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In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Venice Project Center VPC, the Living in Venice project is focused on the quality of life and what it is like to live in Venice. This year’s anniversary is in celebration of turning over a new page in the VPC’s history and leaving information behind for other people to see. Many past IQP's have encorporated different quality of life topics, however none have completed the research. One of the goals of this years Living in Venice project is to compile all of the research and data that has previously been collected and make it easily accessible for the public.
Contents |
The Project
Mission Statement
To investigate the determining factors of the quality of life of the Venetians and to compile our findings into an accessible form for future projects.
Objectives
- To investigate the Venetians' opinions on the quality of life.
- To analyze all relevant factors pertaining to life in Venice
- To explore actions taken by the Venetian government or other key organizations involved
- To predict future trends of Venice based on compiled data
Introduction
Quality of life studies are important because they give an overall understanding of the well-being of a city. These studies highlight the successful aspects of a city while exposing areas where improvements need to be made. Cities with a good quality of life often attract more business, tourism, residents, and a skilled labor force. Organizations such as Mercer, a human resource consulting firm, Urban Audit, and Euro Stat undertake the daunting task of collecting data on various aspects of cities in order to assess their quality of life. Mercer, for example, uses 10 categories and 39 criteria to evaluate 380 cities worldwide . Urban Audit focuses on categories similar to Mercer’s plus others for a total of over 250 categories, depending upon an individual city’s characteristics and state of development. Unlike Mercer, Urban Audit only studies European cities. Such studies are essential to guide analysts and policy makers in finding ways to improve the environments of their cities.
The Urban Audit study allows various European cities to be compared to one another, moreover it helps illustrate where cities excel or fall behind. For example, Urban Audit ranked 32 Italian cities based on cost of yearly rent per square meter of apartments. Milan was top of the list with an average cost of € 2,715 per square meter and Venice ranked fifth highest with an average cost of € 2,272 per square meter. This is an exorbitant amount compared to Italy’s average of € 1,548 per square meter. This indicates that Venice has a complex cost of housing situation and is a factor that lowers Venetian quality of life.
Even though Venice shares many similar characteristics to that of other Italian cities, there are various environmental differences that set it apart. A member of the Historical Archives in Venice said that “Venice is a unique city, there is no other place like it in the world.” Some of the more important factors that make up life in Venice are pace of life, tourism, cost of living, and cost of housing. Many Venetians mentioned that the city has a slow pace of life due to the absence of cars and separation from the mainland. The Venetian atmosphere is different from both the mainland of Venice and Lido, and is said to have “a less stressful environment”. Tourism plays an incredibly important role in the functioning of Venetian daily life and economy. Each year over 12,000,000 tourists visit Venice and of those visitors 3,000,000 stay for one day or more. This figure has been increasing since the mid 1950’s and continues to increase steadily. Furthermore, 76% of the job market in the province of Venezia is focused towards services that cater towards tourism. In addition, Venetians must deal with an exceedingly high cost of living. Citta’ di Venezia did a study in August of 2008 and found that some staple foods such as parmagiano cheese costs almost twice as much on the island than it does on main land of Venice. Overall, in 2007 Venice ranked fourth out of fourteen major Italian cities for highest consumer price index which included inflation.
The population of Venice has been steadily decreasing over the past 50 years due to the high cost of living, low availability of affordable housing for residents, and an increase of tourists. Past projects that have been done by Worcester Polytechnic Institute students have focused on the city of Venice. It is important to study Venetians because they encompass the character of the city. A quality of life study is appropriate because it will gain insight on the issues of Venice that affect its residents. As previously mentioned Venice stands apart from other Italian cities.
The goal of our project is to determine the main factors that influence the quality of life in Venice and to make that information available in English. We collected Venetians’ opinions of their quality of life through informal interviews. We found that the most important quality of life topics were rhythm, cost of living, and cost of housing. Majority of Venetians who left Venice said it was for these specific reasons. Venetians did not like tourists because it was impeding on their traditional neighborhoods and stores.
Life of A Venetian
In order to examine the quality of life of a Venetian, we must first examine the Venetians life in its entirety from cradle to grave. The first step in doing this is to classify it into three general stages: Youth and Early Years, Adolescents and Adulthood, Later Adulthood and Elder. These stages are further categorized into smaller sections by age.
