In Venice one can imagine the watery apocalypse that is said to await us. Images of flooded cities and submerged resorts are used more and more as scare tactics to warn us to change our lifestyles or deal with the impending results of climate change. But the rising waters, the melting ice-caps, none of these are necessary to experience what it would be like to live in a city of water. Welcome to Venice. As we peer over the side of our Gondola, we can see the tops of old cellar windows and doors, now flooded and useless, the wine they stored destroyed and the families they housed long gone. The stairs of the luxurious private palaces, stained and un-kept and overgrown with moss, descend into the blue water, waves lapping and darkening the courtyards as they rise with the tides. Wooden spindly poles covered in barnacles support the narrow leaning buildings and towers, as they desperately reach down, grappling to stay upright in the soft sand and rising waters of the Adriatic sea.
It is common knowledge that Venice is sinking and the waters are rising. The city may well be an example as to what happens to a city over time, after we have manipulated nature to the maximum, and have to consequently struggle with nature's retaliation.
Venice is actually made up of 118 small islands, connected by 400 bridges, (soon to be 401 as one more is currently built at the Palazzo Roma). And all the buildings have been built into the sand. As we walk along the narrow streets and labyrinth-like lane-ways, we notice the stacked up wooden planks. These are the temporary walkways that are needed when the city floods. Which it does, often. On average, the main square (and tourist attraction) of San Marco floods 90 times year.But Venice was flooding well before the climate change argument began. The floods of AD 589, 885 and 1268 were all significant. In the 1930s, water began to be pumped from under the city to be used in the nearby factories, and the city has sunk 1/5 of an inch each year.
In 1966, a great flood resulted in the ground floors of 16000 homes being abandoned.

There are other problems to consider. The waves created by the new motorboats erode the wooden foundations. The houses lean and strain as they sink into the sandy swamps on which the were built. There are no cars on the island (tourist traffic is limited to just one bridge joining it to the mainland) but ironically its the acid tainted droppings of the pigeons that are also responsible for much for the buildings corrosion.Venice has already had to make extreme changes to deal with its situation and there are no more romantic fireplaces or coal ovens. They are also testing the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as an alternative motor fuel for outboard and inboard marine engines. Then there are the large urban projects being developed in order to stop the town from entering an early watery grave. The first involves protecting the island from the rising tides. The"Moses Project" or MOSE
(due to be completed by 2011) consists of 78 mobile steel barriers that will be activated during exceptionally high tides. They will lie on the seabed most of the time, but will be filled with air to create a dam when Venice is threatened. All this would take 30 minutes to work. However critics say that the rise of sea levels from global warming might make MOSE useless in less than 50 years. There are other concerns. Venice has an ancient plumbing system and waste and sewerage is still released into the canals. Without the high tides to flush the filthy water out to sea, the results could be disastrous.

MOSE ProjectThe next idea involves raising the island of Venice itself. This scheme would involve pumping huge quantities of sea water into the ground beneath Venice down 12 pipes each of which would be 700m long. The sea water would make the sand beneath the city expand and lifting Venice by 30cm in 10 years. It also costs just a fraction of Moses at only 100m euro.

How does a city change with the times? Ironically, across the water, the mainland is illuminated with the lights of heavy industry, factories and power plants, that spill pollutants into the air and water. Does Venice need to stay in the sixteenth Century, A UNESCO protected tourist attraction that will drown in its own quaintness? Venice is like an Ouroboros, eating its own tail. History repeating itself, an old city that cannot be overdeveloped yet needs to adjust and adapt with the most modern methods in order to survive.But as one floats down the canals, the only sound that of the swoosh of the Gondolier's oar through water, or the call of a gull, a water city doesn't seem all that bad at all.