Kitabı oku: «Congreso Internacional Comunicación, ciudad y espacio público»

ABSTRACT

This article examines the design decisionmaking process for the urban renewal of The Hague (The Netherlands), developed in the 1980s. The article investigates in particular the process related with the development of a plan (deelgebied 5) and a project (Punt en Komma), designed by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza. Using this case study, the article discusses the role of the architect as a social mediator, and its particular relevance in housing processes developed with citizens’ participation. Drawing on an intellectual framework defined by the concept of “open work” (Umberto Eco) and the dialectical relation between modernity and ambivalence (Zigmunt Bauman), this article suggests that meaningful communication between authors and addressees does not entail a complete elimination of the power of expertise. Instead, this article contends that stimulating the users’ confrontation with the ambiguities and contradictions of the design process is an import feature to enhance the quality of citizens’ participatory in design decision-making processes.

KEYWORDS

Housing, Urban Renewal, Citizens’

Participation, Architecture, The Netherlands,

Álvaro Siza

RESUMEN

En este artículo analizaremos el proceso de toma de decisiones sobre diseño, desarrollado en los ochenta, para renovar la ciudad de La Haya. Investigaremos en especial el proceso relacionado con el desarrollo de un plan (deelgebied 5) y de un proyecto (Punt en Komma), diseñados por el arquitecto portugués Álvaro Siza. Basándonos en este caso de estudio, examinaremos el papel del arquitecto como mediador social y su especial pertinencia en procesos de viviendas desarrollados con la participación de los ciudadanos. Inspirados en un marco intelectual definido por el concepto “obra abierta” (Umberto Eco) y la relación dialéctica entre modernidad y ambivalencia (Zigmunt Bauman), sugerimos en este trabajo que la comunicación significativa entre autores y destinatarios no implica la erradicación del poder de los conocimientos. Por el contrario, sostenemos que estimular la confrontación de los usuarios con las ambigüedades y las contradicciones del proceso de diseño es un factor importante que sirve para mejorar la calidad de participación ciudadana en los procesos de toma de decisiones sobre diseño.

PALABRAS CLAVE

vivienda, renovación urbana, participación

de los ciudadanos, arquitectura, Países Bajos,

Álvaro Siza

One of the targets in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals highlights the importance of citizen’s participation to develop inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. By 2030, target 11.3 aims at, “enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries” (UN, 2015). This target explicitly relates the development of inclusive cities with processes of co-creation and meaningful communication. Indeed, to build the millions of new housing complexes needed to accommodate the rapid urbanisation of the global South we need to critically rethink the system of interrelations woven in design decisionmaking. In this context, to cope with this major societal challenge, there are lessons from the past that can be useful to accomplish a more sustainable urban development. In particular, the urban renewal movement developed in Europe from the 1960s until the 1980s can contribute important guidelines to tackle the urbanization challenges of the coming decades.

In the late 1960s, there was a widespread drive to create meaningful communication between social groups that lived in opposite sides of the political and economic spectrum. Grassroots movements for the empowerment of ordinary citizens gained momentum and would underpin the growing acceptance of citizens’ participation in design decision-making processes. In the 1970s, the visibility of this phenomenon increased in Western Europe with the emergence of urban renewal as an alternative to the welfare state mass housing policies employed hitherto. A common token of the new urban renewal policies was challenging the post-war emphasis on central planning, standardization, and serial mass housing production. Instead, these new policies championed a more situated approach, attempting to re-connect housing policies with its social significance, going beyond a mere productive and regulatory approach. This political agenda was designed to overcome the conflicting relations between the collective and the singular, and thus it has influenced the relation between the planner/designer and the citizen/user. This relation became more interweaved, and triggered a reconceptualization of the role of the architect in design decision-making processes.

In this context, thus, what was the contribution of aesthetic communication in the reassessment of the nexus between author and addressee in the design disciplines? What was the extent to which architectural expertise contributed to bridge the gap between the universal visual order of the architecture sponsored by the welfare state and the subjectivity of emancipated citizens?

To contribute possible answers for these questions, this paper will discuss the importance of communication in Álvaro Siza’s approach to design decision-making with citizens’ participation. I will focus in particular in the design process of the Punt en Komma housing complex, a project developed from 1984 until 1988 as part of the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district, a multicultural neighbourhood in the Dutch city of The Hague. The paper will be divided in two parts. In the first part I will discuss the intellectual background against which citizens’ participation in design decision-making emerged as a counter proposal to the power relations consolidated during the 1950s and 1960s. The idea of open work, as defined by Umberto Eco (Eco, Opera Aperta, 1962), will be examined in detail. It will be discussed as a strategy of aesthetic communication that attempts to reconcile the author with the addressee, a key aspect to mediate the relations between the expert (the designer) and the user (the dweller).

In the second part of the paper, I will examine in detail Álvaro Siza’s project for the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district, with an emphasis on the design decision-making processes of deelgebied 5’s plan and the dwelling layout of the Punt en Komma housing blocks. To illustrate the background against which these processes ensued, I will discuss the most relevant urban and demographic challenges of the district, in particular the tense social relations between the different ethnic groups living in the area. The fundamental aspects of Siza’s plan for the neighbourhood will then be presented and the contribution of citizens’ participation in the process will be discussed. The relevance of the Spatial Development Laboratory (Ruimtelijk Ontwikkelings Laboratorium, ROL, a system to develop full scale models of the typical dwelling units), will be further accounted as a novel method to involve residents in housing design decision-making processes.

Finally, the conclusion will highlight the importance of citizens’ participation in accommodating the social and cultural differences of the future residents and create conditions for multiculturalism and interculturalism in the city. Citizens’ participation will be conceptually framed as a medium for a process of communication between the architect as encoder-producer and the user as decoder-receiver.

PART I ARCHITECTURE, COMMUNICATION, AND THE POETICS OF THE OPEN WORK
The Poetics of the Open Work

In the 1970s, the capacity of the design expert to perform as a social mediator was contested. Fighting the figure of the design expert became a common trend in the 1970s, especially for a group of architects that Tzonis and Lefaivre called the populist movement. Although very diverse and unstructured in its ideological framework, this movement actively pursued a paradigm shift where the focus shifted from an ideal of ‘order’ and ‘expertise’ to one of ‘freedom’ and ‘pluralism’ (Tzonis & Lefaivre, 1976, p. 28). “While [Welfare State] architects saw the designed environment as a well-ordered regiment”, Tzonis and Lefaivre argued, “populists envisaged it as a well serviced supermarket” (Tzonis, Lefaivre, 1976, p. 29). In this context, the expert’s ability to engage in meaningful communication with the ordinary man on the street became a flagship for a new disciplinary approach in the design disciplines. The envisioned position of the designer-expert brought about a flagrant contradiction, though. While driven by an approach of liberation for the user, the populist movement fell prey to what Barry Schwartz called “the paradox of choice” (Schwartz, 2016). As Schwartz aptly demonstrated, too much choice does not always resonate with an increased autonomy, freedom or self-determination. It often means exactly the opposite. In this context, it is worthwhile to review briefly the relation between standards, norms, and openness in design decision-making.

While the critique to the Welfare State architecture gained momentum in the 1970s, there were earlier attempts to reconfigure the role of the architect in design decision-making. One of the earlier critiques to the standards and norms of Welfare State architecture emerged in the late 1950s and it was supported by the notion of open form and open work¹. In the 1960s, open form and open architecture became notable examples of a critique to the mass housing architecture championed by the welfare state². Throughout the 1960s, open form gained momentum as a strategy to promote meaningful aesthetic communication between the designer and the user, where the earlier neither dictates the needs of the later, nor is subjugated by them.

