I’m Back!

I really have no time to do this with work and stuff but can’t seem to stay away … Cities are too fascinating.  Just got back from Caracas, Venezuela.  These visits always get me thinking about cities, the future and the world.

Caracas is such an interesting and I think representative case for urban development in the South.  While Caracas it is relatively small with only 5 million people (as opposed to Mexico DF’s whopping 27 million), it has one of the longest histories of informal city construction in modern times.

In this vein, I have been following the research of Urban Think Tank in Caracas and visited them while in Chacao.  I had a very interesting talk with some folks in the office (although the principals/partners were out of town that day) and immediately bought their book when I came home.

While I am still finishing some fun summer reading, I plan to start reading Informal City – Caracas Case next.  I’ll keep you posted with interesting stuff from the book …  No really, I promise I will.

Demographics

Just saw this in Developer Magazine … Some surprising demographic projections

• By 2030, 60 percent of all people will live in cities and their suburbs;
• In that same time period, they estimate that 7 out of 10 those people will reside in either Africa or Asia
• China, India and the US are the three most populous nations today (in that order)
• By 2030, India will surpass China in population

Wow!  The first one is the reason I write this blog.  Duh.  The second fact is surprising because we in this hemisphere think we’re the most important and thusly the most numerous.  The third one surprised me because I thought Brazil or Russia would be more populous that the US.  And the final one shocked me … Inida?  Really?!

Por fin, nuestra casa

Wow!  I just saw something cool on CNN … Imagine that?!  What’s ironic though is that they were posting a story about some funny company who is turning shipping containers in homes.  Ha ha.  It was probably filed under the “odd news from around the world” category.  What I think they and many other news media outlets are missing is that this phenomenon is MAJOR.

PFNC Home

Here’s the story: “Shipping containers could be dream home for thousands“

What intrigues me about this idea of “Por fin, nuestra casa” is the idea that there are not thousands, but MILLIONS of people who have never had a decent home to call their own.  Do any other people from the United States ever think about this?

What will it mean to the world when everyone is finally tired enough of living in the squatter villages and rich enough to move out and get their own house?  How many more of our earth’s resources will that eat up?  How much more environmental damage will be done buildng newer, better houses?  Unlike many Americans, I do not see this as a threat, but rather an entitlement and a good thing … If it is aided by all of the creative thinking, technology and innovation our world can muster.

People living in substandard housing DESERVE much better than this world has been able to provide.  I just hope that people in the northern, wealthy countries can see this move as progress, not a threat.

Here’s the website for the project “Por fin, nuestra casa” in case you’re interested.

OMG! Forget American Idols, these are International Idols

NEXT WEEK I AM GOING TO SEE JAIME LERNER AND TEDDY CRUZ AT A CONFERENCE!!  I FEEL LIKE ONE OF THOSE CRAZY TEENAGERS WHO GO TO A BOYBAND CONCERT.  I REALLY CAN’T BELIEVE THAT I’M GOING TO SEE THEM BOTH – IN PERSON … AND MAYBE EVEN GET TO ASK THEM SOMETHING.

OMG!  What am I going to ask them?  Anyone got any good questions for these two geniuses?

Okay, I can stop writing in ALL CAPS now.  I’ve calmed down.  But really, I am VERY excited.  I am so starstruck that these two international megastars are going to be in my small town.  These guys are big time, two of my heros.  And I’m sure that the other conference speaker will be equally wonderful but JAIME LERNER and TEDDY CRUZ are going to be HERE!!  IN MY TOWN!!

Here are some links to their work or articles about them:

Jaime Lerner … CommonDreams.org and here: PBS Frontline

Teddy Cruz …  Resilience Science Blog and here: New York Times

The conference website is http://www.aiafla-gulfcoast.org/sdc2008/index.html

Like a good crazed fan, I will try to come back with pictures and autographs to prove the awesomeness I have been gushing about.  Oh yeah, and some inspiring good ideas too.

The role of mayors (follow up)

Tirana, Albania … Hmmm, not what you would normally think of as a bright, happy place to live. But the mayor – a former basketball player turned artist turned politician is trying to change all that.

I read on aljazeera.net today a story about Edi Rama, current mayor of Tirana, Albania. He says:

“When I became mayor of Tirana it was like entering a Kafka book and becoming a person in danger of becoming totally metamorphosed by the very heavy power of the past and of the total lack of authority and hope in the city. Tirana was totally left behind and was very similar to a transit station in that everybody was thinking of how to escape. It was the greyest, dustiest, most hopeless city ever imagined…”

So what did he do?

Pretty awesome stuff. Not that paint can save a city, but it seems like it can get things off to a fresh start. Any thoughts out there?

Here’s the entire article for your reading pleasure: Art for Politics Sake (aljazeera.net in english).

Attention city-haters

But seek the welfare of the City and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

-Jeremiah 29:7

Even the Christian bibles endorses the importance of cities in the lives of people everywhere.  This passage says to me that it is only together – working, living and mixing together – that we will thrive.  Living in isolated places with privacy and security (the suburbs) being more important than connecting to other humans is not how it’s supposed to be.  If anyone can prove to me that the suburbs are not about isolation and keeping away from people not like you, then please share your thoughts.

