6 ms·

Maybe don't build a city on 118 small islands and expect the water levels to never ever change? Seems more like a failure to plan for the future.

by xvx 7y ago

dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- xvx 7y ago
  Karma Police... arrest this man!
SeanLuke 7y ago
I imagine this was said in jest. But it's worth mentioning that Venice has sunk almost 10 inches in the last century. Even if water levels hadn't changed -- and of course they have -- Venice would still be facing serious problems.
- jandrese 7y ago
  It would be more accurate to say "Don't build your city on a river delta or flood plain", but that's where the good soil is. It's also hard to go back in time hundreds of years to yell at your ancestors.
  - safsafsa 7y ago
    Nor would a city not built in the delta be Venice. Venice is Venice because it was built where it wasn't supposed to be!
- ravenstine 7y ago
  I don't think it's in jest, and I actually agree with that statement to an extent. If humans weren't polluting the atmosphere, the climate would still be changing. The only difference is time scale and possibly the temperature delta. This is why building cities right up against the shoreline isn't a very good idea in the long term. And, no, you can have ports without building metropolises right next to the water. Someone's going to say that I'm a "climate denier" which is totally false because I believe in anthropogenic global warming.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    Ports are critical infrastructure, and cities evolve around ports. The world's great natural harbors/ports almost always have large cities built around them (NY, SF, Sydney, PRD, etc).
  - _carl_jung 7y ago
    Cities evolve organically. There is no "Mr City" who mistakenly places cities too close to the shoreline. Businesses naturally accrete around ports until the mass of buildings and workforce forms a city.
  - fooblitzky 7y ago
    The difference in time scale is crucial though. For the past 2000 years, sea level hadn't changed much at all[1]. If the city has to move to adapt to changing coastlines, it can probably manage the move over millennia. With climate change, we're looking at drastic coastline changes over the next 100 years. 100 years is extremely short for cities - it probably takes about that to go from being a town to being a city, if you have excellent growth rates. To move a city in 100 years is probably flat-out impossible, just for cost reasons alone. Most cities are hard-pressed to pay for maintenance of roads and essential services, and service their already crushing debt levels. City governments are not going to manage it, which means the citizens of the cities are going to shoulder the costs. We're going to see large-scale financial hardship in coastal cities going forward, and multiple cities going bankrupt and into decline. [1] https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-ris...
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Scale is also the only difference between a beautiful snowflake and a terrifying avalanche. It's the difference between drinking a refreshing glass of water and being waterboarded. Scale matters a lot.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      I really like these analogies. You are so right.
joezydeco 7y ago
You hop in your time machine back to the 7th Century and tell them that.
- dfcagency 7y ago
  I just imagine this commenter standing there smugly "yes, I contributed. snort I mean WHY would anyone build a PORT city on the WATER??"
  - zeroimpl 7y ago
    Indeed. Yet this port city with almost no land ruled over quite a significant empire for about 1000 years. I think it’s had a good run.
    - dfcagency 7y ago
      Do you drink Soylent? You seem pretty joyless.
      - dang 7y ago
        Personal attacks will get you banned here. Will you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules so we don't have to ban you again?
        dfcagency 7y ago
        You know I meaningfully contribute more than most people here, right?
        dang 7y ago
        That's great! But it's not enough to contribute positive things; you also need to not contribute negative things. It is like society: good deeds don't mean you can break laws. Another factor too: people tend to overestimate the value of their positive contributions and underestimate the damage of their negative ones. Probably by an order of magnitude in both directions, in which case many of us are adding a hundred times less value than we imagine, if we're adding value at all.
munk-a 7y ago
I agree, building a city on 118 small islands is clearly a terrible idea, that's why the city has such a terrible tourism industry today and why during the middle ages it was such an unknown backwater that never played an important role in politics of the day. It's honestly not unreasonable to say "Oh hey the place you built a city is no longer cost sustainable" but there are multitudes of villages and towns in europe, the fact that we know about Venice today and don't know about Ormelle (a random village north of Venice) means there were some reasons for that particular location to prosper. Lastly, we've got the hand we've been dealt and I think it's quite reasonable to try and preserve this historical city even knowing that is it in a vulnerable location, that isn't really a global decision but it is going to be influenced by how many people still find it worth the money to visit.
- bpodgursky 7y ago
  Well, in the middle ages, Venice had no objection to fixing flooding by piling a few more layers of stone and wood onto an existing (sunken) structure and using it as a foundation. And a few hundred years later, doing it again. It didn't used to be a static city. But now that the structures are considered historical and preserved, they're trying to maintain a particular snapshot of the city, with the exact same buildings. Which is a lot harder than maintaining the city overall.
magduf 7y ago
This is a rather ignorant comment. Venice was built many centuries ago before they ever thought about things like long-term climate changes, soil subsistence (i.e., the city sinking over time), etc. And it was a very successful city precisely because of its location: port cities are almost always prone to flooding due to being close to sea level, but humans built them because shipping was the primary method of trade from the time the boat was invented up to the invention of the railroad, so port cities frequently became very wealthy due to all the trade going through them. People 1500 years ago had no idea that cities might sink, and they sure as hell couldn't anticipate climate change caused by everyone driving carbon-spewing cars around the planet in the 20th century and beyond.
Udik 7y ago
See also: the Netherlands, a country in ruins. /s Frankly the problem with Venice is not where it's built or climate change. The problem is that Italy has become a country living by the day and entirely unable to discuss and plan and act seriously for the future (or the present, for that matter). The MOSE project that should have saved Venice from the high tides has been discussed for almost thirty years before even starting the construction, which then proceeded at snail pace with stops and go, lack of funding, corruption, and political quarrels. Nature has never been benign. There are countries that are organized and efficient and dominate it- see the Netherlands. There are others that spend time in squabbles and suffer from each flood, storm or earthquake- see Italy.