This attempt to reconceptualise the design agency of architects would gain a strong intellectual support with the publication, in 1962 of Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (Open Work)³. Among the essays collected in Open Work, “The poetics of the Open Work” could be singled out as a major contribution to discuss the role of the individual addressee in the reception of the work of art (Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, 1984)⁴. In this essay, Eco highlights the notion of open work as a rejection of definite messages. He emphasizes the initiative of the individual addressee in giving aesthetic validity to a work of art introducing his particular perspective (Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work, 1989, p. 4). However, Eco brings about a subtle yet meaningful variation to the concept of openness, defining a work of art as a closed form and open product. Closed in its uniqueness and wholeness and open in its predisposition to be interpreted in infinite forms while preserving its specificity. He concludes, then, “every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and a performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective for itself”. For Eco, the reception of the work of art is an act of freedom and, as such, an imposition of a single sense at the very outset of the receptive process should be prevented. To open up the possibilities for interpretation and performance, Eco champions the ideas of suggestiveness. He goes on contending “an artistic work that suggests is also one that can be performed with the full emotional and imaginative resources of the interpreter” (Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work, 1989, p. 9).

Suggestiveness thus embodies a certain amount of ambiguity and ambivalence, which become important qualities to challenge dogmatic directional centres (Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work, 1989, p.11)⁵. Ambiguity and ambivalence would become the key characteristics of “works in movement”, a sub-group of open works where the collaboration of the addressee in making the work of art is vital, because they are structurally unplanned or physically incomplete, such as Calder’s mobiles or Mallarme’s Livre. Eco suggests incorporating indeterminacy as part of the poetics of the open work. “As in the Einsteinian universe”, Eco argues, “in the ‘work in movement’ we may well deny that there is a single prescribed point of view” (Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work, 1989, p. 19). Eco’s poetics of the open work is based on an organizing rule that allows numerous different personal interventions, resisting, however, indiscriminate participation (Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work, 1989, p. 19). In this article, I will explore the ambivalent character of Eco’s notion of open work to define the intellectual background for a discussion on the interplay between architectural expertise and citizens’ participation in design decision-making processes. The potential and the shortcomings of the idea of open work will be used to examine the extent to which the designer qua author and the user qua addressee can negotiate sovereignty in the design process, without falling prey to the perils of authoritarianism or populism.

The Power of Expertise

The ambivalence in Eco’s poetics of the open work offers a possibility to reconcile the conflicting relation between order and chaos, authority and individual expression, design and contingency. These relations are particularly relevant in the context of design processes with citizens’ participation, where the power relations between author and addressee acquire a prominent status. In this context, design experts can play a key role in supporting social inclusion and mediation, circumventing the anxiety, discomfort and tension, that threaten the everydayness of ordinary people in the face of ambivalence and contingency.

The entwined relation between ambivalence, contingency and the role of the expert was insightfully explored by Zigmunt Bauman, in his Modernity and Ambivalence, published in 1993. In this book, Bauman argues that in modernity’s battle of order against chaos in worldly affairs, its project of a rational-universal world would know of no contingency and no ambivalence (Til, 2009)⁶. In fact, he goes on stating, “the residents of the house of modernity had been continuously trained to feel at home under conditions of necessity and to feel unhappy at the face of contingency”. Bauman further stresses that contingency “was that state of discomfort and anxiety from which one needed to escape by making oneself into a binding norm and thus doing away with difference” (Bauman, 1993, p. 233).

Despite the strong ideological apparatus that supported the project of modernity, it failed to eradicate ambivalence and contingency. It promoted, however, a noticeable displacement of ambivalence from the public realm to the private sphere. In fact, as Bauman puts it, with modernity’s drive to transfer ambivalence from the public to the private realm, experts became key figures in the mediation between the social and the personal. To overcome the anxiety caused on the individual by ambivalence, the expert becomes someone on whom we could truly trust, “one that combined the person’s capacity to understand with the power of science to make the right decisions” (Bauman, 1993, p. 199). The importance of the expert, as Bauman claims, is not so much related with his or her actual qualities or skills but how they are perceived by the recipients of the services. “The expert is, so to speak, a condensation of the diffuse need of trustworthy — because supra-individual — sanction of individuality”. And he goes on pointing out that

“As an interpreter and mediator, the expert spans the otherwise distant worlds of the objective and the subjective. He bridges the gap between guarantees of being in the right (which can only be social) and making the choices that one wants (which can only be personal). In the ambivalence of his skills he is, so to speak, resonant with the ambivalent condition of his client”. (Bauman, 1993, p. 199)

Writing in the early 1990s, Bauman brings about a fundamental reconceptualization of the expert as someone that performs a liberating role. Bauman’s work is, I would contend, essential to create a new intellectual framework for a reassessment of the experiences with citizens’ participation in design processes developed in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the next section of this article, I will discuss further the role of the architect in the design decision-making process. I will examine the plan for the deelgebied 5 and the project of the Punt en Komma housing complex, both part of the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district in the Dutch city of The Hague, as a case study to explore the extent to which meaningful communication can help the architect to perform as a social mediator.

PART 2 THE URBAN RENEWAL OF THE HAGUE IN THE 1980’s
Housing Beyond Standards

The Schilderwijk district was created in the second half of the nineteenth century as a result of a speculative development to accommodate the flux of rural migration to The Hague, the political capital of The Netherlands. Since then, the area evolved to become a densely populated melting pot of people arriving from different parts of the country, where the street was the only space for social interaction. All these factors, however, fostered a strong social cohesion and an inescapable social control. In the mid-1960s, urban design strategies inspired by the principles of the functional city and by welfare state policies, both by then pervasive in the Western world, were used in the urban renewal plan for the Schilderswijk district. The plan Van Gris naar Groen (From Grey to Green), an epitome of what Tzonis and Lefaivre considered the architecture of the welfare state, was designed to rebuild the area with high-rise slabs and an urban layout inspired in the principles of the Athens Charter. The population, however, opposed the modernist plan, and a period of uncertainty unfolded, with the policy makers avoiding negotiations for an alternative urban renewal strategy. The latent conflict between the dwellers and the politicians triggered a process of dilapidation of the neighbourhood. Consequently, a great deal of the residents ran away, moving to other areas. They were replaced by different streams of foreign migrant influx. In the 1970s, the houses left vacant by the older residents were mainly occupied by migrant workers from southern Europe, Turkey and Morocco, and by Surinamese who fled the former Dutch colony after its independence in 1975. This sudden change in the demographics of the neighbourhood contributed to a noticeable transformation in its social relations, creating a progressive loss of mutual contact and social control. As a social worker engaged with the Schilderswijk’s community put it, “because of the different languages and cultures mutual contacts were limited. Because there was no understanding of each way of life, there was less social control” (Boasson, 1988, p. 19)⁷.

While the district kept its pre-World War II character as a melting pot of newly arrived working class residents, a fundamental change happened. Now, emerged a cultural mix, which hindered the blossoming of spontaneous social interaction. From the mid-1970s until the early 1980s, this conjuncture created a process of fragmentation of the district’s social cohesion, and fostered social unrest.

