• eye • on • venice •

24corte del fontego editore

ThEVENETIANCAmpO

Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard

• eye • on • venice •

Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard

The Venetian Campo

Ideal setting for social life and community

Preface by Edoardo Salzano

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When I met Henry Lennard and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard (in the distant 1985) I sought to explain to them and to participants at the 1st International Making Cities Livable Conference the problems and the special quality of Venice at that time.

The problems were substantially those of today: housing for the Venetians, prices, the perennial floods. Some were on the horizon, but did not flare up as major problems until a few years later (tourism, today’s tourism that is destroying the city). Among the qualities that then seemed to me most significant was the relationship that had been maintained for centuries between the natural environment and the built environment – between nature and history. Talking and walking around with them, I discovered through their eyes a third element of the quality of Venice that, until then, did not strike me with the same force: the campi, the subject of this little book. Henry

Preface by Edoardo Salzano

Marina Zanazzo, conception and editorial directionLidia Fersuoch, scientific director

© 2012 Corte del Fontego editoreDorsoduro 3416 - 30123 Veneziacortedelfontego@virgilio.itwww.cortedelfontego.blogspot.comISBN 978-88-95124-XX-X

Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, PhD.(Arch.) is co-founder and Director of the International Making Cities Livable Conferences (www.LivableCities.org). Her most recent book is Genius of the European Square, Carmel, CA, Gondolier Press, 2008.

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said that to spend a day in Campo Santa Margherita was equal to taking an entire course of urban planning, since it taught something that was the very foundation for understanding what a city is, and what the essence of the city is: the relationship between inhabitants in space. With Henry and Suzanne I understood that the campi of Venice, as we experienced them then, were models to study: to understand what public spaces need if they are to forge and shape the population of a city into a truly civic urban society.

It is this nature of the campi that Suzanne describes, as we lived in them together then, and as she still lives in them today when, less frequently than before, she returns to Venice. It is her good fortune that the bright light of memory makes less apparent to her the things that today offend me more: the ugliness wrought by innovations that have degraded the campi, reflecting those that have hit the whole city: from the increasing take-over of communal space for commercial uses (bars, cafes, restaurants), fencing them off and privatizing them in various ways with some profit for city government, to the gobbling-up by the tourist industry of Venetian homes and resident-based shops and services on the campi, to the paucity of maintenance and of everyday cleanliness, to the congestion by many categories of city users (from the increasing flow of

flocks of tourists to the throngs of students attracted by happy hour, to the appalling graduation rites and obsessive chanting that accompanies them.)

Using her memory as a veil to hide the recent horrors, Suzanne can thus tell the story of the Venetian campi as a useful example, whether for those who wish to create high quality public spaces in other parts of the world (naturally adapted to different cultural contexts), or for those who wish to fight against the further degradation of this still unique city.

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Visitors think of Venice as a dream-like city of domes and campanile floating in the lagoon, but for most Venetians, the heart of their city is firmly rooted in the campo of their childhood, for it is here that they develop their joy in life, their delight in other people, their membership in a stable community, and their intense pride in being Venetian.

The campo is an open, irregularly shaped paved space surrounded by buildings. These buildings, which vary in height up to five stories, and also in importance and purpose, often contain small businesses and services on the ground floor and private dwellings above. Almost every campo contains a church that still serves the community and a well-head which, though no longer a water source, is still a gathering place.

A campo is the heart of a neighborhood. Located at a crossing point of pedestrian routes, a campo brings together the ten to fifteen thousand people, of every age and social background, living and working in its district. It is the village square, where elders sit

The Venetian Campo

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and gossip, where chance meetings lead to business relations, where teenagers flirt and children play, where farmers’ markets and fish markets and outdoor theater and community festivals take place.

Social life on the campo may well be more complex and more satisfying for a wider range of inhabitants than on any other urban square in the world.

In the campo, those living in the neighborhood shop, go for coffee and newspapers, while Venetians living elsewhere pass through on their way to work. In this setting, persons encounter each other many times a day and brief conversations ensue. Here, even casual acquaintances become familiar figures. Public life is visible and audible to all. No part of the campo is fenced off or inaccessible, and of course, there are no cars to impede social interaction.

