Talk:List of pedestrian zones

Venice

Venice#Sestieri:

  Cannaregio

  Castello, Venice

  Dorsoduro

  Santa Croce (Venice)

  San Marco

  San Polo

We want to know the entire combined surface area of these 6 sestieri, including all of Santa Croce, and specifically, the surface area of the 3 car-accessible islands of Tronchetto, Santa Chiara (=Stazione Marittima), and Piazzale Roma.

As we discovered previously at the AfD Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_car-free_places, Venice is a frequently cited example of a "car-free city/island (group)/zone", but because cars and buses are allowed access in large parts of the Santa Croce sestiere, it's important to make clear what we're talking about. Ita140188 and I went through several possibilities and then concluded that the unsourced statement that Venice is "5.17 km2" or "517 hectares car-free" meant that the remainder of the alleged 646.8 hectares would be car-accessible. This led me to make the following suggestion: "To be clear about the semantics: I think we should not say e.g. Venice is a car-free city/zone, or Venice is a (populated) car-free island, but rather Venice has a pedestrian zone covering 517 ha out of 646.8 ha (c. 80%) of its historic city centre." But when I tried to verify this figure of 5.17 km / 517 ha anywhere online, I couldn't find it; nor could I find sources for those 646.8 ha. The problem is that essentially all Wikipedia sections in all languages that say anything about the total size of the 6 sestieri of Venice are unsourced.

• Venice#Sestieri (the only source, Venice: History Of The Floating City, only mentions something about the history of the sestieri and parishes, not their sizes. Incidentally, a 2016 book by Harry Margalit p. 25-26 said "Renaissance Venice" was "725 hectares").
• Sestiere (unsourced)
• it:Sestiere (Venezia) (unsourced)
• it:Municipalità di Venezia-Murano-Burano (unsourced)
• de:Sestiere#Geographische Lage.

That last German Wikipedia article is the one which led me to possibly a new insight into how (un)reliable the figure of 5.17 km / 517 ha is. It cites the following source:

• Georges Gauthier, David McDonald, Jenna O’Connell, Nick Panzarino: Exploring the City of Islands: Interactive Resources for Analyzing the Islands of Venice. Worcester 2015, mit Verweis auf Google Drive, darin ICQ, Spreadsheets, VE15-Isles_Isles_Lagoon_data Tabelle aggregiert aus Daten der 127 Einzelinseln der Altstadt, mit Angaben zur sestiere-Zugehörigkeit, Fläche, Bevölkerung und Bevölkerungsdichte.
  

Although it doesn't contain the figures mentioned in the table, it does say many interesting things about just how confusing research into Venetian geography and demographics can be (page 18): The historic city center of Venice is made up of 126 islands, taking up a total area of approximately two square miles. Each island belongs to its own sestiere, or neighborhood. There are six sestieri in Venice as shown in Figure 7: Cannaregio, Castello, Dorsoduro, San Marco, San Polo, and Santa Croce. Each of these sestieri are in turn broken into nearly 1200 census tracts. (...) The boundaries for the census tracts change from year to year, creating inconsistency— Figure 8 demonstrates this, showing differences in the 1981 and 2001 census tracts. It follows that a more consistent and useful model would be to collect data by island instead. The most important part here is a total area of approximately two square miles. It turns out that that is... 5.17998 square kilometres. Now it could be a coincidence, but my guess is someone just read "2 square miles" in some English source, converted that into metric to "5.17 km2" on the list without checking whether that was the actual size of the 6 sestieri combined, and whether the car-free zone covered the whole area (quod non). Therefore, the actual car-free / pedestrian zone may not be "80%" at all. It may just be a metric conversion of a very rough estimate in square miles of the total area of the 6 sestieri of Venice. Perhaps it is even excluding Tronchetto, as many sources say it's not "historic Venice" because it was only reclaimed from the sea in 1960 (even though older parts of Venice were also reclaimed from the sea, such as the island of Santa Chiara / Stazione Marittima), and because it's just one giant parking space without any "historic" (arbitrary adjective) buildings on it. The other problem is that people may not agree on how many "Inner Islands" there are. This source (Gauthier et al. 2015) says "126 islands".

