MESTRE MIGHT BE the most hideous town in Italy. Venice’s ugly sister snarls rather than sprawls at the edge of the lagoon, a hopeless tangle of railway, flyover, flimsy high-rise hotels and the curdled bitterness of the millions of tourists who have been conned into believing they are staying near San Marco.
Almost everything in Mestre is recent; everything is decayed. The modern city lies across the water: car-free, human-scale, where children play in the streets and the obligation to walk fosters community. Everything that contemporary urbanism considers
