would be irreversible and subordinate Venice even further to the modern world. Under their plans for a "bipolar city", the core of Venice is destined to become a periphery to a city whose centre has moved from Rialto and St. Mark's Square. The new centres would be Mestre on the mainland and the "bridgehead". This mistaken approach will continue until politicians and planners stop seeing Venice as inferior, handicapped by the presence of water.

We believe that it's necessary to give Venice back its dignity and uniqueness. The future of Venice should start with a new vision for the idea of "modern", not focused on ever more consumption. In Venice, attempts to compete with mainland cities - notably the industrial zone built at Marghera - have collapsed. Venice needs a new perspective for its future, one that starts from the water.

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The "subway" under the Lagoon: a project against Venice

Venice: a city on water doesn't need a "subway"

The plan to build a mass transit "subway" under the Lagoon from the airport to Venice is based on an idea completely opposite to Italia Nostra's conception of the city.

We see Venice as a "finished work", a unique and exceptional city with its own, organic opportunities for development.

The "subway" proponents include, of course, the obvious economic interests, such as speculators who want to build near the airport. Many proponents are also guided by a dark desire to make Venice just like a mainland metropolis. This attempt, as the last century has taught us, is misguided from the start. "Modernity" is not Venice's destiny: not when it means factories (a path that has already failed), speed, or industrial areas.

And, as a study by RATP (Paris's metro company) has shown, the project does not make economic sense: heavy transit systems like subways work mainly in urban areas with over a million people. To pay its costs, the system would have to transport at least 15,000 passengers an hour. Current projections reach only 2400: too few to break even, but too many for Venice's fragile urban structure.

Instead of this mistaken and backward project, Venice should invest in its water-borne transport. Venice needs innovative ways to move people on the water, the city's characteristic element, not under the water! The water should be an opportunity, not an obstacle requiring expensive tunnels. The city should modernise its noisy and polluting ferries, improving service within the city and across the Lagoon and reducing their damaging wakes. These actions would cost a fraction of the proposed transit line under the Lagoon. Plus, Venice needs to find ways of managing tourism flows to reduce peak numbers that overwhelm the ferry system.

For more information:
Again, no to the "sublagunare", Italia Nostra, February 2005.

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Restoring the city

Details that count: two examples of dubious restoration... 1. on the left, a working sewage vessel in brick is covered in cement; 2. on the left, clumsy welding on a wrought iron balustrade

Restoration (repairing altered and damaged elements) and urban maintenance should be the only actions allowed within an ancient city like Venice. They should conserve the unique quality that historic cities, like natural environments, provide: the complexity and wealth of accumulated "signs".

Restoration, however, calls for rigorous analysis and humility - the humility of architects who must renounce their creativity.

This approach should be applied scrupulously in Venice, where a continuous flow of money from various special laws and other sources supports extensive restoration and maintenance work. Too often, however, these "restorations" have been destructive, both for individual buildings and for the city as a whole. Examples range from the systematic removal of plaster work in buildings to the destruction of the ancient stones paving the city's alleys and squares.

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The Petrochemical Complex

Behind the palaces of Venice, the chimneys of the petrochemical complex

The huge industrial zone at Porto Marghera on the mainland was built over a rich complex of salt marshes, filling in a vast area of the Lagoon. Its factories, in particular the petrochemical complex, have extensively polluted the soil and the Lagoon's waters. Porto Marghera represents an old approach to development, in which environmental and social issues were considered irrelevant. Since the 1960s, when Italy's chemical industry met the first symptoms of an ongoing economic crisis, Porto Marghera has seen little new investment or reconversion for its plants. Porto Marghera has become a symbol of obsolete production, of pollution, and of death.

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Methane extraction: A battle won (for the moment)

Since 1960, Italia Nostra has opposed the ENI-Agip group's plans to extract natural gas in the upper Adriatic, near the Lagoon of Venice. In recent years, this Italian multinational again proposed to build offshore rigs.

Italia Nostra warns that extracting methane could lower the ground level in the Lagoon: flooding in Venice and nearby Chioggia could increase, and the ecosystems could face severe consequences.

Through our opposition — and that of other national and local groups — these plans have again been set aside.

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