The urban renewal of the district became thus a political priority for the municipality of The Hague. To cope with the growing social unrest created by the urban renewal policies, the Municipality appointed in 1980 Adri Duivesteijn, a young social activist against the urban renewal policies of the 1960s and 1970s, as alderman for spatial planning and urban renewal. After four years of many political successes and some drawbacks in his new capacity, Duivesteijn keenly promoted citizens’ participation in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk, the most problematic district of The Hague. He invested a great deal of the material and human resources of his department in preparing the bureaucratic apparatus to support the participatory process. He realised, however, that he was still missing an important element in the process: the designer. It was then, when in April 1984 he visited the Portuguese city of Porto, that he met the architect Álvaro Siza. In Porto, Duivesteijn visited Siza’s social housing projects developed in the mid-1970s, which had been developed with citizens’ participation in the design process. His appraisal of Siza’s work, personal and disciplinary approach triggered him to invite the Portuguese architect to develop a plan for the deelgebied 5, an area included in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district. Siza eventually accepted Duivesteijn’s invitation.

When Siza arrived at the Schilderswijk district, in July 1984, the urban renewal of the district was already in motion, with some new housing ensembles already under development. He could still see and experience, however, the district’s distinct nineteenth century urban fabric and how it generated a particular spatial system and atmosphere. When Siza first visited the Schilderswijk, in 1984, the urban morphology of the district was still characterized by a very dense fabric of long streets delimited by continuous façades, chiefly made of the speculative housing type developed in the late nineteenth century. This experience would eventually be influential for the further development of his plan and projects for the area.

Over the next months, Siza revised an existing plan for the area designed by city’s urban design department. His revision of the plan was fundamentally nurtured by his sensibility to the urban morphology of the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, first and foremost in the role played by the street profile to define the area’s character and atmosphere. Siza was critical about some options of the preliminary plan for the deelgebied 5 designed by the municipality’s technicians, especially the widespread demolitions planned and the disregard for the morphological characteristics of the existing urban fabric. In effect, Siza had already criticized this typical token of the architecture of the welfare state in previous urban renewal projects, where he showed his opposition to the tabula rasa approach (Mota, 2014, pp. 779–808)⁸. In The Hague, he confirmed this, arguing “I do not believe one should break down everything just because you think that you can create something better”. And he went on arguing that “it is important to have references, the old is also the support for what you create anew. If we want to deliver something with high quality, we cannot start from the zero”. Moreover, he went further contending, “if we tear down everything, we throw away the physical identification of the district’s soul” (Boasson, 1988, p. 25). Following these lines, Siza revised the municipality plan to maintain as many buildings as possible. Siza showed also a keen interest in preserving some of the districts vernacular social and spatial practices, as well as building techniques and materialization⁹. Curiously enough, the residents, the developer, and even some technicians involved in the process, disregarded widely the preservation of existing buildings and vernacular references. This was seen as a reactionary attitude, an old-fashioned approach, and a conservative outlook¹⁰.

Siza’s initial exchanges with the stakeholders involved in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk were contentious. He visited the houses of local residents, and met with several technicians, social workers, and representatives of the local housing corporation. Despite some initial resistance to his ideas and an intense negotiation, Siza managed to show to all the stakeholders his genuine interest in the upgrading of the district’s living conditions. Eventually the plan for the deelgebied 5 was approved. However, the participatory process during the development of the plan did not engage most of the residents. This would change radically when the discussions moved to the scale of the building, and especially to the discussions on the dwellings’ floor plan layout. Duivesteijn and the municipality of The Hague were aware of the importance of the spatial organisation of the dwelling unit for a successful urban renewal operation. Considering the difficulties experienced by laymen in understanding technical drawings, many urban renewal operations in the Netherlands during the 1980s adopted an efficient instrument to promote meaningful communication between technicians and the dwellers in housing design: The Spatial Development Laboratory (Ruimtelijk Ontwikkelings Laboratorium, ROL).

A Laboratory for Meaningful Communication in Design Decision-Making

The history of the use of the ROL in design decision-making processes is inextricably linked with the paradigm shift in urban renewal programmes in the Netherlands. Following the shortcomings of the welfare state architecture in the late 1960s, the Dutch governmental and municipal authorities decided to involve the population in the debate on housing. Inspired by this new approach to housing policies, in the early 1970s a group of architects decided to plan an exhibition of the new housing estates to be built in Amsterdam, showing 1:1 models of the “houses of the future”¹¹. This exhibition was meant to become the background against which a permanent debate on housing would ensue. Though the exhibition was never implemented, Amsterdam’s municipal office for housing took advantage of the idea of creating a system to build quickly and inexpensively full-scale models of the apartments designed for their new social housing estates.

The system was based on plywood modular components with chipboard frame. The modular system used components varying in series of 10 cm from the 10 x 10x 10 cm basic unit to the 60 x 40 x 20 cm main unit. The system was assembled with plastic pipes inserted in the holes opened on the top and bottom of the wooden modules. The models built with this system could integrate window frames and doors, as well as furniture and household appliances to create a more realistic experience of the tested dwelling unit, and an objective feedback from the future dwellers on its characteristics. The ROL became a success among the institutional stakeholders interested in social housing.

Soon most of the major cities in The Netherlands would have their own ROL and use it to involve the residents in the design decision-making process (Dinesen, 1982, p. 306). As the Danish scholar Cort Ross Dinesen put it, the models built in the ROLs served two purposes: as a simulation of the dwelling and as a method of communication with users” (Dinesen, 1982, p. 307). Using this system, the architect’s design becomes more tangible and thus enhances residents’ feedback grounded on a concrete spatial experience, with an open attitude where everybody can express their outlook and opinion on the layout of the dwellings, and contribute to fine-tune the project.

Following the lead of Amsterdam, the department of urban renewal at The Hague’s municipality also created a ROL which eventually was used to discuss and develop the layout of the dwellings for the two housing blocks that Siza was commissioned to design in the deelgebied 5, which eventually became known as Punt en Komma.

Accommodating Differences

On 24 January 1985, Álvaro Siza and several technicians involved in the Punt en Komma project travelled to the ROL to meet with the group Bouwen in 5, an association of residents in Schilderwijk’s deelgebied 5. The goal of the working day at the ROL was to assess the qualities and problems of a floor plan for a housing complex located in the Rembrandtstraat, elsewhere in the Schilderswijk district, developed earlier by the housing corporation’s-Gravenhage, the client of Punt en Komma.

In the introduction to the meeting, Siza highlighted the need to understand the way people live as the basis for a research aimed at improving it. Considering the demographics of the neighbourhood, Siza duly noted the absence of foreign residents in the meeting, and stressed the importance of receiving contributions from all the different groups of residents in the deelgebied 5. “The aim is to develop a plan that can be suitable for both Dutch and foreign residents,” Siza claimed¹². Many critiques and suggestions were made after experiencing the full-scale mock-up of the dwelling unit. The accessibility to the kitchen, the rigidity of the partitions, the mix of sleeping and living areas, and the area and structure of the distribution areas were the most noticed remarks.

After this working session at the ROL, the participants made a summary of requirements, to be taken into account by Siza in the development of the project. Then, using his own critical assessment of the residents’ review on the unit tested at the ROL workshop, Siza developed a layout proposal for the Punt en Komma dwellings. There were conspicuous changes to the initial layout tested at the ROL, first and foremost the introduction of a clear distribution area and a better differentiation between the public areas (kitchen and living room) and the private areas (bedrooms and toilet). The layout developed by Siza placed on the street side a larger living room with a semi-open kitchen next to it, while the bedrooms were placed facing the courtyard of the building. These two main areas were articulated by a system of double distribution in U shape, divided by a closet, and connecting all partitions.

