I'm a Venetian since 2020, and I can say that I know a bit about these engineering and environmental issues.
First, the €5.5B cost of the MOSE is mostly due to corruption. Several people have been investigated, and some condemned, but it's pretty clear to everyone that as much as 2/3rd of the cost can be attributed in one way to another to corruption.
Second, no one in Venice is talking about raising the city by pumping something in its underground. No one.
This whole article is fabricated by finding a couple of obscure academics willing to imagine a weird, unlikely scenario.
There is no political will nor agreement on what to do to fight sea level rising. At least for the moment.
Despite all of this, I love being here, and I hope I'll be able to enjoy the city for the next few decades. Maybe some fancy and intelligent solution will show up eventually, down the road. I'm not too hopeful.
People have been talking about this for decades, but it doesn't seem to be very popular now, especially since MOSE appears to be working at the moment.
>First, the €5.5B cost of the MOSE is mostly due to corruption. Several people have been investigated, and some condemned, but it's pretty clear to everyone that as much as 2/3rd of the cost can be attributed in one way to another to corruption.
Perhaps, but if we're being practical we should account for a similar increase in costs to any future solution. It's not like corruption will go away by the time the procurements for the next project go on...
> Perhaps, but if we're being practical we should account for a similar increase in costs to any future solution. It's not like corruption will go away by the time the procurements for the next project go on...
This meek fetal-position defeatism is why infrastructure costs spiral up and up and up forever.
Raise costs on project A
Baseline the expected costs for project B based on project A
Raise costs further on project B
Repeat endlessly
It doesn’t have to be this way. Italy itself halved its rail construction costs by cracking down on corruption in the 90s. We always have a choice.
> Really? I thought the reason was corruption! Perhaps if we all think positively it goes away!
I could have added a few words to my comment to make it clearer:
“This meek fetal-position defeatism in the face of corruption is why infrastructure costs spiral up and up and up forever.”
Corruption can be defeated, or at least minimized, but only if we fight it head-on rather than submissively accepting it and factoring it into our future expectations.
No it won't. Corruption is one of the main reasons those project go anywhere. People in positions of power want to do them because they can get money on the side while they are done.
If we figured out how we can make combating climate change rife with corruption 30 years ago, we'd be in much better place right now.
> Corruption is one of the main reasons those project go anywhere. People in positions of power want to do them because they can get money on the side while they are done.
This misunderstands the relationship between corruption and state capacity.
The key insight is that corruption does not require a project to actually deliver the promised benefits, or even to be completed at all.
> If we figured out how we can make combating climate change rife with corruption 30 years ago, we'd be in much better place right now.
Fortunately there’s a great test case for this theory: California High Speed Rail. It was justified in climate terms but actually got underway so that numerous local/regional special interests and parasitic consultants and contractors could extract profit from it. And the result is a fatally flawed project that is decades late, has swallowed money that could’ve paid for numerous other rail projects, may not be completed at all, and will never deliver the originally promised benefits in any case (too slow because of sweetheart deals for numerous Very Special cities).
Meanwhile, lower-corruption countries that haven’t gutted their state capacity can and do build immense amounts of beneficial infrastructure.
>The key insight is that corruption does not require a project to actually deliver the promised benefits, or even to be completed at all.
No, but another key insight is that it helps corruption very much if it's completed and delivers the promised benefits, since it means less chances for people to complain, and for later investigations (e.g. by political opponents) to deduce wrongdoing...
As for the California example, this is in a place with supposedly less or no corruption (and no "mafia ties" level corruption).
So, "Local/regional special interests and parasitic consultants and contractors" messing up the project is more about a huge bureaucracy and a too disjointed process, with baroque procurement laws, and decision makers who have to satisfy and yield to all kinds of interested parties along the way.
Plus of course the totally hand-tieing legal framework, and ligitation heavy environment leading to paralysis. Sure there would also be some corruption, but in the California case I'd venture to guess that you don't need much of it, and it's all both systemic and legal. It's just regular interested parties and middlemen getting their say and their legal share (but too many of them, and with high multipliers), and costly elaborate and unneeded procedures having to be followed.
