A piece of history
dive into the history of urbanism. Rome is the best history of our model of modern city: grid plan, center around a square with civic buildings and houses that grow toward the periphery. At the ideological level, since the days of the Republic until the fall of Western Roman Empire, the city was identified with the negotium. This feature assigned to the city as the place of work, civic duties, and from the viewpoint cultured and aristocratic, a noisy space, chaotic, given to vice and vulgarity. In contrast, this position (which dominated the literary) recovers the value of otium in the field, ie, leisure reflective, peaceful activities of intellectuals. It is rather paradoxical that the base of the Roman economy (agriculture, the countryside) is idealized positive, although the work in the field are very debilitating and are reserved for the lower classes. But of course, this is the vision of the economic and cultural elite, which was not exploited in the fields, but could be delivered to the reflection or the enjoyment of Fine Arts in the comfort of your estate.
Over time, feudalism was to erase the concept of city life and would eventually settle in the field, but after the revival of trade would provide splendor to the cities that had survived and would lead to the formation of new cities bourgeois. But while city people highlighted the value of the city as a new source of culture and progress, religious orders took the dissenting position. According to this view rural space takes a new turn positive while the resurgent cities are defined by the vices engendered in them, which disturb the spirit of man and away from the contemplation of nature and of themselves, as acts of God. Therefore, the field (especially in the artistic legacy) becomes the place where man can find happiness as a product of divine beauty as a reflection undaunted. This is how the topics of the locus amoenus and beatus ille, which would build on the literature and the collective unconscious that ideal optimum for the field. History determine
after the emergence of large industrial city because of the industrialization process began in Britain and then spread to much of Europe (particularly Protestant Europe) There the city would become a gray, oppressive, stained by coal fumes and smoke from the chimneys, with large factories with high walls that block the sunlight. Cities are places for the "progress", exploitation, domination by the new ruling sector: the bourgeoisie associated with manufacturing capital. While contemporary authors such as Dickens, brought to the city as a bloody field and undesirable, there a current primitive in the most radical. This move would have enough grip on the Luddism, but also set the stage for the romantic ideal about the field and the solitary man united with nature, freedom and ultimate happiness. Nothing too different from the mystical impulse, except for the abolition of religious figures.
Then, Hegel, Marx and Bakunin would be responsible for destroying the basis of the concept rural / urban romanticism, accusing the mistake of hiding the old forms of domination in a series of idealizations tenuous. For social theorists (and most of the) anarchists, the city, a center of production was claimed by and for the proletariat.
Urbanism try to develop their own response to this situation: the garden city. But it soon became clear that this was not enough to be the space that would meet the needs of the majority of the population, but concentrated the attractions of the countryside and the city to the affluent, while the bulk of the inhabitants were relegated to settlements that do not compare to the great plaza, fountain, theater and petit hôtel of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The city then is masked, hiding his true reason for being (home to the great economic activity: banking, trade, industry, for the vices, to the center of political power)
is worth mentioning the global periphery, colonies mostly political, but also in some cases new countries with economic dependency (like Argentina) Here the local economic power, along with foreign capital was in charge of play at the western city positivist models. Not for nothing is considered to Buenos Aires as the Paris of South America.
The twentieth century would bring significant changes to the appearance of cities, but not its structure. Developing at the top and along, the urban centers are consolidated as "the only possible way of life" as the country completes the process of depopulation and concentration in the hands of a few landowners, launched on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Moreover, various architectural movements coexist, decade by decade giving a facelift of the city, according to the dominant aesthetic standard. In recent years the industry begins to move to the periphery (Grouped in huge manufacturing centers or parks) and the eastern cities adopt the Western model, especially in the fastest growing countries (Japan, China, NPI)
The great development of communications, together with modernization of the transport system and improvement in services provided as outlook for the city's model of first world city, ideal for live, in full progress, where everyone is happy.
But, as a characteristic inherent in the system of capital accumulation, there is another city. It is a city of human remains, the marginalized and excluded. Barrios with monoblocks and in the worst cases, villages and settlements. The city of suburbs, which dates from the time of Industrial Revolution has increased while that progress came to town the first world.
However, the rules imposed on society of the spectacle that mediates the first world city, while hiding the miseries of urban underdevelopment. Even the use of the word "suburb" is attested, as something that is not the real city that has a lower status as not worth consideration.
"But what happens when Third World city invades the city of progress?
Breaking into the urban fabric
Argentina in the popular imagination, we have the notion of wave internal migration of the early twentieth century, commonly known as the emergence of "black heads." Later in time, with the final consolidation of several villages and the emergence of so many (other than the slums) would resume the old account. Immigrants from neighboring countries have also been the target of several invectives, to surround with their business, food and industrial arms several neighborhoods of the city (Once, Flores, etc.).
We find, then, that the economic contradictions of capitalism are consistent with models of the city. The coexistence of two different population universes is impassable, not only in the peripheral countries, but also in large cities. The youth revolt of the backward Arab suburbs of Paris is a clear example.
Responses those in power try to give this situation are varied, but since a few decades ago that one solution stands out among all: country clubs and gated communities, emerged in Western Europe in the 70s.
In Argentina, the phenomenon has its heyday in the 90s. It is not a coincidence: while a few rich at the expense of many, neoliberalism should hide the remains had not yet benefited from the burner as spillover. So while the city is gradually copada by the masses, the real estate boom highlights the advantages of the old and traditional area: few people, low noise, remoteness from the poor (security), peace and tranquility to enjoy earnings ... However, the advantages of the field end to seduce and aristórcratas bourgeois city dwellers, accustomed to the advantages of urban life. Here comes the Countrie as better alternative.
