venice|venezia
As part of a grad class I am taking in the Urban Planning Dept on Geographical Information Systems, I thought of creating some maps comparing spatial distribution and access to grocery stores in the two canal towns, the one back home and the one I live in.
Surprisingly, Venice and Venezia do play as good candidates for such comparison, not just cause they have the same name, canals and a bunch of tourists, but also because of similar area and population (if you only take into consideration the main island of Venezia and the ZIP 90291 for Venice).
So, I pulled out geographical information from a bunch of different places, including the Italian and American Yellow Pages and the excellent resources from the Regione Veneto. With some tweaking here and there, I fed them into ArcGIS, ESRI’s very buggy and expensive GIS software. Here’s what I got:
Venezia. Lots of disperse grocery stores, supermarkets and ministores. Venezia is highly touristic, yet residents have ready and easy access to stores within a 0.2 mile walking distance, except from localized low-populated areas, like the port, public gardens and university campus. Trivia: population in Venice is in steady decline every year - population will be zero by 2030, when the town will become officially some sort of gated theme park. Poor thing.
Venice. Shops are clearly arranged along well-defined “strips”, namely Lincoln, Venice, the Boardwalk and Main Street. Most residents will need a car to get to stores and they will probably opt for cheaper, larger stores out of Venice. Venice, though one of the most walkable, bikable and bohemian neighborhoods in L.A. was still designed with the “car in mind”. Venice was founded around 1905. In the early 30’s, most canals were paved to provide car access. Streetcars and public transportation around L.A. were removed to boost the car industry. In the past five years though, traffic has gotten out of control. And it will just get worse. What’s gonna happen? How much more traffic can we take? Apart from the plans for an enhanced subway system or more freeways, my bet is that the Great Wrong Place will naturally turn back to a more sustainable neighborhood-oriented organic growth. More shops and more facilities will start appearing closer to your home, serving diverse, dynamic and ethically rich local communities.
If interested, check a couple more maps and larger sizes.
