Threatening Venice and its Lagoon: The effect of international policies on management sustainability and heritage preservation

Art cities have been under scrutiny in the last decades, presenting phenomenon of over tourism with major impacts on livability. The case of Venice is particularly complex, presenting critical environmental conditions that threaten its survival. In 2016 UNESCO started a procedure to put Venice in the list of sites in danger, questioning to a large extent urban policies, and asking for enhanced preservation measures. This started a round of discussion with the State Party, mainly at the formal level. The purpose of this research is to review the case under the lens of value tensions between stakeholders. Reports, states of conservation and decisions produced are analyzed, applying a qualitative discourse analysis. The case study of Venice depicts the contradiction between vested interests that lie behind values, and the pivotal issue of the sustainability of the site. This research focuses on conflicts inside institutional actors, raised between the technical and the political level.