FOREWORD

While continually subjected to transformation processes mainly due to infrastructural modernisation, urbanisation, industrialisation and, more recently, touristification, cities on water still retain a historical and architectonical landmarks and values, which are the results of long-term processes of commercial, cultural, technological, and entrepreneurial encounters and exchanges that gave them their distinguished character. This heritage plays a fundamental role to maintain their peculiar maritime identity and, thus, is crucial for their future urban, economic, and cultural fortune. The contributions from scholars, experts, and practitioners in various disciplines – from social science and humanities to architecture and urban planning – that are brought together in this volume, help to clarify the basic importance of maintaining and preserving the distinctive identity of two paradigmatic cases of cities on water, Tokyo and Venice. To this perspective, the volume focuses on how the rediscovery of water both from architectural and cultural point of view, as well as the preservation of their historical and local characters, can contribute to produce new forms of sustainable development of the two cities.