Vending Venice

As if all the other trends were not disturbing enough, news reports have informed us about the latest creative use of Venice's public space, which is something that the Venice Project Center has successfuly pioneered as recently as this fall.
As heard on NPR (among others), the Venice city council voted in favor of allowing the Coca-Cola corporation to install vending machines in many of the campi in the historic city. Perhaps the thinking is that the coked-out tourists would expeditiously move through the city, creating fewer bottlenecks in the narrow calli and ponti. Hmmm... it may be worth a try!

Although the mayor seems to have backtracked on this one, the trend of "vending Venice" seems clear and inevitable, now that all the national government funds are going towards the construction of the MOSE barriers against high tides...
If you want to know more, you may consider going to the public roundtable discussion we will be holding at Williams college a week from tomorrow.