Spectacular Modernity


Book Description

In cultural history, the 1950s in Venezuela are commonly celebrated as a golden age of modernity, realized by a booming oil economy, dazzling modernist architecture, and nationwide modernization projects. But this is only half the story. In this path-breaking study, Lisa Blackmore reframes the concept of modernity as a complex cultural formation in which modern aesthetics became deeply entangled with authoritarian politics. Drawing on extensive archival research and presenting a wealth of previously unpublished visual materials, Blackmore revisits the decade-long dictatorship to unearth the spectacles of progress that offset repression and censorship. Analyses of a wide range of case studies—from housing projects to agricultural colonies, urban monuments to official exhibitions, and carnival processions to consumerculture—reveal the manifold apparatuses that mythologized visionary leadership, advocated technocratic development, and presented military rule as the only route to progress. Offering a sharp corrective to depoliticized accounts of the period, Spectacular Modernity instead exposes how Venezuelans were promised a radically transformed landscape in exchange for their democratic freedoms.




Pure Space (Spanish Edition)


Book Description

This book may seem a simple accumulation of twenty-one public space projects in eight Latin American cities. On closer inspection, the presentation of project descriptions, photographs, and annotated drawings reflects a concern to analytically explain the operative aspects at work. The publication is not intended to serve only as a catalogue, guide, or manual on how to produce public space in spontaneous settlements. Rather, it goes beyond the aims of an index of best practices. It is intended, instead, as an empirical base for a critical and theoretical engagement with the problematic of development, social inclusion, public investment, (in)formal settlement, civil society and the public sphere. The publication achieves its final function at this third level, by providing a compelling argument to expand the agency of architects and urban designers and creatively find ways of justifying, financing, and building public spaces in communities —spaces that have a catalytic effectiveness in achieving significant urban and social transformation. This book was awarded by a Graham Foundation Grant and CAF Development Bank of Latin America. FEATURED CASE STUDIES: CONSERVATION 72 Linear parks along the Estero Salado | Guayaquil, Ecuador 80 National Park Babil.nia and Chap.u Mangueira | R.o de Janeiro, Brasil 88 Urban agriculture along the Rimac River | Lima, Peru WASTE MANAGEMENT 96 Moravia Ecological Park | Medellin, Colombia 104 Plaza La Cruz, La Palomera | Caracas, Venezuela RISKMANAGEMENT 112 El Guasmo Beach, floodable park | Guayaquil, Ecuador 120 Safety plazas in Santa Mar.a El Triunfo | Lima, Peru 128 Recovery of the Juan Bobo Creek | Medellin, Colombia INFRASTRUCTURE 136 Northeast metrocable parks Comuna 1, La Popular | Medell.n, Colombia 144 Barrio Las Independencias escalators and walkways | Medellin, Colombia 152 Funicular in Dona Marta | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 160 Complexo do Alem.o | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 168 Ecotecnia Urbana Miravalle | Mexico City, Mexico PAVEMENT, PATHS AND THE SPACE SURROUNDING BUILDINGS 176 Pavement, paths and stairs Cerro Santo Doming and Cerro Toro | Valpara.so, Chile 184 Cerro Santa Ana urban rehabilitation | Guayaquil, Ecuador 192 Fernando Botero Library | Medellin, Colombia 200 Moravia Cultural Center | Medellin, Colombia 208 Espa.o Crian.a and community programs | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 216 Plaza in Villa Tranquila | Buenos Aires, Argentina ACTIVITY 224 Casa Kolacho Comuna 13 | Medellin, Colombia 232 AfroReggae Cultural Center | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 240 Alto Per. | Lima, Peru 248 El Calvario Puertas Abiertas | Caracas, Venezuela