As Henry James observed, conversation flourishes in this traffic-free environment. “There is no noise there save distinctly human noise; no rumbling, no vague uproar, nor rattle of wheels and hooves. All is articulate and vocal and personal. One may say indeed that Venice is emphatically the city of conversation; people talk all over the place because there is nothing to interfere with its being caught by the ear.”1

1 Henry James, Italian Hours. N.Y. Horizon Press, 1968. P. 16.

The campi vary in size: some small campielli are more like courtyards; others are larger than a football field. They provide settings for varied social situations: some are more suited to small-scale, neighborly social life, others offer the opportunity for large festivals and community events.

The many entrances and exits through narrow streets, alleyways and covered passageways (sottoporteghi) are usually small and unobtrusive. Entering a campo, one has the distinct feeling that one has arrived. The campo is entirely surrounded by buildings. There is no view out of the campo and no immediately visible exit. Surrounding buildings seem like walls enclosing an outdoor room: they help focus attention inwards to the activity on the campo. The campo is clearly the center and focus of community life. Access to other parts of the city is of secondary importance.

Buildings are small in scale, seldom more than three or four stories, and most date from before the Renaissance. They are primarily domestic buildings constructed to gracefully accommodate everyday life. Large windows, balconies and terraces ensure the possibility of communication between people inside the apartments and those on the campo. This architectural arrangement is highly theatrical: the campo is like an enlarged Shakespearean theater in which all the people, at balconies and windows as well

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as on the campo, are simultaneously both audience and actor. In Andre Fraigneau’s words, “Venice … is theater in real life. No curtain lowered, no footlights turned off, no after curtain confusion… And just as here the stage setting is true, though nonetheless a setting, so the Venetians lead their real lives but in the manner of actors interpreting a Commedia dell’Arte.”2 As Jean Cocteau succinctly put it, “the play is given in the street. The smallest balcony is a theater balcony, every window a loge.”3

Small businesses, services or workshops are located on the ground floor. These generate interaction, make varied occupations and trades visible, and integrate people with different social and economic backgrounds.

Essential shops include a bakery, butcher, grocer, greengrocer, delicatessen and stationer. Many campi also contain a pharmacy, hardware store and bookshop. Services available in the campo include a barber, laundry, library and often a doctor and dentist, while traditional workshops (furniture making, leather crafts, etc.) are also common.

2 andre Fraigneau, The Venice I Love. N.Y., Tudor Publ. Co. 1965. P. 79.

3 Jean CoCteau, Introduction to Andre Fraigneau. Op. cit. P. 7

This wide variety of basic services ensures that people on different errands see each other and their paths cross. Many shops display wares out of doors in the summer, providing further catalysts for social interaction. All business transactions are seen as opportunities to exchange news and build social capital.4 Since the community’s basic needs are met within the campo, almost all transactions are between people who trust each other because they “know each other’s stories”.5

The coffee bar, the social center for men at all times of the day and for people on their way to and from work, is an essential component, as is a café with outdoor tables and chairs. Here, families, friends, neighbors and children meet. Conversations are in constant flux as people come and go. From the café, events on the campo are watched, as one would watch a theatrical performance.

Varied social and economic strata are represented. The palazzo that once belonged to a wealthy merchant

4 The essential role played by shopkeepers and residents in maintaining successful public life has been well described by Jane JaCobs in Death and Life of Great American Cities, NY, Random House, 1961.

5 Wendell berry, What Are People For? San Francisco, North Point Press. 1990. P. 157.

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stands next to the small house of an artisan. Now divided into apartments, the palazzo’s piano nobile provides grandly proportioned, high ceilinged accommodations, while the former servants’ quarters on the top floor offer more modest, low ceilinged apartments. A certain level of familiarity is therefore inevitable between the well-to-do and those not so well off, a supremely democratic arrangement impossible in highly class-segregated and suburbanized cities.

On regular days throughout the week, market stalls selling fresh fish, fruit and vegetables are constructed on the campo. During the year, stalls selling second hand items, books, inexpensive clothes, shoes or kitchenware may appear.