(picture: the prophet Jeremiah) (quote found at http://www.dpz.com/research.aspx)

The role of mayors

The last post I wrote got me thinking about mayors and their role in everything we have been discussing so far. It seems to me that in notoriously corrupt places like Third World countries, mayors and city government have great potential to do good. Federal-level programs and resources have a long way to go before there impact is felt (filtered down through state, regional and local government) and there are many points at which the funding can be sipped in to … However, locally-generated and locally-controlled money like through a mayor’s office can be more tightly controlled, more quickly felt in good projects and more directly applied to locally relevant issues.

It also occurred to me that several Latin American mayors have made history and/or are making headlines:

Jaime Lerner (Curitiba, Brazil)
Enrique Penalosa (Bogota, Colombia)
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Mexico D.F., Mexico)

Or this unfortunate mayor in Ilave, Peru who was dragged through the streets and killed for his percieved role in corruption (four council members were also beaten severely). This debacle is also described as bringing down Peru’s Interior Minister at the time Fernando Rospigioli (BBC article here).

What is the role of the mayor in Latin American cities? In all developing countries for that matter? How can they be the fulcrum for positive change in a region or even an entire country? I dno’t know the answers, but to this committed small ‘d’ democrat, they seem like important things to be thinking about.

For the fun of it … Check out “World Mayor 2007,” the world’s most outstanding mayor of 2007 will soon be announced.

Trouble in paradise?

As the year comes to a close … No sorry that was too cliche of a start for this post.  I don’t actually have any grand thoughts to sum up 2007.  Actually, for what will probably be my last post of 2007, the initial year of this blog, I have a quandary to share:

In creating an ideal city, what is the role of people?
What about democracy? (small ‘d’ intentional)

A passage I read in May in a New York Times article troubles me:

“Like other left-wing critics, Urban traces the lack of participation to an original sin. The progressive urban planning of Curitiba was not initiated by a democratic process; it was set in motion by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964 and ruled Brazil until the mid-’80s. Its environmentalism is rooted in authoritarianism … The city that has been called the most forward-looking in the Western Hemisphere is an outgrowth of an era that many Brazilians prefer not to look back on. Jaime Lerner, the archangel of the Curitiba green movement, was anointed by the dragons of war.” (full article here)
(photo: wire opera house in Curitiba, Brazil)

Enrique Penalosa in  Bogota had some interesting commentary on this, saying that most people are not really “ready” or “informed” to participate in urban planning.  He explains that because Western culture – Latin America included – is so focused on the private realm (family, home, interior design, consumerism) that we do not know how to focus on and make decisions about the public realm (sidewalk widths, transportation, parks, street lights etc.).

Interesting.  And I agree and it helps clarifies the difficulty and inherent tension in good urban planning vs. good citizen participation.  But it doesn’t offer answers.

Another example is Xenia, Ohio.  In the 1970’s, a tornado destroyed the whole town.   To rebuild it, they got all of the residents together of all ages and walks of life to figure out what they wanted for the newly to-be-rebuilt town.  The result?  A giant shopping mall.

Hmmm … So where does urban planning and citizen participation come together nicely?  Where have both of these important things worked?  Is it true that democracy and good urban planning do not go hand-in-hand and maybe democracy is not needed or even hinders good urban planning?

8 Seattles

This Friday will be two months since I last posted … Sorry about that, but I thought maybe my rapid-fire posts on ARTchitecture would give you food for thought for a while.

I’m back, and here to report that since the time that I last wrote, 8 more Seattles have been added to the world.

Huh? I recently heard a statistic from the UN that with the current pace of urbanization, the world is adding a city with the population of Seattle every seven days. Unfortunately, I can’t cite the UN Department or source of this, except to point you here:

Alex Steffen of WorldChanging.com on TED Talks

I have purposely inserted three links here because they are three excellent, awesome and amazing ways to spend your time on the internet. The first “Alex Steffen” is a fast-paced round-up of radical (but possible) answers to our planet’s greatest challenges – listen for the part about cities. The second, World Changing.com is a repository of all of the cool thinking, ideas, people and organizations Alex talked about in his speech. And the final link: TED Talks is a great repository of many more “Alexes.” Worth looking into.

But my question is this … Who is paying attention to the fact that we have a new Seattle every week? How will this world accommodate all that urban growth? Surely the American model will FAIL us as a planet with its spread out suburbs and car-based infrastructure. Who is creating the new model?

BTW – In case you’re curious, the City of Seattle proper had just over 582,000 people in 2006. The Seattle metropolitan area had over 3.3 million last year. I hope we only add one of the Cities each week, not one of the Metro Areas.

Putting the ART in ARTchitecture, Part III

Okay, so here’s the final installment of my favorite architecture … This stuff I’ve actually seen first-hand also (they don’t make it easy for most Americans travel to Cuba). Below are some pictures from a recent trip to Venezuela.

These buildings are all in Caracas, and are rather unremarkable by that city’s standards:

But they are something remarkable to me. Maybe because America was not building much at all during this time (1930’s). Maybe because everything I see now is either ugly and unremarkable or some neo- version of something past (neo-Mediterranean, neo-Classical, neo-Colonial). Blech!

This architecture, aside from being new to me, was something new to the entire world. Nothing like it had ever existed. It truly was a unique and creative path in architecture. New technology at the time revoutionzied building techniques and abilities. These buildings / architects were able to take full advantage of that fact. They didn’t create anything to be a look-alike. They worked within the means of this new technology to make something totally unique.

Here are some other links to see examples of this architecture elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world:

Racionalismo en Buenos Aires, Argentina

Exposiciones: Damian Flores Arquitectura Racionalista en Madrid, Espana