IL SINDACO Sir, I wonder if you will allow me to make a few comments on “The coming death of Venice?”, which many in Italy – and I for one – read with great interest. Mine will be the comments of a Mayor who is “just a lawyer”: a profession for which Anna Somers Cocks seems to have little time and which she feels automatically puts me in a disadvantaged position with respect to the city’s real power brokers, starting from the Chairman of the Venice Port Authority, whom she depicts as a sort of all-powerful Mr. Mega-Bucks. I must confess to be quite satisfied with the legal profession which, after all, puts me unworthily in the same league as many of Italy’s Prime Ministers and Presidents. And I am quite mystified by the idea that the Chairman of the Venice Port Authority, Paolo Costa, and me should be in a sort of master-servant relationship: we are close friends and have worked together for many years. We sometimes have different views and express them with candour; right now, however, I am the Mayor and have the responsibility of governing the city. Prof. Costa as at the head of the Port Authority operates within the directives set by the government and the city regulations. Venice recently completed its UNESCO World Heritage Site management plan, which Ms. Somers-Cocks feels is both too little and too late. Too late it is not: although Venice has been a World Heritage Site since 1987, drawing up a management plan was not required by UNESCO at the time; the Italian Government decided to make this requirement compulsory for all Italian World heritage Sites, both old and new, in 2006. Hence the management plan recently adopted by the city after a very thorough preparatory work. I fear that Ms. Somers-Cocks, like many others, has fallen prey to a misunderstanding as to the nature of the plan: it was not designed to determine the priorities as well as the regulatory and operative tools for the management of the city and its lagoon, but it is aimed at assessing how the competent authorities are proceeding in respect of their WHS obligations as stipulated by UNESCO. Perhaps the definition “management plan” was unfortunate, but it is the one which is employed by UNESCO and we were bound to adopt it. Venice, like other Italian cities, does have a management plan of the first type: it is called PAT, “Piano Assetto Territoriale”; it has been approved by the City Council and is an operative and legally binding instrument, which sets out the ways and wherefores through which the city can achieve the objective of a more effective governance under democratic control. I am sure it would make worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the city. The UNESCO Site management plan is something different, in the sense that it is not prescriptive in a legally binding way; it sets out the entire range of the policies of the “Comune” of Venice and the nine adjoining “Comuni” in the Lagoon - with their connected problems and priorities - against the UNESCO grid of obligations for World Heritage Sites: in many ways it could be considered a sort of catalogue raisonné on which the Venice and the “Comuni” of the Lagoon can base their decisions. It should, and indeed must, contain a reference to all the problems, indicate possible solutions and highlight sticking points to be addressed. One, by no means the only one, is that of the “large ships” which the plan rightly highlights as an urgent problem to tackle. Equally, it IL SINDACO would have been surprising if the plan did not mention the need for “developing the port of Venice as part of the historic, economic and social heritage of Venice and its lagoon”: the phrase antagonizes Anna Somers-Cocks but all it does is to remind that Venice is a seafaring city and its port is one of its essential economic lifelines, whose import extends to the lagoon as a whole. Too little, too late? It is of course a matter of judgment, but it would be a good idea not to lose track of what this UNESCO-based document is about. The plan has brought together, for the first time, all the local authorities – “Comuni”, Provincial Governments, Central Government and Regional bodies, business associations and trade unions, civil society, etc. - responsible in different ways for the management of the lagoon which is an essential component, together with Venice proper, of the World Heritage Site as defined by UNESCO. This was never done before, and anyone who has even a scant knowledge of the vagaries of local government coordination in Italy, will understand how - if it were for nothing else - this plan is a success which will prove its mettle as time goes by. The Management Committee established under the plan – Comitato di pilotaggio- gives a voice and puts on an equal footing all the parties concerned: an added value on which few would have been disposed to bet at the outset. I would like to be extremely clear on the issue of the large ships coming into the lagoon: I am absolutely opposed to the present route which takes them into port through St. Mark’s and the Giudecca Canal. No matter how remote the danger of an actual accident may be, the risk should not be run; the transit of these modern leviathans places an unacceptable pressure on an already fragile ecosystem and in many ways defiles the city, unnaturally dwarfing its monuments and skyline. Seen from the Lido, the procession of huge funnels protruding from the embankment takes at times a gruesomely grotesque Fellinesque air. I have stated my position on many occasions, and will continue to do so. But I will need the support of as many voices as I will be able to muster: because of another of the baroque complexities of the Italian government system, I as the Mayor of Venice can rule over the canals in the city, but have no authority over the main transit canals which fall under the responsibility of the central government. Which in turn delegates authority to its local representatives and to the Port Authority. The pressure for an early solution to this problem must be put where it belongs and can be most effective; I sincerely hope that all the friends of Venice, who call on and sometimes berate the Mayor for his pretended lack of action, will join me in urging the central government and its local representatives to stop dallying with details and put an end to the situation, before anything untoward happens. This does not mean that the ships should no longer reach Venice, but rather that they should do so following a different route. Ms. Somers-Cocks rightly underlines that the cruise traffic provides significant benefits to the city: even though the figures mentioned have been questioned by some, the fact remain that this form of tourism is not one that the city can afford to let go, for its positive impact on providing jobs. There are many alternative routes under consideration, some of which are easier than others to put into place, and speed should be the main consideration in this respect. I am of the opinion that shifting the passenger terminal to Marghera could provide an effective and rapid solution, albeit temporary, while other long term projects are being discussed. IL SINDACO The offshore port favoured by my friend Prof. Costa could be a valid alternative, but would require far more time to be completed than Venice can afford. Dredging some of the existing canals, as Anna Somers-Cocks also mentions (by the way: it’s “canale” della Contorta (o Caotorta) and non “calle”. “Calle” is the venetian name for a street or an alley, and dredging a canal in one of Venice’s “calle” would indeed be awkward…) could pose significant environmental problems. Of the many solutions under discussion, I have no doubt that we will be able to come with one which will best suit the interests of all parties concerned. What we need to do without further ado, however, is to get the ships out of St. Mark’s and the Giudecca, and to do it now. For this I can only say: Help me! Tourism is vital to the well-being of Venice and provides the resources necessary not only for the livelihood of its inhabitants, but also for restoring the monuments and more generally providing essential amenities in a city which has 100,000 plus permanent residents and over six million tourists who spend at least one night there in the year. The figures have been widely quoted and I will not repeat them: we all know the situation. A couple of points are worth mentioning, however: according to WTO, by 2020 the relative importance of Europe as the primary tourist destination will decrease from 65% to 46% while regional tourism will account for 1,2 billion out of 1,6 billion total estimated trips. Crowds will continue to come and numbers will increase, but the biblical scourge anticipated by Ms. Somers-Cocks may turn out to be more manageable than she seems to anticipate: Asian tourists in particular will continue to be largely of the affluent variety with an obvious advantage for the city’s coffers (which already benefit from the growing revenue from tourist (“tassa di soggiorno”) and transit (ZTL) taxes). The inflow of tourists into Venice should be directed towards a variety of alternative routes to the main monuments: most if not all want at some point to be in St.