For special festivals on saints’ days, a wooden stage is built, a public address system and lights are connected, and exhibitions are set up. Kitchen and bar are housed in tents, and trestle tables and benches laid out in the campo. For a week, children’s games and competitions, jazz, rock and popular music concerts take place. Every afternoon and evening, traditional food and wine is available at minimal prices. The festival ends with a long evening of dancing and entertainment.

Each summer at least one campo – usually Campo San Polo – is transformed into a theater for a Goldoni play or Commedia dell’Arte performance. A stage and wooden bleachers for the audience are constructed,

and tickets are sold. Free entertainment is offered at the summer film program that usually takes place in August on Campo Sant’ Angelo. A huge screen measuring twenty by forty feet and stepped seating for an audience of several hundred are constructed. Those arriving too late for a seat sit on the ground or lean against the walls of surrounding buildings. Even on the coldest nights, and through thunderstorms, Venetians huddle together or under umbrellas and shout for the film to continue. For Venetians, the film show is an important social event. They congregate long before the movie begins for the express purpose of seeing friends. Even during the movie, there is much coming and going, greeting and gossiping.

It is said that in the eighteenth century, Carnival “filled one half of the year so pleasantly that the other half was taken up with waiting for it to come around again”.6 The festival was banned in 1797 but re-launched in 1979 to increase winter tourism. While tourist revelers congregate in Piazza San Marco, and some Venetians participate in grand masked balls, the Carnival spirit is alive throughout the city. People go shopping in costume, families and friends devise Carnival themes,

6 marCel brion, Venice: The Masque of Italy. NY, Crown Publ. 1962.

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and neighborhoods organize children’s Carnivals and special events on their campo.

One of the most unique features of the Venetian campo is that it is both a public space and a semi-private space. It is public because streets and alleys lead into it. There are no barriers, so anyone, including tourists, can walk through. On the other hand, as any visitor immediately senses, the campo is like an outdoor room, a territory that belongs to the community in general, and in particular to those who live and work in surrounding buildings. In some small campi, residents still use the space immediately in front of their house as an extension of their dwelling. They hang out washing, children play on the stoop, and housewives sit outside their door.

Venetians consider the campo to be under their jurisdiction. They do not assume they have the exclusive rights to the space, but rather that they are responsible for that part of the campo, and they can, if necessary, quell undesirable behavior. Since they recognize the majority of people in the campo, they quickly identify strangers or troublemakers.

The campo is frequented most of the day, though different groups predominate at different times. Most of those living around the campo pass through many times a day and spend considerable time there doing errands, shopping and talking. Conversations are fluid:

clusters of people form and reform as some arrive and others leave.

For elders, the campo is the place for social contact. Within a few yards from home, the campo allows a far greater range of activities and interactions than would be possible in a retirement social center. On the campo they meet children, grandchildren, lifelong friends, neighbors and acquaintances from other districts, as well as familiars, shopkeepers and café owners who fulfill daily needs.

Elders, especially those widowed or living alone, spend extended periods in the campo, using small errands as a reason to linger.

For men, particularly after retirement, the bar is primarily a political or social club. Time spent drinking is minimal. Having found friends, the conversation groups move into the campo, where wives, children or colleagues may become part of the conversational ballet.

Young people hang out on the campo, try out new fashions, flirt and make friends. Mid-morning, early evening and late at night are favorite meeting times for the young, and particular campi are favored over others, but the young are never segregated from the larger community.

For parents with small children, the campo ideally combines the possibility of shopping, being near their

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children, and chatting with friends. They do not need playgrounds; children play on the campo while adults talk together.

The campo is an unrivalled playground, safe for toddlers, stimulating for imaginative games of every kind, and flexible for wheels and ball games. Children use the entire city as their playground and every architectural detail as a prop in their games, a stimulus for play - the well head, the stoops, window sills and ledges, water fountains and taps, even cracks in the paving. As Andrea Fraigneau remarked, “The passage from the dark shadow of a seemingly endless side street into the sunshine of a ‘campo’ where children chase each other around a marble well shaped like the capital of a fallen column. What a delight for these children, this universe of props: stairways, banisters, low walls, and gates. Venice, capital of tag and hide-and-seek.”7

Venice may not offer as many places for organized competitive games (football fields, tennis courts) as other cities, but the quality of children’s play is more spontaneous and imaginative because they draw on their complex social world, and intricate physical environment for inspiration.

