Oops, the canal/eye city was Anastasia. In that city, you see your desires all around you but that's the extent to which you experience it. The significance could be the sight's role in influencing the more vapid desires, the creation of which in turn robs us of our ability to truly fulfill any desire.
Zora's similarity to brain structure fits into the mnemonic theme of the chapter. Then Calvino goes into the threat of such devices when they exist as an unchanging closed system, which can be a comment on mental deterioration in the aging process or as a result of dogmatically clinging to a system beyond its relevancy.
Per Fedora, I think it's as simple as saying that imagined realities/desires/etc occupy just as much mental space as what we understand about reality.
Not sure how to connect Isidora to the body concept (though the spiral seashells did make me think of nipples lol). Maybe with the sexual imagery and the shift from "wild regions" to the city, there's a Malthusian theme about the youth pushing out the old? Maybe less likely is the idea that we can have an impact on the world to see our desires come to fruition, but do more to pave the path for those who follow us to fulfill these desires (which are borne of what we lack).
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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.
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