Population and Migration
Currently in Venice each age demographic is facing a specific situation. Venice’s youth population makes up an inordinately small portion of the overall population. A total of 14% of the population in Venice compared to 18% in Italy. On the other hand, Venice’s elderly population makes up a larger portion of the populace. A total of 25% of the Venetian population is considered to be elderly, while only 19% of Italy’s population is elderly.
Coupling these facts with Venice’s distinct economic landscape and migration troubles, the life of a Venetian varies greatly across its stages. To the right is a figure showing the percent of women and men in each age group in the “centro storico” or historical center of Venice. The historical center is considered to be the main lagoon island off of the mainland of Venice. In the figure the right hand side is female and the left hand side is male. Also, the x axis of the figure is percentage, which indicates the percentage of people in each age group. There is a bulge in the upper portion of the graph indicating that there is an uneven distribution in the population, greatly weighing towards late adulthood and elder.
In 1980 the population of the commune of Venice was 352,453 people and in 2007 the population was documented at 269,545. In order to get a better idea of the decrease in the population of Venice, between the years of 1981 and 2001 there was a decrease of 21.7%. There are two explainations for this bottle neck effect in the population, migration and birthrate, both of which will be discussed thoroughly in the following section.
In 2006 there were 268,934 people living in the commune of Venice. Of these people, 5,736 migrated out of the city, which is about a 2.1% population decrease in one year alone. On an international scale Italy’s growth rate is extremely low. In 2000 the growth rate was documented at being 0.28% and in 2040 the growth rate is predicted to be – 0.47%. This indicates that if the emigration of people does not slow down, it will be virtually impossible to keep a native population of Venetians.
Adult Stages of Life
In this stage of life it is common for one to get a job, buy a home, and start a family. One could say that this is when “real life” begins. As defined by Robyn Hartley the start of adulthood is “the transition from school to the workforce, from living in their parents’ home to living outside their parents home, and from being financially dependent to being financially independent.”
Job Market
Approximately 12,000,000 tourists visit Venice each year. As a result, the service industry takes up approximately 80% of job market in Venice. Construction, manufacturing and agriculture make up the other 20%. College graduates that cannot work in the service industry must seek jobs elsewhere in Italy. One of the possible causes of the major decrease in the number of younger Venetians may be college graduates leaving the city due to the lack of variety in the job market.
Despite the lack of job variety in Venice the unemployment rate in Venice is considerably low. Currently the unemployment rate is less than 5% while the national average of 6.2%. However, the high level of job availability does not necessarily indicate great economic conditions. In 2008 the median starting salary for Italy was €22,391 while Venice’s median starting salary was €19,100. The problem of low starting salaries, a homogeneous job market, and a high cost of living make for an economic sector that is hostile for young people trying to start their careers.
Housing
Similar to that of many places, buying a house in Venice is a large investment. In fact most people do not buy a house, but rather rent apartments. Of the entire housing stock in Venice, only 61.7% of the houses are occupied by residents. A total of 29.3% of the houses are associated with non-resident use (such as vacationers) and then 9% of the houses are unoccupied.
These unoccupied houses can be found all around the city. They are generally identified by the rundown outer appearance and completely empty interiors. On a casual walk round the city someone would pass many of these houses.
Due to the large number of tourists that visit Venice each year, a major sector of the Venetian housing market is dedicated to short term rentals. Over the last three decades the Commune of Venice has been faced with a drastic increase in rental prices. The high costs have forced residents to move out of the historical center of Venice and to the mainland. On the other hand non-residents living in Venice are willing to pay almost any price for their short stays in the city, which effectively out bids Venetians for housing. Due to this high demand for housing, the property values have increased by almost 800%, making it nearly impossible for residents to afford to live in Venice.
In an effort for the Italian government to reduce the demand for public housing and rent subsidies, as well as promote rentals for residents within city centers, a systematic plan for rent regulation was developed. In 1998 a national law offered tax breaks to individuals who rented according to the specified regulations. In the historical center of Venice there are three homogeneous housing zones which are defined. The prices for these zones are designed to be approximately twenty-five percent below market value. The reduction in these costs hoped to make renting more affordable for residents living in Venice. If an owner agreed to follow the regulations he or she is entitled to a significant tax break.