Following up on these initial contacts, in March 1985, the group Bouwen in 5 issued a list of principles they believed essential for a smooth relation between the different stakeholders¹³. Among these principles, the issue of the communication between the architect and the residents was also addressed. They suggested “the architects should, as far as possible, use spatial methods of representation: isometrics, perspective drawings, models, photomontages and so on”¹⁴. In effect, on 22 April 1985, the same group, together with other associations of deelgebied 5 residents, distributed a document with the title Bewonersparticipatie: Nu en in de toekomst (Residents’ participation: Now and in the future), where they presented several requirements for an effective and fruitful participation of the residents in the design decision-making process. Among these requirements, the ROL workshops were considered an important component of a design process aimed at “building a home and not just a house”¹⁵.

Hence, over the following months several working days were organized at the ROL to discuss the floor plan of the dwellings. On 11 July 1985, a working day with eleven Turkish residents was held in the ROL housed in the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology¹⁶. In the meeting’s introduction delivered by Jacques Poot, the residents’ expert, he emphasized the importance of having the foreign residents involved in the process, as they represent approximately half of the population living in the deelgebied 5. However, as Siza had remarked some months earlier, Poot also contended that it “must be kept in mind that the houses should be suitable for all populations, and not specifically for foreign residents”¹⁷. The report of the assessment made by the Turkish residents underlines their good acceptance of the dwelling layout, especially the flexibility of the plan, and the clear separation between living and sleeping areas, as well as their position in the building: the living room on the street side and the bedrooms on the courtyard side. The surface area of some partitions was criticized as well as the location of the kitchen and bathroom appliances. In the written account of this working day at the ROL, the author of the report noted it was remarkable the detailed appraisals to the plan made by the Turkish residents. Despite this process was something completely new to them, the report stated they showed interest as if it was their own home already. The importance of having a full-scale model instead of drawings was seen as instrumental, and the conclusion was thus clear: “working in this way is therefore very valuable”.

On 6 September, 1985, the members of the project’s bouwteam (construction team) visited The Hague’s municipal ROL, in Scheveningen, and changed on the spot some parts of the model of the typical ground floor dwelling of the Punt en Komma buildings, which had been discussed in the bouwteam’s meeting held on the previous day. On the next day, 7 September, the neighbourhood office de Hoefeiser (The Horseshoe) organized a visit to the ROL with residents of the deelgebied 5 to experience and discuss the full-scale mock-up of the dwelling. About thirty residents were present, among which half were immigrants, all male, and mostly of Turkish origin. This was a fundamental test to check the extent to which Siza’s initial goal of designing a dwelling able to accommodate different cultural backgrounds had been successfully accomplished or not.

There was a broad appraisal on the general layout of the dwelling but the participants in the workshop also made critical remarks. The group of immigrant residents, predominantly Muslims, suggested the living room and the entrance hallway should be bigger. The sliding door to the master bedroom was criticized and they proposed the toilet should be placed closer to the entrance and distant from the living room. The review of the group of native Dutch residents mentioned mostly the same, except the criticism on the sliding door to the master bedroom. The critique on the position of the balconies was also unanimous. Both groups agreed that it would be better to have the balcony facing the street next to the living room or next to the kitchen/dining room. Siza agreed to review the plan in order to increase the area of the living room and the entrance hallway but argued the position of the balconies facing the courtyard side was a better solution. To support the latter decision Siza argued that the balconies facing the courtyard would yield more privacy, less noise, odours, and nuisances and would offer the possibility to dry the laundry and even prepare food¹⁸. Eventually, whenever structurally possible and conceptually plausible, the final layout of the dwellings accommodated most of the feedback of the residents. According to Dorien Boasson, “this way of working gave residents the opportunity to think actively about the plan, and to make reasoned changes to it.” Further, she argues, with this initiative “the involvement in the construction plan has significantly increased” (Boasson, 1988)¹⁹.

In fact, as mentioned above, the final version of the dwelling’s layout designed by Siza, would be noticeably based on the decisions made in the ROL workshop with the participants. An important development was the introduction of sliding doors to allow several possibilities of spatial articulation between the kitchen, the living room and the hallway. This flexibility was instrumental to create a layout that could accommodate the different lifestyles of the future users, as well as their diverse cultural, religious and even ethnic background. To be sure, Siza contends that he struggled to avoid a culture-specific solution in the design of the dwellings, as that would increase the latent ethnic tension. The Schilderswijk, Siza claimed, “is a very interesting, fascinating milieu. But there are here and there signs of racism. It’s just difficult that all these people blend together so suddenly. It takes time to emerge from it a great community. Hence, conflicts are inevitable” (Franke & Wensch, 1990, p. 1490). Siza identifies in this potential conflictive setting a major disciplinary challenge: How to design houses that are suitable for families with such different cultural backgrounds and diverse lifestyles? From his experience with participatory meetings in the Schilderswijk, Siza reports:

When I talked with the Dutch, they said: ‘Muslims are terrible, they hang curtains on the windows. One thinks about that, and then you hear: ‘Dutch families are terrible, they have such small bathrooms, and facing directly to the hall; we want large bathrooms in the bedroom area’. For them it is (a religious) tradition, to withdraw for washing. The whole point was to design apartments where all of them could meet these requirements. This led to lengthy discussions with stake-holders; (…) We ended up with innovative dwellings; well, not innovative, but the special thing about them is that there is a double distribution, which can be divided by sliding doors, and give greater privacy from the bedroom area to the living room (Franke & Wensch, 1990, p. 1490).

In 1994, six years after finishing the construction of the Punt en Komma buildings, Siza gave an interview to Ruud Ridderhof where he pointed out his design strategy to tackle the problem of accommodating cultural heterogeneity. In Punt en Komma “we had expressly tried not to build special homes (for that was one of the ideas: to build special homes for Muslims)” (Ridderhof, 1994, pp. 40-41) However, Siza understood this discrimination would not work. “It was a very bad idea; the houses had to be the same, we had to find a house that satisfied everyone”, he declared. This strategy proved to be fruitful. “Ultimately,” Siza explains, “the consequence was that the elements added to the interior — such as the extra central space with sliding doors — were very well accepted by Dutch families”.

Encoding, Decoding

The working sessions at the ROL workshops contributed significantly for the successful outcome of the Punt en Komma’s design decision-making process. This working method created a medium for meaningful communication between designers and users. This was instrumental to avoid the alienating factor of using jargon in discussions on aesthetic principles, technical constraints, political agendas, and cultural idiosyncrasies. In effect, as Stuart Hall points out in his 1980 essay Encoding, decoding, “if no ‘meaning’ is taken, there can be no ‘consumption’” (Hall, 2007, p. 91)²⁰. The participation of the stakeholders in the development of the layout for the dwelling of Punt en Komma reveals, then, a practice that goes beyond a mere empowerment of the users in design decision-making processes. It creates a platform where aesthetic communication can be conveyed through an actual spatial experience where the disciplinary codes can have a meaningful decoding as social practices. This process, however, is not linear. In the design process, there are different stages and moments with relative autonomy that, nevertheless, reproduce structures of power. Hall’s essay offers a sound theoretical framework to analyse the production and dissemination of messages, which can be valuable to discuss the case of citizens’ participation in design decision-making processes.

According to Stuart Hall, there are four linked but distinctive moments in the process of communication: production, circulation, distribution / consumption, and reproduction. Consumption, for Hall, is an indissoluble moment of the production process, and “the message-form is the necessary form of appearance of the event in its passage from source to receiver” (Hall, 2007, p. 92). He thus contends that “before this message can have an ‘effect’ (however defined), satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as a meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded” (Hall, 2007, p. 93).

