Informality: Re-Viewing Latin American Cities
Thursday, 17 February 2011 to Saturday, 19 February 2011Location: Department of Architecture, Trumpington Street, Cambridge
Session 5: Fashionable Slums (A Critique)
Alfonso Valenzuela-Aguilera (UAEM / IURD-UC Berkeley)
FORMAL/INFORMAL/ILLEGAL: CULTURAL PROJECTS AS ANTIDOTE TO INSECURE ENVIRONMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA
Three economic circuits overlap in Latin American cities: the formal, the informal and the illegal. According to Portes, when the State attempts to fade the informal economy through the expansion of norms and controls, the preexisting conditions which originate informality in the first place seem to decline even further. On the other hand, organized crime is affecting the daily life of citizens and is drawing young population into the illegal economic circuit, debilitating the social structure of the community.
So, how are Latin American cities dealing with this situation?
In the present proposal we will assess the alternatives to stop violent cycles through programs and projects in cities like Bogotá, Medellin, Río de Janeiro, Sao Paolo and Mexico City. In these places, civil organizations are targeting young population in order to provide spaces for arts and culture (Faro, Circo Volador), sports ( Luta pela vida), video production (Shinealight) and therapeutic workshops (Trust Units) in contrast to repressive strategies undertaken by formal and informal security forces across the urban realm.
Adriana Navarro-Sertich (University of California at Berkeley)
Favela Chic
Although architects and planners have addressed informal settlements, or favelas, for over fifty years, it is only recently that design has become a central component in approaches to configuring. Following a long history of tabula rasa focused on eradication and relocation, the emergence of Team 10 and urban theorists and practitioners such as Castells, Perlman, and Turner, a recognition and appreciation of the vernacular and the informal was encouraged. We are now witnessing spectacular libraries in depressed neighborhoods, gondola systems in marginalized areas, museums in informal settlements. Through interventions that acknowledge and legitimize informalitys architectural and urban potentials, designers have adopted the favela as a new paradigm. The formalization and commodification of the informal has resulted in a recent, new design phenomenon; a new paradigm that I am calling Favela Chic.
Currently, some of the most interesting efforts to address favelas are exemplified in Latin America, where interventions have accepted the notion “slums of hope", thereby reformulating the discourse of the growing city, its configuration of built form and social activities, and the relations between the global and informal. Seeking to minimize displacement while at the same time reintegrate the favela with the city, Favela Chic interventions primarily focus on infrastructure and public space. Although ranging in types and scales, from small acupunctural projects to expansively designed infrastructural networks, three common design strategies are identified based on comparative field studies in South America (Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela): the reconfiguration of edge conditions (permeability + containment), the re- conception of public space, and the focus on representation and image. Within these strategies, five architectural tools are used to achieve reintegration: Urban Connectors, Icons, Skin+Sign, Tectonic Uplift, and Dirty Works.
Through a definition of the different strategies, typologies and specific case studies, this paper will discuss the potentials and dilemmas in the adoption of a Favela Chic paradigm and the commodification of an image of social good, as opposed to the cultural specificities and socio-economic realities of everyday life.
Session
6: Longitudinal Analysis and
Morphological Growth
Adriana Massida
The Unsettling Nature of Barrio Rivadavia 0-1-2 in Buenos Aires: Transitions of Formality/Informality
In 1956, as part of the tasks of the transitional military government de la Revolución Libertadora, a plan of social housing was set up in Argentina in order to deal with the -then- emerging informal settlements. Being the first plan in Argentina adressed to the villas miseria, and deeply rooted in the economic and social policies that the Revolución Libertadora was trying to promote, this Plan de Emergencia proposed the construction of 17 complexes of housing in the Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, each of them hosting 1000 families and providing a community centre for their "reeducation". Only 5 of these complexes were eventually built and, even if they had been created by the same organisms and with similar schemes, they were in very different positions within the city and developed thus different evolutions.
After a brief outline of the historical context of the first intervention and the frame of mind behind it, this paper will study the evolution of the complex of housing Barrio Rivadavia and its surroundings. This complex was built in 1958 in non-floodable land of the área known as bañados de Flores, and embodies many of the contradictions of the Plan de Emergencia. In 1984-85, important modifications and additions were made to it. It is socially integrated with the villa 1-11-14, which surrounds it. Because of its urban position, finally, this plot went through this process being tensed by the historical centre of Flores, the floodable lands, the dumps and the emerging villas.
MSc Arch. Cristina Dreifuss-Serrano (Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería and Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas)
Huaycán: A case study on growth of spontaneous architecture
The phenomena related to the growth of cities, often linked to massive internal migrations, have a violent impact in many aspects of the established structure. The boundaries of what is urban are blurred and it is frequent that the urban system (transportation, services and housing) does not develop fast enough to give an adequate answer to the needs in the new areas of the city.
