Veneto 2100 - Living with Water

What is the future of the Veneto region given the threats posed by rising sea levels, heavy rainfall, floods and drought?
Three regional territories are reimagined in 2100 by taking multiple water-based threats and opportunities as the starting point. Widening the riverbeds, establishing spatial corridors to buffer peak water flow, replenishing the groundwater through the use of new reservoirs, storing water to counteract periods of drought, leaving room for the interplay of the rivers and the sea, and accommodating the rising seawater levels are all strategies for shaping a more resilient Veneto.
The publication Veneto 2100 - Living with Water is a long visual essay, constituted by a wide range of maps, extracts of video-interviews, archival and news clippings, diagrams, short stories, and critical essays.
Organised into four main sections, the book retraces the path taken by the research. The first part foregrounds some well-known and standard arguments that together explain why Veneto is a paradigmatic case for considering the future role of water in our society. Four short essays by experts in the field of urbanism, anthropology, ecology, and communication design are also featured in this introductory section. The second part is dedicated to the delta of the River Po: this deltaic area returns once again to be a space ‘between’ land and water. In the third part, the Monti Lessini creeks are envisioned as studded with countless small and medium-sized enterprises, orches- trated to engender a responsive dialectic between the local communities, their living space and water. The fourth part describes the River Piave’s upland plain as a dryland where agricultural operations are calibrated to match the forecast- ed reduced availability of fresh water. Finally, an additional section takes stock of the research results, and discusses them in light of more recent events, discourses and projects.