Many of my recent posts have been the piecemeal beginnings of a doctoral thesis on how any city is improved by getting rid of cars and replacing the roads with canals. It has been pretty convincing. But it has also been fun to do. So I have pretended that you are not yet convinced at all, and need every possible argument I can come up with.
So far I have put canals in Nice, France. I put some in Rome, Italy, stopping to install a few extra fountains there. And most recently I added extra canals to Kyoto, Japan, a place that has a canal or two, but clearly would not be too bad off with a few more.
These all came out quite nicely, if I do say so myself, which I find I usually have to. Nevertheless I found myself imagining the reader saying "Sure. Those particular cities did look a bit better with canals instead of streets, though they look a little post apocalyptic too. But what if you took a city of canals and instead replaced all the canals with streets?"
Ohhhhhh. What a good idea!
So I have taken Venice and put streets in over the canals. It does look worse! And it was quite the desecration, like scribbling over a Rembrandt.
But it was kind of devilishly fun doing it.
I may do Amsterdam or Bruges next!
Anyway, here is Venice, disimproved. Though, on the other hand, it probably won't flood so bad like this.
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