In Venice there was one particular municipal law that changed rentals and housing drastically. The Commune di Venezia passed Law 49 in 1999 that was intended to deal with the expected increase in tourism due to the 2000 Jubilee Year celebration. This law eased rental rules and allowed the creation of bed and breakfast type hotels. Usually these are bed and breakfasts are run out of local houses and involve the rental of spare rooms. This allowed common people to become renters and allowed nearly anyone to rent out their private space.
As it can see in the graph above the number of available beds has increased greatly since 1999. The increase was caused by the change in Law 49 that the Commune di Venezia passed in 1999.
In 2004 a study was done by Urban Audit that showed the yearly rent of an apartment in Venice was € 2,272 per square meter. The average of Italy was € 1,548 per square meter. Venice had the fifth highest cost out of 32 different cities in Italy with Milan having the highest cost. The costs of non-residential dwellings are based on sestieri. Weekly and monthly rental costs behave exactly opposite of each other. In 2001 the most popular rental area of the historical center of Venice was San Marco. This also happened to have the most expensive monthly rentals, but the least expensive weekly rentals. It was also shown that the monthly rental costs decreased as the distance from the main tourist attractions increased. In this situation the exact opposite was true for weekly rentals. It costs less to have a weekly apartment near the main tourist attractions.
Community and Family Life
Similar to that of many other Italian cities, family life is very important in Venice. Traditionally a large family was ideal. Celebrations and Sunday dinners are still very common where grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins are invited over to spend time together. It is also very typical for children to not leave their parents home until they are married, which makes the families very close nit. Even after children move out, often they will move back in to help their aging parents.
Along with family life, community life is also important. Venice is divided into six different districts, which are commonly known as sestieri. Within these sestieri there are different parishes, which are small social and administrative units of Venice. These sestieri are what make up the various communities throughout Venice. It is very common for one to live in the same sestieri for their entire life. Individuals who grow up in a specific sestieri often have a close connection to it for their entire life. The graph below shows the six different sestieri in Venice. The Grand Canal is the main divider for which the sestieri are split apart.
Quality of Life
Quality of life is defined by the free dictionary as “your personal satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the cultural or intellectual conditions under which you live (as distinct material comfort)”. In other terms, quality of life is more of a person’s feelings or emotional state about their personal life. Although there is no particular way to measure quality of life quantitatively, it can be measured by surveying people and determining their emotional state. Mercer’s Human Resource Consulting LLC states that “One may live in the highest ranked city in terms of quality of life and still have a very bad quality of life because of unfortunate personal circumstances (illness, unemployment or loneliness, etc.).”
Another term that is used to describe the factors that affect a person’s life is quality of living. Quality of living is slightly different from quality of life. It has certain standards such as health issues, housing, consumer goods, personal safety and education that can be measured quantitatively. Our project is more concerned with quality of living, but due to the confusion caused by this subtle but distinct difference, we will simply refer to what our project is covering as quality of life.
Various studies have been done to determine the quality of life of cities and then rank them. A study was done in 2005 by the Economist which created a Worldwide Quality of Living Index. A total of 111 different countries were ranked, with Italy being fifth. According to Mercer Human Resources Consulting LLC some of the factors that affect the quality of life throughout the world are political and social Environment, socio-cultural environment, economic environment, medical and health considerations, schools and education, public service and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing, and natural environment.
If you wish to view information about quality of life, please view our Quality of Life Matrix for Venice page.
Brief Methodology
We will be using the term quality of life to describe the subject of our study. Through research we have found that quality of life is “your personal satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the cultural or intellectual conditions under which you live.” Since we have been in Venice, we have conducted numerous interviews to find out what it is like to live in Venice. Although it is difficult to find Venetians who speak a fair amount of English, we have had a very good feed back over the last week.
From our interviews we are going to compile all of the data and look for any trends that have developed. We plan to do this through coding analysis. Our data is going to be organized in an excel spreadsheet and then visually represented through Google Widgets, drawn graphics, and Adobe Flash. We want our data to be visually represented in order to make is easily accessible and can be universally understood.
