Let me preface my response to the first interventions by identifying my
expertise as architectural history. I devote more attention to the form of
cities than to the social or political analysis of them. As CB states the easy distinctions between center/periphery, north/south,
(and we should add first world/third world) no longer correspond to an
empirical knowledge of cities. They are probably cultural concepts
inherited from the imperialist episteme.
In Monterrey or Guadalajara one
finds the same degree of suburbanization of both the center and the edge
that one expects from US cities. In most US cities one finds areas of the
type of underdevelopment that used to characterize ex-colonial cities--so
whatever the Third World used to mean it is now a more genrealized
condition (the difference is now a question of scale rather than type).
TA's observation that Latin American cities are judged to be overcrowded
stems from the same problem of who is in control of the tools of
perception. Mexico City, for example, soon to be the world's largest city,
has many egregious environmental problems due to overpopulation, but
appears to me to be the smallest big city in the world, that is it has the
most intimate neighborhoods and spaces of community, which are reinforced
by its transportation networks and things like traditional outdoor
markets..
For those who still believe in political solutions to urban problems, the
postmodern blurring of categories presents indeed a nasty problem since it
becomes increasingly difficult to locate the sources of accountability.
Where one used to be able to blame a corporation (like GM for the
destruction of public transportation), or a country (like the US for the
destabilization of Allende's Chile), or even an individual (like Nixon for
the invasion of Cambodia) the path to responsability has been cloaked by
various levels of telematic distance. The Gulf War was a painful example.
Economic globalization and the information revolution have to a certain
extent difused responsability, not in the interests of peace, but for the
logical process of letting elites accumulate relatively anonymously,
independent of local circumstances.
Uneven development and horrific human exploitation continue in an ever less
regulated manner, a fact that registers on the form of most cities.
Skyscrapers in Caracas, such as the twin 60 storey Parque Central, planned
by the government as a symbol of the commitment to advanced services have
an excellent view to the thousands of shanties on the hills, much more
picturesque but built without roads or services and usually encouraging
lives of utter precariousness. Skyscrapers in downtown Houston look onto
vast parking lots (about a third of the downtown blocks are either parking
lots or parking garages); the once thriving diversity of urban life has
been almost completely exterminated.
This formal result of great symbols of
capital with ever less governable spaces between corresponds to SS's
analysis of globalization. What surprises me, considering the visible class
division in the city, corroborated by statistics about the shrinking middle
class in most countries, is that there does not seem to be much evidence of
new urban social movements (for instance the uprising in Chiapas, arguably
the most successful social movement in the last decade, is not urban.)
Instead I notice a widening range of anarchy. Events like the South Central
riots in L.A., and the rise of all sorts of predation in most cities.
Enclaving, which is as prevalent in Los Angeles and Houston as it is in
Monterrey and Caracas, is in my mind the most significant trend in recent
urbanism and the direct response to anarchy. It of course means the closing
of the city, a refeudalization, the limiting of access, the end of a
possible polis.
Many people in architecture believe that virtual architecture is already in
practice--and thus the obsolescence of space and form as quantifiable or
aesthetic entities. At least they talk like this has already happened. I
fail to feel any enthusiasm for anything that promises me to have less
bodily contact with the world, but am forced to recognize how despatialized
all relationships are becoming in spite of my desires. To me the Internet
seems just another insidious way to say one thing like hyper-democracy
while doing another, like limiting access. Infocrats will be exploiting
cyberproles in the jacked-in planet. Information society has the pretense
of anarchical multiplicity with the friendly face of new tycoons like Bill
Gates sitting at the "window", raking in the power.
As the techniques will not fail (cyber-Luddites not withstanding), access
to the virtual realm will become the major political issue of the end of
the decade, and perhaps the real city will become less of a political
territory.
I am reminded of Victor Hugo's parable "This will kill that; the
book will kill the building" in which he describes a dizzying escalation of
books assembled into a cataclysmic Tower of Babel. The unification of
language through globalized digital information is a new method of building
that Tower. The computer in this regards will kill the city, and with it
the idea of the polis. I hate to even think of it, but there will come a
time when those who are interested in preserving the idea of democracy will
struggle not just for fair housing, healthcare, and transportation, but
public jacks.
So with this overly paranoid response I would conclude that while
urbanization is increasing incrementally, the despatializing model invented
in the US is being repeated everywhere with minor variations (for instance
in Caracas highrise housing often takes the place of the lowrise enclave).
Any social movement that would like to defend democratic rights will
eventually probably have to launch its struggle through the sort of
telematics we are using in this conference in order to address power. But I
have so many questions about the ensuing change of consciousness that this
technology implies. Without bodies in space one cannot imagine the human
predicament which is the essence of that historic struggle for rights.
Despite my obvious
handicap I'd like to try to react to the positions taken by Christine
Boyer, Saskia Sassen, and Tom Angotti :by drawing on my limited experience in
Latin America (confined to the cities of Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Mexico
City in Mexico, and Caracas, Venezuela).
