ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years, the debate over Venice’s future has been dominated by considerations of how to promote economic and social development in the area. The so-called ‘Venice problem’ is characterized by three aspects: the industrial decline of the Venetian lagoon; a set of environmental issues brought about by earlier forms of development; and the supposedly pernicious commodification of the city through processes of tourism. To date, the overwhelming aim of the literature tackling the Venice problem has been to foster development practices that take both the economic and environmental spheres into consideration – practices that don’t just focus on cleaning up the polluted waters of the lagoon and on the environmental restoration of the area.