> No, but another key insight is that it helps corruption very much if it's completed and delivers the promised benefits, since it means less chances for people to complain, and for later investigations (e.g. by political opponents) to deduce wrongdoing...
Again, a nice theory, but one that does not match reality. High-corruption projects rarely get done, or have serious flaws if they do. You can see this all over the world: from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome (still not fully complete, money all embezzled) to Mexico City’s Metro Line 12 (inferior concrete saved Carlos Slim some money but killed 26 passengers). There is no accountability for the perpetrators of these failures precisely because of the corruption that enabled them in the first place, so they do not need to concern themselves with the benefits of the project. That’s why corruption fundamentally breaks the incentives for good governance. Meanwhile low-corruption countries build lots of great infrastructure.
> As for the California example, this is in a place with supposedly less or no corruption
Surely you can’t be serious
> So, "Local/regional special interests and parasitic consultants and contractors" messing up the project is more about a huge bureaucracy and a too disjointed process, with baroque procurement laws, and decision makers who have to satisfy and yield to all kinds of interested parties along the way.
What huge bureaucracy? The problem is that there is none, that all decision-making has either been passed up to politicians or down to consultants. CA HSR authority barely exists—all there is is a self-serving political board and a bunch of self-serving private consultants with virtually no one in the actual civil service technically competent to check their work. The politicians like Rod Diridon of San Jose use their positions to improperly benefit their cities (corruption) and the design-build consultants use their lack of oversight to improperly enrich themselves by making intentionally expensive design choices (also corruption).
The rest of what you said about the process is correct, and is another way to say “institutionalized and legalized corruption”.
> High-corruption projects rarely get done, or have serious flaws if they do.
Survivor bias. You only hear about corruption in failed projects. You don't hear all that much about corruption in successful projects because it couldn't have been that bad if the project went well and was a good idea. I can assure you that with every successful project many people got rich on the side too.
Getting rid of corruption is impossible. But it can be done in a better or worse way.
The assertion that something is always there even when there’s absolutely no evidence for it is an unfalsifiable “Russell’s teapot” argument.
It is trivially true that someone makes money from every project; the land, labor, and materials have to come from somewhere. But it’s only corruption if someone is extracting surplus beyond the actual necessary cost.
Fortunately the Transit Costs Project has a great database of global costs for rail transit projects, making it possible to discern when something is fishy. I highly recommend reading at least their executive summary.
> The assertion that something is always there even when there’s absolutely no evidence for it is an unfalsifiable “Russell’s teapot” argument.
Stating that every large project involves some degree of corruption is less like claiming that there's a teapot in the orbit of Jupiter we can't hope to observe. It's more like claiming that every sufficiently large economy has some gray area even if we didn't directly observed it.
> corruption does not require a project to actually deliver the promised benefits, or even to be completed at all.
Yes. Corruption only requires for the project to get started. Which is what very few useful projects experience at all. Most never get off the ground. And project getting started raises the probability that the project will be eventually finished at some point.
> And the result is a fatally flawed project that is decades late
But the alternative is not a project done right. It's a project than never got started because no one saw opportunity for personal gain in it. Think of all the places that don't have high speed rail projects, let alone high speed rail.
I know it's easy to lament inefficiencies of corruption and compare effects with other, more successful projects that possibly required less corruption to get going. But the fact is that inefficiencies are not a problem as long as there is money in the pockets. Every corporation operates with huge inefficiencies at every level except for perhaps core revenue centers. And it's fine. The problem is with starting things as an organization with money.
> But the alternative is not a project done right. It's a project than never got started because no one saw opportunity for personal gain in it. Think of all the places that don't have high speed rail projects, let alone high speed rail.
The alternative is absolutely a project done right—that’s why working high speed rail exists all over the world! The US is not the only place that exists.
I don't complain. And as soon as someone figures out other thing than corruption profits that will motivate people in power to get things done I'll be fully onboard.
Elections kinda do that up to a point, called elections. Corruption is longer term mechanism.
