Formal vs. Informal Does it mean anything?
Post by Silvia Soonets [Proyectos Arqui 5] on Caracas
Adriana’s last post, More Definitions: Informality vs. Informalities, made me think, once more, about the meaning of informality. I’m not talking in an academic or philosophical sense, but from the practical approach of someone that it is supposed to offer solutions to the problem. What does informality mean? Has this meaning any impact in our decisions as designers?
There are, certainly, many informalities, and most, but not all, of them are related with poverty and developing countries. The high class settlements South East Caracas and the street vendors in LA are only two examples of these exceptions.
Caracas is a showcase of any kind of informality we can think of: regular (traditional?) slums, street vendors and varied informal economic activities everyway, rich zones very beautiful but built according the same principles of a slum, the new vertical slums inside Read More…
Slumscapes
Jeff Gillette, “Mondrian,” image courtesy of the artist
The title of this post is taken from a series of paintings by Jeff Gillette, a Southern-California-based mixed-media artist and painter. Gillette, in his artist’s statement, writes of his visits to several slums in Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi: “Aside from the seething humanity, the suffering, the unfairness and cruelty of the slum was a strange beauty. The cacophony of filthy debris rising from oceans of garbage comprises an architecture of poverty and necessity. What emerges is a living environment of aesthetic wonder, of spectacular variations of color, form, and texture.”
Gillette’s paintings display a high level of artistic control. Building materials, topography, and structural forms are clearly specified and arrayed in rhythmic compositions. The kaleidoscopic colors and textures are just bright enough to signal that the viewer is in a hyperrealistic environment, and to call attention to the consumer-waste origin of the building materials. Human inhabitants are absent (though human and Disney characters are sometimes included in order to make a visual pun on “squatting.”)
I wanted to focus on Gillette’s work here because it is a good reference point for discussing representations of urban informality and aestheticization of poverty, topics we frequently address here in Favelissues. As Gillette expressed to me, the visual and aesthetic are the primary content of his work, and his approach is basically objective. In that sense his images are the ultimate aestheticization of slums, as he is occupied with problems central to art and philosophy, not policy.
Jeff Gillette, “Caracas,” image courtesy of the artist
But Gillette’s paintings can stand in for a tendency in our own minds to let an image or the “skin” of an informal settlement push aside a fuller understanding of the complexity of urban informality. It’s so much easier to hold an image Read More…
Worst Urban Practices
Post by Marines Pocaterra [Proyectos Arqui 5]
The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 was a landmark achievement for the international community. They constitute one of the few globally-supported, (193 countries) comprehensive development commitments. They establish specific, measurable benchmarks and targets to eradicate extreme poverty and promote peace and security. The eight goals tackle poverty, education, gender equality, child and maternal mortality, HIV and other diseases, environmental sustainability and encourage a global partnership for development. The targets are set to be achieved by 2015.
If we search the web for Latin American countries that have accomplished MDGs you will find that Venezuela and Cuba excel for their advances. Cuba is a regime that has transformed a country into a concentration camp, not a reference to compare with the free world. Venezuela’s information in the MDGs page, instead of annual publications, shows only a link to a webpage with colorful and very positive news about social advances (updated 2008). Many programs called Misiones are proclaimed but no statistics or charts about results to back the statements, although Venezuela has had the same president for almost 14 years.
Venezuela´s regime manages an extraordinary oil income with no legal controls or limitations. Pedro Palma, ex-president of Economic Science Academy, wonders if there are evaluation mechanisms for the social investment, which according to the government, amounts $ 500.000 Million (USA $) over the last 12 years.
To begin with, the measure for poverty used in the MDG is the “dollar a day” guideline, which cannot be used in Venezuela, due to opaque policies of exchange, with multiple (preferential) rates. It is illegal to even mention the real equivalence of local currency. Thus, if an NGO is offered social financing for a program, it would be very difficult to accept, because any international currency Read More…
Architeture vs. Politics: Is it possible for them to agree?
