One of the unexpected effects of visiting Venice during the pandemic is realizing that beneath the rhetoric about declining numbers of native inhabitants, rising rents and intrusive cruise ships, Venice is still surviving. The population on the island of Venice may have dropped from 140,000 in 1960 to around 50,000 today but as a city it endures. The narrative was picked up in the “Co-habitats” section of the Biennale exhibition in the Arsenale, which explores democracy and development in cities. One of the exhibitors, Sandro Bisà, lives on the island of Burano, which sits in the middle of the Venetian lagoon. He has worked with Modem, an office based in California to explore the resilience of Venice and the lagoon it sits in.
His discoveries are surprising. With urban authorities across Europe using the lockdown as an opportunity to pedestrianize city centers and encourage use of public transit, car-free Venice is suddenly and unexpectedly looking like a city of the future. La Serenessima, as it is known, has an inhabited core where everyone uses the (admittedly expensive) public vaporetto, or water bus, system to traverse its canals. The periphery is defined not by tiresome battles over land use but by massive infrastructure construction to host 21st century geo-engineering: the dream of urbanists. In October 2020, Venice’s new robotic system of flood defense—MOSE—was successfully triggered for the first time, protecting Venice from a high tide, lessons perhaps for other coastal cities. (The system clearly has had its teething problems. In December, operators failed to turn on the defenses early enough, leading to an inundation widely covered in the media.)
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.