Had Venice’s political leaders not begun to shift resources away from higher education and innovation in the 1980s, Venice could have emerged by now as a kind of Cambridge on the Adriatic. Yes, Venice is engaged in a 5.5 billion euro (US$6 billion) flood-barrier project, called Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MOSE). However, the project, launched in 1984 — when Venice was already sinking — and inaugurated in 2003, was supposed to be completed in 2011. Even if MOSE is finished by its current deadline in 2021, neither it nor any other construction project would be enough to protect Venice. The first step is to remove Venice from the jurisdiction of the Italian government, whose consistent failures have driven the city’s decline in recent decades.

Source: Taipei Times November 24, 2019 15:56 UTC