I would thus suggest the working sessions at the ROL workshops, illustrates a successful attempt to translate the codes of the architecture discipline to the decoder-receiver. The communicative exchange is reciprocal, though not symmetrical. There is reciprocity, for example, in the way the architect, as an encoder-producer, benefits from the receiver’s understanding of the message; it constitutes a source for his continuous production, which eventually contributes to improve the process of consumption/reception. However, the positions at each end of the process, in this case the architect and the dweller, are not symmetrical or equivalent. As Stuart Hall highlights, there is no code with a transparent, or “natural” representation of the real. Hence, this inevitably sparks misunderstandings, or distorted communication, which creates discrepancies in the relation between encoder and decoder, thus resulting in three positions: the dominant-hegemonic, the negotiated, and the oppositional²¹.

CONCLUSION

The design decision-making process in deelgebied 5’s plan and Punt en Komma’s project resonates with Stuart Hall’s definition of the negotiated code. “Decoding within the negotiated version”, Hall claims, “contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules — it operates with exceptions to the rule” (Hall, 2007, p. 102). Siza’s engagement in the urban renewal of the Schilderswijk district epitomizes the challenges brought about to the design disciplines and their relation with managerial strategies, including citizens’ participation. In effect, Siza himself addresses these challenges in his reflections on the experience of designing deelgebied 5’s plan. He contends, “the participation of residents, technicians and politicians should signify an open process, not simply appeasing or conformist, nor of a local and fragmentary nature, and not merely conducive to the adoption of models around which a consensus is easily reached”²².

Siza criticizes the dominant-hegemonic approach and advocates a negotiated code to create an open design decision-making process. This is an essential feature of a disciplinary approach able to tackle the challenges of urban renewal policies in an holistic way, from the urban scale to the dwelling unit; from the definition of the urban image and collective spaces to the detailing of the sliding door in the apartments; from the definition of the building’s materialization to the solution of acoustic problems; dealing with the agenda of policy makers and the idiosyncrasies of the residents.

In the design decision-making process of the plan for deelgebied 5 and the project for the Punt en Komma buildings the conflicts and tensions brought about in citizens’ participation became part and parcel of the creative process. As Siza put it, designers and the other stakeholders involved in housing design should reject a simplistic approach that sees “participation of residents simply as a pacifying element, so often reductive, refusing by prudence or calculation, the creative leap which qualifies it as an integral part of design” (Siza, 1987).

This case study is useful to discuss the role of the expert in this day and age, and the extent to which experts can still play a role as social mediators in the complex challenges related with the future development of inclusive, resilient cities. According to Zigmunt Bauman, “expertise promises the individuals means and abilities to escape uncertainty and ambivalence and thus to control their own life-world. It presents the dependency on the experts as the liberation of the individual; heteronomy as autonomy” (Bauman, 1993, p. 223). Bauman plainly asserts the emancipatory role of the expert as both a mediator and interpreter, bridging the gap between the objective and the subjective worlds. While doing this, he seems to deem ambivalence as an undesirable condition. However, the case study discussed in this (Bauman)article suggests something different.

Siza’s approach in the design decision-making process for the deelgebied 5 plan, and the Punt en Komma buildings challenges Bauman’s idea of the expert as a proxy for individual escape from uncertainty and ambivalence. Rather, the power of ambivalence in Siza’s design approach is, I would contend, liberating the individual through stimulating his confrontation with the ambiguities and contradictions of the design process. In this context, the nexus between the author and the addressee is conveyed by a negotiated code that accommodates the universal and the situated, order and chaos, standards and contingency, modernity and the vernacular; in other words, autonomy and heteronomy.

REFERENCES

Bauman, Z. (1993). Modernity and Ambivalence. New Ed. Polity Press.

Boasson, D. (Ed.). (1988). Visie op de stad: Alvaro Siza in de Schilderswijk, Den Haag / Dorien Boasson. Den Haag: Uitgave Projektorganisatie Stadsvernieuwing’s-Gravenhage.

Bosma, K., van Hoogstraten, D., & Vos, M. (2000). Housing for the Millions: John Habraken and the SAR (1960–2000). Rotterdam: NAI Publishers.

CIAM ‘59 in Otterlo. (1961). In O. Newman (Ed.), Documents of Modern Architecture 1. Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag.

Dinesen, C. R. (1982). Boliglaboratorier i Holland. Arkitekten, (15), pp. 306-308.

Eco, U. (1962). Opera Aperta. Milan.

Eco, U. (1984). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. In U. Eco, The Open Work. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Indiana University Press.

Eco, U. (1989). The Poetics of the Open Work. In U. Eco, The Open Work (A. Cancogni, Trans.) (pp.1-23). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Franke, R., & Wensch, B. (1990, August 10). Alvaro Siza Haus. Interview with Alvaro Siza. Bauwelt 81(29-30), pp. 1462-1498.

Habraken, J. (1961). De Dragers en de Mensen, het einde van de massawoningbouw.

Hall, S. (2007). Encoding, Decoding. The Cultural Studies Reader (S. During, Ed.), 3(90-103). London and New York: Routledge.

Kedziorek, A., & Ronduda, L. (Eds.). (2014). Oskar Hansen – Opening Modernism: On Open Form Architecture, Art and Didactics. Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Mota, N. (2014, September 3). Álvaro Siza’s Bonjour Tristesse: A Symphony for a Big City. The Journal of Architecture 19(5), 779-808.

Ridderhof, R. (1994). You Cannot Impose an Imaginary History on the City. Interview with Alvaro Siza. Detachement and Involvement. Work of Alvaro Siza for the Schilderswijk Area, The Hague, 39-48. (R. Ridderhof, Editor) The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Schwartz, B. (2016). The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. 2nd. New York: Harper Collins.

Siza, A. (1987, September). Il Piano per La Zona 5: Direttive e Suggerimenti. Casabella, 538, 9.

Till, J. (2009). Architecture Depends. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Tzonis, A., & Lefaivre, L. (n. d.). In the Name of the People. The Development of the Contemporary Populist Movement in Architecture. Forum XXV(3), 28-29.

UN. (2015). The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Van Hoogstraten, D. (2010). Master of Your Own Home. Time and Hierarchy in the Housing of John Habraken and the SAR. Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, 4, 4-19.

RESUMEN

Esta investigación aborda las relaciones yuxtapuestas que surgen al analizar y construir mapeos pertinentes a la eficiencia urbana*, en ciudades latinoamericanas con distintos sustratos topográficos, encontrando cierto grado de relación entre las que se ubican en la planicie Atlántica de América del Sur**, en contraposición a las establecidas en el macizo andino de la costa del Pacífico***.

En un contexto en donde “el planeta Tierra vive un período de intensas transformaciones tecnocientíficas como contrapartida de las cuales se han generado fenómenos de desequilibrio ecológico que amenazan, a corto plazo, si no se le pone remedio, la implantación de la vida sobre la superficie” (Guattari, 1990, p. 7) es indispensable encontrar estrategias, locales, regionales y globales válidas para comprender y resolver los procesos actuales.

PALABRAS CLAVE

eficiencia urbana, ciudades, topografía,

trama, tejido, transformaciones

* En las aplicaciones de eficiencia al análisis de políticas, la eficiencia típicamente se asocia con una relación entre medios y fines. Se propone que un programa es eficiente si cumple sus objetivos al menor costo posible. Ernesto Cohen y Rolando Franco (1995) definen la eficiencia como “la relación entre costos y productos obtenidos”. Marlaine Lockheed y Eric Hanushek (1994) señalan que “un sistema eficiente obtiene más productos con un determinado conjunto de recursos, insumos o logra niveles comparables de productos con menos insumos, manteniendo a los demás igual”.