Citizens come up with an automatic answer: they become builders of their own city. New environments appear, from architecture without architects, gradually growing from the requirements of its users-inhabitants, who also become its constructors. When the economy of the families allows it, the new citizen adds pieces to its house, making it a place for the satisfaction of their desires.
Auto-construction or self made architecture is an informal way of making city, one house and at the time. This fact has been studied from various perspectives (sociological, urban, economic), however there are few studies focusing on architecture as the initial cell of these developments (Burga Bartra 2006, Figari 1987)
Huaycán is an example of such an area. Located in the periphery of Lima, Perú, it was founded in 1984 as a small neighbourhood of houses and public spaces. Whit time, new families have come and old ones have grown. It is possible, thus, to find housing in very early states of development, quarters with well-established constructions although lacking some primary services, and a central area, completely established, with a flourishing commerce activity.
The study, taking place during most of 2010, describes the developing in time of spontaneous architecture, identifying patterns (divided in shapes and systems) and the way they change as the situation of the families allows further construction of their houses.
Katherine Gough (University of Loughborough)
Pereira revisited: the consolidation of low-income housing in Colombia
The lack of adequate housing in many cities of the global South has been highlighted by the ‘Cities Without Slums’ initiative. Whilst not denying that numerous urban inhabitants are living in houses unfit for human habitation, many are in fact able to gradually improve their homes over the years. The nature of the consolidation process of low-income housing is the focus of this paper. In 2010 I made a return visit to low-income settlements in the Colombian city of Pereira, where I originally conducted research in 1987 and subsequently in 1997. Conducting interviews again in the same houses has generated data on housing consolidation and the changes in the households living in the houses for over a 20 year period. Such longitudinal studies are invaluable for providing an understanding of the capacities of, and challenges faced by, low-income inhabitants in their attempts to create decent housing for themselves and their families.
Conducting longitudinal research generates a rich data set which cannot be replaced by asking questions about the past as memory is notoriously unreliable and interviewees reconstruct the past as they wish others to hear it. In this paper I reflect on the nature of longitudinal methodology and the benefits and challenges which arise when returning to the same places and people in the field. I also present some of the preliminary findings of the study highlighting how the consolidation process of the houses differs by settlement type and the nature of the household. The exodus of family members to work in Spain and state support given to internally displaced people both emerge as important factors in understanding the consolidation process of low-income housing in Pereira.
Session 7: Gentrification, Densification and Revitalization
Dr. Jorge Inzulza-Contardo (University of Chile)
Santiago Quadrant Model (SQM): re-viewing the boundary between formal and informal neighbourhoods
The shape of Santiago’s urban fabric, in common with many others Latin American cities, has undergone a major metamorphosis, particularly, at the beginning of 20th Century, when Santiago started to consolidate as a capital city with the problems and complexities associated with this process. For the period 1940-2002, actions of extension rather than densification, and state-sponsored social housing programmes, were extensively developed in the centre of Santiago and in all directions from its core. As a result, both physical and socio-economic patterns were altered mainly due to the impact of large-scale extension of housing provision since the 1960s through metropolitan masterplans, and later, in the 1980s when the market forces took a main role in the urban planning of the city. Even though the two National Urban Development Policies (PNDUs) of 1979 and 1985 put considerable emphasis on the social development of the city, under the name of ‘Market Social Economy’ (1979), and established that ‘the urban land is a scarce resource’ (1985), Santiago in the last thirty years has shown a clear liberalisation of the urban land density regulation, leading to a noticeable predominance of residential property. Thus, different housing landscapes can be found when comparing diverse areas of the cities, and also, boundaries between formal and informal neighbourhoods are blurred. This paper explores these complexities through the Santiago Quadrant Model (SQM) proposed by the author, illustrating the patterns of physical and socio-economic change that formal and informal neighbourhoods present. In doing so, key contemporary issues such as gentrification (recent waves) and globalisation are included in the analysis, which are associated with social segregation and community conflicts found in the different quadrants of Santiago. Examples of formal and informal neighbourhoods are provided.