Out of curiosity, why move to Venice? I guess 2020 would be a great time due to the dearth of tourists, but otherwise the city seems to be owned by tourists rather than the locals. Is there real hidden life going on there? How does one hook up with the local/long term residents?
In Venice, the small local population amidst a substantial influx of tourists fosters a tighter community.
Actually, lots of extremely local communities gather around social hubs, typically squares featuring bars where people routinely visit for breakfast, brunch, and aperitifs. It doesn't take long to gain recognition and differentiate yourself from a tourist; alcohol often facilitates conversation, too :).
If you want to see this in action, there are a fair number of sagre (these are summer festivals typical of small towns and villages throughout Italy, but not so much in the cities) that unfold right in the heart of Venice each year!
(Try searching for Festa de san piero de casteo or Sagra di san giacomo dall'orio and look at some pictures)
Moreover, as Venice doesn't have cars (and boats just work in a different way), you're likely to follow the same few paths to and from work. This familiarity aids in establishing recognition on the street.
Being young can be beneficial when integrating with locals, thanks to the significant student population residing in the city (relative to the number of permanent residents). However, it's hardly an impediment; it's common to see people of all ages enjoying drinks during aperitivo. YMMV depending on your level of introversion or extroversion.
Nightlife after midnight is concentrated in a few places, and again it won't take long to recognize the same faces, nor to be recognized too.
Overall, as a single data-point, during my seven years there, I found Venice's social dynamics to touch a sweet spot in its unique blending of small-town camaraderie and large-scale artistic events.
I had the same question. I visited Venice years ago, and though I definitely think the place deserves to be on people's bucket list (it's beautiful, an engineering marvel, and I kept thinking to myself "How can this place still exist?"), but it still felt like "adult Disneyland" - more a museum almost than a place to live.
Genuinely curious about what life is like living there, and what the draw would be to move there.
There's many different kinds of experience to be had in Venice. If someone comes as part of a tour group, and their Italian is limited to 'grat-see', then yeah, they're 100% going to have a particular kind of experience (for which "adult Disneyland" is a great label). The stretch between the Rialto and Piazza San Marco, inclusive, is 100% for tourists. Some other stretches are heavily touristy too these days - the seaside walk between Piazza San Marco and Arsenale, the isles of Burano & Murano, etc. This is really no different from a place like Prague, where the historic heart is also 100% for tourists.
There's other places in Venice though - quieter parts, less touristy streets. You see fewer selfie sticks and more people with grocery bags, you see lawyers' offices and dentists, you see cafés selling coffees for more reasonable prices, etc. I would imagine that there would be beautiful charm to living off the beaten path in Venice, strolling along the canals every time you want to go for walk. If you're someone who greatly values beauty, paying Venice's cost of living premium in exchange for that privilege might feel like a good deal.
> For all its technological whizzyness, the system has downsides. Cost is one. Mr Redi reckons each raising of the barrier costs about €150,000 (other estimates are higher).
Great article but I'm really curious about this number. If the alternative to raising the barrier is "the entire city floods" then that... seems like a pretty good trade? Also, nobody talks about the cost of raising and lowering a drawbridge. The whole point of it is to be raised or lowered, just like the barrier.
Also, nobody talks about the cost of raising and lowering a drawbridge.
Worked at a civil engineering company that worked on a major drawbridge project. Minimising the number of times it needed to be opened/closed was a major concern and huge point of contention.
I assumed it was due to the height of the ships that typically passed. Probably costs more to build the bridge higher so you don't have to raise it as often, so they fight about lowering costs and minimize the number of times they raise the bridge.
Traffic mainly, but also maintenance. Mechanisms needed to be inspected/serviced every N openings. Although the big fight was basically that 'Team Road' wanted the bridge to open twice a day at fixed times and if a boat missed its slot it just had to wait, while 'Team River' wanted the bridge to open within 10 minutes of any boat showing up.
The issue is not the cost at the moment. The real issue is, what are we going to do in 50 years?