** Área geográfica que involucra al macizo de Brasilia, la llanura Amazónica y al macizo de la Patagonia.

***Área geográfica que contiene la cordillera de los Andes, cordillera del Caribe, precordillera Andina, cordillera de la costa peruano-chilena.

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the juxtaposed relations resulting from the analysis and mapping of urban efficiency* in Latin American cities with different substrates and topography, and it finds a certain level of relationship in the cities of the Atlantic plains in South America**, versus the cities established in the Andean mountains in the Pacific coast***.

In a context where “the Earth is undergoing a period of intense techno-scientific transformations. If no remedy is found, the ecological disequilibrium this has generated will ultimately threaten the continuation of life on the planet’s surface” (Guattari, 1990, p. 7), it is crucial to find valid local, regional and global strategies to understand and figure out the current processes.

KEYWORDS

urban efficiency, cities, topography, grid,

tissue, transformations

* When applying efficiency to the analysis of politics, the efficiency is typically associated to the relationship between means and goals. This paper proposes that a program is efficient when it fulfills its goals at the lower possible cost. Ernesto Cohen and Rolando Franco (1983) define efficiency as “the relationship between costs and output achieved”. Marlaine Lockheed and Eric Hanushek (1994) say: “A more efficient system obtains more output for a given set of resource inputs, or achieves comparable levels of output for fewer inputs, other things being equal.”

**Geographic area including Brasilia mountain range, Amazon plains and Patagonia mountain range

***Geographic area including the mountain ranges of the Andes, the Caribbean, the Andes pre-mountain range, and Peru-Chile coast mountains.

1. PRETEXTO Y RETROSPECTIVA

Así, hacia donde quiera que uno mire encuentra esa misma paradoja lancinante: por un lado, el desarrollo continuo de nuevos medios tecnocientíficos, susceptibles potencialmente de resolver las problemáticas ecológicas dominantes y el reequilibrio de las actividades socialmente útiles sobre la superficie del planeta y, por otro, la incapacidad de las fuerzas sociales organizadas y de las formaciones subjetivas constituidas de ampararse de esos medios para hacerlos operativos.

Guattari, 1990, p. 14

Más del 50 % de la población mundial vive en ciudades y en regiones como América Latina este número se prevé que llegue al 80 % en 2050, por ello, comprender y trabajar sobre su estructura de manera equilibrada es urgente. Sin embargo, retomando la cita del filósofo francés, Félix Guattari (que en su trabajo publicado en 1989, Les trois écologies, indaga sobre los mecanismo plausibles de abordar la problemática estructural que enfrenta el planeta Tierra), existiendo los medios tecnocientíficos suficientes, las estructuras urbanas siguen siendo —en gran medida— deficientes y fragmentarias a la hora de resolver, de manera solvente, los procesos urbanos contemporáneos, de hábitat y naturales que se suceden en la ciudad, en muchos casos potenciando el desequilibrio en términos políticos, culturales, económicos, sociales y, en especial, ambientales.

Parecería obvio reconocer las diferencias sustanciales en los sustratos topográficos de las ciudades latinoamericanas, sin embargo, tanto su proceso de fundación como —en términos generales— su contemplación en los sucesos urbanos posteriores, son análogas, ponderando otras matrices de pensamiento por sobre la naturaleza misma del sitio. No es nuestra intención juzgar los procesos, sino simplemente señalar y estudiar sus consecuencias respecto al sitio, el crecimiento de estas y como consecuencia de ello el impacto en su eficiencia urbana.

Hoy, continuando un período en donde el rol social (en su conjunto abarcando estados, organizaciones sociales y población en sí) se consolida como actor principal de la gobernanza urbana, es urgente reconocer y reorientar los procesos urbanos a comprender la naturaleza del sitio subyacente a la trama urbana y reconocer así procesos que ponderen la valoración del sustrato natural, con el fin de equipararlo a las valoraciones políticas, económicas y sociales ya establecidas.

Figura 1.Basural I

Fuente: Porter (2012). De la serie Bruma II

1.1 Precuela

La mayoría de las ciudades latinoamericanas surgidas a partir de la conquista, principalmente española, heredan en su estructura formal una serie de concepciones fundacionales que las han marcado hasta nuestros días. Nos interesa destacar que este proceso se basa en la consolidación de una estructura urbana que se encuentra escindida del soporte natural. Una estructura formulada en términos económicosculturales y estratégico-militares que con el paso del tiempo fue variando en su contexto, pero nunca en su morfología.

De carácter pragmático, este tipo de organización reconocía sólo la topografía como una tabula rasa¹, es decir, no existía noción de sitio en su implantación. Así, el sitio efectivo de fundación, de la mayoría de estas ciudades, se basa en lugares estratégicos, en términos militares, de visuales altas y dominio sobre el territorio y el mar, y, en términos comerciales, con puertos naturales; a partir de allí, seguros de las inclemencias bélicas, se organizaba el “campamento”² con sus ejes y su retícula en damero, independiente a las variables constitutivas del territorio, convirtiéndose en el primer hito reconocible que marca todas las ciudades latinoamericanas, una huella indeleble que se encuentra en el casco histórico de estas, desde el Cono Sur hasta América del Norte, tanto en las costas del Atlántico como las del Pacífico, convirtiéndose indudablemente en un sistema de dominación cultural.

1.1.1 Su organización en damero

se trata de una exacta figura regular con un perímetro cuadrado. Es decir, que cuadrícula supone solo el sistema modular en base a cuadrados y admite el perímetro rectangular como de hecho sucedió en las trazas de muchas fundaciones, de las cuales la más ilustre es, sin duda, la de Lima.

Nicolini, 2005, p. 29

Su ordenación representaba en su centralidad la estructura social de la época, disponiendo desde el centro a la periferia la jerarquización de los solares, manifestando de forma física los mismos valores socioculturales, en mayor o menor medida, como una estructura rígida, independientemente de los cambios topográficos a lo largo de Latinoamérica, convirtiendo a la ciudad en un sistema repetible y homogéneo de valoración social aplicado al territorio, estructura que hoy podemos reconocer en cualquier ciudad establecida durante la conquista. Este sistema de organización social sobre el territorio promovió —entre otras cosas— la centralidad, de la que muchas ciudades latinoamericanas han pretendido salir en las últimas décadas, incluso en el auge suburbano de los años noventa, en donde todas las infraestructuras desarrolladas confluyen —en mayor o menor medida— a estos centros urbanos. Jorge E. Hardoy (1975) define los elementos de la ciudad fundacional latinoamericana, cuya estructura se componía de “a) un trazado en damero, cuadrada o rectangular y que, con el tiempo, adquiere una forma trapezoidal; b) la plaza, generalmente en el centro, estaba formada por una manzana sin edificar; c) alrededor de la plaza se designaba el cabildo, la iglesia y la gobernación, y distintos puntos, terrenos para las órdenes religiosasˮ (p. 41).

