At the opening of his election headquarters in Venice, center-right mayoral candidate Simone Venturini announced: “We will set up a task force to attract the best investors in the world…”, thus reiterating what current mayor Luigi Brugnaro has already done with the so-called “Venice Development Agency,” established in 2016
with the aim of becoming an economic tool and interface with national and international investors to enhance the area’s resources, foster the development of local entrepreneurship, and attract new investments and economic initiatives.
This goal was as pretentious as it was revealed to be mere real estate propaganda – aside from the use of public resources – and it was concluded in 2022 with the Agency’s inclusion in the “Venice, World Capital of Sustainability” Foundation. By promising a “task force,” Venturini, after eleven years in office as a city councilor, is reviving a model that proved a fruitless failure during his mandates. He avoids discussing real limitations (bureaucracy, constraints, governance) and hides a structural problem behind an operational slogan, revealing a provincial understanding and vision of investment dynamics.
The real investors that are interested in Venice (not those in hotels or shops) are drawn from INVITALIA, European funds, large groups that are already present, and state agreements on Porto Marghera. Major transactions are negotiated “off-market” in the hushed offices of consulting firms and major studios in Milan and Rome: international funds and banks negotiate with advisors and governments.
Given the events of recent years, the Municipality would do better to focus on creating the conditions to attract investment, especially on the mainland and in Porto Marghera, before creating another task force to “capture new investments” or directly proposing real estate transactions that it manages itself.
A serious investor doesn’t come to Venice to be convinced. They have studied the context on their own, assessed whether it makes sense to enter the market, and then moves through direct channels. They sit down in the mayor’s office not to negotiate, but to announce the transaction and determine what, and how much, political and administrative risk he or she will have to assume.
When meeting with the mayor, the investor assesses execution risk (will I actually be able to do it?), political risk (will someone stop me?), and time risk (how much will it cost me to wait?). What an investor really seeks is a reliable environment in which to develop their project. Specifically, they expect clarity on the decision-making framework – that is, understanding how decisions will be made and by whom – transparency on the timeframes and necessary steps, even if they are complex, and consistency across the various administrative levels, thus avoiding uncertainty along the way. Stability in political direction is expected, which is essential for operations that extend over several years.
Investments, especially those of a significant size, depend on the overall quality of the administrative and regulatory framework and, last but not least, the ethical context within which they are implemented. From this latter perspective, the damage inflicted by a series of well-known events (for example, the Pili scandal) on the reputation of the “Venice system” is undeniable, regardless of the final judicial outcome.
One hundred years ago, a group of financiers (the “Venetian group”) implemented the “Greater Venice” project, which aimed to integrate the city into the European and global context and to fully seize the opportunities and potential inherent in the city’s combination of water and land, sea and port, industry and products, and finance and market. National and international investments arrived, and over the years, Porto Marghera became one of the largest industrial zones in Europe.
Regardless of the well-known environmental and social implications and consequences of that uncontrolled development, the idea – one might call it farsighted – of the “Venetian group” was to redesign Venice in order to bring economic development beyond the city of water, and to find an alternative to the tourism monoculture that was already expanding a century ago in a city that could still be defined as such in the full sense of the word at the time.
This alternative ended at the end of the last century with the well-known series of crises and deindustrialization and Venice’s definitive withdrawal into the arms of the tourism monoculture. With the aim of reversing this trend, various administrations attempted to transform Venice into a “multifunctional city,” if not a city of all trades: from museums to the stubborn desire to maintain the extremely convenient courts, public offices, and corporate headquarters in the entire region, to the establishment of a business incubator in the former Herion Factory (today’s H3/SerenDPT), on the no less convenient island of Giudecca.
The results: a citadel of justice and regional offices in Piazzale Roma and at the train station – not wanting to move them to the mainland – management offices that have been relocated to the countryside on the outskirts of the municipality (Generali), and business incubators that have proven to be very ineffective. Meanwhile, the social and economic decline of the historic center has continued, while Mestre and the mainland have remained neglected despite having space, infrastructure, and potential.
One recent example, among many, is the M9 in Mestre, a modern and innovative museum. This was conceived of as being and could become – undoubtedly it could – a driving force for attracting investment, cultural tourism, and creativity, similar to what the Guggenheim did in Bilbao, which acted a trigger for the regeneration of an entire city. The M9 could house a start-up incubator, a digital one-stop shop for international investors (integrated management of permits, incentives, and contacts) inspired by Italian initiatives like Invest in Milan or Torino Invest, and university campuses, which instead were built on the waterfront.
The lesson is clear: concentrating everything in Venice for the purpose of creating alternatives to tourism does not create such alternatives and, more importantly, does not attract investment beyond hotel facilities. Venice remains a global brand of culture, art, and tourism, but only concrete integration –physical and digital – with Mestre can bring real economic development and international appeal beyond the Venice brand. Only with genuine integration between its two parts will the Municipality be able to create a modern, attractive, and sustainable urban system, correcting the mistakes of the past and fully leveraging the cultural, economic, and creative potential of both.
The future governance system, whether or not its composition is renewed, must recognize and acknowledge that Venice cannot compete in everything (high-end tourism, research and innovation, industrial regeneration in Marghera). It must have a clear focus—while simultaneously addressing the issue of overtourism and promoting a more balanced and sustainable economic model—on redesigning a modern, ecological, ethical, and sustainable Greater Venice.
The era of governance focused on promoting individual transactions with the mentality of a real estate broker must be definitively closed, and not revived, as the mayoral candidate is doing. Instead, we must open the era of building a city system—both on land and water, each with its own role—that is attractive to investments consistent with the urban context, sustainable over the long term, and not simply generating high immediate returns. These investments must be a vehicle for stable, qualified, and irreplaceable employment, capable of retaining residents and attracting skills.
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