Invest even more money to buy another 10-50 years or will we have to admit defeat? If there's even a chance of admitting defeat that will be felt in property prices and investments a lot sooner than those 50 years.
Venice is a small city compared to Jakarta, and they're moving Jakarta. However I'm not sure if they will succeed in their plans with Jakarta, sure the big companies will move, but moving a city is not a trivial thing to do.
They're building a showcase city a thousand kilometers away in a different island as the new capital, but they're not relocating the 20+ million who live in Jakarta.
They are relocating the government. The private companies weren’t invited. This is like how Burma moved its capital from Rangoon to Nay Pyi Taw, Rangoon is still the commercial capital if Burma.
The other examples I would reach for are Côte d'Ivoire moving its capital from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro in 1983, or Nigeria moving from Lagos to Abuja in 1991. In both cases, the old capital is still far and away the largest city in the country, like 10× the new capital city.
Jakartan here, will never move even if the whole city get flooded (more than it has been). I'll probably get a houseboat and settle down.
More realistically, Northern Jakarta is sinking, but the Southern part (and the suburbs/exurbs in the surrounding area) are still going to be okay and Jabodetabek will still be home to millions.
Well, for people living there it's how they pay their bills, so for them it's very practical economical problem. And not just them, the whole Veneto region in fact lives from tourism, and Venice is their main attraction, so they all heavily depend on it. Even here in Istria (Croatia) many people live from organizing boat tours to Venice, so the economical impact of these changes goes even beyond just Italy.
I visited once and stayed well away from the center. It didnt look like anyone much actually did live there - which makes sense, if you owned an apartment it seems you were better off renting it to tourists and moving to mestre.
> the whole Veneto region in fact lives from tourism
This has.not been true for more than 30 years. Veneto is the heartland of the original Benetton, a heavily industrialised region, the engine of the Italian North-East economic mini-boom of the 80s/90s (based on low-cost manufacturing). In fact, there is a massive duality between the tourism industry in Venice and the economy of the mainland, which is markedly reflected in politics (Venice tends to elect leftist mayors, while Veneto as a whole is very rightwing).
Losing the tourism industry would definitely be a blow to the economy, but Veneto would survive economically just fine.
In another 50 years the condition of Venice will be a footnote in the ledger of systemic problems that bring everything to a halt.
The system, the organism or ecosystem of European civilization world wide is rotting and collapsing right before our very eyes. We are witness to the Technology Age Collapse, whether people can or want to see it or not. That will have consequences for everything and everyone, including Venice.
AI cannot create any of the things that formed the European civilization that produced and maintained everything we all have, like computers, electricity, communications, transportation, flight, etc. AI can copy, emulate, and automate; it cannot create harmonious and finely humanly tuned things. It would never have created the works of art and architecture, let alone the technologies to produce everything in order to solve specific human problems.
> AI can copy, emulate, and automate; it cannot create harmonious and finely humanly tuned things. It would never have created the works of art and architecture
I have yet to see evidence that this kind of assertion will age any better than the famous 64kB quote. True, AI can't create masterpieces today, but claiming it will never match humans feels more like emotional wishful thinking.
It's basically a religious argument that realistically can only hold if there is something in the brain which violates known physics and allows for a category of computation that isn't just different, but different enough to be impossible to emulate within known physics.
Otherwise the brain can't compute anything a computer can't (eventually) emulate.
Maybe it's possible - as an atheist I find that near impossible to imagine, but I won't entirely dismiss the possibility, but I doubt it.
a ‘masterpiece’ is a very subjective term. Most are viewed as such not because of some objectively measurable quality but because of their uniqueness/originality (at the time) and context. In that regard it’s hard to imagine AI could achieve that until it became very good at imitating humans.
Uhm, all of the technologies you mention were developed by a web of humans far larger and more diverse than "European civilization." This reads very poorly.
> let alone the technologies to produce everything in order to solve specific human problems
not just technologies, but policies, education, mindsets. The goal is to make people switch from a high environmental impact to a low one. You don't need much technologies to get a bicycle rather than a heavy hence polluting vehicle. The situation we are now is just the result of many many smaller ones
> Mr Redi reckons each raising of the barrier costs about €150,000 (other estimates are higher).