7 andre Fraigneau. Op. cit. P. 87.

In 2007 a new festival of children’s play on the campo, “Campi da Gioco - Giochi da Campo” was born. Over a two-month period each year, in ten different campi, organizers introduced children to games their parents and grandparents played, and provided materials for creative art work. “The goal is to bring children closer to the spaces that have always been the theater of their play, to involve them and make them protagonists, and finally to revitalize the social fabric of the city and to restore to the Venetian campi their ancient role as a meeting place for children, parents and grandparents.” 8

At one event, toddlers were busy with pavement art and collage; six-year olds took part in three-legged races, hopscotch, skipping and tugs of war; a chess tournament engaged a dozen ten-year olds; teens with video-cams interviewed people for comments on the event, and a children’s version of Commedia dell’Arte was performed. At another event, small children were shown how to make colored chalk sticks for pavement art, taught each other rhyming games and cat’s cradle, and participated in blind man’s buff, follow the leader, skipping, and statues.

8 http://www.comune.venezia.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/19917.

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Much play on the campo is unstructured and imaginative. Children play roles or enact imaginary figures, and there is much “messing around”, wasting time, and laughing. This unstructured play is creative and social: children are not learning rules of a game but rules of how to have a good time with each other.

Adults are interested in children and pay attention to them, so children learn to pay attention to others. They quickly become competent in relating to a variety of people, not only family members and age cohorts but also acquaintances, even strangers and tourists.

Each campo has its own unique character, its own special blend of social life that derives from its population and location in Venice. This individuality has been celebrated by the Venetian poet Diego Valeri:

“…the delight of all delights is that of the campi. Santa Margherita, San Giacomo dall’Orio, Santa Maria Formosa… each unlike the others, each with its own individual note, in architecture, colour, street life, poetry.”9

Venice contains seven large campi that provide settings for festivities and community events, 50 campi of varying size that contain some shops, cafes and/or

9 diego Valeri, A Sentimental Guide to Venice. Translation by Cecil C. Palmer. Padua, Le Tre Venezie, 1946. P. 113.

businesses, and 50 additional small campielli and corte more suited to neighborly social life.

Campo Santa Margherita

Campo Santa Margherita, in Venice’s Dorsoduro district, is one of the largest campi, measuring roughly two hundred yards by forty-four yards. It is also one of the most purely Venetian, less affected by tourism because of its distance from San Marco. Approximately fifteen thousand people live in the neighborhood and use the campo on a daily basis. They do most of their shopping here, and pass through on their way to work or school. Elders gather to stroll and talk, youths and university students meet friends here, while children play.

Almost every necessary shop and service is available: there is a grocery shop, butcher, baker, pharmacy, hardware store, stationers, drug store, and specialty shops selling books, wine, ladies’ underwear, toys, natural products, kitchen/bathroom fixtures, and a bank. There are four cafes, three bars, an ice cream store, and five restaurants. There are two “permanent” vegetable market stalls, three daily fish stalls, and a variety of markets that appear from time to time selling books, shoes, clothes, linens, or second-hand goods.

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Originally, the campo contained two churches, the Carmini, and the church of Santa Margherita. The latter is now a university auditorium. During the 50s and 60s, there was also a movie theater. This was recycled as a supermarket in the 1990s, causing many small businesses to close. In 2011, the supermarket was closed “for renovation”. Off the campo, but within a two-minute walk are schools, university departments, and city administration offices, as well as Venice’s largest institutions and offices.

Campo Santa Margherita is an ideal social and physical environment for children. Here they are within sight of adults, not isolated on a playground or game field. They can pause in their play to address or respond to an adult, or watch how older people relate to one another.

Adults, youths and children negotiate how the space is to be used. Boys playing football learn to pay attention to the presence of a frail, elderly person. Teenagers learn to control their passion for earsplitting music late at night. Little children quickly learn that if they get into a dispute or fight, an adult will intervene to teach them how to make up. In this setting, adults become tolerant of normal childhood exuberance and energy.

