[HN Gopher] Venetians fear 'museum relic' status as population d...
___________________________________________________________________
Venetians fear 'museum relic' status as population drops below 50k
Author : pseudolus
Score : 54 points
Date : 2022-08-10 18:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Isn't Italy in general facing massive demographic decline? Is
| this all that unique to Venice?
| potiuper wrote:
| As the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Italy
| shows some are better off; venice is unique:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/the-economic-history-of-veni...
| TylerE wrote:
| Italy itself is a rather recent concept, surprisingly. The
| modern country of Italy didn't form until 1866, after a
| rather long series of civil wars.
|
| Venice was it's own Republic until 1798, when it fell to
| Napoleon.
| LtWorf wrote:
| And by venice itself we forget to mention all the coast in
| jugoslavia
| butokai wrote:
| That makes the country of Italy rather recent (just like
| most European countries), not the concept of Italy. The
| concept of Italy is much older than the country (for
| example, "Italian" was used as a language in the Venetian
| republic, and by that it was meant Florentine)
| seydor wrote:
| But they _are_ sidekicks in an open air museum. If they wanted
| people to stay there, they would have made the city livable, but
| given the amount of tourism, lack of transportation and very
| unique conditions, why would someone stay in venice? Maybe it 's
| possible to lure some digital nomads there to create a sense of
| community, it s probably an interesting place for that, but
| otherwise why would someone move to venice?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> digital nomads there to create a sense of community_
|
| How can they create a community if they're nomads?
|
| Communities are created over years or decades by people who
| stick around together (for the good times and for the bad times
| as well) to plant roots and build homes, lives, and businesses
| locally, sometimes for more than one generation, not by yuppie
| remote tech bros with MacBooks who come over to spend some
| money, have their fun, and once they're bored or life gets a
| bit unpleasant, leave.
| seydor wrote:
| digital nomadism does have a culture though, and they tend to
| create hubs, even if those are revolving doors.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> they tend to create hubs_
|
| Hubs and communities are two vey different things in my
| book.
|
| And major tech hubs with top paying jobs or a concentration
| of rich tech workers tend to score poorly at anything
| related to the sense of "community" as you have major
| gentrification issues from the giant wealth disparity and a
| caste system of those with tech jobs and money and those
| without. And the modern, compensation oriented tech
| workers, have rarely been great at forming any kind of
| community together, let alone with others, being more
| individualistic and preferring always to do things each
| their own way. Just ask them to unionize and see what
| happens.
|
| _> even if those are revolving doors_
|
| And "revolving door" communities are the worst. S-E Asia
| and Latin America are full of these gated communities of
| western remote workers and digital nomads and it kinda
| sucks, as everyone treats the place like a holiday
| amusement park. Not learning the local language, not
| integrating with the locals, not adapting to local laws,
| customs and traditions, they're just there to have their
| fun of being the top 1% earners there, consume, party,
| Tinder around, and once the novelty wears off, move on.
| That's the worst kind of community I can think of.
|
| For me, community, is what I see in small european
| villages/cities with small family businesses going back
| generations and everyone investing back into the local
| community and in the local environment for the future
| generations in the long run.
| kodah wrote:
| I agree that large, dense urban centers are not good
| economically, especially when they depend on one
| industry. That said, dense urban centers _can_ have
| communities, and I don 't think it's fair to
| automatically exclude anyone who has chosen to not put
| down roots there. I've mostly read your comments as
| negative and gate keeping.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Who was I gate keeping?
| kodah wrote:
| Anyone that doesn't live in a place for n number of
| years. You tried to mix that with a bunch of talk about
| tech bros, overpriced lattes, and the cost of dense urban
| centers with singular industries but I think most folks
| see right through that. What you're really promoting is
| that unless someone is in your area to stay, you don't
| think they can/should build or be a part of a community.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> What you're really promoting is that unless someone is
| in your area to stay, you don't think they can/should
| build or be a part of a community_
|
| That's not what I said and I feel like you've take this
| personally.
|
| You have an idealistic view of tech communities, but the
| reality is that most communities of western digital
| nomads or tech workers, like those in S-E Asia and other
| parts of the world, are more like gated communities or
| private amusement parks and less like communities in the
| traditional sense that benefit the local environment long
| term, like you usually see in smalls European cities.
| Even techies in the west don't create great living
| communities when in large numbers in the same place since
| what you usually get is booming housing prices, NIMBYISM,
| elitism, and a constant pressure to keep up with the
| Jonses.
|
| I'm not gate keeping anyone, I'm just telling it like it
| is in reality.
| kodah wrote:
| I did take it personally, because you are describing me -
| you shouldn't be surprised that you're talking to and
| about _real people_.