Why not raise the barrier permanently, then? Build a lock for the ships going to Marghera, reroute the sewage and runoff to the sea outside the barrier.
The debate around preserving Venice's lagoon as a body of water linked to the open sea has been ongoing for centuries. A public authority to oversee these issues, the Magistrato alle Acque [1], was established in 1501, and large-scale public works were mandated around the same time (i.e., rerouting rivers to prevent the lagoon from silting up).
The reasons for this have evolved over time. It began to protect waterways that enabled local commerce, and expanded alongside Venice's dominance across the Mediterranean Sea. This led to the identity of a city that celebrated its "Wedding of the Sea" every year [2].
As a modern-day example of this, UNESCO has enlisted `Venice and its Lagoon` in its World Heritage list [3], stating:
```
Criterion (v): In the Mediterranean area, the lagoon of Venice represents an outstanding example of a semi-lacustral habitat which has become vulnerable as a result of irreversible natural and climate changes. In this coherent ecosystem where the muddy shelves (alternately above and below water level) are as important as the islands, pile-dwellings, fishing villages and rice-fields need to be protected no less than the palazzi and churches.
```
In the present day, when Venice is mainly seen as a tourist attraction, it's easy to underestimate this. However, locals still draw a firm line between those who live in the city and the "campagnoli" (people from the countryside).
Any plan to sever this historical link between Venice and the sea would be a tough sell, regardless of its economic or technical feasibility.
the article talks about this – it’s a major ecological concern as it‘d turn the lagoon into standing water, and Venice is already notorious in polluting the lagoon.
There would be the need of huge (leakproof) containers for the compressed air recovered, from a back of the envelope calculation, we are talking of 100,000-150,000 cubic meters of compressed air.
When I first glanced at the headline, it read “razing” the city.
Jokes aside, it’s a serious issue, but Venice is just one of many coastal cities so affected. New Orleans residents can tell you about a relatively recent experience they had.
Someone once mentioned to me, that if you wanted to see a government agency that was not politicizing climate change, look to the US Navy. They have trillions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure that could get swamped.
Seriously, one of the true wonders of the world. It is amazing it was not fully ruined in XX century with cars and advertisements and "modern" architecture. I feel like all of the western civilisation should be spending money on saving Venice, considering its historic influence as well.
I agree 100%. If every city had vehicle traffic fully grade-separated from pedestrians the way the Venice does, they would be much more livable and safe.
We got enough debt and unfilled payments to go around already. Let those who want to save it spend their own personal money by donating it to certain accounts. And do not shoulder everyone with stupid waste of money.
And why pick only it to save? Don't any dying city build in 1900s deserve to be saved too?
It's a modern problem. Below the current city are the remains of several other cities that previously sank into the muck. The problem only became difficult to manage when we stopped rebuilding over sunken structures and started continually investing in extremely complex and heavy structures that we are hesitant to write off.
I’m sure if we compare governments and corporations with impact of individuals it’s not 50/50. Govs and corporations have much bigger chance at changing large scale factors, quite obviously. Even individual behaviour is in the hands of the governments – see France banning short flights as example.
the same could be said on the power of people above all with inflation, drought, heat waves, pollution waves, mindsets change slowly but surely, it'll become shameful to have noisy and polluting vehicles. I can see some environmental revolution in the future, environmental migrants, environment will be problem number 1, far ahead of minor things like covid. Government often follow and react. I'm french and this law is a bit of an experiment, very minor https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/world/europe/france-short... I live near Nice, a plane landing every minute, at least 6 planes trail visible in the sky, when there's not too much pollution, the government is still subsidising airplane companies, airports etc. It's not enough, we need quotas of a few air flights in our lives, no more
Honestly I think, such projects must be funded instead of stupid thing called development aid: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_aid Because money does not solve poverty problems. Especially wiring them directly to corrupt governments.