The campo makes a difference in people’s lives. You can see this if you watch an elderly woman entering the campo, shoulders bowed, only too aware of her

arthritic pains and increasing unsteadiness. A passing friend calls a greeting and she raises her head to respond. A little further on, a couple cross her path, stop to embrace her and tell her the latest family news. A child runs up, takes her hand and walks with her to the grocer’s shop. Shopping takes a long time because of the conversations, and she emerges talking animatedly with two friends. By now she is exchanging gossip and laughing. She has forgotten her troubles and walks briskly home, her mind full of the last half hour’s conversations.

Children learn how to interact with everyone in the community, whether young or elderly, poor or well-to-do, physically or mentally handicapped. They learn how to behave by imitating adults. Glancing around Campo Santa Margherita on a normal afternoon, you can observe numerous examples of good behavior learnt and practiced: four adults are standing talking together animatedly, paying attention, interjecting, an arm on the shoulder, laughing; just a few yards away, four five-year-olds are standing talking together animatedly, the same gestures, the same underlying respect and the same sense of fun. When adults meet good friends on the campo, they exchange a kiss on the cheek, and the four year old meeting his best friend also gives her a hearty kiss on the cheek.

Shaping a child into a socially adept member of

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the community begins when the baby is brought to the campo to be introduced, passed from arm to arm, spoken to and admired. The toddler on the campo with his father, playing ball for the first time, is learning not only to walk and to catch a ball, but also to throw the ball to another child, and to respond to an older couple who pause to address him. The teenager meeting his girlfriend on the campo is already highly attuned to the complex social matrix of family and community relationships. He has seen frequent expressions of tenderness and love, acts of concern and responsibility towards himself and others, and is able to express the same feelings to his girlfriend. “Social anxiety” is unknown on the campo.

During the 1990s, university students adopted Campo Santa Margherita as their favorite gathering place. This large university draws students from Italy and abroad. At graduation, traditional rituals mark doctoral students’ rite of passage to adulthood. They are feted by friends and family, and at the same time, to curb conceit, teased and made to play the buffoon.

Not all university students have grown up on a Venetian campo and learned to accommodate the needs of others. In 2011, one bar was so popular for students that, in an unprecedented situation, campo residents had to call police to quell the noise. Hopefully, revised opening hours will solve this problem.

Campo San Barnaba

This small campo lies between Campo Santa Margherita, the university and the Accademia art museum. It combines a village quality with a varied population of artists, craftspeople, academics and business people.

Like many other campi, Campo San Barnaba is the neighborhood’s living room, the place to meet acquaintances, friends and relatives, to talk about family, work, plans and hopes, and to discuss politics. At certain times of the year, the campo becomes the setting for civic rallies, celebrations, and Carnival festivities.

Of the two cafes, one is frequented by the men. Sometimes they get caught up in a conversation that extends across the campo as they continue to debate and joke while making unsuccessful attempts to return to work.

At a second café, the women-folk of an extended family used to gather nearly every summer afternoon. Grandmother and great-grandmother sat at their favorite table, weather permitting, from 3.30 to 5.30pm. They were often joined by a married daughter and her children. The children played with friends, the younger ones played tag around the well or tennis in front of the church. The girls skipped or played a complicated jump-rope game using café furniture to secure their

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ropes, or they “played house” using the campo as both private home and neighborhood. Sometimes children climbed the well or watched deliveries arriving by boat, but if a child fell off the well, or a toddler wandered too close to the canal, the women at the café were there to comfort or to scold.

More than anyone else, these women used the campo as an extension of their home. They met friends here. People shopping or passing through the campo paused for a few minutes, or sat down at their table and became engrossed in conversation. Sometimes, when business was slow, the proprietor would lean on the back of a chair to talk. Occasionally, one of the men folk would join his wife at the café amid hugs from children and warm greetings from the women.

Until the 1990s, San Barnaba contained all shops essential for everyday life. The butcher’s shop, cheese shop, and one grocer’s shop have closed; one delicatessen became a high quality restaurant, and an artist/craftsman opened a shop catering largely to tourists. The church has become an exhibit hall, and the mattress-maker’s workshop is now an antiques shop. However, one still finds a grocery store, delicatessen, two cafes, a stationery/tobacconist and a newspaper stand. The vegetable market on the barge is still moored beside the campo, as it has been for centuries.

