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To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too muc

To an uneducated eye (like mine), Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail. Buildings require constant repair due to erosion. Too much water brings flooding, too little exposes mud and filth, and hinders transportation... I'm very curious to know what counter-measures are put in place to protect the city from these (and many more) dangers.

joezydeco 9y ago
Start with the MOSE Project: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project
Kagerjay 9y ago
I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it from tides. Venice also naturally floods all the time, when I was over there the large square next to the cathedral / church flooded. When it floods, it usually floods several inches on average There's a good article on it here https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice-italy.htm https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice-italy.h...
- starik36 9y ago
  Same thing happened when I was there as well. But, surprisingly, it wasn't as big of a hassle as one would have thought. You could just walk around it. And a few hours later rain stopped, the flooding relented and it was back to normal.
  - briandear 9y ago
    And you’ll see stepping-stone type things scattered around the sidewalks to help people walk over flooded areas as well as doors to homes and businesses sealed at the bottom to allow for about 1 meter of flooding without causing any interior damage. Then there are sandbags scattered about to help with flood protection when necessary. Venice has been fine for hundreds of years; it isn’t all the sudden going to fail.. it just adapts and moves on. By far the biggest danger to Venice is the hoards of tourists that make getting around for a local almost impossible. When I was there in November (to take a Venician Plastet/Marmolino class) — even in the cold rain it was essentially a mob of people seemingly everywhere except the most back streets of back streets. That “hidden Venice” is quite amazing — I am definitely over the crowds and kitsch that pollute the maIn drags. Pro-tip if you want to have a nice visit: explore the streets and canals at night.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      > By far the biggest danger to Venice is the hoards of tourists that make getting around for a local almost impossible. You've got it precisely backwards. By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. Venice is dependent upon tourism income for its economy to an extent much greater than most other cities. Rome, Florence, Milan, and others have big businesses and use tourism as supplementary income, but it's the main source for Venice.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
        > By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. No. The danger is any point away from the equilibrium - too few/no tourists and there's no income, but too many tourists and the tourists won't spread the word for other potential travelers anymore when they e.g. cannot go to any popular place or getting ripped off hundreds of dollars for pizza.
        CydeWeys 9y ago
        "It's such a popular tourist spot, no one goes there anymore." (Apologies to Yogi Berra.) Tourism-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action.
        dredmorbius 9y ago
        Just giving that a cursory thinking through, I can see several ways in which that might fail. "Real-estate-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices and rents are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action." Or, perhaps, it's rents-extraction, money-laundering, signs of even worse collapse elsewhere, and killing the underlying fundamentals of the local economy. I suspect there's similar lines of analysis which could be applied to tourist spots. And am wondering what examples of now-failed tourist temples there might be. Say, Niagara Falls, as an example.
- klez 9y ago
  > I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it from tides. As I said in another comments, no, the wall (MOSE, several walls, actually) has not been completed yet and is non-operational.
  - Kagerjay 9y ago
    hm, didn't know it wasn't operational yet. I just remember seeing a diagram of it relative to the venice map
sandworm101 9y ago
The non-adaptation thing is recent. Dig down and you will find every building today stands atop the rubble of many previous that were nocked down once they got too expensive to maintain. The city constantly sinks and readily adapted to this. Some might say that need to constantly adapt made venice great. But at some point in the 1950s/60s the "greatest generation" decided to protect the old at all costs. Nothing is ever knocked down and so within only a couple generations everything is in crisis at once.
- acqq 9y ago
  Sources? What I know doesn‘t fit your story. The most of the traditional houses aren‘t on the rubbles at all but on the water tanks, which are at least a few hundred years old.
  - lukeschlather 9y ago
    Many buildings in Venice are hundreds of years old. If the cycle involves replacing, say, 1% of buildings every 5 years then that isn't necessarily in conflict. Most of the buildings would be hundreds of years old, but after 50 years of an effective moratorium, 10% would need to be replaced despite the fact that most buildings are hundreds of years old and don't need to be replaced. That's a little different from saying the entire city needs to be rebuilt, but it will eventually.
- slm_HN 9y ago
  The "greatest generation" name applies to Americans not Italians. They earned that title by winning World War II, rebuilding Japan and Germany, and creating the richest society in the history of the world. That same generation of Italians embraced fascism, followed Mussolini, allied with Hitler and got their ass kicked in World War II.
  - lazerwalker 9y ago
    I'm not sure if shitting on Italians adds anything to this discussion. That same "greatest generation" of Americans wrongly imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent during the war, and turned a blind eye to Jewish refugees for an embarrassingly long time before grudgingly entering the war. None of us are perfect.
dgudkov 9y ago
These problems existed for centuries but apparently something kept Venice from failing. I suspect it's not about engineering or construction, but it's about money. As long as Venice has a sufficient influx of money it will do well. A significant drop in tourist revenue is way more dangerous to the city than erosion or flooding.
- briandear 9y ago
  Maybe: fewer tourists, more people move back to the city and other industries begin to re-emerge. But right now, much of Venice is dying off — except for the tourist shops, because of the tourists. It’s turning into an EPCOT Center version of Venice. However, it would be interesting to see what the per-tourist expenditure rates have been over the past five years; my hypothesis is that per-tourist spending is down despite total tourist spending being up. Cruise ship passengers are a bulk of visitors and they don’t spend much (since they sleep on the ship.) So that crowds out potential visitors who might spend more money. As another commenter said: there is a equilibrium between tourists and locals that needs to exist. My opinion is that shoulder-to-shoulder people is actually harming the city. There are actually proposals to limit the numbers of tourists — those proposals from the government wouldn’t exist unless there was some sort of problem. I am not a Venice expert and have only been there a few weeks, but seeing masses of people buying cheap Chinese-made knockoff Murano glass from vendors who aren’t even Venetian (nor even live in Venice) — it’s hard for me to accept that is “good” for Venice or Venetians.
  - robryan 9y ago
    I read that they were now limiting the amount of cruise ships they get a year because of the issue of them crowding the city a lot without spending much.
phil248 9y ago
"...Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail" I'm sure there were people in the 1100's saying the exact same thing!
kurthr 9y ago
The point is you probably could have said that on any date in the last thousand years! They have been fighting tides and subsidence the entire time... the time integrated wealth there is astounding. They have been "building" giant dynamic sea walls for decades although beimg Italy you never know when they'll finish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Venice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Ven...
SunShiranui 9y ago
Motherboard made a documentary about this and what could happen to Venice in the next 100 years, but it's only available in Italian as far as I'm aware: https://video.vice.com/it/video/venezia-2100/59e606b5177dd461cf60fab1 https://video.vice.com/it/video/venezia-2100/59e606b5177dd46...
roywiggins 9y ago
Every city is constantly flooding, burning, and falling apart. But people keep coming and building them up again. Just look at... well, all of Europe after WWII. Lots of Warsaw had to be rebuilt from scratch. It takes a lot to actually kill a city for good, though obviously it does happen.
emmelaich 9y ago
If nothing else this event sounds like a good opportunity to do some inspections.