Figura 2. Esquema manuscrito de la ciudad de Caracas que define la estructura de la ciudad organizada a partir del damero

Fuente: De Pimentel (1578). Plano de Caracas

Este conjunto de ciudades (en los virreinatos del Río de la Plata, del Alto Perú y de Nueva Granada) se convierte en un medio³ para representar, en simultáneo, un mandato sociocultural y una distribución urbana sobre el territorio:

ya que sobre ambos se aplican los principios cristianos de orden y virtud. Por lo mismo, en primer lugar, aun cuando los indios tuviesen sus “ciudadesˮ y sus formas de organización, era necesario “urbanizarlosˮ, de manera que las jerarquías sociales fuesen, desde un primer momento, aprehendidas; en segundo lugar, era necesario insertarlos en una red vertical de ciudades, pues se presume que entre ciudades deberán existir diferencias y jerarquías, al modo como entre los hombres se dan justas diferencias de virtud y riqueza. (Landaeta Mardones y Espinoza Lolas, 2015, p. 2)

La ciudad en Latinoamérica se construye como una herramienta de dominación de la emulando lo que lo fue la ciudad romana, renovando la concepción clásica que veía en la ciudad el elemento donde debían confluir un adecuado orden social con su respectiva realización territorial: “La medida del éxito de la colonización española fueron sus ciudadesˮ (Lucena Giraldo, 2008, p. 20).

Con este sistema de institución local y administrativa de la Corona de España, implantado en el tiempo, estas ciudades conformaron una verdadera red política, establecida sobre el territorio, y así comenzaron a funcionar como un sistema de ciudades⁴, en el cual empieza a ser fundamental la vinculación interna, debido a que no solo por mar, sino por caminos de tierra, el sistema de dominación se extendía al territorio, extrayendo recursos para enviarlos a la madre patria⁵. Estas rutas comenzaron a conectar, tanto a estos centros urbanos, vinculando así los distintos virreinatos (el del Río de la Plata con el del Alto Perú, por ejemplo), como a las áreas estratégicas dentro de cada uno. Este proceso subrayaba la centralización, vigente hasta hoy día, de las ciudades cabecera del virreinato, instaurando una matriz económica al territorio de absoluto carácter colonialista. “No existen planos de las ciudades y fortalezas construidas antes de la década de 1520, pero el análisis de las instrucciones, capitulaciones, reales cédulas y otras formas empleadas por la Corona para comunicar directivas no parece ofrecer dudas sobre el gradual proceso de perfeccionamiento en el trazado de las ciudades coloniales hasta alcanzar el modelo clásico”ˮ (Hardoy, 1975, p. 43).

Figura 3. Estructura urbana de las ciudades de Quito, Lima, Santiago, São Paulo, Montevideo y Buenos Aires

Fuente: Borthagaray y Massin, 2010

A medida que avanzan los diversos procesos sociopolíticos en el continente, se van montando esta red de ciudades. En tal sentido es fundamental destacar uno de los sucesos más relevantes ocurrido en el período de revoluciones independentistas y que abre, sin lugar a duda, una nueva lógica del territorio.

El cruce de los Andes comenzó a principios de 1817 y en pocos años, logró la liberación de Chile y preparó el ascenso hacia el Perú, a pesar de la oposición del Directorio porteño. En julio de 1821, San Martín ocupó Lima y declaró la independencia del Perú, formando un protectorado a cuyo frente fue elegido. Abolió la esclavitud y los servicios personales, entre otras medidas. Para poner fin a la resistencia realista, intentó sumar esfuerzos con Simón Bolívar, con quien tuvo la famosa entrevista de Guayaquil, en julio de 1822. Pero las diferencias políticas y militares hicieron que se retirara y dejara todo en manos del líder venezolano. Pronto renunció al protectorado del Perú y se retiró de la política. (Pigna, 2014, p. 274)

Más allá de la gesta histórica, el cruce de los Andes pone de manifiesto una situación que resulta fundante para esta investigación, y es la valoración del soporte topográfico para gestar una estrategia militar, ya que el soporte topográfico no servía de salvaguarda de los asentamientos urbanos y tampoco existían caminos alternos que conectaban ciudades, se reabre la noción de territorio.

1.2 Durante

El modelo clásico de la ciudad colonial hispanoamericana es esencialmente un modelo urbanístico arquitectónico que respondió a una idea cultural europea traída desde España a América, y que experimentó un proceso paulatino de perfeccionamiento que, con el tiempo, fue sancionado legalmente.

Landaeta Mardones y Espinoza Lolas, 2015, p. 2

En el amplio espacio temporal, intermedio entre el colonialismo y lo que definimos como actualidad, sucedieron hechos fundamentales en la historia que afectaron físicamente a este conjunto de ciudades, detenernos en ellos sería extenso, pero podemos concluir que finalmente no han modificado la mirada original, es más, en muchos sentidos profundizaron los procesos centralistas⁶ y, sobre todo, el desequilibrio con el soporte natural.

Encontramos asimismo en las ciudades latinoamericanas operaciones urbanas extirpadas literalmente de otros procesos y contextos, traspalando paradigmas inocuos e inconsistentes para los entornos políticos, sociales y ambientales de Latinoamérica. Estas operaciones no han cuestionado, en términos formales, las ideas desarrolladas en la ciudad colonial, es más, han servido para enfatizar esta condición eurocentrista.

En América, la idea de raza fue un modo de otorgar legitimidad a las relaciones de dominación impuestas por la conquista. La posterior constitución de Europa como nueva identidad después de América y la expansión del colonialismo europeo sobre el resto del mundo, llevaron a la elaboración de la perspectiva eurocéntrica de conocimiento y con ella a la elaboración teórica de la idea de raza como naturalización de esas relaciones coloniales de dominación entre europeos y no-europeos. Históricamente, eso significó una nueva manera de legitimar las ya antiguas ideas y prácticas de relaciones de superioridad/inferioridad entre dominados y dominantes. (Quijano, 2000, p. 779)

La ciudad de Buenos Aires, por ejemplo, retomó del pensamiento haussmaniano⁷ la apertura de las diagonales, diagonal norte y diagonal sur, y para su traza contrató a Joseph Bouvard, de la Municipalidad de París, con la idea de reproducir, precisamente, el modelo de la capital francesa. Para su realización, la Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (MCBA) debió comprar y/o expropiar gran parte de los terrenos de las manzanas involucradas. Concluidas en 1943, las diagonales marcaron un hito urbano que en gran parte han signado el ADN de la ciudad “más europea” de Latinoamérica. Más allá de la anécdota, este tipo de situaciones solo enfatizó los conceptos vertidos en la época colonial, evidenciando, cada vez más, la separación entre estructura urbana y soporte territorial. Con esto no estamos afirmando que hayan sido los únicos movimientos, se destacan en varias ciudades procesos de revalorización de las ciudades indígenas, que sí habían desarrollado la estructura física de sus asentamientos en relación directa con la topografía.

Otro ejemplo del interés por las ideas eurocentristas vuelve a escena en la posguerra, cuando, en sintonía con las ideas del movimiento moderno, surge la ciudad de Brasilia, una nueva ciudad planificada, convirtiéndose en un icono del modernismo en Latinoamérica. Esta es una ciudad proyectada por Lucio Costa a partir de la tabula rasa, nuevamente, al igual que la ciudad colonial. En 1957 su propuesta resultó ganadora del concurso hecho bajo el mandato del presidente brasileño, Juscelino Kubitschek, para crear una nueva capital más centralizada que la costera Río de Janeiro. Del gesto primario de hacer una cruz, del también conocido ritual romano de creación de una ciudad, Lucio Costa trazó los ejes de la nueva capital con una particularidad. El eje norte-sur estaría curvado, adaptándose así mejor a la topografía, dando como resultado un esquema que hará de Brasilia reconocible simplemente con dos trazos.