In adjacent streets, several small hotels and tourist

apartments have opened in buildings that used to be housing. Community social life on the campo continues, but it has waned over the years as tourists became more prevalent.

Campo San Luca and Campo San Bartolommeo

These campi have the reputation of being “talking campi” – places where people come from every part of Venice, summer and winter, when they wish to find someone to talk to. They are small campi, surrounded by shops and coffee bars, located on major routes not far from the Rialto Bridge.

On winter evenings, when the rest of Venice is shrouded in silence, Campo San Luca is crowded. As you approach, still several blocks away the buzz of conversation can be heard, the chattering and laughing and shouting, until that sudden bend in the alley when the party is revealed – a noisy milling crowd in the bright outdoor room, small groups talking animatedly, individuals moving through looking for friends, loud greetings and embraces as groups of friends find each other.

The coffee bar is a focus of activity, providing a warm corner where newcomers fortify themselves against the cold, and a well-informed bar tender who

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may know whether a particular individual has yet put in an appearance. But most people warm themselves in the good companionship of their friends, spinning the conversation from politics to family matters, from food to fashion, from exhibitions to love affairs, ranging over every imaginable topic.

Campo San Luca underwent some changes since the 1990s. The coffee bar Rosa Salva, famed among Venetians for its outstanding coffee, was replaced by another firm, and a second bar opened next door. A fast food chain also opened on the campo, attracting tourists. A renowned bookstore that could always be relied on to carry a copy of Diego Valeri’s incomparable paean to Venice, A Sentimental Guide to Venice, closed its doors.

Campo San Bartolommeo has always endured crowds of tourists during certain hours of the day because of its proximity to Rialto. Nevertheless, those who work in Venice and live in Mestre still gather here in the early evening on their way home to talk and joke together in the shadow of Goldoni’s statue. It is as if Goldoni, that “good, gay, sunniest of souls”10 smiles

10 “…/There throng the People: how they come and go,/Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,—see,—/On piazza, calle, under portico,/And over bridge! Dear King of Comedy,/

down from his pedestal, watching the comedy of common life immortalized in his plays.

History of the campo

Venice was founded in the fifth century by people from the mainland who fled the Hun invasion from the north to take refuge in the lagoon’s marshy islands. The center of the original community, “Venetia”, moved from island to island, but by the ninth century was firmly established in its present location.

The historic area consists of 104 islands. Originally, each island was semi-autonomous. Houses were built around the edge so that each house had direct access to the water for commerce and transportation. The open space in the center, the campo, was used for community needs such as the graveyard, for grazing cattle, for the water cistern and well, and for public events such as markets and festivals. Shops and businesses opened onto the campo.

Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so,/Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!”. robert broWning

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All movement from island to island was conducted by boat; bridges linking the island communities were built centuries later.

The city’s island structure created a strong sense of neighborhood identity and rivalry.

Originally, as their name implies, the campi were unpaved fields. In the eighteenth century, to protect ladies’ ankle-length gowns and elegant shoes, especially during the evening passeggiata, wide stone paths called listone were constructed across some campi. Tassini describes the passeggiata that took place on winter evenings along the paved listone on Campo Santo Stefano.11 Today, Campo San Pietro in Castello is the only campo that is still grass crossed with stone paths.Evolution or Devolution?

Study of the Venetian campo over the last 35 years reveals disturbing changes in building uses and quality of social life. Mass tourism has caused escalating problems. Bus tours, cheap flights and cruise ships have inundated Venice. Every day, 55 thousand day trippers pour through the city. Twenty million tourists

11 giuseppe tassini, Feste, Spettacoli, Divertimenti e Piaceri degli antichi Veneziani. [1890] Venice, Libreria Filippi Editrice. 1961.

per year now seek postcards, pizzas and cheap carnival masks imported from the Far East, slowly driving out shops and services needed by local residents.

The University has expanded. By doubling up, students can often pay more for an apartment than young working Venetians. The student lifestyle has tended to disturb the subtle balance of life on the campo.

