The Problem With Venice Aka Venice the Menace

Venice A city in northeastern Italy located on a group of 117 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges The city has an average of 50,000 tourists a day It is regarded as one of the world's most beautiful cities Known for its beautiful Gothic/Renaissance/Baroque architecture, its canals and gondolas, its Carnival festival, its culture

Carnival Is held on Shrove Tuesday (Martedi' Grasso or Mardi Gras), the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent, which is 40 days before Easter The festival is world-famed for its elaborate masks.

Problems with Tourism The city can be very overcrowded at some points of the year It is regarded by some as a tourist trap Widely known for its element of elegant decay The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made housing prices rise so high that numerous inhabitants are forced to move Cruise ships bring in a lot of tourists and money but the city’s fragile canals need to be protected https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGqVG6QUTKQ 2:32

Venice is sinking

Venice is Sinking In the past century, the marshy land that the city sits on has lowered by about 11 inches Some experts say that the city is now sinking 5 times faster than previously thought Venice is also apparently tilting eastward

Why Is Venice Sinking? Tectonic plates Compaction of the ground the plate it sits on descends just below the region Compaction of the ground the weight of buildings weighing down on the ground) The pumping out of groundwater below the city They stopped doing that decades ago

AND the Sea Levels Are Rising In recent years, Venice has had an average of 100 floods a year This is mostly due to climate change The local Adriatic Sea is supposed to rise about another foot by the end of the century

Residents now have to often walk on wooden planks (passerelle) to stay above the floodwaters in large parts of the city.

How to save venice?

The MOSE Project Named after Moses and the parting of the Red Sea It is a system of floodgates seeking to protect the Venetian Lagoon from becoming flooded with water from the sea. When inactive, the gates will lay flat on the seafloor; when water levels rise, they will be pumped full of air and rise above the surface to block sea water. Is 85% complete; should be done by 2022

The Controversy Over MOSE So expensive So far, over $7 billion Will it even work? Just a short-term fix? The environmental impact Could hurt the ecosystem of the lagoon

Other Options One idea involves pumping water back underneath the city A dozen wells surrounding Venice in a six-mile circle would pump water into the ground over a ten-year period It should stabilize the sinking and then actually cause an uplift. It would be a lot cheaper than the MOSE project, around $300 million. It may sound a little crazy, but it’s been done before. Used by oil companies, this kind of subsurface fluid injection has previously caused land to rise in California and Canada.

A look under the city… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BmjCLbsU4A The Surprising Foundations of Venice 2:10

Other locations overrun with tourists

Dubrovnik, Croatia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWNxNnON-L4 5:01 The extra attention the city gets from being a filming location for Game of Thrones combines with the cruise ship arrivals to create "a problem of epic proportions."

Barcelona, Spain Visitors to the Catalan capital increased by 25% from 2012 to 2016 and locals have reacted in anger. The city has moved to limit tourist beds in a bid to tackle the problem.

Santorini, Greece The number of cruise ship passengers who can disembark at the Cyclades island each day has been capped to 8,000 to control increasing tourist numbers.