In later phases of our interviews, we are going to incorporate questions about local government actions. We want to find out from the local Venetians what the government has been doing to help aid the people to address quality of life issues. Currently we are unsure of specific issues, but this will be revealed through the next phase of our interviews.
Once we have completed all of our interviews and analysis, we want to predict future trends specific to Venice. An example of a trend that we want to follow up on is the cost of living, particularly the cost of housing. After collecting data on the cost of housing over the last few years, we want to determine the trend the data is taking. From this trend, we want to predict what the future cost of housing in Venice.
To view a more in depth methodology, please see our Living in Venice Methodology page.
Findings
In this section we will discuss the results of our interviews addressing the quality of life in Venice. Our findings are presented in four sections, Interview Findings, Overall Findings, Findings by Demographic, Other Trends, and Cases of Interest.
Interview Findings
We completed 28 interviews while in Venice. We conducted the interviews over a three week period for approximately 3 hours a day. It was very difficult to find Venetians who spoke enough English to answer our questions and who had the time to help us. Therefore only one in eight propositions were successful. We found that many people attempted to speak to us in order to help. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of our questions, they were unable to fully answer them. Following each interview, the interviewers’ notes were transcribed with direct quotes from the interview. A coding process was used to categorize the quality of living topics.
Overall Findings
On the right is a word cloud summarizing the all the phrases mentioned during our interviews. A word cloud is also known as a frequency chart. The more times a word came up in our interviews the bigger the word in the word cloud is. If a word was only mentioned a few times it will be quite small. If a word is very big, that means that it was brough up a lot in our interviews. For example Expensive is the largest word in the word chart because it was brought up in almost all of our interviews. The word cloud includes the likes and dislikes of the Venetian populace. These are not considered to be quality of life topics, but simply general words or phrases that were mentioned throughout our interviews.
Findings by Demographic
From our interviews, we were able to construct word clouds and bar charts based on the following demographic separations: male and female, 17 – 30 years old, 31 – 50 years old, 51 years old and older, current residents, and people who have moved to Mestre. We also took note of other trends that we discovered from our interviews that were of interest. Based on each demographic section, we were able to compare the word clouds and draw out key trends. The word clouds were used to depict the frequency of the “keywords” found in our interviews. There were a total of 39 different keywords/phrases that we took from our interview responses. This was done in order to keep the word pool consistent between the different word clouds. The keywords were then placed under the 10 different Quality of Life topics from the Economist, Urban Audit, and Mercer.
The bar charts rank the percentage of the quality of life topics mentioned by each demographic. For example, politics came up twice in our interviews, both by men. Therefore, males make up 100% of the political responses. The bar chart and word cloud show different information but support each other’s findings.
Other Trends
This section contains other trends that were not included above but we felt were important to mention or explore more in detail.
Native Parents vs. Non Native Parents
The last demographic we were able to separate in our interviews was whether or not the interviewee’s parents lived in Venice. The word clouds that we generated for this demographic were very similar to the word clouds that we generated for the living in Venice demographic. Only two of the people we interviewed whose parents did not live in Venice lived in Venice themselves. Seeing this, there was very few differences for us to analyze in this demographic.
These bar charts were also very similar to the previous demographic. The four highest percentages for the interviewee’s whose parents were not from Venice were accessibility, job variety, cost of living, and cost of housing. These four trends have been consistent factors that force people to move out of the city.
Community Life
Community life turned out to be one of the most important quality of life factor in Venice, but the Word Clouds do not express its importance. In the Word Clouds the phrases such as friendship, Cannaregio, Castello, San Marco, Rialto, and family life are all under the quality of life topic for community life. Therefore even though the individual words may be fairly small compared to the word expensive or shop Variety, the number of all of the community life topics makes it the most important quality of life factor in Venice.
Politics
Even though only two of our interviews touched on politics, it appeared to be a fairly important, though overlooked, topic. From one of our interviews, we learned that the gondoliers and taxi drivers have significant influence in the government. However, when we asked people about what the government has done to improve life in Venice, many people complained that there was not much done. Therefore even though politics was only brought up twice, it seems to be more important than the word cloud suggests.
