After years of attempts, Mayor Brugnaro has done it: today, Thursday 25 April, the experimentation of the access ticket within the historic center of Venice will begin, launched to deal with the phenomenon of mass tourism which suffocates city streets. A controversial measure to say the least, and disliked by many of the citizen committees who have launched against it numerous initiatives, mobilizing islanders, inhabitants of the “mainland” and students. This is because, according to many, the “access fee” does not only conflict with personal rights and freedoms, but undermines the very concept of the city as a place of exchange and a center of passage, veering instead towards an increasingly looming dismemberment of the urban fabric. Far from safeguarding Venice, the ticket would thus be in line with that museumization process of the city which has been affecting her for years, making her even more of a slave to the phenomenon she intends to fight.
Access tickets: functioning and controversial aspects
Starting from April 25th, to enter Venice on the “black stamp” days you will be required to pay an entry fee equal to five euro if you do not fall within the hypotheses that give the right to exemption from payment. The expense will therefore be paid only by daily tourists residing outside Veneto who do not stay overnight in those accommodation facilities in which the tourist tax is already due. The days affected are 29 in total, and run from 25 April to 5 May and then every weekend until 13-14 July, with the exception of the Republic Day weekend. Payment of the contribution or obtaining the exemption will have to be proven by showing a voucher to the competent authorities at the access points to the city, which will be acquired after the request for entry to the historic center of Venice, and which will be available in the form of a QR code. The only people exempt from obtaining the voucher are residents and those born in the Municipality of Venice. This means that even students, workers residing in the metropolitan city, and domiciled residents will have to have a code to show to the Venetian security personnel, under penalty of a fine of 50 to 300 euros.
To go to study, take an exam, work, or even enter your home, permission will have to be asked. This is the first of the many consequences and contradictions that the citizen committees denounce to the access ticket initiative; the phenomenon of daily tourism is in fact just one of countless problems that affect the city of Venice, and is nothing more than the symptom of a much more deep-rooted disease. Far from being the problem itself, mass tourism is part of a much broader framework which also includes the housing, social and employment crises that suffocate the historic center of Venice. Directing efforts against tourism alone would in this sense be like cutting the dried branch of the diseased olive tree, and it would resolve – if it succeeds at all – the issue only on the surface. We talked about it with Federica from the Social Assembly for the House (ASC), one of the groups that occupied the seat of the city’s City Council last April 9th under the slogans “No to tickets, yes to housing and services” and “Venice does not it’s a museum.”
“Entry fee” or propaganda move?
According to Federica, the ticket is «one simple measure to a complex problem». This initiative, in fact, not only acts selectively, limiting itself to targeting daily tourism and classifying those entering the city into “series A and series B tourists”, but frames the problem as the proverbial man looking at the pointing finger the moon. The question of the livability of Venice is much more deep-rooted and cannot be resolved by targeting mass tourism alone, but must be addressed by acting on working conditions and services dedicated to citizens. Furthermore, the measure seems to have all the aspects to be configured more as one propaganda movewhich as a real attempt to resolve the Venetian tourist emergency: as Federica tells us, the Brugnaro administration that has been fighting for years for the introduction of the access ticket is the same one that on the other hand does nothing but promote initiatives aimed at encouraging the arrival of tourists, ranging from the attempt to boycott movements against large ships, to the creation of a new vaporetto stop in San Giobbe, up to the construction of the new San Giuliano hub. Confirming the possibility that the ticket is more of a cosmetic initiative comes the quick and unexpected sprint that the measure experienced just when UNESCO had considered the idea of putting Venice in its blacklist of World Heritage sites at risk, a statement against which Mayor Brugnaro lashed out in a disruptive manner, claiming the integrity of the city.
Also casting doubt on the real intention to regulate mass tourism is the launch of the Housing Plan announced in December, against which ASC has moved since its conception. In fact it allocated 28 million for the assignment of 500 public houses, of which, according to ASC, only 100 in the historic center, by 2026. Numbers well below the over 2,200 apartments and buildings mentioned in the data provided by Ocio!, a collective of inhabitants and researchers who have been carrying out monitoring, discussion and planning activities since 2019 to deal with the housing emergency; and the amount allocated is rather less than 93.5 million – coming from the PNRR – dedicated to the construction of a new sports forest in Mestre, when, as Federica reports, that money could not only be used to deal with the housing emergency, but also to restore similar buildings in the historic center.
The problem of tourism as a source of the housing issue
The phenomenon of mass tourism itself does not arise from nothing, but it comes powered by the entire city system, which the administration addresses not to those who live in the city, but to the tourists themselves; and it is natural that if they are called tourists, tourists come. To counteract this phenomenon, rather than acting directly on the methods of access to the city, we should therefore rethink its logic and its spaces, making them more citizen-friendly. As Federica points out, fighting tourism by charging a fee for access to the city would in this sense only fuel the logic that sees Venice as a proverbial “open-air museum”, precisely, making it a museum. Yet “Venice is not a museum”, but a city, and as such it needs structures, services, spaces, initiatives and protections aimed at those who experience the city. In this regard, ASC has been fighting for some time to «apply regulation to tourist rentals» by placing a «ceiling on the number of houses» dedicated to tourists, promote initiatives aimed at «calming rents», and to redevelop those approximately 2,000 «vacant and uninhabitable” which, if exhumed, could serve as homes and offices for citizen services, the first example being all the nursery schools and schools, which in Venice “compete” to get the students needed to stay open.
In short, according to Federica, to reduce tourism we should first make the city less touristy, not transform the phenomenon into selective tourism; and to do this we need an administration that directs investments towards services dedicated to the citizen. According to Ocio! to date, in the historic center of Venice the number has fallen below 50,000 residents (which however must be joined by the students and workers who live on the island), reaching the lowest number ever, while the number of beds reserved for tourists have exceeded that figure. Faced with these numbers it is easy to imagine how the city is rapidly transforming, as Federica herself reports, into a sort of “playground” made especially for tourists, entering a real vicious circle; after all, the more structures are reserved for tourists, the more tourists arrive, and the more spaces are converted into spaces dedicated to them, taking away the air from the authentic urban fabric. The only way to escape from this logic is to attack it at the root and change the city model, making it more attentive to the needs of the inhabitants. This is why, as ASC claims, the solution cannot be to reduce tourists, but must necessarily involve a rethinking of the city, through the introduction of service structures and spaces that are truly citizen-friendly.
[di Dario Lucisano]