|
| I've moved around every 3-4 years between being in the
| military and building a career in tech. I moved out of my
| home state because wages for tech workers where I lived
| were dismally low. I was rapidly approaching the point
| where owning a home was difficult, so I left and came out
| West. I'm here _because I have to be_. That hasn 't
| prohibited me from joining and participating in
| communities. Maybe you'd be surprised to find out that
| most local communities are connected to larger
| communities; in fact, if you're someone who moves around
| a lot you often depend on these to land in places without
| feeling lost. All of what I've described here isn't
| unique to the states.
|
| I did all of this so that I could actually afford to put
| down roots somewhere that I can sustainably have a job as
| well too. Turns out that's expensive and I'll go where I
| need to go in order to make that happen in the future.
|
| You are gate keeping, you're just hiding it behind very
| charged rhetoric that sounds progressive.
| scrose wrote:
| It looks like they're already learning this the hard way:
|
| > Venice authorities this year announced a plan to attract
| remote workers to the city, but it appears to have made
| little impact.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| > Communities are created over years or decades by people who
| stick around to plant roots and build homes, lives, and
| businesses
|
| This is nonsense, community is simply about about shared
| experience and can absolutely happen with strangers or short
| term acquaintances. In fact I'd say that's the primary way
| I've experienced community from college onwards (now 30 y/o)
| and I expect many young people would feel the same.
|
| More to the point, digital nomads often stay in a place for
| months on end. That's more than enough time to run into
| people in similar circumstances at a bar/cafe a few times and
| befriend them, creating shared in-jokes and opinions of your
| situation, passing them on to other people you meet such that
| they take on a life of their own--aka, culture. You need look
| no farther than major digital nomad hubs like Chiang Mai and
| Bali to see that there are extremely vibrant communities in
| these places, which is _why_ so many nomads find their ways
| there.
| egypturnash wrote:
| How much of a connection has your "digital nomadry" made
| with locals? It sounds like most of your connection is with
| other people in the same rootless situation, not with
| people who actually live in the nifty places you're
| visiting.
|
| You are certainly in _a_ community but you are probably not
| much of a part of the community you 're visiting. And if my
| experience as someone who grew up in a tourist destination
| is any guide, the locals whose job it is to be nice to you
| probably swap stories about your cluelessness about the
| local culture, and a lot of the locals whose job is _not_
| being nice to you view you with vague disdain at best.
|
| You are raw material for the local economy and, we will
| generally do our best to politely pick you up by your
| ankles, shake you until money stops falling out, and send
| you on your way, while making sure you have a good enough
| time doing this to come back again once you have more
| money.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> You need look no farther than major digital nomad hubs
| like Chiang Mai and Bali to see that there are extremely
| vibrant communities in these places_
|
| Seems like you're mixing this with tech hubs and online
| communities. Or my understanding of what a real community
| is, is different than yours.
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| Communities come in all shapes and sizes. Your definition
| of community is too narrow.
|
| If you want to play "more community than thou", you're
| going to lose to the cohousing I spent my 20s in.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Certainly agree with your point about communities coming
| in all shapes and sizes. But it, respectfully, seems a
| bit like a parody to compare a 20s cohousing experience
| to the entire city, culture, and history of Venice
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Communities come in all shapes and sizes._
|
| Yeah, a lot of things ca be a community. Even my board
| games or bouldering communities. But that has nothing to
| do with the type of community in this topic.
|
| _> Your definition of community is too narrow._
|
| It's not _my_ definition here. In this topic we 're
| talking specifically about digital nomads and whether
| they'd benefit the city of Venice.
|
| _> If you want to play "more community than thou",
| you're going to lose to the cohousing I spent my 20s in_
|
| I'm not playing anything against any community, but the
| topic was whether groups of digital nomads can form a
| community that would benefit the existing communities of
| the city of Venice and I gave my opinion on why that
| would not be the case, so please, let's stop changing
| goalposts to contrarian anecdotes (your community in your
| dorm from your 20's is not the same as the community of
| the city of Venice).
| znpy wrote:
| > In fact I'd say that's the primary way I've experienced
| community from college onwards
|
| Then you probably never actually experienced a real
| community.
|
| I've grown up in a small town of about ~3000 inhabitants,
| who all pretty much knew each other. Random people knew my
| family, I could walk anywhere and meet someone who went to
| school with my dad or who had worked with my grandfather in
| the 60s/70s. I was often taken care of, as a small child,
| by people who I didn't know directly but that knew my
| family, and who my parents knew. There was also gossip of
| course, and some darker patterns (early 90ies), but the
| core idea was thar everybody knew each other and had formed
| long lasting bonds over the decades.
|
| This is what community means when we're talking towns, not
| Internet forums.
|
| And by the way: most natives will stick around when things
| are not so great too, nomads will just go somewhere else...
| in this sense digital normads are more like leeches than
| anything. They will make prices rise and only improve the
| pockets of few people (landlords, mainly).
