Rethinking the Informal City PDF Download

Author: Pablo Meninato
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003847250
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines.

Author: Felipe Hernández
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857456075
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.

Author: R. S. Rose
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0896802434
Category : Elite (Social sciences)
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
The Unpast: Elite Violence and Social Control in Brazil, 1954-2000 documents that the brutal methods used on plantations led directly to the phenomenon of Brazilian death squads.

Author: Sergio Magalhães
Publisher: Rio Books
ISBN: 658791375X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Some colleagues from the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil – IAB (Brazilian Institute of Architects) and I spent some years organizing the 27th World Congress of Architects, initially planned to be held in July 2020 in Rio de Janeiro. However, the pandemic caught us along the way and we had to postpone the event until 2021. From March to July 2021, debates, conferences, lectures, exhibitions, films, and many other activities – almost all of them online – were carried out with hundreds of leading professionals and almost 100,000 participants from 195 countries. With such a diversity of prominent names, as we had intended, a unifying idea emerged: we are all together and it is up to us to contribute creating better, prettier, more climate-friendly, and less unequal cities. It did seem that the subject of the Congress (which was defined still in 2014, when Rio was elected as the host city) had been premonitory: "All the worlds. Just one world. Architecture 21". On the eve of his 100th birthday, French philosopher Edgar Morin drew attention to the possibility that the aftermath of the pandemic could give rise to new world-transforming forces, however fragile they might be. And that given this possibility, our path should be one of hope. This thought has inspired the World Congress of Architects and, somehow, also this book. I gathered a handful of texts and wrote a few others under the impact of the challenge to turn the 21st century into a more humane place. I state no thesis here, but rather a plea. I am very grateful to everyone who contributed to making this book a reality, starting from the initial (and continuous) motivation as offered to me by my dear Rosana Lanzelotte, from Musica Brasilis. I'd like to highlight the great performance of RioBooks' publisher Denise Corrêa, whom my colleague Verena Andreatta had recommended me, and the competence of a few others: architect Anita Di Marco's in the thematic review of this volume; Sylvia Cardim's in the sophisticated graphic design; my friend and colleague André Luiz Pinto's in selecting and treating the images presented here; my dearest old friend and great artist Thereza Miranda's inspiration for the presentation of the book; and finally Victor Burton's in conceiving the book cover. In part, some of the ideas stated here resulted from special contributions by dear friends such as Fabiana Izaga, André Luiz Pinto, Eucanaã Ferraz, and Graça Matias Ferraz. Some topics were discussed in the creative environment of the Graduate Program in Urbanism at FAU UFRJ. I thank my children Pedro, Tiago, and Aninha, who took care of me with tenderness and understood my effort to conclude these texts. I owe a special thanks to the Rio de Janeiro city government and its Culture Department for promoting this book using the ISS Incentive Law, as well as to the sponsoring companies Grupo Globo, Icatu, and STX Empreendimentos. Both the book and I were extremely honored by the references made by Ruy Castro, Zuenir Ventura, and Luiz Fernando Janot, whom I thank in the hope of living up to their expectations. However, I count on their generosity and yours, dear reader, in understanding that this is but a small amount of mortar to help build better cities. It is hope!

Author: José Bernardi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000993647
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This book seeks to explore the theoretical and architectural connections between memory, values, cultural identity, and adaptive reuse in Latin America. It does so by critically analyzing ideas and works within the context from where they emerge. With rich and layered historic centers, a wealth of colonial and 19th-century buildings, and the heritage from the modern era, Latin America offers a unique architectural patrimony and its contribution and impact on contemporary culture and architecture still require critical study and discussion. The chapters of this timely book consider the conflicted relationship between colonialism, native cultures, and immigration. It also explores the connections between modern projects and national identity, and contemporary interventions serving the needs of diverse societies while being cultural receptacles of memory. While most books on adaptive reuse focus on the larger general concepts, different technical approaches, and case studies, this book will contribute to the study of adaptive reuse moving away from Europe and North America, focusing instead on cases in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru. This book is an important resource for researchers and students in the area of architecture, cultural, global, and design studies, heritage, geography, sociology, and history.

Author: Richard Gruneau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317617355
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Since the turn of the twenty first century, there has been a trend for urban "mega events" to be awarded to cities and nations in the East and Global South. Such events have been viewed as economic stimulant as well as opportunities to promote national identity, gain greater international recognition and exercise a form of 'soft power.' However, there has also been on-going controversy about the value, impact and legacy of global mega events in these cities and nations. This book provides a critical examination of the ambition for spectacle that has emerged across the East and Global South. The chapters explore the theoretical and conceptual issues associated with mega-events and new forms of globalization, from the critical political economy of mega-events in a changing world order to the contested social and economic legacies of mega-events and the widespread opposition that increasingly accompanies these events. The book also explores questions of urban development and governance, the role of new communications technologies in global economic expansion, the high security State, and the growing global influence of international non-governmental organizations. This book offers a rich collection of original theoretical contributions and global case studies from leading international scholars from the social sciences and humanities. It offers a fresh and unique interdisciplinary perspective that synthesizes cutting edge research on mega-events and urban spectacles while simultaneously contributing to a broader understanding of the dynamics of global capitalism and international political power in the early twenty first century.