City/Art


Book Description

In City/Art, anthropologists, literary and cultural critics, a philosopher, and an architect explore how creative practices continually reconstruct the urban scene in Latin America. The contributors, all Latin Americanists, describe how creativity—broadly conceived to encompass urban design, museums, graffiti, film, music, literature, architecture, performance art, and more—combines with nationalist rhetoric and historical discourse to define Latin American cities. Taken together, the essays model different ways of approaching Latin America’s urban centers not only as places that inspire and house creative practices but also as ongoing collective creative endeavors themselves. The essays range from an examination of how differences of scale and point of view affect people’s experience of everyday life in Mexico City to a reflection on the transformation of a prison into a shopping mall in Uruguay, and from an analysis of Buenos Aires’s preoccupation with its own status and cultural identity to a consideration of what Miami means to Cubans in the United States. Contributors delve into the aspirations embodied in the modernist urbanism of Brasília and the work of Lotty Rosenfeld, a Santiago performance artist who addresses the intersections of art, urban landscapes, and daily life. One author assesses the political possibilities of public art through an analysis of subway-station mosaics and Julio Cortázar’s short story “Graffiti,” while others look at the representation of Buenos Aires as a “Jewish elsewhere” in twentieth-century fiction and at two different responses to urban crisis in Rio de Janeiro. The collection closes with an essay by a member of the São Paulo urban intervention group Arte/Cidade, which invades office buildings, de-industrialized sites, and other vacant areas to install collectively produced works of art. Like that group, City/Art provides original, alternative perspectives on specific urban sites so that they can be seen anew. Contributors. Hugo Achugar, Rebecca E. Biron, Nelson Brissac Peixoto, Néstor García Canclini, Adrián Gorelik, James Holston, Amy Kaminsky, Samuel Neal Lockhart, José Quiroga, Nelly Richard, Marcy Schwartz, George Yúdice




Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s - 2000s


Book Description

In this book Arturo Almandoz places the major episodes of Latin America’s twentieth and early twenty-first century urban history within the changing relationship between industrialization and urbanization, modernization and development. This relationship began in the early twentieth century, when industrialization and urbanization became significant in the region, and ends at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when new tensions between liberal globalization and populist nationalism challenge development in the subcontinent, much of which is still poverty stricken. Latin America’s twentieth-century modernization and development are closely related to nineteenth-century ideals of progress and civilization, and for this reason Almandoz opens with a brief review of that legacy for the different countries that are the focus of his book – Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela – but with references to others. He then explores the regional distortions, which resulted from the interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and how the imbalance between urbanization and the productive system helps to explain why ‘take-off’ was not followed by the ‘drive to maturity’ in Latin American countries. He suggests that the close yet troublesome relationship with the United States, the recurrence of dictatorships and autocratic regimes, and Marxist influences in many domains, are all factors that explain Latin America’s stagnation and underdevelopment up to the so-called ‘lost decade’ of 1980s. He shows how Latin America’s fate changed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, when neoliberal programmes, political compromise and constitutional reform dismantled the traditional model of the corporate state and centralized planning. He reveals how economic growth and social improvements have been attained by politically left-wing yet economically open-market countries while others have resumed populism and state intervention. All these trends make up the complex scenario for the new century – especially when considered against the background of vibrant metropolises that are the main actors in the book.




Negotiating Space in Latin America


Book Description

Winner of the 2020 “Outstanding Academic Title” Award, created by Choice Magazine. In Negotiating Space in Latin America, edited by Patricia Vilches, contributors approach spatial practices from multidisciplinary angles. Drawing on cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, geography, history, literary studies, sociology, tourism, and current events, the volume advances innovative conceptualizations on spatiality and treats subjects that range from nineteenth century-nation formation to twenty-first century social movements. Latin America has endured multiple spatial transformations, which contributors analyze from the perspective of the urban, the rural, the market, and the political body. The essays collected here signal how spatial processes constantly shape societal interactions and illuminate the complex relationships between humans and space, emphasizing the role of spatiality in our actions and perceptions. Contributors: Gail A. Bulman, Ana María Burdach Rudloff, James Craine, Angela N. DeLutis-Eichenberger, Carolina Di Próspero, Gustavo Fares, Jennifer Hayward, Silvia Hirsch, Edward Jackiewicz, Magdalena Maiz-Peña, Lucía Melgar, Silvia Nagy-Zekmi, Luis H. Peña, Jorge Saavedra Utman, Rosa Tapia, Juan de Dios Torralbo Caballero, Tera Trujillo, Patricia Vilches, and Gareth Wood.




