Tokyo and Venice as Cities on Water: Past Memories and Future Perspectives

Rosa Caroli · Stefano Soriani

Dec 2023 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

About this eBook

Like other cities on water, Tokyo and Venice are characterised by intrinsic fragility, resulting from the combined work of the continuous emergence of technological, economic, social, and environmental forces, which affect the urban structure and landscape. Their tangible and intangible (material and immaterial) heritage can play a fundamental role in both maintaining their peculiar maritime identity and defining a future vision for the city. Accordingly, this volume focuses on how the rediscovery of water, from both architectural and cultural points of view, as well as the preservation of the historical and local character of the use of water, can contribute to new forms of resilience.

The contributions from scholars, experts, and practitioners in various disciplines – from the social sciences 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.

About the author

Stefano Soriani is Professor of Economic and Political Geography at the Department of Economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. His research focuses on ports and maritime transportation, the evolution of port-city relations in the Mediterranean area, and the evolution of metropolitan governance in European polycentric urban regions.

Rosa Caroli is Professor of Japanese History at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and a specialist in the modern and contemporary history of Japan. Her main field of research concerns the evolution of Japan’s modern state with a specific focus on identitarian discourses on the nation and its peripheries. She has also written extensively about the history of Okinawa and, more recently, about Edo-Tokyo history.