From aboard a 12-deck cruise liner, the sight of St. Mark's Square, the Doge's Palace and Bridge of Sighs gliding past from a cabin balcony is a breathtaking thrill. The fatal grounding of the Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast has sharpened the focus on the largely unchecked boom of these ever-larger luxury liners, and nowhere more so than in Venice, a fragile city already struggling against mass tourism and the steady deterioration of its underwater foundations. Venice in the space of 15 years has become one of the world's most important cruise destinations, the port serving as a lucrative turnaround point for 650 cruises a year ? up to nine a day in high season. Since 1997, the number of passengers cruising through Venice has risen from 280,000 to 1.8 million last year. The city has been emptied of its residents, and it's a victim of pollution from this unsustainable traffic, said Saverio Pastor, a craftsman who makes oarlocks for gondolas, who has been leading the campaign to rid the Venice basin of cruise ships. Residents along the Giudecca canal, the wide waterway through which the ships pass en route to their berths, complain both about the noise and the impact of water being pushed up into the narrower feeder canals, eroding foundations as the water surges and recedes. To deal with the air pollution, the port is studying a system that would permit the ships to plug into a power grid when docked, allowing them to turn off their engines.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? There's a hidden corner of the City by the Bay where rusted cranes used to build WWII battleships loom over dilapidated artist studios, where working-class fishermen bob up against first-class ocean liners docked for repair. Residents of San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood overlook the rough-and-tumble Pier 70 waterfront and bask in the smell of fresh fish, the cacophony of fog horns and Canadian geese, the jumble of Victorian cottages tucked between corrugated barns and industrial brick icons of the late 1800s. A secret stash of cheap artist studios in old clapboard pier offices commands a view of the rusted bones of crumbling canneries, metal scrapyards and silent smokestacks. The city plans to redevelop Pier 70, hoping to capitalize on its historic charms while providing badly needed jobs, commercial and residential space ? all while maintaining the neighborhood essence that dates back to the mid-1800s when the Union Iron Works, Bethlehem Steel, Pacific Rolling Mills and the Spreckels Sugar refinery dominated the waterfront. The roughly 1,000 residents, artists and small business owners, shipyard workers, fishermen and boat builders are passionate that their historic surroundings and lifestyle not be harmed. The restored piers along the Embarcadero waterfront from the stadium where the Giants play baseball, under the Bay Bridge and up to the historic Ferry Building are now filled with tony restaurants, bakeries, coffee sellers and pricey artisan cheese and chocolate shops. The shipyard today has the largest floating dry dock on this side of the Pacific, where massive cruise liners come in for inspections and repairs and tiny tugs get their underbellies scrubbed free of barnacles. The artists, filmmakers, architects and designers in the three-story, wood-frame Noonan Building at Pier 70, built in 1941 by the government as war production offices, overlook an auto impound yard and a rusted-out warehouse. The historic ones include rare examples of modified Renaissance Revival in red brick that withstood the catastrophic 1906 earthquake, as well as rusticated stucco, granite staircases and fluted Doric pilasters alongside warehouses made of corrugated iron.