Maybe don't build a city on 118 small islands and expect the water levels to never ever change? Seems more like a failure to plan for the future.

by xvx 7y ago

Maybe don't build a city on 118 small islands and expect the water levels to never ever change? Seems more like a failure to plan for the future.

dang 7y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

xvx 7y ago
Karma Police... arrest this man!

SeanLuke 7y ago

I imagine this was said in jest. But it's worth mentioning that Venice has sunk almost 10 inches in the last century. Even if water levels hadn't changed -- and of course they have -- Venice would still be facing serious problems.

jandrese 7y ago
It would be more accurate to say "Don't build your city on a river delta or flood plain", but that's where the good soil is. It's also hard to go back in time hundreds of years to yell at your ancestors.
- safsafsa 7y ago
  Nor would a city not built in the delta be Venice. Venice is Venice because it was built where it wasn't supposed to be!
ravenstine 7y ago
I don't think it's in jest, and I actually agree with that statement to an extent. If humans weren't polluting the atmosphere, the climate would still be changing. The only difference is time scale and possibly the temperature delta. This is why building cities right up against the shoreline isn't a very good idea in the long term. And, no, you can have ports without building metropolises right next to the water. Someone's going to say that I'm a "climate denier" which is totally false because I believe in anthropogenic global warming.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Ports are critical infrastructure, and cities evolve around ports. The world's great natural harbors/ports almost always have large cities built around them (NY, SF, Sydney, PRD, etc).
- _carl_jung 7y ago
  Cities evolve organically. There is no "Mr City" who mistakenly places cities too close to the shoreline. Businesses naturally accrete around ports until the mass of buildings and workforce forms a city.
- fooblitzky 7y ago
  The difference in time scale is crucial though. For the past 2000 years, sea level hadn't changed much at all[1]. If the city has to move to adapt to changing coastlines, it can probably manage the move over millennia. With climate change, we're looking at drastic coastline changes over the next 100 years. 100 years is extremely short for cities - it probably takes about that to go from being a town to being a city, if you have excellent growth rates. To move a city in 100 years is probably flat-out impossible, just for cost reasons alone. Most cities are hard-pressed to pay for maintenance of roads and essential services, and service their already crushing debt levels. City governments are not going to manage it, which means the citizens of the cities are going to shoulder the costs. We're going to see large-scale financial hardship in coastal cities going forward, and multiple cities going bankrupt and into decline. [1] https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-ris...
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Scale is also the only difference between a beautiful snowflake and a terrifying avalanche. It's the difference between drinking a refreshing glass of water and being waterboarded. Scale matters a lot.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    I really like these analogies. You are so right.

