Re:Venice Battles Flooding Amid Highest Tide in 50 Years
by bpodgursky on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @01:00PM
(#21527229)
Well, in the middle ages, Venice had no objection to fixing flooding by piling a few more layers of stone and wood onto an existing (sunken) structure and using it as a foundation. And a few hundred years later, doing it again. It didn't used to be a static city.
But now that the structures are considered historical and preserved, they're trying to maintain a particular snapshot of the city, with the exact same buildings. Which is a lot harder than maintaining the city overall.
It's honestly not unreasonable to say "Oh hey the place you built a city is no longer cost sustainable" but there are multitudes of villages and towns in europe, the fact that we know about Venice today and don't know about Ormelle (a random village north of Venice) means there were some reasons for that particular location to prosper.
Lastly, we've got the hand we've been dealt and I think it's quite reasonable to try and preserve this historical city even knowing that is it in a vulnerable location, that isn't really a global decision but it is going to be influenced by how many people still find it worth the money to visit.