Venice addresses all of life's work at human scale.  You can reach out and touch it. ​

Venice is unique because there are no cars.  This transforms life more than  even the water.  Slowing the city's pace and the experience of time; morphing the awareness of urban ambience, space, sounds, smells, light;  heightening sensitivity to weather and the power of natural phenomenon, beauty, stillness, awe;  accentuating physical expenditure for basic needs or battling the elements;  volume, weight; makes process real and accessibility fundamental; elevates human contact ﹣ the good, the bad and the ugly, human by-products, constraints; etiquette and respect; population diversity and fluctuations, reliance, self-reliance, cooperation and dependability. 

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Venice is truly innovative

Clocking up more than 200 inventions including banking, accounting and insurance systems, the personal fork, the newspaper, the navy,  casinos, art collecting and opera houses, Venice continues to innovate, spawning a whole sector of Venice is a Future City candidates.  Meanwhile, it holds on to its once supreme objects ... the enjoyment of life, lucrative industry and the search for new adventures....  

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‘The thread of Venetian thought is woven into how we now envision community, health care, economics, consumerism and globalisation, all the “big picture” subjects that are the scaffolding of our lives.’ writes anthropologist Meredith F. Small — Inventing the World: Venice and the Transformation of Western Civilization p. xiii. 

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Venetian civilisation demonstrates the enduring value of culture.  

An amalgamation of cultures — the basis of its strength — the hallmarks found in its architecture, food and language.   And you too speak Venetian, as eloquently described by Alberto Toso Fei.  The arts also offer an opportunity to engage in productive discourse and Venice has one, if not the, “highest concentration of historic architecture” in the world, according to Dr. Frederick Ilchman of Save Venice, an organisation restoring Venice’s “irreplaceable artistic heritage” with international support.   It also has a vast repository of important art historical works still in their original locations outside of museums and largely open to the public.  

 

Venice in its lagoon is a way to conceive of a future city.  

Venice is a finite equation.  It is as it was and cannot be anything else.  This is its strength and its curse.  The footprint and labyrinth are set.  It is we who have to innovate because Venice just is. 

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“Venice and its lagoon landscape is the result of a dynamic process which illustrates the interaction between people and the ecosystem of their natural environment over time.” UNESCO World Heritage, Outstanding Universal Value

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‘The margin, where the city ends, is essential because it provides that entity with both cohesion and meaning, but also because it represents the limit vis-a-vis natural space, the horizon of radical equality.’ Salvatore Settis, If Venice Dies, p. 101.