Using Technology To Save A City

The Italian government is sponsoring the construction of a system of gates to protect Venice from high tides. Despite many other problems affecting the troubled city, some see this as Venice's only hope.

"The Venice lagoon is one of the world's most delicate and unstable ecosystems, a unique place where saving a dying natural habitat is crucial to preserving human culture and history...

And that has prompted increasingly passionate debates here about radical plans now under way to save it - plans that push at the limits of scientific knowledge and engineering capacity.

At the heart of the debate is tension between those who believe in the power of human technology to thwart the forces of nature and those who worry that Italy's master engineers, in their hubris, may only complicate Venice's problem. "

Thanks to Stephen J. Conschafter