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> most natives will stick around when things are not so
| great too, nomads will just go somewhere else... in this
| sense digital normads are more like leeches than
| anything. They will make prices rise and only improve the
| pockets of few people (landlords, mainly_
|
| x100 this!
| jfengel wrote:
| A lot of people do want to live there. There is a significant
| university, and all of the things needed to support it (like
| grocery stores). There's a well-developed water taxi service.
| It's been a real place to live for centuries.
|
| It's an idiosyncratic place to live, to be sure. They even seem
| content to live with the acqu'alta, the regular flooding. The
| houses are set up with barriers that prevent water, up to the
| height of about a foot. Any higher and the pressure would risk
| collapsing the walls, so they just let it in and clean up. Not
| pleasant, to be sure, but there are plenty of people who would
| put up with it to live in such a charming, beautiful city.
|
| It really is the tourists that push it over to "unlivable".
| They massively outnumber the residents, especially during the
| summer. It's actually not as bad as you might think in the many
| parts of the city that the tourists don't go to, but you have
| to pass through them.
|
| It might be AirBnB that really ends up taking it out. Whatever
| you'd pay to live that life, somebody else will pay more to
| spend a night in it.
| themitigating wrote:
| If it's just airbnb why not ban it. Hotels for tourists and
| homes for residents
| nradov wrote:
| A lot of the tourists come for day trips via cars or cruise
| ships. Banning short term rentals like AirBnB might help
| slightly but wouldn't really solve the problem.
|
| Living in a place where tourists outnumber permanent
| residents will always kind of suck no matter what. The same
| type of issues impact beach towns in the summer and ski
| towns in the winter.
| jesusofnazarath wrote:
| LtWorf wrote:
| > A lot of people do want to live there
|
| But only rich people can afford it.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| And by rich, we're talking San Francisco expensive. This is
| not "upper middle class in Omaha" rich. This is money-
| coming-in-from-somewhere-else expensive. You are not moving
| to Venice and opening a diner, waiting tables, or opening a
| carpentry studio and selling chairs. You are definitely not
| selling sharpened pencils
| (http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/index.html)
| naasking wrote:
| > If they wanted people to stay there, they would have made the
| city livable, but given the amount of tourism, lack of
| transportation and very unique conditions, why would someone
| stay in venice?
|
| I literally just got back from Venice. You can walk across the
| whole city in a little over 30 mins. What sort of
| transportation do you think you need here? There are boats,
| trains, cars to get into and out of the city, but once there,
| you can just walk anywhere.
| markdown wrote:
| > digital nomads there to create a sense of community
|
| Does not compute.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Many years ago William Gibson called Paris a theme park.
| viscanti wrote:
| Singapore?
| markdown wrote:
| Dubai?
| LtWorf wrote:
| There are huge amounts of tourists in many other cities in Italy,
| but not all of them get flooded with basically sewage water
| constantly.
| superchroma wrote:
| I wondered if you could reclaim some land near the city but off
| to one side and put some low office buildings and modern
| apartments or something, and get some natural traffic in the area
| there for the food and atmosphere.
|
| This is a city that was living and constantly renewed to the
| state of the art that is now halted and frozen in time. That's an
| expensive proposition to maintain, plus the environmental
| situation there is worsening[1] which will be very difficult to
| rectify.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/venice-floods-pictures-
| touri...
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| They did and that place is called Mestre - right next to Venice
| on mainland. Lots of space and reasonable housing. I think the
| main problem with living in Venice is that the only jobs
| available are in services and those do not pay enough to
| compete in housing with tourists. So attracting remote workers
| and retirees is the only reasonable play.
|
| One note on population drop - you would expect it even without
| tourists. 50 years ago Italy was poor and families had many
| kids crammed into small apts. No one lives like that now -
| anything less than 1bdrm/kid is cruelty. Considering virtually
| no new housing in Venice in last 100 years (no land), drop in
| population is expected.
| nickff wrote:
| The newly reclaimed land would by definition not be part of the
| Historic City of Venice. The commune contains a significant
| amount of land on the Italian peninsula, and many people who
| work in the Historic City live there.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice#Local_and_regional_gove...
| notorandit wrote:
| Venezia is not a real city where you can actually live. Poor
| infrastructure and troublesome environment.
|
| A world marvel, indeed. But still unfeasible for real life.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Plenty of people "actually live" there. They're outnumbered by
| the tourists, but they exist.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Most people don't want to live inside Disneyland or the Bellagio
| either.
| seydor wrote:
| I don't know about the bellagio ...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Isn't this the ideal anti car, walkable, bikeable, high density
| city that the anti car set has been telling us we need to
| transition to?
|
| I wonder why they're having a difficult time drawing full time
| residents.