"Think peace and security that gives the field, just 30 minutes from the city by highway. Green spaces and sports, club house, pool, Internet access, schools (...) Choose St.Gilbert, tranquility and comfort for you and your loved ones. "
The gated Countrie and then concentrated the virtues of rural life, the threat of takeover and chaos in the city, but also the benefits of urban life, given how boring may be the country life. The result? Country living 5 minutes from shopping and 30 minutes from the city with the advantages provided by the telecommunications and security to the remote itself (which of course is reinforced by private security staff) to the form presented Countrie the material the mix, with large green spaces (emulating the field) and a clubhouse that serves as a cultural center, usually near the school (in imitation of the old forum Roman). The most extreme example is probably that of Nordelta, proposed as a new city from its slogan, calling for the establishment of an urban / rural for anyone who is wealthy enough of the invasion vulgar in the North Area of \u200b\u200bGreater Buenos Aires .
Meanwhile, the ideal of countries / gated community is driven from power, urging the middle to accompany the upper class in your quest and escape from the invasion in the cities. Thus, there are many advertisements for real estate projects, television programs dedicated to them, magazines of "design" to emphasize its latest architectural trends, special supplements to the newspaper Saturday or Sunday to offer peace and comfort next to the police website. For their part, many traditional clubs of the middle class choose to convert their fifth weekend in country where you begin to build houses and buildings!
The scope of the phenomenon in the city country
In this sense we can understand the phenomenon of "exhurbación" aristocratic-bourgeois response to the invasion popular cities. Although this does not end the matter. Despite the push media receiving country clubs, its scope would be limited because only a small portion of society could access to a lot of those. But do not despair jumbo, rivals of the big bourgeoisie, there is a solution for you. The idea of \u200b\u200bthe Countrie is to take advantage of the city to the countryside, however, if the financial means are not enough, you can arrange a similar proposal: extend the benefits of rural to urban. I refer to the towers-country.
towers or towers-country-garden are the major players in the construction boom in the city. Traditional departments promise a range of services similar to those of the country which include: swimming pool and sun terrace with parasols and deck chairs service, grill or barbecue, SUM, landscape development, games, private security, GRILLS, park, tennis court and, in some cases more eccentric, nursery, sauna and gym. About the size of its growth, data architecture supplement Clarin reported that 47% of the residential projects (including country clubs and gated communities) is comprised of the towers-country. This means that the development exceeded even their own country clubs that sprang up.
The City already provides to these buildings as a brand, with peaks of evolution in Palermo, Belgrano, Coleraine, Caballito (the structural capacity has already been filled) and incipient profusion in peripheral neighborhoods, like Park and Villa Crespo Patricios. In much of Buenos Aires residents and their wishes to live in a country: go to the club within the building (gym, pool, tennis), go to the park within the building (development landscape, games), go to kindergarten in the building (nursery), or cyber, or the bag, or a party or virtually any social space. We follow then the privatization of social life previously linked to public space or neighborhood, now a gated community in the peaceful tenants providing fencing and private security. "Why go out with so much uncertainty and so many turning black, if you can do here in the building?" Shelter in towers-country, bias generator, demobilizing, extends not only to its inhabitants. Advertising and media (mis) information strive to propagate their virtues sounding increasingly compelling for much of the middle class.
now try to set the framework for a sci-fi tale in which the ideal of the tower-country final victory.
Undoubtedly, the scenario is Puerto Madero. Does not this neighborhood a great country? Let's see: the fence is replaced by its isolation from the rest of the city via bridges and the private security has its counterpart in the prefecture, has tranquility, peace, beauty, but is close to the city, is monitored by cameras, etc. And anyone who has walked in Puerto Madero you can see: in the streets there are no people, no life, the few who live there can do their activities from the comfort of their buildings, indoors. Not to mention running into a typical corner store as a shoe store, a grocery store or the butcher.
This "neighborhood? so little man, as neoliberal, so little public is a possible preview of apocalyptic urban reality. Streets, cafes and clubs and people occupying abandoned their leisure in the solarium of the pool or the voluntary loss of mental abilities, I say, ehhhmmm, the love of Big Brother.
Many relationships can be established between this city \u200b\u200bmodel in the making and the emergence of shopping centers, monumental totems of consumerism, private property and modern capitalism. It may be preferable to elaborate on those at another time, but worth the mention as a constituent element of the new and nasty urban fabric.
Chin-pum
Ultimately, the integrated development of rural and urban areas is dependent on its historical value. In this context, today we found a deserted field and reserved for the production of landowners, cities where many do not want to see the excluded and country clubs, spaces that are proposed as perfect small towns of "good people" taking elements from both habitats. These events are inevitable products of modern capitalism and its particular upsurge in recent years by neoliberalism. Then, we argue that the only alternative is massive takeover of public space, to claim them as places of contact, reflection and learning, the task has already been initiated in recent years by assemblies or groups of artists who occupied abandoned houses or buildings made its value from an architectural and community activities. The path left is to support that process, claim the role of the public (the square) and continue to denounce the country's character in its manifestations rural or urban, in order to generate the necessary awareness to make our own lives and our own cities.
For revolution is a form of release to the City, but the release of the City is necessary for revolution.
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