Point of fact, according to the story’s opening it said that it robbed gondoliers or their money and residents of their transportation.
Residents don’t ride in gondolas— that’s for the tourists. Far too expensive.
Venice without water
61–70 of 96 posts
Re: Venice without water
#62No comments about global warming and water levels?
Re: Venice without water
#63To 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.
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.
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.
Re: Venice without water
#64There is so much talk these days of "rising sea levels" so its kind of ironic to see the opposite. But I guess changes in weather causes both extremes.
Re: Venice without water
#65Junk article on junk site. Low tides are a normal part of life in Venice. I was Kayaking there a few months ago and Tide tables determine what parts of the city are navigable by boat. Some canals are indeed very shallow. Been that way forever. They are dredged periodically to keep them navigable at normal tides. The larger and deeper canals are always navigable.
Re: Venice without water
#66I had no idea the canals were this shallow! For some reason I thought they were at least 10 meters or so deep.
It would be crazy hard to build a whole city on 10m deep sea. Some channels have been dig deeper to allow for traffic, but most are fairly shallow. Even the biggest Grand canal is just around 5m deep.
Re: Venice without water
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
is it filthy? do the canals have trash floating? What are you alluding to?
I was struck by the fact that the bottoms of the canals is just mud--no trash (at least in the photos in the article). The article mentioned the "filth buried at the bottom of the canals", but they seem remarkably clean.
it looks clean, but the smell of that mud, o boy...
Re: Venice without water
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 des…
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.
Re: Venice without water
#69Point of fact, according to the story’s opening it said that it robbed gondoliers or their money and residents of their transportation. Residents don’t ride in gondolas— that’s for the tourists. Far too expensive.
But they do take the water busses (vaporetti)
Re: Venice without water
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was struck by the fact that the bottoms of the canals is just mud--no trash (at least in the photos in the article). The article mentioned the "filth buried at the bottom of the canals", but they seem remarkably clean.
it looks clean, but the smell of that mud, o boy...
Like greglindahl pointed out in another comment, there are no sewers in Venice, so that's not just mud. That's another reason for the smell.