joezydeco 9y ago

Start with the MOSE Project: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project

Kagerjay 9y ago

I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it from tides. Venice also naturally floods all the time, when I was over there the large square next to the cathedral / church flooded. When it floods, it usually floods several inches on average There's a good article on it here https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice-italy.htm https://www.visit-venice-italy.com/acqua-alta-venice-italy.h...

starik36 9y ago
Same thing happened when I was there as well. But, surprisingly, it wasn't as big of a hassle as one would have thought. You could just walk around it. And a few hours later rain stopped, the flooding relented and it was back to normal.
- briandear 9y ago
  And you’ll see stepping-stone type things scattered around the sidewalks to help people walk over flooded areas as well as doors to homes and businesses sealed at the bottom to allow for about 1 meter of flooding without causing any interior damage. Then there are sandbags scattered about to help with flood protection when necessary. Venice has been fine for hundreds of years; it isn’t all the sudden going to fail.. it just adapts and moves on. By far the biggest danger to Venice is the hoards of tourists that make getting around for a local almost impossible. When I was there in November (to take a Venician Plastet/Marmolino class) — even in the cold rain it was essentially a mob of people seemingly everywhere except the most back streets of back streets. That “hidden Venice” is quite amazing — I am definitely over the crowds and kitsch that pollute the maIn drags. Pro-tip if you want to have a nice visit: explore the streets and canals at night.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    > By far the biggest danger to Venice is the hoards of tourists that make getting around for a local almost impossible. You've got it precisely backwards. By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. Venice is dependent upon tourism income for its economy to an extent much greater than most other cities. Rome, Florence, Milan, and others have big businesses and use tourism as supplementary income, but it's the main source for Venice.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > By far the biggest danger to Venice is the absence of those hoards of tourists. No. The danger is any point away from the equilibrium - too few/no tourists and there's no income, but too many tourists and the tourists won't spread the word for other potential travelers anymore when they e.g. cannot go to any popular place or getting ripped off hundreds of dollars for pizza.
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        "It's such a popular tourist spot, no one goes there anymore." (Apologies to Yogi Berra.) Tourism-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action.
        dredmorbius 9y ago
        Just giving that a cursory thinking through, I can see several ways in which that might fail. "Real-estate-based economies can't fail from becoming too profitable. If prices and rents are high, it's only because people are still willing to pay them. It's market forces in action." Or, perhaps, it's rents-extraction, money-laundering, signs of even worse collapse elsewhere, and killing the underlying fundamentals of the local economy. I suspect there's similar lines of analysis which could be applied to tourist spots. And am wondering what examples of now-failed tourist temples there might be. Say, Niagara Falls, as an example.
klez 9y ago
> I went to venice a few years back, there's an outer seawall that protects it from tides. As I said in another comments, no, the wall (MOSE, several walls, actually) has not been completed yet and is non-operational.
- Kagerjay 9y ago
  hm, didn't know it wasn't operational yet. I just remember seeing a diagram of it relative to the venice map

