Campaign For A Living Venice

For the Love of a City

My friend grabbed my arm and stopped me, gesturing at the massive stone pillars, and said “But this city is strong, no? Strong! It has survived so many things for so long and yet here it stands.”

By Paul Rosenberg, Campaign For A Living Venice

In the summer of 2016, I was planning my second trip to Venice when UNESCO announced that it was considering putting the city on the list of Endangered World Heritage Sites. I had only been in Venice for a total of seven days in my life, but I was already completely in love. In the previous few years, I had been eagerly studying the history of the city and learning the language. Now, as I was beginning to learn about the present-day condition of this enchanted place and how serious the problems it was facing were, I got quite angry.

It was this outrage I felt, and the extremely limited options for an American with equally limited resources such as myself to do anything meaningful to help Venice, that became the inspiration and driver for the creation of the Campaign For A Living Venice.

The basic idea I had was that if I felt so strongly about what was happening in Venice, there were almost certainly many other people around the world who felt the same way but had no way of knowing what was going on. I could help, I decided, by making it possible for people who love Venice, but who do not read Italian or are not familiar with the local media in the city, to read the news about Venice in English. That simple mission has been what the site has done ever since November 2016, publishing translations of local news stories and essays on a weekly basis.

It’s a small endeavor, to be sure, yet for the limited number of regular readers the site enjoys, it has also happily become a resource for international media outlets, freelance journalists and scholars who are looking for factual, on-the-ground information and local contacts to speak to about the myriad issues being faced in Venice.

Over the years I have returned to the city many times, and I have had the incredible fortune to get to know many people and to have the opportunity to be involved in and supportive of all they do for Venice. The welcome I’ve received has been truly humbling, but people who love Venice can tell that I do too. This is perhaps the city’s greatest strength – Venetians love their city with great intensity, and act accordingly. The city is brimming with talent and energy and activism, which may not always work effectively or harmoniously, but is nevertheless united by this deep love of place, a love for Venice that we today share with countless generations of Venetians and foreigners that came before us.

That love means a lot, I think, and it’s what gives me hope for the future of Venice. The city is approaching a crucial turning point with the upcoming elections next year. The impact of the Brugnaro years has been drastic, and much of it will be permanent, at least physically. However, his legacy does not have to define politics in Venice going forward. There is an opportunity to rebuild a government with functioning services, a rational housing policy and budget priorities that are citizen-facing, rather than development-facing, and above all, redistributes power back to a healthy balance within the city and municipal governments.

Then there is the task of restoring trust with the public. Let’s not forget, Mayor Brugnaro and all his top deputies have now been indicted for corruption, concerning a real estate deal the mayor tried to make in 2017, just a year after taking office and swearing he would never try to sell or develop the land in question (the so-called Pili tract), and setting up a “blind trust” to avoid the perception of conflicts of interest.

It’s been a hard time for the city, these years since CFLV first started. Yet, I always think back to one evening in Venice, walking past one of the monumental churches with a friend and talking about the problems the city was facing and the fears that it was being destroyed. She grabbed my arm and stopped me, gesturing at the massive stone pillars, and said “But this city is strong, no? Strong! It has survived so many things for so long and yet here it stands.”

She was, of course, exactly right. The narrative about Venice when I arrived on the scene was that the city was dying. It is certainly true that the number of permanent residents has continued to fall and has dropped to an all-time low. But dying, never! I recently had the privilege of translating a newly published book called Venice is Alive! (more on that in an upcoming article). Venezia è Viva is a tour through some of the lesser known yet very active – lively – areas of the city. Venice is full of tourists, yes, but it is just as packed with students, academics, researchers, artists, musicians, writers, technologists, archivists, artisans, architects, doctors, attorneys and a myriad of specialized workers who are qualified to maintain and restore the unique and ancient structures of the city. I’ve left a bunch of other categories out. The city is buzzing with activity.

Indeed, Venice is very much alive, but it still needs a great deal of help. The living Venice – the city where people live, work and raise families – persists, endures, yet an incredible effort will be required to make the city productive and sustainable for the generations to come. Fortunately, as just mentioned, the city has an incredible amount of energy – and love – working in its favor, in the form of countless associations, local political parties and some very committed city councilors in the opposition parties.

Thinking back across the years now, when I was already all aflame with love for and curiosity about Venice and found myself furious to learn that the city was so badly threatened, I have to admit after all this time that I have always had, even since that first summer, an ulterior motive for wanting to fight for Venice. Put simply, I dearly, badly wanted to live in Venice myself, and I selfishly wanted there to be a city still there should I some day find a way to make that happen. I admit it – there was some self-interest involved!

Now that dream is at hand, and I’ll be living in Venice very soon – starting next week, in fact. For this Campaign, then, the next year promises to go to a new level, taking readers inside the living city and the struggle for its political, social, environmental and economic future in a way not possible before. CFLV will be “on the ground” in a new way and at a critical moment.

Gentle reader, if you’ve stayed with me this far, you must care about – or even love – Venice yourself. Please take a moment to share the site with your friends and keep spreading the word. Your actions matter. People like you and me are paying more attention than ever to Venice, and this site will continue to inform and shed light on current events. The true motive is the one we all share: the love of a city.

For the love of Venice.