Author: Enrico Tommarchi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000623882
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Culture- and event-led regeneration have been catalysts for the transformation of redundant urban port areas and for the reframing of the image of many port cities, which notably feature among mega-event bidding and host cities. However, there is little understanding of the impacts of these processes on port-city relationships, as well as of how port city cultures shape mega events and the related regeneration strategies. The book examines the underexplored mutual links between, on the one hand, urban and socio-economic regeneration driven by cultural and sporting mega events and, on the other hand, the spatial, political and symbolic ties between cities and their ports. By adopting a cross-national, comparative perspective, with in-depth case studies (Hull, Rotterdam, Genoa and Valencia) and examples from other port cities across the world where mega events were held, the book engages with issues such as the tension between port and cultural uses, reactions and opposition to mega events in port cities, clashing urban imaginaries drawing on port activity and culture, the role of port authorities and companies in the city’s cultural life, the spectacularisation and commodification of local maritime culture and heritage, processes of cultural demaritimisation and remaritimisation of port cities. The book is therefore a contribution towards the bridging of port city and mega-event studies, and it provides insights for port city policy makers and mega-event promoters, drawing from a range of international experiences. The book also shows how societal and political change in the current ‘ontologically-insecure’ times may undermine the very paradigm of culture- and event-led regeneration in the years to come.

Author: Hattie Hartman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118972481
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Brazil is a country of city dwellers undergoing radical transformation: over 85 per cent of the country’s citizens live in cities and over 40 per cent of the population live in metropolises of more than a million people. Whereas previously urban growth had been ad hoc, preparation for the FIFA World Cup in 12 cities across the country in 2014, and for the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio, changed all that. Several Brazilian cities have proactively invested in infrastructure and the public realm. And a number of projects by international ‘starchitects’ have heightened interest in Brazil from architects and urban practitioners abroad. The failure of public authorities to meet their ambitious aspirations for the sporting mega-events sparked a series of street protests across the country under the banner of ‘the right to the city’, beginning in 2013. For Brazil, this was an entirely new phenomenon, one which has unveiled the potential for bottom-up influences to effect urban change. The focus of this issue, though, is on design projects that contribute a strong sense of place to their respective cities, highlighting also the integration of landscape design in urban planning and community interventions that seek to address the enormous disparity between the lives of the country’s rich and poor. Contributors: Ricky Burdett, Thomas Deckker, Gabriel Duarte, Sergio Ekerman, Nanda Eskes and André Vieira, Alexandre Hepner and Silvio Soares Macedo, Circe Monteiro and Luiz Carvalho, Joana Carla Soares Gonçalves, Jaime Lerner, Ana Luiza Nobre, Justin McGuirk, Francesco Perrotta-Bosch, Maria do Rocio Rosário, Fernando Serapião, Guilherme Wisnik Featured architects: AECOM, Biselli Katchborian, Brasil Arquitetura, Santiago Calatrava, Studio Arthur Casas, Diller Scofdio + Renfro, Herzog & de Meuron, Vigliecca & Associados

Author: Fabian Frenzel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136487956
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Slum tourism is a globalizing trend and a controversial form of tourism. Impoverished urban areas have always enticed the popular imagination, considered to be places of ‘otherness’, ‘moral decay’, ‘deviant liberty’ or ‘authenticity’. ‘Slumming’ has a long tradition in the Global North, for example in Victorian London when the upper classes toured the East End. What is new, however, is its development dynamics and its rapidly spreading popularity across the globe. Township tourism and favela tourism have currently reached mass tourism characteristics in South Africa and in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In other countries of the Global South, slum tourism now also occurs and providers see huge growth potential. While the morally controversial practice of slum tourism has raised much attention and opinionated debates in the media for several years, academic research has only recently started addressing it as a global phenomenon. This edition provides the first systematic overview of the field and the diverse issues connected to slum tourism. This multidisciplinary collection is unique both in its conceptual and empirical breadth. Its chapters indicate that ‘global slumming’ is not merely a controversial and challenging topic in itself, but also offers an apt lens through which to discuss core concepts in critical tourism studies in a global perspective, in particular: ‘poverty’, ‘power’ and ‘ethics’. Building on research by prolific researchers from ten different countries, the book provides a comprehensive and unique insight in the current empirical, practical and theoretical knowledge on the subject. It takes a thorough and critical review of issues associated with slum tourism, asking why slums are visited, whether they should be visited, how they are represented, who is benefiting from it and in what way. It offers new insights to tourism's role in poverty alleviation and urban regeneration, power relations in contact zones and tourism's cultural and political implications. Drawing on research from four continents and seven different countries, and from multidisciplinary perspectives, this ground-breaking volume will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in this contemporary form of tourism.

Author: Licia do Prado Valladares
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469649993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
For the first time available in English, Licia do Prado Valladares's classic anthropological study of Brazil's vast, densely populated urban living environments reveals how the idea of the favela became an internationally established—and even attractive and exotic—representation of poverty. The study traces how the term "favela" emerged as an analytic category beginning in the mid-1960s, showing how it became the object of immense popular debate and sustained social science research. But the concept of the favela so favored by social scientists is not, Valladares argues, a straightforward reflection of its social reality, and it often obscures more than it reveals. The established representation of favelas undercuts more complex, accurate, and historicized explanations of Brazilian development. It marks and perpetuates favelas as zones of exception rather than as integral to Brazil's modernization over the past century. And it has had important repercussions for the direction of research and policy affecting the lives of millions of Brazilians. Valladares's foundational book will be welcomed by all who seek to understand Brazil's evolution into the twenty-first century.