Venice will never die.

I find it so fascinating how many people romanticize Venice as an ephemeral city, always in a death-like dance with ecology, geography, tourism and time. It just seems so convenient to advertise the risk and decay, the unsustainability, and the ongoing, feeble, costly attempts by humans to preserve a city that we might just love to consume to death. I propose another perspective to this cynical, fatalist view. Venice is extremely resilient. It will not sink into the lagoon. It will not become a ghost-town of decayed buildings, whose history and culture sink away into the bog of the lagoon, and out of our mortal minds.
Too many people love it. They love it for its precariousness, its romance, its risk, and its power. It's a social and ecological underdog, with prime realestate in the world's hearts and minds. Its image goes far beyond what its poorly-constructed forms and foundations can support---Venice is an Idea. And as long as we humans remain mesmerized by the Idea, we will continue to protect it with our hearts and souls, and Venice will not disappear. I would argue that it's physical form may continue to change, as it negotiates its Image in our minds, and continues to woo our hearts(and wallets) with its risky mystique, and we continue to demand more than it can afford. In the end, if there is one, I would imagine that it could only come when we fall more in love with the ecological, the natural and the power of nature and time, and finally decide to give Venice back to the earth that it came from.