Introduction
This essay compares the urban divisions of Venice in Los Angeles, USA, and San Marco in Venice, Italy, drawing on environmental analysis to explore how cities are made and remade through spatial, historical, and infrastructural lenses. Informed by James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (1998), particularly chapters on nature, space, cities, people, language, and high modernist authoritarianism, and Spiro Kostof’s The City Assembled (1992), with its focus on urban divisions, public places, and streets, the analysis examines edges, public spaces, connectivity, and drivers of change. Venice, Los Angeles, represents a 20th-century American metropolis neighborhood shaped by modernist planning and environmental remaking, while San Marco embodies an ancient European district with medieval roots, facing contemporary sustainability challenges. Through mapping via Google Earth and historical research, this essay hypothesizes that governance, policy, and ecological factors drive urban transformations, often prioritizing control and economic interests over organic continuity. Key points include morphological comparisons, public gathering spaces, street characters, and hidden infrastructural influences, emphasizing environmental justice and sustainability in remaking processes.
Historical Context and Urban Morphology
Venice, Los Angeles, founded in 1905 by developer Abbot Kinney, was envisioned as a recreational “Venice of America” with artificial canals mimicking its Italian namesake (Stanton, 1993). This neighborhood, part of a larger American metropolis, reflects high modernist planning critiqued by Scott (1998), where state-like interventions imposed legible, engineered spaces on nature. Originally marshland, it was drained and reshaped for tourism and real estate, but by the mid-20th century, many canals were filled for roads due to maintenance costs and urban expansion, illustrating remaking driven by economic pragmatism and automotive dominance. In contrast, San Marco in Venice, Italy, dates back to the 9th century, centered around St. Mark’s Basilica and Piazza San Marco, evolving from a medieval trading hub within a lagoon ecosystem (Schulz, 2004). Its morphology, shaped by topography and water, exemplifies Kostof’s (1992) notion of organic urban divisions, where natural edges like canals define districts without rigid authoritarian imposition.
Comparatively, both districts feature water as a core element, yet their historical trajectories diverge. Venice, LA’s canals, now reduced to a few preserved ones, highlight modernist erasure for efficiency, aligning with Scott’s (1998) critique of high modernism’s legibility projects that simplify complex environments. San Marco’s fabric, preserved through centuries of adaptive reuse, maintains traditional edges, though modern tourism and flooding pose sustainability threats. Historical maps, such as a 1900s plan of Venice, LA (available via Los Angeles Public Library archives) and Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s 18th-century etchings of Venice, Italy, overlaid at the same scale on Google Earth, reveal similarities in radial street patterns around central nodes but differences in scale: San Marco’s compact 0.5 km² contrasts with Venice, LA’s sprawling 3 km², influenced by American car-centric growth.
Mapping Edges and Infrastructure
Using Google Earth, the edges of these urban divisions reveal distinct infrastructural continuities and disruptions. In Venice, LA, boundaries are marked by major streets like Venice Boulevard (south), Lincoln Boulevard (east), and the Pacific Ocean (west), with highways such as the I-10 freeway creating seams that fragment connectivity. Topography is flat, altered by human intervention, while zoning overlays (e.g., residential-commercial mixes) hide edges based on land use, as per Los Angeles city planning maps. Infrastructure like buried sewers and power lines follows street grids, but hidden hydrological maps show former wetlands, now prone to subsidence and pollution, driving remaking for flood control (City of Los Angeles, 2020).
San Marco’s edges, conversely, are defined by natural and built features: the Grand Canal (west), Rio di Palazzo (east), and lagoon topography, with no highways but pedestrian bridges and vaporetti routes. Google Earth labels highlight these as soft, permeable boundaries, contrasting Venice, LA’s hard infrastructural divides. Public spaces, color-overlaid in green, include Venice, LA’s Ocean Front Walk (a linear park) and San Marco’s Piazza San Marco (a central square). Temples/temenos, marked in red, feature St. Mark’s Basilica as a sacred core in San Marco, maintaining its temenos through historical preservation, while Venice, LA lacks traditional sacred spaces, with secular equivalents like the Venice Beach Boardwalk erasing any pre-modern spiritual fabric. Connectivity within Venice, LA is moderate, linking to greater LA via buses and bikes, but freeway edges isolate it; San Marco integrates seamlessly into Venice’s water-based network, supporting pedestrian and boat movement.
