Venice is one of the most iconic cities
in the world, due to its amazing canal system.
Have you ever wondered why Venice has canals at all
and how the Venetians built a city unlike any other?
I produced a video to answer those questions
and it's over on Nebula.
It's a part of my great city series where so far
has covered Paris's Boulevards, the plan for Canberra,
Shanghai's Metro System and New York Central Park.
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than the videos you'll find on YouTube and add free.
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How many people live in Venice?
The official answer is 258,685 people, but
for about 200,000 of them home doesn't look like this.
Instead, it looks like this.
To my eye, this looks like a normal Italian city
not the world famous city crisscrossed by canals.
That's because most Venetians don't live
in the historic district in the center of the lagoon,
but on the mainland.
Here's the boundary for the full community of Venice.
It includes the historic center right here, but it also
includes many of the lagoons islands and Terrafirma,
or the mainland.
Now you might be saying, so what?
There are plenty of cities that have more people living
on the periphery than in the historic center
and you would be right, but here are two reasons why
I think Venice is different.
First, at its height in the 1600s, the historic center
of Venice used to be home to 200,000 people,
vastly outnumbering the population of the surrounding areas.
Today, it's home to only 50,000 people.
That's a massive difference, and that decline is not caused
by suburbanization like in US cities.
Second, almost nobody thinks about the parts of Venice
outside of the historic center.
I guess that most people don't realize that Venice exists
outside of the lagoon.
Let's rectify that situation and learn more
about greater Venice and how it transformed
into a city primarily in the lagoon, to one where
primarily people live on the mainland after the bike bell.
(bike bell ring)
In its prime, Venice was the center of a maritime republic
so wealthy that it built buildings like this and this.
Venice surrendered to Napoleon in 1797 and became part
of the newly formed country of Italy in 1861.
Today, Italy is made up of 20 regions,
kind of similar to US states or Canadian provinces.
Venice is located in Veneto and serves as its capital.
Venice is in the metropolitan area known as PaTreVe,
for Padua, Treviso and Venice.
Taken together, the metropolitan area
has 2.7 million residents.
The cities in the region are tightly connected.
For example, there are about a hundred trains
per day between Padua and Venice.
The trip takes 29 minutes on a regular train,
and half that on a high speed train.
Most of these trains from Padua
and at Santa Lucia station and Venice's Historic Center
but many also stop at Venice Mestre Station,
which is just as important to the Region's rail network.
So in the context of northeastern Italy,
historic Venice is definitely a focal point
but it's also just one small section
of the larger city of Venice
which is only 10% of the greater PaTreVe metropolitan area.
But like I said in the beginning of the video,
it didn't always used to be that way.
In the early 1900s, the majority of Venice's population
still lived within the historic city.
However, since the fifties, the local population
of Venice has decreased by about 1200 people per year.
And Mestre's population has increased as more
and more people who once lived
in the historical city have chosen to move
to the more affordable mainland.
Residents are more likely to find non tourism professions
on the mainland, like in Marghera
which has a large industrial and shipping industry.
Now, over 70% of those living
in the metropolitan city of Venice live on the mainland
and only about 20% live in the historic city.
Those who continue to live in Venice
still often have to leave the island to
do their day-to-day shopping in Mestre.
What happened then?
How did the Venice that we all know and love,
the center of a maritime republic that was incredibly
wealthy come to be just a smaller notable section
of a larger region?
Let's take a step back into history.
Throughout its history, most of Venice's economy was based
on trade, but Venice also made things.
The island of Burano specialized in lace making.
Murano became a center for producing fine glass wears.
In the past century,
the glass making industry has shrunk in size, mainly
due to the fact that cheaper glass items like simple beads
and bottles can be industrially produced elsewhere.
As a result, only luxury glass products are produced
in Murano today.
Manufacturing doesn't happen much in Venice anymore
and its role as a trade hub has declined significantly.
Beginning in the 20th century,
the city put a great emphasis on the preservation
of its historic architecture, art, and culture.
Initially, this was great economically
as it brought in lots of tourists who wanted to
experience these amazing attractions.
As more and more tourists visited every year
shop owners sold more and cheaper mass produced souvenirs
diluting the artistry that historically went
into prominent crafts in industries like glass making.