Post by Silvia Soonets [Proyectos Arqui 5] on Caracas
Last year, a friend invited us to participate in a self-build housing program. It was then, that we heard, for the first time, about Miranda´s Certificates for Building Materials . (Certificados Mirandinos de Materiales de Construcción).
With this program, the provincial government aims to support the people’s self-construction efforts, giving them construction materials. There are several types of certificates, each one with a specific amount of money, to be used in a specific way, either improving an existing house or constructing a new one. The building process is to be supervised by a professional, architect or engineer, who visits the site several times to provide technical advice and to ensure the materials are used as agreed. People never touch money, but the certificate allows them to pick up materials in hardware stores affiliated to the program.
As professionals in charge of a particular area, we would be expected to teach building technics, adapt the typical house design to each case, approve the bill of materials and ensure the completion of the house. At first sight it seemed that our experience in the upgrading projects could be useful and that it was just another way of approaching the typical problems inside informal settlements. It was worth a try; we accepted enthusiastically and started to work immediately.
Nevertheless, at the end of the first site visit we started to become a but doubtful.
The settlement, just outside the state’s capital city, Los Teques, is mostly a rural sector, with few houses, small and simple, without any infrastructure. Since the program did not include any infrastructure, new bathrooms were supposed to simply let the water run freely, and connections among houses were steep paths with evident erosion. The houses we advised resulted Read More…
The Urban Theater
Post by Marines Pocaterra [Proyectos Arqui 5] on Caracas
We all agree that urban interventions should be positive social actions that focus their benefits on low-income urban dwellers. There is a wide range of projects in this list: punctual upgrades in informal settlements, participatory projects, new infrastructure equipment, renovations, and so on and so forth.
Yet, as urbanists and urban activists, we will have to learn to sort out the ‘good’ interventions from the theatrical urban shows. This is particularly important, as various demagogical regimes have discovered a way to implement political control through the disguise of innocent urban interventions. Allow me to expand on the latter, as it is a scheme applied in my home country, Venezuela:
Governments begin by preaching ‘globally approved slogans’ on urban upgrading: empowerment of the people, participative projects, equal access to land, leadership in self-development and so on. However, this façade discourse quickly transforms into a prize contest where people are offered, not education, stability nor the power to make decisions; but instead, cheap trinkets ranging from participation on a share of ‘invaded’ land, to white line appliances, to cash, to positions of ‘power’ within the community.
Originally designed to transform dwellers into owners of their own future, provide responsible for their living conditions, support equality in citizenship and so much more; these types of interventions become a simple disguise for manipulation. Instead of strengthening Read More…
Why Design?
I’d like to take as my starting point the blog entries posted here by Proyectos Arqui5 about their experiences designing upgrading projects in barrios in Caracas, Venezuela. I’m struck by the sense of frustration and urgency in Ms. Soonets’ and Ms. Pocaterra’s writing. We in the US can only imagine the strange reverses they are witnessing which are, in their view, resulting in the downgrading of the planned city. They describe a professional context in which laws and sources of political support are frequently turned upside down, and projects that have been in planning for years are inexplicably stonewalled.
In thinking about the challenges of practicing architecture in such a context I thought back to my own education at UC Berkeley and my architectural research in favelas in Sao Paulo in the mid-1990s, when the idea of architects designing projects in squatter settlements would have sounded quite bizarre to most people. At that time, studying community design had gone out of style. Computer-generated rendering was beginning to be taught, so that a student could put a glittering skin over any form and present it as a building. Most students’ focus was on the building as an object, not on design in the service of users (in spite of the best efforts of the faculty) and the real estate boom of the last fifteen years saw many of us working on large, costly buildings.
The knowledge that we spend so much of our time mastering – complex planning and building codes, sophisticated materials, structural, lighting, HVAC, and LEED requirements – is specific to the formal context and has little to no relevancy in a less formal setting. Instead, relevant areas of knowledge might include participatory design, local social, political, and commercial practices, health, violence, sanitation, transportation and water issues, local land use policy, tenure and access to credit, sustainability in the context of the local geography, the socio-economic programs Read More…
Falling in Love with the “Barrio,” the risk of toying with informality
Post by Silvia Soonets [Proyectos Arqui 5] on Caracas
ON YOUR MARK…GET SET…STOP!