Julie Gamble (University of California at Berkeley) and Adriana Navarro-Sertich (University of California at Berkeley)
Guayaquil, neoliberal upgrades painting the aesthetics of a new city
The upgrading of slums in Latin American cities through the use of physical intervention attracts the global eye. As these interventions become more prevalent, they require a scrutinizing and analytical lens that goes beyond the bourgeois gaze (Roy, 2003). In this regards, the case of Guayaquil, Ecuador, is an interesting one to analyze. Guayaquil s upgrading strategy was established through the public-private partnership—Fundación Malecón 2000. Backed by this neoliberal paradigm, the city now boasts a portfolio of urban renewal projects that have brought international attention and have made the case of Guayaquil a significant one, redefining the relationships between the global city and the informal one. The most notable of these projects is the case of the previously informal settlement las Peñas, located at the foot of the Santa Ana Hill, near the downtown waterfront. As a continuation of the large-scale, modern waterfront renovation project (“The Malecón”) the original focus for the Fundación Malecón 2000, Las Peñas was primarily improved through the use of paint. With minimum displacement, small public spaces were created, and the facades of houses where improved following an architectural theme, best described as “Old Guayaquil.” This process was accompanied by a previous land legalization in order to execute the physical project and in order to facilitate economic development for small local businesses aiming to attract more tourism. Today, the recreation of Old Guayaquil has accelerated other projects that incorporate economic generating activities for the Fundación, and also speculative high- end development. This confluence of economic activity through the local, the real estate developer, and the tourist breeds a form of what this paper considers gentrification. In piecing together such a narrative, this paper weaves together physical and ethnographic evidence that considers whether or not gentrification may be the ultimate consequence of physical interventions within the informal settlements of Latin American cities.
Aline Cannataro de Figueiredo (São Paulo Metropolitan Housing Company)
Public Housing and Urban Renewal Program for the city centre of São Paulo
More than 28% of São Paulo’s inhabitants, about three million people, experience some degree of urban precariousness. When facing the informal city (slums, tenements houses and irregular settlements) there are deficits to be overcome, as the lack of social housing, infrastructure, accessibility, facilities and public services.
The São Paulo Metropolitan Housing Company (Cohab-SP) has a mission to promote social housing solutions in São Paulo´s Metropolitan Area. Among the housing programs developed by Cohab, “Renova Centro” stands out.
The “Renova Centro” seeks a new alternative on how to reanalyze the city centre area in order to promote social housing and renovate the urban space. This strategy also provides the social inclusion of the low income population.
During the city´s urban development, the central region suffered a drain on the number of residents, resulting in a large number of empty buildings nowadays. However, due to the public transport network, education and leisure infrastructure, public services and work opportunities, this area daily receives a large number of people, which, part of them come from the informal city located in the peripheries. Moreover, considering this panorama, popular movements started to require social housing in the downtown area.
The “Renova Centro” is a housing program that is going to create approximately 2500 housing units through 53 buildings (originally apartments, hotels and offices currently abandoned) that are being acquired and revitalized by Cohab for the use of social housing, which, will serve families earning up to 10 minimum wages (R$5,100.00 = US$2,800.00).
The “Renova Centro” program will be presented with its entire concretization process, including its ideals and goals, previous experiences, survey method, data collection, selection criteria and building rehabilitation projects.
Session 8: Views from Academia
Alejandro de Castro Mazarro (Latin Lab, GSAPP, Columbia University)
Informal São Paulo - a panorama of formal architectural practices
Public Institutions have become a major link connecting mainstream architectural design culture and urban upgrading carried out at informal settlements. But, what other formal practices take place at informal settlements? What contribution could these practices provide to architecture culture and design? To address these questions, the presentation will compare contemporary private and public housing projects produced in São Paulo’s informal settlements. The former includes the work of Ashoka, Habitat Urbano, and Usina, architecture offices that have been commissioned by private investors, NGO’s and local communities. The latter entails masterpieces of SEHAB’s (Secretary of Housing of São Paulo) urban upgrading program displayed at the exhibition A cidade informal do século XXI. Renowned architecture offices such as MMBB, Ruy Ohtake, U-TT, and academic institutions such as GSD (Harvard University), GSAPP (Columbia University) and ETH-Zurich participated in the exhibition, which was held at São Paulo’s Museu da Casa Brasileira in April 2010. In particular, the presentation will compare graphic outcomes, design statements, and institutional contexts within which the projects have been commissioned. By subverting the relevance of visual instances in architectural design, this comparison will reveal a panorama of agents and professional skills that can be incorporated into mainstream architecture culture from its fringes. The ultimate goal of the presentation is to stage a debate on the new roles that architectural design can perform in informal settlements and to question the required “visibility” of design in architecture. This research draws from the outcomes of the seminar “Práticas e Projetos” developed at “Escola de Cidade” School of Architecture in São Paulo, as well as from the information gathered from research conducted at the Latin Lab, GSAPP.
Adib Cure and Carie Penabad
OFF THE MAP: STUDIES OF THE UNPLANNED CITY
Case Study- Barranquilla, Colombia
According to the World Bank, since World War II global population has increased from two billion to 5.5. billion, and nearly all this growth has taken place in the developing world where the urban population has grown from 300 million to 1.7 billion today. Most of these urban dwellers live in communities belonging to an urban geography that is literally “off the map”: undocumented, illegal, mobile, ephemeral, and generally beyond the reach of government services and infrastructure. Lacking even an agreed-upon descriptive term - they are variously referred to as slums, informal settlements, shantytowns, or in our preferred terminology, Unplanned Cities. In Latin America, as in the rest of the world, the prevailing view of these irregular settlements is that they are nothing but undifferentiated pockets of misery, wracked by poverty, crime, and unsanitary conditions: in other words, an unfortunate but inevitable waste product of the uncontrolled urban growth that characterizes our time.
