On the one hand, the unregulated, organic, need-driven growth of the barrios has produced sustainable and efficient community models. Yet the resulting 'city' is chaotic, unstable, and unsafe. Urban planners have found European and American models to be irrelevant. What's the solution?
December 12, 2002
Caracas, in common with so many other Latin American metropoles, has
witnessed the emergence of many "closed urban communities" during the past
decade. Such privatized spaces are usually found in elite residential zones
where residents can afford to pay for high walls, and guarded (and often
armed) entrances. They represent a perceived safer alternative to the more
open fabric of the "normal", formal cityscape --one in which individual
houses are protected by high walls and electrified fences. These elite
"barrios" thus eliminate the presence of buhoneros (street-traders) and
other allegedly "dangerous" elements of the urban scene. Alas, they also
represent in physical form the segregation that is ever more present in
major cities, reflecting the results of social polarization: the rich with
lavish homes and armoured cars well-protected, the poor in ranchos and on
the streets. The future looks bleak, leading progressively to an even more
divided Caracas.
David Robinson,
Geography Dep't Syracuse University
January 13, 2003
It seems short sighted to consider a solution. The study has laid
before us a good summary, as general as it is, of the situation in
caracas. What I believe the next step should be is to ask questions:
how can a government on the brink of collapse and with only corrupt,
oligarchic precedence be influenced into addressing issues that a
global economy will put before it? how can the same government
civilize a population where more that 80% lack schooling? where
several million live as undocumented immigrants whose rights are
refused or abused? The list of questions is long but needs to be put
forward.
Architecture can not provide the answers. It can make the suggestions
to other professionals and work in tandem with them to make changes.
Caracas and Venezuela are a mess too great to place on the shoulder of
architecture alone.
Pedro Pachano
January 17, 2003
I've been fascinated by the same occurrence. Barrios seem to lack
anything we architecturally consider to be "adequate" urbanism, but then
again when architecturally designed urbanism tends to create "dead
cities". Maybe our concept of adequacy is in need of refinement. Is the
world still something which can be defined according to our previous
concepts of right and wrong or is it moving towards a more complex system
of "better thans" or "better than befores"...or maybe even more important
"more sustainable than befores". What is the impact of these situations
on the environment and how is that creating or accentuating problems of
"adequacy" in terms of health and sustenance?
