Venice, Fragile City: 1797-1997

Rating:
Summary: Venice as live as it'll ever be
Review: A nice journey through Venice recent history revealing a city that's still alive and living.
The research touches many subjects related to the city and its environment such as art, architecture, sociology, politics, economy and pollution giving the reader a wide view over the lagoon complex and problematic system.
The book gets very interesting once we enter the twentieth century and we discover a series of new projects that change radically the city's system, but not its outlook and appeal.

The bibliography and the notes sections are accurate and rich.
Clear graphic although not that enchanting.

"We must let the citizens benefit both for the merely romantic aspects of Venice, and for the functional and efficient aspects of the contemporary living, not letting some prevailing on the others. Venice cannot survive with policies and projects that foster the touristic monoculture and do not keep in mind the basic, ordinary and extraordinary necessities of the citizenship. We must avoid both tendencies that would like to radically change the city appearance, homologating it to the one of other cities, or preserving it barrenly, crystallising it as a sort of scenography or museum"
from "Ten Hypotheses for the Lagoon - Dieci ipotesi per la Laguna di Venezia" by Occhialini C., Pucci C., I.L.A.U.D. Publishing, Milano 2003