Post by Marines Pocaterra [Proyectos Arqui 5] on Caracas
Barrios, Caracas; source: Arthus Bertrand
ON YOUR MARK…
The perception of urban informality as an incremental reality, not a temporary anomaly, became clear in the eighties. There were studies and experiences leading the route of public programs. Through open contests, professionals in the area began to focus on this social issue.
GET REAAADY…
In the nineties, more mature social propositions were tested in pilot plans. Former eviction plans developed into flexible participatory planning, having community representatives make decisions along with experts. This process resulted in a reinforcement of representation mechanisms within the community, the transparent elections of representatives; communities learned to prioritize common problems and issues over the personal problems, and developed a sense of responsibility for improving conditions on their sector, while learning to navigate through a system of rules to obtain official help (through a formal request to authorities and the correspondent follow-up).
It was presumed that, resulting from this upgrade process, residents of these areas would become an independent strong individuals, tightly bonded to a strong community, aware of their rights and no longer easily manipulated.
Although political propositions had been made many years before, people learned not to trust these electoral promises through the years; however, this time the situation seemed different. There was a solid plan attached, and one with ample support. We, urban technicians, fell for the new National Upgrade Plan and tried to rub our enthusiasm on the community. Expectations were high. The entire country was waiting for the gun shot, ready to begin the race and fight against poverty and marginalized areas in the city.
GOOooo………NO, HOLD YOUR HORSES!
Once pilot plans were completed, local governments aligned with the system, preparing projects to submit to official grants and loans. Unexpectedly, all actions started slowing down, a mist of confusion fell over the procedures stated in plans, and waiting became the permanent answer of government institutions to expectant communities.
If upgrading is a tool that could strengthen society, aiming for an integrated urban fabric, and equitable rights for all citizens; yet some regimes simply prefer a divided society, a subdued majority. In the latter scenario, the expected urban results include Read More…
Going Backwards in Caracas
Intro Post by Silvia Soonets [Proyectos Arqui 5]
In 1999 we started working on the improvement of our informal settlements, or barrios. The goal of the “Programa Nacional para la Habilitación Física de Barrios” (National Program for the improvement of Informal Settlements) was to integrate the informal areas to the formal city, and to equal the urban services between both zones. The time framework of 15 years, if optimistic, seemed attainable. We knew the work ahead was difficult and that perhaps it would not be possible to upgrade all the barrios, but no one could have imagined what really happened.
Today, only 12 year later, we have almost reached the aim: the city and the barrios are one and the same thing.
Unfortunately, things went just in the opposite way they were planned. Instead of improving the connections and the roads crossing through the informal zones, many streets look like moon landscapes. Far from the dream of having code zones in the barrios, all along the city buildings flourish ignoring any regulation. And rather than safer and more comfortable substitute houses, a new housing typology has arrived in the form of vertical barrios that occupy abandoned or unfinished buildings. The formal city is being swallowed by the informal overgrowth.
We are certainly in our way to a cohesive and integrated city: a huge, continuous, endless barrio.
Meanwhile, life inside the old informal settlements continues almost unchanged. Only few of the projects were in fact built, most of the proposals are lost, and the National Program was abandoned, degenerated in several plans for the improvement of the most visible individual houses. The problems related with insufficient Read More…
Metrocable :: Medellin + Caracas
As the aerial cable car- or metrocable- is quickly gaining attention and traction, becoming one of the new paradigms in addressing urban informality, I wanted to share this short video of the 2 Metrocables in Medellin (with a focus on Santo Domingo), and the Metrocable in Caracas (Barrio San Agustin).
METROCABLES VIDEO:
** Special thanks to Maria Carrizosa for helping me with the photo stills composite.
Adriana Navarro Sertich
Lubaina Rangwala
Jennifer Renteria
Kirsten Larson
Proyectos Arqui5
Tucker Landesman
Namrata Kapoor
Paula Restrepo-Cadavid
Andrew Carman
Jose Antonio Ramirez
Fernando Luiz Lara
Bethany Opalach
