City Beautiful
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Early Access: Why Nobody Lives in Venice
🕑 Added 2023-02-16 20:26:18 +0000 UTCThe concept for this video has been floating around in my head since before YouTube existed. I visited Venice in 2004 and was amazed that I could walk through Venice at night and not see a single soul. The tourists were gone and very few people lived in the historic center. I found out then that most Venetians lived on the mainland. I wanted to visit and see where the "real" Venetians lived, but I was on a university field trip and it wasn't on the agenda. I still haven't visited Mestre, but this video is as close as I can get.
When I started writing this script, I hadn't really put it together that this pattern really works for many historic centers throughout the world. I think it does, though, and I hope the video is useful to other cities in a state similar (though less extreme) to Venice.
Comments
Russell Coleman
Love the video! I can’t imagine how hard it is to be a current resident of Venice watching it all fall apart. One of my coworkers was born and raised there but moved to London and then the US after he no longer felt comfortable living in that city. I wonder if it would be better for Italy economically to throttle tourism more; what is the value of keeping the city alive in the long term vs. short term tourism dollars? Or perhaps at least some sort of law like no mass manufactured products sold in Venice tourist traps, instead only allow the sale of Venice glassware and local products. Although that seems like it would really require some nuanced thought to get right.