We believe this view is as unfortunate as it is misguided. While undeniably precarious in construction, unplanned cities exhibit underlying urban and architectural patterns of remarkable resilience, and that moreover reflect their inhabitants’ enduring cultural values. Careful on-site documentation reveals these more subtle urban patterns; and we believe that the mapping of this finer grain is vital in overcoming the chronic lack of basic information that plagues attempts to ameliorate the problems of the Unplanned City.
To this end, the paper will present the work of the University of Miami School of Architecture design studio entitled The Sweet Charms of the Shanty Town and other Urban Myths: Barranquilla Case Study. Initially, the studio focused on comparative urban studies of Latin American unplanned cities. However the primary objective was the documentation and mapping of the Barlovento shantytown. Following a comprehensive urban mapping of the settlement, the studio focused on site selections for the design of a sustainable architectural proposal for the “Escuelas Folcloricas del Carnaval”. These cultural facilities provide a variety of educational and public spaces associated with the events of the annual Carnival of Barranquilla and could serve to organize the residents (who currently produce many of the crafts for the Carnival) in one building, fostering a sense of community ownership and pride. We believe that this is vital in the on going effort to transform these settlements into stable and legitimate neighborhoods.
Luis Diego Quiros Pacheco (University of Maryland)
SJO I San José – from Perception to Reality
In a world driven each day more by images, virtual metaphors and media, it is imperative that we look at the actual state of Latin American cities, some of which belong to countries portrayed as ecological or cultural paradises, but which are still driven by the disjunction between rural and urban societies and values.
This paper explores the contemporary phenomenon of disconnection between the realities of the city and the individual and social perceptions as driven by mediatic and economic forces, specifically in San José, Costa Rica – the “world’s happiest country”.
With more than 25% of its national territory under protection from deforestation, 5% of the world’s biodiversity and no army, it is no wonder that Costa Ricans consider themselves to be the happiest people in the world. Yet San Jose and the Great Metropolitan Area, which holds half of the country’s 5 million population, is one of the least livable cities in Latin America. It shares some of the major problems that most cities in the region suffer from: alienation from nature, informal growth and lack of future planning.
In this essay I am going to be
looking at this ‘deterritorialization’ (Deleuze, Guattari, 1972) process, it’s
causes and implications on the city from the point of view of an academic and design/research
project - an urban Joint Studio between the Universidad del Diseño and the Harvard
Graduate School of Design held in San José in 2008. I will explore the loss of
memory and the social and political disengagement of the Costa Rican society
with their capital city and its juxtaposition with the perception of happiness
and quality of life.
Session 9: The Role of Architects in the Construction of Informality
Renata Satiko Akiyama (Polytechnic of Milan)
The Role of Architecture in Slum Areas
Abstract tbc
Raphaële Goulet (Territorial Studio, France)
Building the city with "informal" tools : The "district architects" role in the transformation of Mexico City
In Mexico, low income city districts are mostly built with "informal" methods. Municipalities are searching for new strategies of urban management, firstly to address the lack of building security and physical risks those areas may represent, and secondly to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. One of the key strategy is to bring back architects in the heart of "informal" neighbourhoods.
This research investigates the nature, scope and value of the work undertaken by this type of architects, through the case of Mexico City 's "district's architects".
In Mexico, architects can work for two major programmes : the housing enhancement program (P.M.V.), and the district improvement program (P.M.B.) - both programmes are currently developed in other Latin American countries but not with such an important group of architects as in Mexico.
We have completed a six-month field investigation, with the completion of fifty interviews and visits, to finally present the methods of six district's architects.
They are a new generation of professionals, who bring experiences form their predecessors, from Cuba or Uruguay, in a constant search for new dynamics of involvement of the population. Together with teams of academics and students from the main public universities of Mexico city, they redefine and re-test premanently the scope and the organisation of the munipality programs. Since ten years, they have been developping an extended palettes of tools to approach the very diverse type of local situations.
The major challenge everyone has to face, is to find its own way to combine both systems formal and informal. Some improvise informal building techniques, others teach inhabitants to play with architecture principles, the last ones learn how to mix city's official regulationswith the informal rules of the area.
Most of the projects realized however still lack sustainability approach, and some fail to create real satisfactory living spaces, but still, most of them shows that many architects are ready to reinvest a social architectural practice towards solving critical challenges of urban development.
Alexandre Span Frediani, Matthew French, Isis Paola Nunez Ferrera and Naomi Shinkins
Integrated Informal Settlement Upgrading: Participation, Power and the Social Production of Space
abstract tbc