As the wealthy around the world get richer, more and more millionaires want their own piece of this most beautiful city. They buy up palazzi as second or third homes, thus removing housing stock for local residents, and raising property values, forcing Venetians to move to the mainland. Under these pressures, the population is rapidly declining: in 1951 it was 174,000; by 2009 it had dipped below 60,000. If palazzi and apartments continue to be sold for hotels and second homes, and the permanent residential population declines further, the safety and hospitality of the campi will be lost.

When hotels and “second homes” predominate in a neighborhood, grocery shop owners can no longer make a living, and the shops become tourist-oriented. This vicious circle is disastrous for the Venetian community and quality of everyday life on the campo.12

12 In the area of Dorsoduro near the Dogana, long referred to as the “American ghetto” because so many Americans, Milanese

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While international organizations are committed to preserve Venice’s architecture and art treasures, the city’s most precious resource is its people, and their quality of everyday social life on the campo. As former Mayor Casellati13 emphasized, the diversity and mixture of building uses must be protected so that the social functions of the campo can be preserved. Yet city government seems incapable of instituting regulations that would protect housing, shops and services needed by the Venetians.

Learning from the campo

Around the world, “modern” city planning has destroyed communities. People are yearning for a sense of community they remember from their childhood; social scientists are studying negative consequences of social fragmentation and isolation, and analyzing how social networks and civic engagement develop14;

and Germans own palaces there, there are hardly any shops serving daily needs.

13 Mayor antonio Casellati, Avv., (Mayor 1988-1990) at the 5th International Making Cities Livable Conference, June 1989

14 For example, robert d. putnam, Bowling Alone. NY, Simon & Schuster. 2000

and planners are searching for an urban form that reinforces social life in public and the development of social networks15.

Before mass tourism transforms Venice into a dead museum, we would do well to study the genius of the Venetian campo. Not only the Venetians, but the whole world needs the Venetian campo, and the social life it supports, to survive and flourish.

The unique geographic and historic circumstances of Venice in no way diminish the valuable lessons that a careful examination of the campo can offer for the enrichment of public urban spaces elsewhere. Rather, we should be grateful that Venice’s unique history has preserved the ideal setting for social life and community

– the Venetian campo.

Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard

15 suzanne H. CroWHurst lennard, sVen Von ungern-sternberg & Henry l. lennard (Eds.). Making Cities Livable. Carmel, CA, Gondolier Press, 1997.

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oCCHi aperti su Venezia

1. Donatella Calabi, Paolo Morachiello, La piazza di Rialto 2. Franco Mancuso, Costruire sull’acqua 3. Edoardo Salzano, Lo scandalo del Lido 4. Paolo Pirazzoli, La misura dell’acqua 5. Edoardo Salzano, La Laguna di Venezia 6. Giannandrea Mencini, Fermare l’onda 7. Paola Somma, Benettown 8. Luigi Fozzati, Sotto Venezia 9. Franco Mancuso, Fronte del porto 10. Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, Il ponte di debole Costituzione 11. Stefano Boato, Tessera City 12. Silvio Testa, E le chiamano navi 13. Paolo Lanapoppi, Caro turista 13. Paolo Lanapoppi, Dear Tourist (versione inglese) 14. Angela Maria Alberton, La sedia del Florian 15. Enrico Tantucci, A che ora chiude Venezia? 16. Giorgio Agamben, Dell’utilità e degli inconvenienti del vivere fra spettri 17. Sergio Pascolo, Abitando Venezia 18. Paola Somma, Imbonimenti 19. Alberto Vitucci, Nel nome di Venezia 20. Donatella Calabi, Paolo Morachiello, Rialto, il ponte delle dispute 21. Maria Rosa Vittadini, Fare a meno dell’acqua 22. Debora Antonini, Risorgimento a Venezia 23. Donatella Calabi, Paolo Morachiello, Fontego dei tedeschi 24. Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, The Venetian Campo

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Finito di stampare nel mese di dicembre 2012

dalle Grafiche Erredicì di Padova per Corte del Fontego editore

• eye • on • venice •

24Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard

The Venetian CampoIdeal setting for social life and community

euro 3,00

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Short, clearly written essays that provide curious readers with true information about how Venice works – or very often doesn’t work. Original, challenging, eye-opening pages for residents and visitors.