Cases of Interest
There are two cases of interest that we would like to make a note of. If you wish to view these, please see our Cases of Interest page.
Analysis
In this section, we will elaborate on the prominent trends that seemed to emerge from our results and will discuss our analysis and extrapolation of these trends. The most dominant trends were the issues of housing and hotels, cost of living, pace of life, community life, and population decline.
Housing and Hotels
Through our interviews Venetians expressed concern about the increase of hotels and lack of affordable housing. Much of the housing market is focused on non-residents opposed to residents of Venice. In 1971 there were 3.1 % of homes occupied by non residents. In 2008, homes occupied by non residents increased to 19.4%. A nonresident does not live in Venice all year. Typically nonresidents own vacation homes. Venetians feel that there is a correlation between the number of nonresidents and cost of housing. In the Historical Center of Venice housing is 300% more expensive than the average resident can afford. Therefore, many residents cannot afford to live in the Historical Center and are being forced to move. We found that the main two places that people move to are Lido and Mestre. During our interviews we found that the topic housing was always mentioned as a negative.
The cost of housing affects Venetians of all ages. The younger interviewees mentioned that it was difficult for them to afford an apartment after graduation. Two particular cases are excellent examples of young Venetians expressing their frustration about cost of housing in Venice. The first is a woman named Mary whom we mentioned in Section 2.4.1. Mary graduated with a degree in Political Science from the University of Padua. She decided to move back to Venice because she enjoyed the lifestyle. Currently Mary is working two jobs and is struggling to make ends meet. She lives with her parents but despite her hard work, it is very difficult for her to live in Venice on her own. Another interesting interview was with Alex. Alex is 28 years old and currently lives in Lido, but works in Venice. When asked what he would like to change about Venice he stated that he “would like the prices of houses in Venice to decrease that way more young people could afford to live here.”
It is suspected that the increase in number of hotels has caused the number of affordable housing decrease. From the late 1950’s to the early 2000’s the number of hotel bed doubled to approximately 16,000 beds. The increase in number of hotels is suspected to have had a great effect on the residential housing market. After the Commune di Venezia passed Law 49 in 1999 more bed and breakfasts and hotels were able to open. Residents no longer needed governmental permission to open a hotel therefore making it easier to open a bed and breakfast to open.
Cost of Living and Lack of Shop Variety
The high cost of living is a prominent issue in Venice. Approximately 75% of our interviewees mentioned that the cost of living in Venice is more expensive than they can afford. Utilities and Services is one area that greatly influences a person’s choice to live in Venice, especially when they are looking for a place to live. In the past 10 years the price of oil used to heat homes has risen by 90% and the price of gas used to cook food has increased by 70%. The transportation of goods from the mainland to the Historical Center causes an increase in cost compared to the cost on the mainland. The average cost to transport a liter of oil to the Historical Center of Venice is 0.0173 euro.
Food is one of the basic necessities that are more expensive in Venice than on the mainland. For example Calamari costs about 4 Euros more per kilo than it does on the mainland and beef is about 2 Euros more per kilo than it is on the mainland. The cost of the 32 food items used to calculate the consumer price index in August 2008 was 18% higher in the Historical Center than in Mestre. The increased price is due to the transportation costs of moving goods from the mainland to the island.
Very few basic necessity stores are still around which makes it hard to live comfortably. According to the Venetians we interviewed, the variety of traditional Venetians shops have also been affected by tourism. A previous study from 2005 collected data on the types of stores in Venice from 1970 to 2005 in Dorsoduro and Cannaregio.
In the sestieri of Dorsoduro, the percent of basic necessity stores (Appendix D) has dropped from 28% in 1970 to 5% in 2005. Tourist shops, hotels, restaurants have increased greatly over the same 35 year period. Surprisingly, a quarter of the shop breakdown in 2005 is made up of closed stores. Contrary to Venetians belief, tourist stores did not cause many of the stores to close. Various hypotheses to why the amount of closed stores has been increasing were that supermarkets have taken the place of the smaller basic necessity stores, or that the rent was too expensive for new stores to open.