sandworm101 9y ago

The non-adaptation thing is recent. Dig down and you will find every building today stands atop the rubble of many previous that were nocked down once they got too expensive to maintain. The city constantly sinks and readily adapted to this. Some might say that need to constantly adapt made venice great. But at some point in the 1950s/60s the "greatest generation" decided to protect the old at all costs. Nothing is ever knocked down and so within only a couple generations everything is in crisis at once.

acqq 9y ago
Sources? What I know doesn‘t fit your story. The most of the traditional houses aren‘t on the rubbles at all but on the water tanks, which are at least a few hundred years old.
- lukeschlather 9y ago
  Many buildings in Venice are hundreds of years old. If the cycle involves replacing, say, 1% of buildings every 5 years then that isn't necessarily in conflict. Most of the buildings would be hundreds of years old, but after 50 years of an effective moratorium, 10% would need to be replaced despite the fact that most buildings are hundreds of years old and don't need to be replaced. That's a little different from saying the entire city needs to be rebuilt, but it will eventually.
slm_HN 9y ago
The "greatest generation" name applies to Americans not Italians. They earned that title by winning World War II, rebuilding Japan and Germany, and creating the richest society in the history of the world. That same generation of Italians embraced fascism, followed Mussolini, allied with Hitler and got their ass kicked in World War II.
- lazerwalker 9y ago
  I'm not sure if shitting on Italians adds anything to this discussion. That same "greatest generation" of Americans wrongly imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent during the war, and turned a blind eye to Jewish refugees for an embarrassingly long time before grudgingly entering the war. None of us are perfect.

dgudkov 9y ago

These problems existed for centuries but apparently something kept Venice from failing. I suspect it's not about engineering or construction, but it's about money. As long as Venice has a sufficient influx of money it will do well. A significant drop in tourist revenue is way more dangerous to the city than erosion or flooding.

briandear 9y ago
Maybe: fewer tourists, more people move back to the city and other industries begin to re-emerge. But right now, much of Venice is dying off — except for the tourist shops, because of the tourists. It’s turning into an EPCOT Center version of Venice. However, it would be interesting to see what the per-tourist expenditure rates have been over the past five years; my hypothesis is that per-tourist spending is down despite total tourist spending being up. Cruise ship passengers are a bulk of visitors and they don’t spend much (since they sleep on the ship.) So that crowds out potential visitors who might spend more money. As another commenter said: there is a equilibrium between tourists and locals that needs to exist. My opinion is that shoulder-to-shoulder people is actually harming the city. There are actually proposals to limit the numbers of tourists — those proposals from the government wouldn’t exist unless there was some sort of problem. I am not a Venice expert and have only been there a few weeks, but seeing masses of people buying cheap Chinese-made knockoff Murano glass from vendors who aren’t even Venetian (nor even live in Venice) — it’s hard for me to accept that is “good” for Venice or Venetians.
- robryan 9y ago
  I read that they were now limiting the amount of cruise ships they get a year because of the issue of them crowding the city a lot without spending much.

phil248 9y ago

"...Venice looks inadaptable and bound to struggle, and eventually fail" I'm sure there were people in the 1100's saying the exact same thing!

kurthr 9y ago

The point is you probably could have said that on any date in the last thousand years! They have been fighting tides and subsidence the entire time... the time integrated wealth there is astounding. They have been "building" giant dynamic sea walls for decades although beimg Italy you never know when they'll finish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Venice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Ven...

SunShiranui 9y ago

Motherboard made a documentary about this and what could happen to Venice in the next 100 years, but it's only available in Italian as far as I'm aware: https://video.vice.com/it/video/venezia-2100/59e606b5177dd461cf60fab1 https://video.vice.com/it/video/venezia-2100/59e606b5177dd46...

roywiggins 9y ago

Every city is constantly flooding, burning, and falling apart. But people keep coming and building them up again. Just look at... well, all of Europe after WWII. Lots of Warsaw had to be rebuilt from scratch. It takes a lot to actually kill a city for good, though obviously it does happen.

emmelaich 9y ago

If nothing else this event sounds like a good opportunity to do some inspections.