The debate on the ongoing dynamics of urban transformation is becoming louder and louder, since these dynamics have had an acceleration and dimensions unthinkable until some years ago, and happened after several quick changes in economy and society, in the trasports’development, in lifestyles, etc. Now public administrators face the problem of how to interpret and handle the changing process in the urban areas. How to reconvert the areas towards the new utilizations and to set them more and more towards a requalification and revitalization. How to answer the new living and working needs of the population, inside the changing and difficult context of a globalization which is more competitive than cultural. How to forecome ongoing needs and transformations, driving them through a strategic planning towards a livable urban network and a sustainable development. The problem is that often places have not adjusted themselves to these needs, nowadays factories and dormitory suburbs do not make sense anymore, but how can now the skeleton containers of the past be used, and what can do people inhabiting them? Today, from this viewpoint of continuous rearrangement and transformation, the urban system has to be redefined and reinterpreted in the sense of a daily city, made not anymore or not just by its inhabitants, but by its users (city users), by those who come here, use the city and visit it for different reasons: tourists, students, commuters, temporary workers, etc. This is the case of Venice indeed: a unique city, with a delicate balance, difficult to administer and a city that, by virtue of this, can be considered as a laboratory to handle the switch towards a modernity in line with human being’s needs.

One of the initiatives for the recovery and reconversion of the Venetian local economy is the technology park VEGA (VEnice GAteway), Venice’s Door to Innovation, a door which makes easier and organizes relationships, offering technical support and making desirable the settling of innovative enterprises. VEGA has the aim of reconverting the first industrial area of Porto Marghera by means of the double mission of both realizing infrastructures in order to attract companies with a high scientific and technologic content, and facilitating the knowledge transfer. This process should go beyond the real estate operation, to contribute to an environmental, urban and economic retraining which represents one of the main challenges and chances for the Venetian economy: that of rising the technologic level and the competitiveness of the Venetian economic base. Another plan for the development of economy and territory is the project Venice District for Innovation which was born as instrument to make the settling of innovative production activities easier. In practice, it is a service structure used by the city’s administration in order to support and attract investments. Some actions of transformation of the urban environment are foreseen in order to help infrastructural and system conditions, so that innovative enterprises can settle in the city; furthermore, some urban projects are being realized using settlement opportunitis for unused sites or out-of-use areas located in strategic urban positions. The creation of structures and infrastructures in areas with a special attention to buildings of architectural and historical value, or defined as industrial archeology, and with out-of-use public buildings (schools, hospitals, former churches). For this purpose, a special attention is given to the creation of an incubator for the settlement of enterprises working in innovative sectors. This is how the incubator Venicecube and Consorzio ex Cnomv was born. Located in the most panoramic area of the Giudecca, facing the S. Marco basin, it is easily reachable from all the city and it is central in relation with the main productive activities in the historical centre. It has been completely restored by the City Council Administration of Venice, with the contribution of the European Fund for Regional Development. The incubator has an advanced technological equipment, which respects the environment and saves energy; the spaces reserved for offices have been studied in a way that they are easily adaptable to the needs of all the different new companies. The building has been developed on three floors of 1,000 square metres each, and it is characterized by the use of common spaces and multifunctional halls. The use of the best technologies available on the market and the respect of parameters of work economy and environment-friendly architecture make the incubator a particularly suitable place for concentration, which favours creativity and the development of synergies and a chain of value between the young companies hosted, all things that make think of a communication pole useful for all the city’s events, and that unites energies in order to present itself on the market.

The attitude and the first results are surely encouraging. But it is still early to say whether it really exists a new model of local development which, attracting new professionals and promoting the settlement of innovative enterprises in the historical centre, linked to immaterial production, shifts the trend towards the adrift of tourism and the exodus of citizens. Certainly, a seed has been planted and, as always, we will need time to see if the plants grows, and now we need to cultivate with care and work so that the efforts can end in a big, fast river, and will not be lost in many gulleys of particular interests, that after passing by leave the soil even drier and more barren than before … If this trend really takes off, Venice could really be a district for innovation and immaterial economy, in a right way, complementary to that of its touristic and cultural calling. In short, Venice would be a research station and metaphore of the whole Italy, which cannot afford factories at low added value anymore, but has to use its human capital as a software (leaving the hardware to countries with low labour costs). The must is to develop sectors of quality, creativity, linked to communication, art, style, beauty, to the art of living and to taste, giving value to the Italian peculiarities that made of the peninsula a central place for the European Renaissance. Indeed, what Venice now needs in order to become lively and productive once again, is not much: an optical fiber cable, a far-sighted administration, and a shared culture that wants to go back to the enjoyment of its magic, poetical atmosphere, enclosed in its typical contemplative silence, without the pollution of garish souvenirs or enourmous cruise ships, grotesque in the lagoon context.