THE CONTESTED CITY OF VENICE : Caring for Commodified Common Infrastructures in a Touristified Environment

Abstract In this essay I reveal contested common infrastructures in the interplay between vanishing public infrastructures in Venice and lack of care by governmental actors in a city with a shrinking number of inhabitants. I examine care and commodified public infrastructures in heritage cities facing mass tourism and climate change effects by zooming in on effects of entangled commons at the micro‐spatial level (public furniture), meso level of the neighbourhood (public buildings) and macro level of infrastructure decisions (cruise ships and harbour areas) that affect both the ecosystem and everyday life. I also discuss the role local initiatives play who are fighting for the right to the city. My ongoing ethnographic fieldwork since 2019 forms the empirical basis.