Interview with Claudio Sensini

Post date: Nov 16, 2015 4:9:13 PM

This Friday we met with Claudio Sensini, the head of the Urban Division Design and we interviewed him about public space and the regulations associated with them. Based on this interview the four main categories on occupying public space in Venice are: Plateatici, Posteggi Ambulanti, Markets and Street Artists. The complete division is shown in the figure below.

The regulations for managing the public spaces are called pianini. There are 22 pianini in total and they aim to reorganize the public spaces, and identify the maximum area to be used by commercial places. . The plateatici of the retail sector on the other areas is assigned following the street traffic map. This map classifies the streets depending of their traffic as high, medium and low. In this way, high traffic streets should allow a 4m distance for pedestrian walkways, medium traffic streets should allow a 3.20 m distance, and low traffic street cannot occupy more than 1/3 rd of the street. Each commercial activity has to pay a yearly fee for the plateatici, which is determined from the duration of business, if it is temporary or permanent, their location.the artistic and environmental value of the area, hours of operation, the impact on the environment due to occupation. To enforce this regulation there are police checks to measure the plateatici. If the police finds you pass the limit area of your plateatici an encroachment fine will be applied. After two fines the business get suspended for three days. If a business get another encroachment fine, another three days suspension of the business will happen, and so on. These police checks are supposed to be periodically, however they only tend to happen when someone complains. A newspaper article was publishes this week, related to this situation. A traditional restaurant was closed for three days in Canareggio after they were caught twice by the police encroaching their plateatici limits. You can read the full article here: http://www.ilgazzettino.it/NORDEST/VENEZIA/venezia_multa_chiude_paradiso_perduto_tavoli/notizie/1676051.shtml