> I am an engineer, I live in Venice and I do work on this project. The gates might have a lot of drawbacks, but at least they are not visible. The lagoon of Venice is practically a natural reserve, especially in the vicinity of the sea inlets: the gate project in the Rotterdam style was rejected exactly for this reason (and the inlet in Lido is almost 2 km wide, compared to the 0,4 km of the dutch project). The gates themselves are huge, they can easily withstand a tide of +3 m and need very little modification to go above this threshold. The main concerns lie with the environmental impact of their activation: firstly because they consume a lot of energy, secondly because they impact on the vital interaction of the lagoon with the Adriatic: in the worst case scenario, it is expected that by the end of the century, flooding above the 110 cm threshold will occur for 180 days per year, thus this problem needs to be carefully handled. For the concerns about the navigation and trade, an offshore port (with an underwater train connection) is being studied, an idea which could also remove all the container and cruise ships which are still allowed to enter the very shallow water of the lagoon.
I remember when they put this project out to bid the two finalists were a local consortium and a Dutch consortium that had extensive experience in that nation’s waterworks.
> * When a high tide begins, machines that consume enough electricity to power “a small town”, as a technician puts it, compress air that is blasted into each floodgate. As seawater is forced out, the floodgates rise into nearly vertical positions. The resulting barrier holds back the Adriatic until the tide retreats.*
This sounded impressive to me, like a micro version of some disaster science fiction, in which massive engineering effort is thrown at defending against some planetary-scale existential threat.
Do we have enough will to tackle climate change itself? Or the Cascasian subduction zone earthquake-tsunami that would wipe out much of US Pacific Northwest metro areas?
It’s really hard seeing a tsunami take out Seattle, given that there are tall mountains between it and the Pacific Ocean, the tsunami would need to develop in the sound, which should be impossible. We can still be taken out by a earth quake or maybe a mudslide when Rainer erupts and it’s glacier melts?
Tsunami won’t take out Seattle. It is a long, winding way from ocean through Puget Sound. Models show that there will be flooding in low areas. Seattle has advantage that built on hills.
The tsunami will have huge effect on the coast but minimal effect on Portland and Seattle. Even Astoria, on Columbia mouth, and Victoria, on Strait of Juan de Fuca won’t be affected much.
Also, the quake wont be that bad in Portland and Seattle. The fault is pretty far off shore and it will feel more like a 7 in Portland. A 7 that goes on for minutes so liquefaction will be a problem. Most buildings will survive, only unreinforced masonry and liquifcation areas will collapse.
The big problem is that the infrastructure is old and will fail. Most bridges and all the utility crosssings. Which means no water and power for months. But infrastructure can be upgraded. It would be possible to make Portland and Seattle like Tokyo in 2011 quake which was very similar to Cascadia quake.
The article doesn’t make sense. It says a tsunami will hit the pacific coast, but neither Portland nor Seattle are very near the pacific coast. It is not very likely a tsunami will be able to clear the Olympic mountain range, and while Portland has no such protection, it is inland enough that it would have it be a huge tsunami not known in modern times.
Now if everything simply breaks up and falls into the ocean, we are screwed. But a far away seismic event isn’t going to affect us.
Forget Berlin. The Ruhr area, biggest continuous settlement in Germany, with roughly 20 million inhabitants (of which maybe 5 million would be affected), is below its local water table because "the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep". So now they are spending 100Mio per year on pumping away the ground water, probably forever:
Let it sink, make it an underwater tourist attraction. Modern day Atlantis theme park. Pressurize select spaces, build glass tube walkways, rent diving gear and plant fake treasure that can be exchanged for gifts.
The world's largest amusement park, Disney's Magic Kingdom, sees on average roughly 15 million people visit each year. A "quarter of a million", or 250_000, doesn't sound so many anymore. The park has a maximum capacity of 90_000 guests at once. A massive undertaking for sure, but not impossible.
Obviously, the residents and owners of Venice would be compensated and receive shares, enough to live elsewhere and well, or this wouldn't work.
Isn't every amusement park in the world built upon land on which people used to live? They don't build them out in the desert, do they? Well maybe Las Vegas.