Public Catalyst


Book Description

Demonstrates the existence of public space catalysts, as well as the need for their presence for an expectant or indifferent place to be activated. This work -- which understands that the city, now and always, has had and must have public spaces of intensity -- proposes urban catalysts as agents that are capable of activating a place that was previously indifferent. The comparative work of historical and recent cases, developed by research and drawings, has allowed us to discover that the vivid public spaces of identity and reference have been formed due to the urban effect caused by these agents that we call "catalysts." Manuel Bailo's work includes a wide range of projects, ranging from urban scale to interiorism. It has been widely published and presented with awards. Co-published with University of Virginia: School of Architecture.




The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies


Book Description

Provides comprehensive coverage of major topics in urban and regional studies Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Anthony Orum, this definitive reference work covers central and emergent topics in the field, through an examination of urban and regional conditions and variation across the world. It also provides authoritative entries on the main conceptual tools used by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political scientists in the study of cities and regions. Among such concepts are those of place and space; geographical regions; the nature of power and politics in cities; urban culture; and many others. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies captures the character of complex urban and regional dynamics across the globe, including timely entries on Latin America, Africa, India and China. At the same time, it contains illuminating entries on some of the current concepts that seek to grasp the essence of the global world today, such as those of Friedmann and Sassen on ‘global cities’. It also includes discussions of recent economic writings on cities and regions such as those of Richard Florida. Comprised of over 450 entries on the most important topics and from a range of theoretical perspectives Features authoritative entries on topics ranging from gender and the city to biographical profiles of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright Takes a global perspective with entries providing coverage of Latin America and Africa, India and China, and, the US and Europe Includes biographies of central figures in urban and regional studies, such as Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Neil Smith, and Henri Lefebvre The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies is an indispensable reference for students and researchers in urban and regional studies, urban sociology, urban geography, and urban anthropology.







Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning


Book Description

Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning offers a new selection of the best urban planning scholarship from each of the world's planning school associations. The award winning papers presented illustrate the concerns and the discourse of planning scholarship communities and provide a glimpse into planning theory and practice by planning academics around the world. All those with an interest in urban and regional planning will find this collection valuable in opening new avenues for research and debate. This book is published in association with the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN), and the nine planning school associations it represents, who have selected these papers based on regional competitions.




The Savage Detectives Reread


Book Description

The Savage Detectives elicits mixed feelings. An instant classic in the Spanish-speaking world upon its 1998 publication, a critical and commercial smash on its 2007 translation into English, Roberto Bolaño’s novel has also been called an exercise in 1970s nostalgia, an escapist fantasy of a romanticized Latin America, and a publicity event propped up by the myth of the bad-boy artist. David Kurnick argues that the controversies surrounding Bolaño’s life and work have obscured his achievements—and that The Savage Detectives is still underappreciated for the subtlety and vitality of its portrait of collective life. Kurnick explores The Savage Detectives as an epic of social structure and its decomposition, a novel that restlessly moves between the big configurations—of states, continents, and generations—and the everyday stuff—parties, jobs, moods, sex, conversation—of which they’re made. For Kurnick, Bolaño’s book is a necromantic invocation of life in history, one that demands surrender as much as analysis. Kurnick alternates literary-critical arguments with explorations of the novel’s microclimates and neighborhoods—the little atmospheric zones where some of Bolaño’s most interesting rethinking of sexuality, politics, and literature takes place. He also claims that The Savage Detectives holds particular interest for U.S. readers: not because it panders to them but because it heralds the exhilarating prospect of a world in which American culture has lost its presumptive centrality.