|
| Of course, in reality: no I don't wonder why. It's an ancient
| city with no modern conveniences. The reality is that most people
| want to live in suburbs with a yard and a garage, not in a
| postcard.
| whatatita wrote:
| > The reality is that most people want to live in suburbs
|
| Maybe. But there's plenty of people (literally billions) that
| would prefer to live in a dense, walkabe city. The atmosphere,
| culture, and freedom that brings is beloved by many, including
| myself.
|
| Venice is having trouble because the city is ful of tourists,
| who don't buy "normal every-day things", don't use/need
| residential infrasturcture, and don't work in the city. Coupled
| with the thousands of AirBnB's that take revenue away from the
| city, the poorly developed local economic sectors, and the lack
| of modern residential infrastucture, you have a city in rapid
| decline.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Actually, cycling is forbidden in Venice proper.
|
| I guess too many cyclists found themselves taking an unplanned
| swim in the canal.
| piaste wrote:
| That could have been tolerated, but them bumping _other
| people_ into the canals was probably the real problem.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Come to any city in Europe sometime and be proven absolutely
| wrong.
|
| Venice is depopulating because it's not a livable walkable
| city, not because it's walkable.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >The reality is that most people want to live in suburbs with a
| yard and a garage, not in a postcard.
|
| Suburban houses are flats on the ground. They have all the
| downsides of apartments and all the downsides of houses with
| none of the benefits of either.
|
| The Soviet model of small flat + country house is probably the
| only serviceable one. You have a house with enough land to
| actually grow something and you have a flat that is close
| enough to everything else that you don't need a car in your
| daily life.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's not an "ideal" city in any practical sense. It's a
| beautiful historic city, and that appeals to some, but it's not
| practical.
|
| It's a city mostly of tourists and it's not walkable.
|
| New York, Boston, SanFrancisco, Seattle are all ideal walkable
| cities and some of the most competitive expensive desirable
| places to live in the US. Or look at most of Europe.
|
| Most people in most of the world don't live in the suburbs with
| a car and a yard. Most don't want that. Americans do because
| we've been conditioned to think the city is bad (dirty,
| violent, expensive, _not white_ ) and Americans therefore don't
| think it's livable because they've never tried nor set cities
| up for success. Tons of people around the world and in the US
| grow up and raise kids in the city without a car and do it
| well.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _Tourism is a double-edged sword because you take money but at
| the same time you expel all the activities and space for [the
| residents]_
|
| I see no reason why cities don't have caps on tourists. We have
| visas for entire nations, no reason not to have them on more
| granular levels as well.
| mysterydip wrote:
| I was just there on a short holiday, and it was definitely
| swarming with tourists. The city itself was difficult to navigate
| if you just wanted to get from point A to B; finding the right
| bridges definitely added time. Nice to visit, but I couldn't
| imagine being a resident there.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| I had to look this up to verify, but the actual population of the
| city is about a quarter of a million, the 50k refers to the
| historic part of it.
| occamrazor wrote:
| The rest of the city is called Mestre. It's a separate town on
| the mainland, which belongs to the sane administrative "city".
| Nobody considers them as _the same_ city.
| spoonjim wrote:
| "Venice's main island has lost more than 120,000 residents since
| the early 1950s, driven away by myriad issues but mainly a focus
| on mass tourism"... surely it's the tourists driving away the
| residents and not the fact that the city is fucking underwater
| LtWorf wrote:
| They have a plan to block the rising waters... balloons or
| something... they sank millions into that thing, probably for
| nothing.
| ggm wrote:
| It started decades ago. It was predicted decades ago. We're
| living a predictable outcome. It's in the second paragraph: since
| 1950. So 70 years of structural planning failure to manage this
| problem. Across the same interval of time Italy had multiple
| financial and political crises, the red brigades, the resurgence
| of the northern league, Mussolini's daughter becoming a political
| reality, Berlusconi and bunga-bunga..
|
| And the amazing saga of the seawall and how it turned into yet
| another giant tax dodge crime related boondoggle.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/15/venice-controv...
|
| Really, each decade there was a significant decision they could
| have made, and didn't: limit access and provide structural
| support to residents. They just decided not to decide. There were
| half-arsed attempts, but pretty much none of them worked. If they
| did rent controls and financial aide to locals at scale, they'd
| see a return of the venetian diaspora and probably make the
| problem worse.
|
| Here's one nobody wants: move a significant amount of the
| relocatable artwork to Mastre, and make people want to go there.
| The impact of tourism spreading more widely will boost the Mastre
| economy, and relieve pressure inside Venice proper. That would
| mean construction investment, in an economy which is notoriously
| corrupt especially in sectors like construction.
|
| Here's a second one which they already tried: tell the cruise
| ships to fuck off, and really make it happen.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/13/italy-bans-cru...
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| It's like the resource curse except the resource is tourists.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-11 23:00 UTC)