The President of the Municipality of Venice, Giovanni Andrea Martini, who is a candidate for Mayor in the 2020 election, offers some thoughts on 2019 and the results of the Brugnaro Administration’s policies.
31 December 2019
“This is an administration that has aggravated the fundamental problems and has created new ones”. The judgement of Giovanni Andrea Martini, President of the Municipality of Venice and currently a left-wing candidate for Mayor, who regards a year of the Brugnaro Administration with a very critical view: the acqua granda; the two cruise ship accidents; UNESCO’s refusal to consider Venice an at-risk site, and the clear problems related to the environment and tourism which have shown the world “the fragility of Venice”.
“Behind the facts lies a precise idea of the city, which the outgoing administration has pursued for five years. The key is simple: extol the relationship between tourism and real estate income, attracting hotel investments in Venice and Mestre on one hand, and on the other hand a policy of total openness to the conversion of much of the housing stock in Mestre and Venice to tourist rentals. The end result: the number of beds available to tourism is far greater than the number of residents of the entire historic city”, says Martini.
He is also critical of Pili, a project dear to the Mayor, as a “high density tourist district on polluted marshes”. He continues: “It’s a place that will symmetrically reproduce the traffic congestion of the other terminal: Piazzale Roma”. Then there is the question of security, “drug related deaths, widespread crime, youth gangs that spread fear, an overall breakdown in social relations and a growth in urban decay”. Martini asks: “Will the triumphant ribbon cuttings and colored balloons succeed in clouding minds and covering all of this? We will see in a few months, when the citizens have ballots in their hands”.
[Ed. Note: Martini’s new campaign web site (all in Italian) can be found at https://www.tuttalacittainsieme.it/
Source: La Nuova Venezia
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