Many of the trends in Dorsoduro that were previously stated are apparent in Cannaregio as well. The percent of basic necessity stores in Cannaregio had dropped from 26% in 1971 to 6.3% in 2005. The similarities between Dorsoduro and Cannaregio express how the trend is common throughout the entire historical center of Venice. In 1970 there was only one supermarket in total in Cannaregio and Dorsoduro combined, and in 2005 there were 3 in Cannaregio and 2 in Dorsoduro. Some of our interviewees have talked about the growth of non-Venetian retail. There has been a major shift in Venetian retail. Many basic necessity/service stores have closed and have not reopened for various reasons. While these stores close, restaurants and hotels open in their place. However, many of the stores stay closed. The reason for this trend is not fully understood but many hypotheses have been made.
Pace of Life and Community Life
From our interviews, community life/pace of life was the most frequently mentioned quality of life topic. Despite the fact that “pace of life” was not found in any of the literature we studied, it is an important factor among Venetians. We created the term “pace of life” to quickly adjust to the growing trend we found among Venetians we surveyed. What we found was that many Venetians were emphasizing what they called “the Venetian lifestyle”. Our task was to try and ascertain what “the Venetian lifestyle” actually consisted of.
Venetians often described Venice as “a social city”. Due to the lack of cars, people have to walk everywhere and this fact defines Venetian life. “Walking around the city, one runs into many different people along the way. When you see someone you know, you stop and talk to them. It also causes you to meet new people along the way”. The Venetian who quoted this described life in Venice as “mobile” and said it makes for a different social environment.
Other Venetians also described Venice as “a relaxed environment”. One Venetian said that, “Even when I’m working or doing errands, [in Venice] there’s just no stress. In another city, I would be driving everywhere and rushing around on edge”. Many Venetians mentioned that the atmosphere in Venice was different from many other places and when probed further, they would describe the atmosphere as “relaxed” and “laid back”.
Eventually one Venetian said to us, “In Venice life flows at a different pace. People walk everywhere and take the time to enjoy things. It is a different pace of life, a different pace.” It was from this quote that we took the term “pace of life” and applied it to life in Venice. The “pace of life” of Venice is the special lifestyle and atmosphere in which the people of Venice conduct their lives. This is caused by Venice’s location away from the mainland in the lagoon, as well as the lack of cars located in the historical center of Venice. It would seem this concept of “pace of life” is very important among Venetians. Our interview results show that the frequency of “pace of life” was mentioned the most by people who had lived in the city for all of their life. If someone had to categorize the Venetian lifestyle into one concept, it would be “pace of life”.
Population Decline
The population of the Historical Center of Venice has been on a declining for the past fifty years. It is believed that cost of living and availability of affordable housing are prominent causes for Venetians leaving the city. Another probable cause in the decrease of population not mentioned in the analysis section is job variety. In the tourist verses population graph below, the lighter line represents actual data and the darker line is our predicted data. See section 4 to refer to our prediction methodology.
The job market in Venice caters towards tourism. Therefore if one is not interested in the tourism field they will have a difficult time finding a job in Venice. An interviewee said that, “you work in Venice if you are interested in working with art or tourists.” Graduates who did not major in tourism have a difficult time finding a job in Venice. As a result, many Venetians leave the city to find jobs elsewhere. As shown in our predictions above, the number of tourists will continue to increase. Therefore, Venetian graduates will continue to leave the city looking for an occupation.
Motion Chart
Below is a motion chart of actual and predicted trends in the Historical Center of Venice, the Mainland, and Lido. As you can see the population of the Historical Center of Venice will be slowly decreasing over time. You can also see that as the population of the Historical Center decreases, the population of the Mainland increases. You can also see that the population of Lido slightly decreases then remains the same.
Recommendations for Future IQP Projects
In this section we will elaborate on certain topics and issues that arose during our research that we feel should be pursued in a future project. In each section we have included our idea of perceived gaps, a suggested course of action, and some background information we have unearthed.
Below is a recommendation we wish to make. If you wish to view more, you can visit our Recommendations for Future Projects Page.
