During a four-week stay in Venice, I did not see a single car. The city is not well-adapted to the automobile. The old joke, usually attributed the humourist Robert Benchley, is that, on arrival, he panicked and wired his editors at The New Yorker: ‘Streets full of water! Please advise.’ Some, however, say the source is the rascally actor David Niven.
No matter. Venice is a challenge to both old and new conceptions of how cars might work in cities. At the beginning