This morning my father, Wladimiro Dorigo, was insigned of a Laurea Honoris Causa in Urbanistics by the Venice Institute of Urbanistics and Architecture (IUAV).
Wladimiro Dorigo was in charge of the urban plan of Venice in critical years of the post-war restructuring, from 1956 to 1958, but he continued to be involved in the problems of Venice and its surroundings both from a sociopolitical and a historical point of view.
Although he later became a Professor of medioeval art history, his most important books are centered on Venice in the ancient times, with research on the scientific evidence for the effects of climate change of the relationship of the city with its lagoon and waterways, and on the urbanistic and artistic life of Venice during the Romanic and medioeval periods.
This morning Wladimiro gave a long lecture on the history of the last 50 years of Venice, its problems, the attempted solutions, and the entanglement of good and bad ideas for the solution of problems of Venice and its surroundings with political friction against their realization. He finished by warning against micromanagement and political and economical interests, which already killed Venice as a city (the 175000 inhabitants of the late 50's are now reduced to 58000) and threatens its existence in the present century, due to the insufficient measures against rapid climate change and the effects on the Venice lagoon, of which evidence has been brought by his studies of water levels in the medioeval ages as well as by ice core sampling in Greenland.
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