Affordable Housing Institute : US

As many debate what New New Orleans should be, and as those who live there individually fashion what it will be, we need periodically to remind ourselves of what it could be.  Among all its possible tomorrows, New New Orleans could be the American Venice, or it could be a ghost, city as memory, as unwittingly illustrated by this New York Times travel romance about Venice’s sleepy neighbor Torcello:

 

 

IT should come as little wonder that the island of Torcello is a refuge for visitors in search of a quick escape from the crowds of Venice. The island that rests quietly in the northern lagoon, a 40-minute ferry ride from the main islands of Venice, made its reputation as a haven 1,500 years ago — nearly 500 years before Venice became an empire — when mainlanders, escaping invading barbarians, settled here.

 

Before the Bellagio Housing Conference, the Boss and I spent a few truly wonderful days in Venice, including a long day trip to Torcello. 

 

Today’s Venice, like yesterday’s Torcello, began as a salt-marsh island amid the lagoon’s mud flats: 

 

Torcello amid the lagoon: the water is seldom more than ten feet deep.

 

Like Venice, Torcello’s isolated islets were filled in to create larger platforms, and its natural salt rivers embanked to create canals:

 

Torcello’s ‘grand canal’

 

Up through AD 1400, a wise investor would have bet not on Venice but on Torcello:

 

Torcello reached its peak in the 14th century with a population of 20,000 [Probably making it one of Italy’s largest cities. — Ed.] before malaria all but wiped it out. It was then overshadowed by San Marco and other islands as the center of Venetian life.

 

The malaria epidemics were a cataclysm that not only killed many Torcellans, it encouraged many more to move to Venice, and the island never recovered its economic position:

 

 

Today, you’ll find an island still unscathed by modernity, a haven of green fields broken by canals and sidewalks leading to two ancient churches, a bell tower and a cluster of homey restaurants and faded pastel houses.

 

What Venice resembled, a thousand years ago

 

In its time, Torcello was world-class, as evidenced today by its Byzantine basilica:

 

The most concrete relic left from Torcello’s past is still the major attraction on the island — the lagoon’s oldest cathedral, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, dating to 639 AD.

 

 

Rebuilt in the 11th century, the cathedral’s interior, with its Byzantine wood beams separating brick archways supported by columns with Corinthian capitals, seems to sum up the mood of Torcello: refined simplicity and intricate attention to detail.

 

A mosaic at the basilica that dates to the 11th century depicts the Last Judgment.

 

To a housing person, the huge mosaic signals something else: the blowing of the last trumpet, the end of the world for Torcello.

 

 

Under the right conditions, cities can die, especially a city (like New New Orleans and modern Venice) where the water is a constant enemy.  Such cities survive only by being constantly built:

 

 

Cities are the cauldrons of wealth creation, driven by economic activity:

 

 

If the people explosively disperse, the economy follows, the revenue base shrinks, and the infrastructure, too costly to maintain, gradually decays and dissolves, all but for the vast silent monuments.

 

 

When our day was over, we took the vaporetto back to Serenissima Venice.

 

 

Is the last trump blowing for New New Orleans?

 

The Last Trump, Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello

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