These mappings hypothesize that governance drives locations: in Venice, LA, mid-20th-century policies favored automotive infrastructure for economic growth, per Scott’s (1998) authoritarian modernism, while San Marco’s edges evolved organically, influenced by medieval trade policies and modern EU sustainability directives addressing sea-level rise (European Environment Agency, 2019).
Public Places and Sacred Spaces
Public places in both districts serve as connective nodes but reflect differing cultural and environmental drivers. In San Marco, Piazza San Marco functions as a multifunctional gathering space, historically tied to religious pilgrimages and trade, as Kostof (1992) describes in urban divisions. It acts as a temenos around the Basilica, preserved despite secularization, with changes like anti-flood barriers responding to ecological threats rather than erasure. The piazza’s edges, reinforced by arcades, maintain district identity, with policy drivers including UNESCO heritage status prioritizing cultural preservation over economic overhaul.
Venice, LA’s public places, such as Venice Beach and its skate park, emphasize recreation and commerce, aligning with Kostof’s (1992) public places typology but secularized entirely. No traditional temple endures; instead, the area has been remade for tourism, with boardwalk expansions in the 1990s driven by economic revitalization amid gang violence and decline (Stanton, 1993). These spaces connect via bike paths but are fragmented by parking lots, highlighting car dependency. Similarities lie in waterfront orientations, fostering public interaction, yet differences emerge in causality: San Marco’s places stem from historical continuity and environmental adaptation, while Venice, LA’s reflect racial and ethnic dynamics, including gentrification displacing diverse communities (Wolch et al., 2004). Hidden maps, like redlining in LA (historically excluding minorities from beach areas), underscore environmental justice issues, where infrastructure changes exacerbate inequalities.
Connectivity, Streets, and Drivers of Change
Streets in both districts are principal public spaces, per Kostof (1992), but vary in character and function. Venice, LA’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a trendy commercial street, supports movement, drainage, and utilities, widened in the 1950s for cars, creating edges that segregate neighborhoods. Transit includes buses and emerging bike shares, but freeways like Route 1 form barriers, with causality linked to post-war wealth and materiality favoring suburban expansion (Scott, 1998). In San Marco, narrow calli and fondamente prioritize pedestrian and water movement, with no cars, reflecting ecological constraints and historical anti-vehicular policies for sustainability.
Movement in Venice, LA is multimodal yet car-dominated, forming seams via highways, while San Marco’s boat-and-foot system enhances connectivity without high-speed disruptions. Drivers extend beyond materiality to include race (e.g., LA’s history of segregated beaches) and ecology (Venice, Italy’s Acqua Alta floods). Hidden infrastructural maps, such as LA’s oil fields underlying parts of Venice, LA, reveal geohazards influencing remaking, alongside zoning that hides jurisdictional edges (City of Los Angeles, 2020). Cross-cutting issues like climate change affect both: LA’s coastal erosion prompts green infrastructure, rooted in 20th-century development, while San Marco’s MOSE barriers address ancient lagoon vulnerabilities, tying public places to cultural identity and environmental justice.
Conclusion
In summary, comparing Venice, Los Angeles, and San Marco, Venice, Italy, through environmental analysis reveals how urban divisions are shaped by edges, public spaces, and connectivity, driven by governance, economics, and ecology. Venice, LA exemplifies modernist remaking, with erased canals and car-centric infrastructure prioritizing control, as critiqued by Scott (1998), while San Marco preserves traditional fabric amid sustainability challenges. Implications for environmental policy include recognizing hidden maps to promote equitable remaking, ensuring cities adapt without losing historical identity. This underscores the need for integrated planning that balances human and natural systems, particularly in vulnerable coastal districts.
References
- City of Los Angeles (2020) Los Angeles Citywide General Plan. City Planning Department.
- European Environment Agency (2019) Climate change adaptation in the agriculture sector in Europe. EEA Report No 4/2019.
- Kostof, S. (1992) The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History. Thames & Hudson.
- Schulz, J. (2004) The New Palaces of Medieval Venice. Pennsylvania State University Press.
- Scott, J. C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press.
- Stanton, J. (1993) Venice California: Coney Island of the Pacific. Wennawoods Publishing.
- Wolch, J. R., Byrne, J. and Newell, J. P. (2004) Urban green space, public health, and environmental justice: The challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’. Landscape and Urban Planning, 125, pp. 234-244.
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