Canal Cities Research Articles

Book Review: Dominic Standish, Venice in Environmental Peril:Myth and Reality

Book Review: Dominic Standish, Venice in Environmental Peril: Myth and Reality. Forward by John Elgin. University Press of America, Inc. 2012. ISBN: 9780761856641 (Paperback). 306 Pages. $38.99.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http.V/www. transformativestudies, ors O2014 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]On 4 November 1966 a confluence of severe weather - high tides, winds, heavy rains swelling the rivers and canals - led Venice to experience traumatic floods, the worst to hit the city in the twentieth century. In some parts of the city water levels rose to 194 centimetres above mean sea levels, while the Doge's Palace on St. Mark's Square drowned under a meter and a half of sea water. Between three and 5000 Venetians were left homeless as shops and businesses were ruined and homes left uninhabitable. Electricity was knocked out for over a week. Unsurprisingly for a city with as many cultural treasures as Venice, many millions of dollars of damage was done to artworks and historic buildings. Although there were no flood-related deaths in Venice's historical centre, two people died of heart attacks during the flood in Chioggia, a town that sits a few miles south of the city on an island at the mouth of the Lagoon of Venice. Alleyways were left awash with rubbish, dead pigeons, and drowned rats.Destructive and traumatic as the floods of November 1966 undoubtedly were, it is surely no great surprise that Venice would be at risk of flooding. It is with good reason that Venice has at different times been known as the 'City of Water,' the 'Floating City,' 'City of Bridges,' or 'City of Canals.' Venice is composed of 117 islands separated by canals and rivers and linked by bridges, situated in a 56 by 11 kilometre tidal lagoon on the north western shores of the Adriatic Sea. It is thus subject to flooding at high tides and has, throughout the centuries, suffered serious and devastating floods.The events of 1966 were the worst floods in the 20th century, though they were matched in their severity by the more recent floods of 2008. At the foundation of Dominic Standish's argument in Venice in Environmental Peril: Myth and Reality, is the recognition that the impact of earlier historical floods was far greater on the lives of Venetians:Less developed infrastructure and transport, the absence of sea walls, and weaker building structures and defences, meant that Venetian communities were often devastated by flooding. They suffered much more from flooding than Venetians did in 1966 or today. (p9)This straightforward, but important, insight seems at odds with the narrative that has developed in the aftermath of the 1966 floods in which the city has come to be understood to exist on the edge of a precipice. As Standish summarises in his introduction: today's discussion of Venice is pervaded by fear of the sea, a preoccupation with environmental threats; and claims about sinking, rising sea levels, and the destructive impact of tourism, present Venice as a city in peril. (p2)It is this narrative of Venice in Peril that Standish seeks to explain and critique. At one level, his book develops a straightforward, but in the contemporary climate, perhaps unfashionable, counterargument to the different strands of environmentalist preoccupations that, Standish argues, have lead to a failure to properly develop and modernize Venice since the floods of 1966. The most significant example of this is the failure to realise the proposals set out in Project MOSE for a system of 78 mobile flood damns that could control, and where necessary, help to stem water flow into the three main inlets to the Venetian lagoon, thus significantly limiting high tidal flooding. A feasibility study first set this proposal out in 1971, five years after the traumatic floods; legislation was passed to begin the construction project in 1973, but to this day, 40 years later, the project has not been completed. …