Venedig.net (a German-language tourist website cited on German Wikipedia), for example at http://www.venedig.net/zu-besuch-in-venedig/, claims there are only "118 islands". Venedig.net does mention the size in hectares of various sestieri, but it isn't always reliable, e.g. Das Sestiere Santa Croce im Nordwesten der Stadt erstreckt sich über 94 Hektar und setzt sich aus zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Teilen zusammen. Sein östlicher Teil besteht aus Gassen und Plätzen, die zu angenehmen Spaziergängen durch diese bescheidenere Gegend der Stadt einladen. Hier können Sie auch einige der interessantesten Palazzi am Canal Grande bewundern. Im weniger attraktiven westlichen Teil des Sestiere befinden sich industrielle Gebäude und der große Parkplatz des Piazzale Roma. The adjoining map does not highlight the islands of Tronchetto or Santa Chiara (=Stazione Marittima) as part of Santa Croce, even though they administratively are. It even says the Western part of the sestiere is "less attractive" because it has industrial buildings and the great parking space of Piazzale Roma. This again shows a tendency amongst travel-guide-style tourist sources to willfully exclude some or all of the car-accessible parts of Venice from its total surface area because it's "less attractive", "not historic", "artificial" etc. while on the other hand some sources are trying to claim "all of Venice is car-free". This is trying to have it both ways. Either Tronchetto, Santa Chiara (=Stazione Marittima) and Piazzale Roma are part of the 6 sestieri (namely Santa Croce) or they are not. Administratively they are, therefore they count, therefore not all of Venice is car-free, despite what travel guides, carfree movement activists/enthusiasts and perhaps some proud locals might like to tell tourists and other outsiders. The question remains: how much of it? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:19, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

PEBA Allegati A e P.pdf (Fiorin 2018) is a great source. Lists all islands of Venice, their names, size and vehicle accessibility as of 2018. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:34, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello Nederlandse Leeuw. "How much of it?" is an excellent question. Thank you for your very detailed research, as always. It looks like Ita140188 is still actively editing Wikipedia, so hopefully they can clarify which source this edit of theirs is based on. Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 22:42, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind compliment. I'm not always as thorough, but I'm afraid that if we never get to the bottom of this Venice business, it won't get resolved for another 18 years. I don't want Venice to be the global posterchild of pedestrian zones / car-free cities/islands (on Wikipedia or elsewhere) if the information about the actual situation down there is this misleading. Wikipedia should lead by example when it comes to accuracy.

@Ita140188: do you remember where you got the "5.17 km2" figure from, and if not, would you agree that it may well be a metric conversion of the approximately two square miles mentioned in sources such as Gauthier et al. 2015? Because then it has little worth and we could better base ourselves on that 2018 PEBA Allegati report (Fiorin 2018) or something. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:09, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Santa Croce islands

Best map I can find of Santa Croce. It doesn't show Tronchetto, and only part of Santa Chiara (=Stazione Marittima) which is mislabelled "Tronchetto"; otherwise it appears to be accurate. These two islands plus Piazzale Roma are car-accessible.

Alright, here is my effort to compile data from Fiorin 2018 page 15 (labelled "pagina 1"). Legend: "mq" = metro quadro ("square metres"). Mq Superficie totale Insula = "total island surface in square metres". % Superficie Insula su Sup tot Venezia = "% Island surface area on total surface area of Venice". We're in luck, Santa Croce is the first sestiere they numbered, with a total of 14 islands, from west to east. Most islands are named after a (former) church or another landmark that dominates/dominated it:

1. Tronchetto: 187554,00 mq (2,47 %)
2. Stazione Marittima ("Maritime Stations", i.e. Sea Port, the Port of Venice; I've been calling this island "Santia Chiara" because that's what it said on Google Maps, and it was historically named so after the Church of Santa Chiara that stood on the spot where the Venice Police Station is currently located): 428156,32 mq (2,89 %)
3. Piazzale Roma (strictly speaking, "Piazzale Roma" only refers to the 1933-built bus station on this island, but it has become a pars pro toto for the entire island): 95629,17 mq (2,79 %)
4. Santa Maria Maggiore: 41848,06 mq (0,82 %)
5. Ca' Rizzi: 8982,19 mq (0,10 %)
6. Giardini Papadopoli (strictly speaking, "Giardini Papadopoli" only refers to the gardens on this island, but it has become a pars pro toto for the entire island; the ruins of the Church of Santa Croce after which the sestiere is named are found on this island): 18251,34 mq (0,30 %)
7. Tolentini: 105260,70 mq (1,58 %)
8. San Zan Degolà: 69271,47 mq (1,31 %)
9. San Giacomo da l'Orio: 35833,79 mq (0,82 %)
10. Megio: 7129,64 mq (0,06 %)
11. San Stae: 21608,32 mq (0,25 %)
12. Ca' Mocenigo: 9467,49 mq (0,09 %)
13. Santa Maria Mater Domini: 13696,26 mq (0,16 %)
14. Do Torri: 19231,23 mq (0,17 %)

Total surface area of Santa Croce

1,061,919.98 square metres = 106.191998 hectares = 1.06191998 square kilometres (0.410007304278 square miles).