Shopkeepers selling goods to locals just couldn't compete,
eventually forcing them to move
to the mainland or close entirely.
And as those older shops closed,
more stores catering to tourists took their place.
The reorienting of the city
for tourists had an inevitable result, more tourists.
The maximum sustainable daily number
of tourists in Venice is around 22,500 tourists per day.
Yet in 2021, Venice saw up to 80,000 tourists per day
in parts of the year.
This number of tourists outnumber locals
by almost two to one.
Some even call Venice a short-term city
as a majority of its occupants are only passing
through the area soon to be replaced by other tourists.
This place is a lot of stress under the declining number
of remaining locals who reported extensive hours
long queue times for restaurants, museums
and public transit.
It's not uncommon for tourists and locals to butt heads.
All of these factors have caused a steep decline
in resident comfort since the 1950s,
particularly in the last several decades.
Tourists, businesses cater to tourists and the wealthy
have inadvertently caused an increase in the cost
of living within the historic city and a decreased quality
of life due to insufficient everyday businesses like grocery
or retail stores that are required to support locals.
As tourism has flourished, many locals have been priced
out of housing and have fewer opportunities for work.
Landlords continue to significantly raise the cost
of rent for locals.
One article I found reported
that a family lost their Venetian apartment
after their landlord rose their monthly rent
from 800 Euros to 1500 euros.
Social services claimed they couldn't do anything to help
as there were too many other similar cases
that were already being dealt with.
Once locals are priced out of their apartments,
landlords often transform rentals
into Airbnbs, hostels or BNBs,
where they can make more money by catering to tourists.
A not so fun fact is that Venice not only is unaffordable
to low income residents, but is increasingly unaffordable
to middle income residents as well.
Even though rental costs across lagoon are half
of what they are in historic Venice,
some Venetian locals wanna keep their city
as they know it alive by continuing to live there.
Unfortunately, younger residents
with less income are often the first to be priced out
leading to an older aging population
in a generally inaccessible city
for the elderly and disabled.
Many are worried that a large number
of young adults leaving the city for housing
and work on the mainland will deprive the city
of a future social fabric with a variety of different types
of skilled workers.
The steep population decrease
has had many worried about the future of the city.
Is there any way to make Venice more attractive
and affordable to locals?
Urban planning efforts catering to tourists
often don't follow the comprehensive urban plans
for the city.
Many worry that Venice may be past the point
of being able to fix the city's growing problems and critics
of Venice's urban planning efforts have expressed a desire
for more of a focus on resident wellbeing, sustainability,
and resilience in both short and long-term city planning.
But Venice has not yet balanced those goals
with tourist focus goals.
As historic Venice becomes more overcrowded by tourists,
Mestre's beginning to gain more tourists each year
as a result, as it's perfectly positioned
close to the historic city,
has interesting historical locations of its own,
and has more typical everyday businesses
and shops that are lacking in historic Venice.
Finally, there's the issue
of when Venice will become not only a ghost town for locals
but for tourists as well.
In 2021, UNESCO threatened to add Venice
to its list of world heritage sites in danger
and Venice nearly avoided being added
to the list by banning cruise ships in the city center.
The Venetian government has attempted to
enact other policies to limit large numbers of tourists.
They recently enacted a three to 10 year old fee
for day troopers to the island
but they've yet to put an official limit on the number
of people that are allowed to visit the historic city
in a day.
These efforts have saved the city
from being placed on the danger list for now,
but UNESCO expects additional efforts to protect Venice
from over tourism and population decline to be set
in place for a deadline later this year.
The growing dependence on tourism,
the city's increasing vulnerability to population loss,
and the effects of climate change beg the question
of how long the city will remain attractive
to humans, period.
The reality is that historic Venice may not have
a very long future and it makes total sense
for ordinary Venetians to vacate it.
The fall of the republic,
the crush of tourists and sea level rise
all spell disaster for historic Venice.
By 2100, when someone says they're visiting Venice
they may not not mean this, but instead this.
If you wanna learn more about Venice, not from 2100,
but from say 1100 at the height of the Republic,
I've got you covered.
I made an in-depth look at the rise of Venice
and how they built their impressive canal city.
It's one of my favorite all-time videos
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