Housing in Venice
Through previous research we found that the Venetian housing market poses many problems within Venice. In our interviews we were able to confirm that the housing market is still a very large problem for both Venice and its residents. Our research suggests that the Commune of Venice does fairly well at supplying its poorer residents with low-income housing. However there is a distinct lack of affordable housing for middle-income residents. Venice’s core population is largely being driven off of the island due to the city’s housing problems. While we were aware of this issue when we went into our project, the problem turned out to be far more pervasive than we expected.
As we mentioned in the Housing and Hotels section, the problem of a lack of affordable housing for the middle class is only going to get worse as more residential housing is converted into hotels. Our Motion Chart hints the significance of the Commune di Venezia Law 49 passed in 1999. Although previous projects have been done on the housing markets in Venice, we feel that there is still a distinct need to continue to investigate the situation in order to propose solutions and provide useful data.
The questions that we feel a project like this will address are as follows:
- What are some of the many causes of the housing problem in Venice?
- How are those causes influencing the housing market in Venice?
- How does the 1999 Commune di Venezia Law 49 relate to the dramatic shifts in the housing market?
- Exactly what has the government been doing to help ease the housing problem?
- Is tourism largely responsible for the housing problem? Why?
One of the previous housing projects we investigated focused more on how Venetians found housing and the average prices of apartments in Venice. According to our research, this project was conducted while the housing problem was still in its early stages. From our interviews we believe the housing problem has grown to such a large scale that it requires further investigation.
Conclusion
The four main topics that are most important to life in Venice are cost of living, housing, the pace of life and the population decline.
The Historical Center of Venice is very expensive to inhabit because of its separation from mainland and location in a lagoon. One Venetian mentioned that “It is much cheaper to shop on the mainland for clothes”. On average, goods in the Historical Center of Venice are 80 euro cents more than the mainland due to transportation costs. Overall, Venetians have expressed concern about the high cost of living in the Historical Center of Venice. They believe it is one of the reasons people are leaving the city. Our data shows that as over the past ten years the cost of living in Venice has increased and the native population has decreased. We do not have enough evidence to support that the two are directly related, but further research could fill this gap.
Venetians expressed the low availability and the high cost of housing as a major concern for life in Venice. This topic was most frequently mentioned by Venetians as their least favorite aspect of the city. Residents suspect that the increase in tourism has caused retail property to become more expensive. Our data shows that there is a correlation between tourism and housing. Data in the Motion Chart, supported by Commune di Venezia Law 49, shows the number of homes occupied by residents decreasing as the number of tourists increases. Further research of Law 49 may give more supporting evidence to the correlation between number of tourists and cost of housing.
Venetians we interviewed valued community life as well as the pace of life in Venice. The pace of life in the Historical Center of Venice is slower than the mainland and Lido due to the lack of cars and isolated location in the lagoon. Also, residents expressed strong connections to their sestieri. Venetians feel that tourism is a threat to their tight knit communities. “Tourism is like oil, spreading out from the center of Venice, wiping out the community life”. Many people that we interviewed see the Venetian community in danger of wiping itself out with tourism. Some thought that it was already too late.
The population of Venice has been on a steady decline over the last 50 years. Venetians are leaving for one or all of the reasons discussed above. A decreasing population and birthrate combined with increasing emigration will make it difficult for Venice to hold on to its native residents. Our predictions and the predictions of other organizations do not see any of these trends reversing in the immediate future. The Venetian lifestyle, defined by its lack of cars and relaxed pace, is distinctive and treasured by its inhabitants. Unfortunately the character of Venice may not be enough to keep people from leaving. A Venetian said “Soon Venice will turn into a commercial historical site”. This was a very profound and brave statement, but trends depicted in the Motion Chart and data presented in our Results and Analysis allude to this assumption. The trends in the Motion Chart are based off linear extrapolation and therefore cannot be exact. However, there exists a very probable chance that the Venetians fears may come to pass.
Collaborative Graphic
This graphic shows the relative importance of the quality of life factors as Venetians live through their middle ages.
Bibliography
Please see separate Bibliography page.
Group
Documents
- Living in Venice Final Presentation
- Living In Venice Final Report
- Living In Venice Final Report (PDF)
Other IQP's from B 2008