Total surface area of the three car-accessible islands Tronchetto, Santa Chiara (Stazione Marittima), and Piazzale Roma

• 187554,00 mq [Tronchetto] + 428156,32 mq [Stazione Marittima / Santa Chiara] + 95629,17 mq [Piazzale Roma] = 711,339.49 square metres = 71.133949 hectares = 0.71133949 square kilometres (0.27464817708899997 square miles).
• 2,47 % [Tronchetto] + 2,89 % [Stazione Marittima / Santa Chiara] + 2,79 % [Piazzale Roma] = 8.15% of the total surface area of Venice (Inner Islands) is car-accessible

Total surface area of Venice (Inner Islands)

• (0.187554 square kilometres [Tronchetto] : 2.47) x 100 = 7.593279352226721 square kilometres
• (0.71133949 square kilometres [3 car-accessible islands] : 8.15) x 100 = 8.728091901840491 square kilometres

I don't get it. Why can't I calculate the total surface area of Venice? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:23, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

It seems that anything related to "car-free places" is a series of rabbit-holes! I don't fully understand the maths above, but the number 711,339m² seems to appear out of the blue, so maybe that has something to do with it.

The following suggestion might be admitting defeat, but if Ita140188 doesn't provide the source soon, maybe this can be resolved by just changing the text to something like (without bolding) "A large portion of the six historical districts (sestieri) is a pedestrian zone where transport takes place on foot or..."

Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 23:51, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

It's a bit of a rabbit-hole indeed! The 711,339m² figure is the combined surface area of the three car-accessible islands, I just hadn't fully written that calculation down. However, I now see I hadn't understood the Italian columns parameter meanings. The 4th, 5th and 6th column are about how much area of the island in question is walkable in m2 (#4), how much that is of that island in question percentage-wise (#5), and how much of the total walkable area of Venice is to be found on the island in question (#6). The percentages in column #6 do not correspond to the absolute numbers in column #7 as I assumed. Of course not. How could 428156,32 mq be equivalent to 2,89 % of all of Venice, but just 95629,17 mq (less than a quarter of that size) also be equivalent to 2,79 % of all of Venice? Instead, Column #5 (% walkable surface per island) is what you get when you divide Column #4 (walkable surface per island in square metres) by Column #7 (total surface per island in square metres). So unless we want to manually count up all those 129 Venetian islands surface area sizes in square metres, or are able to put it in some sort of Excel sheet (which I failed to do just now), Fiorin 2018 can't get us to the total surface area of the Inner Islands. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 06:26, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be the kind of source we've been looking for all over the place: Superficie territoriale del Comune di Venezia in ettari ha) in kilometri quadrati (kmq) e in metri quadrati (mq). What we are interested in is the terra emerse ("land above water", i.e. dry land) in the last three columns. No. #1 and No. #2 are the six sestieri combined, and correspond to 'Centro Storico' at the bottom. 4.4834 km2 [No. #1] + 3.4962 km2 [No. #2] = 7.9796 km2 [Centro Storico] or 3.080931282 square miles, much larger than the unsourced 5.17 km2 / 2 square miles claimed by Ita140188 / Gauthier 2015, and also much larger than the unsourced 646.8 ha claimed by many Wikipedia pages. Both are really far off. Even if we don't count the 3 car-accessible islands (c. 0.71 km2, c. 0.27 sq miles), we don't get even near those unsourced numbers. I cannot account for such large discrepancies. I do note, however, that "Renaissance Venice" was "725 hectares" according to Margalit 2016, so the idea that the present-day six sestieri had to have at least that size, plus 19th-century-enlarged Santa Chiara and 1960-reclaimed Tronchetto, is quite plausible, and gets us much closer to that 7.9796 km2. It would mean 7.268261 km2 of the Centro Storio is car-free, or c. 91%. (Incidentally, these c. 726.8 hectares would be very close to the "725 hectares" of "Renaissance Venice", which is probably not a coincidence: most of the present-day car-accessible areas of Venice were reclaimed from the sea after the Renaissance). Unless I made a mistake somewhere, that is the answer we've been looking for. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 07:08, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Well done! That is very impressive persistence in your research. Who would have thought that "what is the area of Venice" would be such a difficult question?! Regard, MrsSnoozyTurtle 07:46, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Venice has a pedestrian zone covering c. 726.8 ha out of c. 798 ha (c. 91%) of its historic city centre.^[1][2][3]

Thanks very much! I've just carried out the revisions. I couldn't easily find a good source for the fact that the three islands are car/bus-accessible, so I've just used the Lonely Planet travel guide of 2018. It's not ideal, but does the job. If anyone knows a better source, that's fine. Per WP:CALC we are allowed to make simple calculations from multiple sources without infringing upon WP:SYNTH. The three souces combined (the "terra emerse" source, Fiorin 2018, and Hardy Lonely Planet 2018) give us our answer of a pedestrian zone covering 91% of the centro storico. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:08, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

PS: Resulting illustration caption on the right here. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Great work. The Lonely Planet source is an improvement on the sourcing we had previously (i.e. none!), so I wouldn't worry about that.

Do you mind if I simplify the numbers in the table to improve its flow? Feel free to change or revert it if you don't think it's an improvement. Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 22:39, 29 December 2022 (UTC)