تشرد الأهالي في مصر بسبب الغارات الجوية أثناء الحرب العالمية الثانية /

ملخص کانت بعض المدن المصرية أثناء الحرب العالمية الثانية هدفا لغارات طائرات دول المحور بسبب الموقف الودي الذي وقفته مصر إزاء الحليفة بريطانيا تنفيذا لاشتراطات معاهدة 1936م وذلک على الرغم من وقوف مصر على الحياد من الناحية الرسمية . وقد صحب هذه الغارات – کما سبقها وتلاها – أکبر موجة للهجرة الجماعية تشهدها مصر في تاريخها الحديث ، وترتب على ذلک تشرد عدد کبير من السکان قدر بمئات الآلاف ، فقد فر عدد کبير من سکان القاهرة والإسکندرية ومدن القناة من بلادهم بحثا عن أماکن أخرى أکثر أمانا داخل القطر المصري ، وکان مما فاقم من هذه الظاهرة أن المغيرين قد استخدموا في هذه الغارات أحدث أنواع القنابل وأشدها فتکا وتدميرا ، کما أنهم لم يراعوا قيمة لقواعد الحرب ولا لمبادئ الإنسانية . وقد خلفت هذه الغارات العنيفة التي شنتها طائرات دول المحور على المدن المصرية مشاکل صحية واجتماعية عديدة کان من أبرزها مشکلة الهجرة التي تشبعت إلى مختلف مدن القطر المصري وقراه ، ورغم الجهود التي بذلتها الحکومة لاحتواء هذه المشکلة إلا أن تزايد أعداد المهاجرين بدرجة کبيرة وبصورة مفاجئة جعل نتائج الجهود التي بذلتها الحکومة في هذا الإطار غير ملموسة ، وهذا البحث يعالج ظاهرة تشرد الأهالي في مصر بسبب الغارات الجوية أثناء الحرب العالمية الثانية . Abstract Egyptian cities in World War II were the target of raids aircraft Axis powers. Because of the Egyptian position was next to Britain according to the treaty of 1936. At the same time, the officialposition of the Egyptian government on the fence and not to stand next to any force from the warring powers. These raids resulted in the largest wave of immigration waves known to Egypt throughout history. This immigration has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Egyptian families. Cairo, Alexandria, Suez Canal cities residents fled to the country safer. The air raids on Egyptian territory included the latest bombs without censorship of any principle of humanitarian principles. During these raids increased occurrence of many other health problems, as well as social problems. The most important of these problems is the migrations from conflict areas to safe areas problem. This paper discusses the displacement of citizens because of air raids in World War II .

Venice, City of Canals: Characterizing Regions through Content Classification

AbstractInformation retrieval tasks in the geographic domain rely on textual annotation of georeferenced information objects. These information objects can be annotated with references to spatial objects contained within the corresponding geographical footprint. Not all the spatial objects, however, describe the essential attributes characterizing the region. In this article, we present a method to calculate the descriptive prominence of categories of spatial objects in a given region and select a subset for the characteristic description of the region. The method is demonstrated on three datasets of points of interest and an artificial dataset is used as a benchmark. The method reduces the number of categories describing regions significantly (p<0.001). We further illustrate the results qualitatively for three regions characterized in text.

Inventing space in the age of Empire: planning experiments and achievements along Suez Canal in Egypt (1859–1956)

This paper presents a new French research project concerning the planning and architectural history of the Suez canal cities in Egypt during the age of Empire. Begun in January 2008, this research has been addressing two first topics: religious architecture and port cities as cosmopolitan locales.

The Effect of Digital Transformation on the Performance of Green Yacht Tourism; Applied to Canal Cities

The Effect of Digital Transformation on the Performance of Green Yacht Tourism; Applied to Canal Cities

Laser fluorimetric determination of uranium in environmental samples from Nile Delta and adjacent regions

Total uranium content was determined in soil and plant samples obtained from various areas in the Nile Delta. Samples taken from east and west of the delta, Suez canal cities and from the Alexandria region were analyzed using laser fluorimetry (LF). Uranium was extracted from digested samples with methyl-isobutyl ketone and measured using a laser fluorimeter. The radium content of the same soil samples was determined using gamma spectroscopy. The uranium content of plant samples was determined using LF, since this technique has a detection limit lower than that of GS. Uranium content in the samples varied between 0.6–4.4 μg/g for soil and 0.032–0.17 μg/g for plant tissue.

>Travellers' Venice: Some Images for Byron and Shelley

'Venice is ... a mirror held up to its own shimmering image – the central conceit on which it has evolved.' So writes Mary McCarthy of the city of canals and glassworks. She adds, moving from one companion of Narcissus to another, 'and no word can be spoken in this city that is not an echo of something said before.' My essay takes this last dictum for granted, not merely as an excuse for plagiarism, but as an historical principle too. Venetian images do not begin, they just persist. Even when a discoverable beginning really exists, it is hard to believe that you have really located it.