joezydeco 7y ago

You hop in your time machine back to the 7th Century and tell them that.

dfcagency 7y ago
I just imagine this commenter standing there smugly "yes, I contributed. snort I mean WHY would anyone build a PORT city on the WATER??"
- zeroimpl 7y ago
  Indeed. Yet this port city with almost no land ruled over quite a significant empire for about 1000 years. I think it’s had a good run.
  - dfcagency 7y ago
    Do you drink Soylent? You seem pretty joyless.
    - dang 7y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here. Will you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules so we don't have to ban you again?
      - dfcagency 7y ago
        You know I meaningfully contribute more than most people here, right?
        dang 7y ago
        That's great! But it's not enough to contribute positive things; you also need to not contribute negative things. It is like society: good deeds don't mean you can break laws. Another factor too: people tend to overestimate the value of their positive contributions and underestimate the damage of their negative ones. Probably by an order of magnitude in both directions, in which case many of us are adding a hundred times less value than we imagine, if we're adding value at all.

munk-a 7y ago

I agree, building a city on 118 small islands is clearly a terrible idea, that's why the city has such a terrible tourism industry today and why during the middle ages it was such an unknown backwater that never played an important role in politics of the day. It's honestly not unreasonable to say "Oh hey the place you built a city is no longer cost sustainable" but there are multitudes of villages and towns in europe, the fact that we know about Venice today and don't know about Ormelle (a random village north of Venice) means there were some reasons for that particular location to prosper. Lastly, we've got the hand we've been dealt and I think it's quite reasonable to try and preserve this historical city even knowing that is it in a vulnerable location, that isn't really a global decision but it is going to be influenced by how many people still find it worth the money to visit.

bpodgursky 7y ago
Well, in the middle ages, Venice had no objection to fixing flooding by piling a few more layers of stone and wood onto an existing (sunken) structure and using it as a foundation. And a few hundred years later, doing it again. It didn't used to be a static city. But now that the structures are considered historical and preserved, they're trying to maintain a particular snapshot of the city, with the exact same buildings. Which is a lot harder than maintaining the city overall.

magduf 7y ago

This is a rather ignorant comment. Venice was built many centuries ago before they ever thought about things like long-term climate changes, soil subsistence (i.e., the city sinking over time), etc. And it was a very successful city precisely because of its location: port cities are almost always prone to flooding due to being close to sea level, but humans built them because shipping was the primary method of trade from the time the boat was invented up to the invention of the railroad, so port cities frequently became very wealthy due to all the trade going through them. People 1500 years ago had no idea that cities might sink, and they sure as hell couldn't anticipate climate change caused by everyone driving carbon-spewing cars around the planet in the 20th century and beyond.

Udik 7y ago

See also: the Netherlands, a country in ruins. /s Frankly the problem with Venice is not where it's built or climate change. The problem is that Italy has become a country living by the day and entirely unable to discuss and plan and act seriously for the future (or the present, for that matter). The MOSE project that should have saved Venice from the high tides has been discussed for almost thirty years before even starting the construction, which then proceeded at snail pace with stops and go, lack of funding, corruption, and political quarrels. Nature has never been benign. There are countries that are organized and efficient and dominate it- see the Netherlands. There are others that spend time in squabbles and suffer from each flood, storm or earthquake- see Italy.