La mirada foránea a signado el territorio, más allá de operaciones urbanas específicas, siendo claro, además, que el crecimiento exponencial de habitantes en nuestras ciudades es el punto de inflexión para reflexionar sobre su estructura. De allí surge gran parte de la problemática actual. Los procesos migratorios, internos y externos, más el crecimiento demográfico, que en algunos casos se acelera en unos sectores sociales, evidencia una falencia en el crecimiento superficial de la huella urbana y en la consecuente planificación de los usos del suelo. Pese a la incapacidad física de crecimiento, limitada por la naturaleza topográfica del sitio, presente en mayor medida en las ciudades del Pacífico y en menor medida en las ciudades del Atlántico, el pensamiento centralista no ha sido eclipsado. Existieron muchos procesos que conformaron las estructuras existentes de las mismas, sin embargo, son contados los casos en que la manifestación física de estos procesos urbanos se dio alineada y de manera equilibrada a los procesos económicos, socioculturales y naturales de las mismas. Los procesos sucedidos en esta etapa, como los humanistas, haussmanianos, los migratorios internos y externos y las grandes infraestructuras, a principios de los años noventa, hicieron que el crecimiento de las áreas suburbanas se mantuviera signado por los procesos disociados de los territorios centralistas surgidos en la matriz colonial. Vale citar como ejemplo, que para que el crecimiento de los suburbios fuese una realidad tangible, se tuvieron que generar previamente infraestructuras vehiculares que pudieran rápidamente conectar a sus habitantes con los centros urbanos, manteniendo la lógica dependencia de estos, estableciendo así de manera anticipada su fecha de vencimiento. Según Sassen (2007),

la centralidad sigue siendo un aspecto clave en la actual economía global. Pero hoy en día ya no existe una relación directa única entre centralidad y entidades geográficas tales como el centro de la ciudad, o el distrito central de negocios (DCN). En el pasado, y de hecho hasta hace pocos años, la centralidad era sinónimo del centro de la ciudad o el DCN. Hoy, parcialmente como resultado de las nuevas TIC, el correlato espacial del “centroˮ puede asumir varias formas geográficas, desde el DCN, el área metropolitana, a la nueva malla global compuesta por ciudades globales. (p. 25)

Como fin de este período, Guattari (1990) manifiesta que “las oposiciones dualistas tradicionales que han guiado el pensamiento social y las cartografías geopolíticas están caducas. Las situaciones conflictivas continúan, pero introducen sistemas multipolares incompatibles con enrolamientos bajo banderas ideológicas maniqueístas. Por ejemplo, la oposición entre Tercer Mundo y mundo desarrollado ya no tiene ningún sentidoˮ (p. 14). Este panorama nos obliga, en la actualidad, a superar el paradigma “tercermundista” de la superioridad de las ideas foráneas que provenían del mundo ilustrado o desarrollado.

1.3 Actualidad

La ecosofía social consistirá, pues, en desarrollar prácticas específicas que tiendan a modificar y a reinventar formas de ser en el seno de la pareja, en el seno de la familia, del contexto urbano, del trabajo, etcétera. Por supuesto, sería inconcebible pretender volver a fórmulas anteriores, que corresponden a períodos en los que a la vez la densidad demográfica era más débil y la densidad de las relaciones sociales más fuerte que en la actualidad. Pero se tratará de reconstruir literalmente el conjunto de las modalidades del ser-en-grupo. Y no sólo mediante intervenciones “comunicacionalesˮ, sino mediante mutaciones existenciales que tienen por objeto la esencia de la subjetividad.

Guattari, 1990, p. 34

En la actualidad nos encontramos en un proceso en donde la “gobernanza” se ha constituido como un mecanismo validador de los procesos urbanos. Según la ONU:

La gobernanza es el ambiente propicio que requiere marcos jurídicos adecuados, procesos políticos, de gestión y administrativos eficientes, así como mecanismos, directrices y herramientas que permitan al gobierno local responder a las necesidades de los ciudadanos. La gobernanza puede definirse como las diversas formas en las que las instituciones y los individuos se organizan en la gestión cotidiana de una ciudad, y los procesos utilizados para llevar a cabo de forma efectiva la agenda del desarrollo de una ciudad, a corto y a largo plazo. La gobernanza urbana es el software que permite que el hardware urbano funcione. La gobernanza urbana eficaz se caracteriza por ser democrática e inclusiva, integrada y con objetivos a largo plazo, multiescalar y de multinivel, territorial, competente y conscientes de las ventajas de la era digital. (UN-Habitat, 2012)

Este proceso permite dar visibilidad a muchos actores, otrora relegados en el ideario colectivo de la ciudad, aunque aún no ha logrado, en líneas generales, revertir las posiciones de poder, acentuadas por un mercado de capitales dominante; sí ha conseguido, en algunos casos, con mayor éxito que otros, poner en evidencia procesos genuinos radicados en el seno de las sociedades.

Como señalamos en el análisis, las ciudades latinoamericanas enmarcadas en procesos contextuales similares registran en su superficie procesos urbanos también similares, los mismos han sido estudiados por diversos autores y podrían resumirse en la sintomatología condensada por el geógrafo e investigador Pablo Ciccolella (2012):

Expansión de la mancha urbana; Policentrismo o, al menos, tendencias al mismo; Tendencias a la ciudad-región y al crecimiento reticular; Expansión de la base económica, especialmente basada en servicios; Difusión o proliferación de nuevos objetos urbanos (shoppings, hipermercados, urbanizaciones cerradas, edificios inteligentes, etc.); Suburbanización difusa, tanto de élites como de sectores pobres o populares; Incremento de la polarización social; Incremento o consolidación de la segregación residencial; Aparición de nuevos distritos de negocios o formación de redes de distritos corporativos; Reestructuración neoliberal (desregulación-privatizaciones) como factor explicativo de estos procesos territoriales.

Asimismo, en varias de las ciudades consideradas, en general las más complejas, también se han verificado otros procesos coincidentes, menos acusados en el resto de la muestra:

Localización de actividades globalizadas (Buenos Aires, México, Santiago, San Pablo); Capital inmobiliario como factor preponderante de la expansión metropolitana (Buenos Aires, Lima, Río de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, San Pablo); Gentrification, es decir reapropiación de áreas centrales por parte de sectores sociales de ingresos medios altos y altos (Buenos Aires, Santiago); Suburbanización de tipo “americanizante” (Buenos Aires, Caracas, São Pablo, Santiago); Dualización (Buenos Aires, Lima, Río de Janeiro, São Pablo). (p. 13)

Esta situación amerita un trabajo conjunto y exhaustivo que vuelva a equilibrar las estructuras urbanas, pretendiendo extender el soporte infraestructural sobre el territorio. En todos los procesos predecesores, existe un denominador común, el hombre se encontraba, en su valoración, por encima de la naturaleza, la política y la técnica, se fomentaban los procesos de acción por sobre la naturaleza. Esta tendencia fue cambiando y visibilizando el daño ambiental producido, una naturaleza mutante⁸, este concepto define una mutación constante del ambiente y, por ende, una transformación del estadio natural del territorio. Esta sucesión tuvo su inflexión en el tsunami del Japón en 2011, el cual fue el terremoto más potente sufrido en el Japón hasta la fecha, así como el cuarto del mundo. Transmitido en vivo a todo el mundo, cobró casi catorce mil vidas humanas, y por más que estemos hablando de un fenómeno natural, su visibilidad permitió que en que en el Marco de Sendai para la Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres 2015-2030, presentado por la ONU en 2015, aparecieran estas definiciones:

Además, entre 2008 y 2012, 144 millones de personas resultaron desplazadas por desastres. Los desastres, muchos de los cuales se ven exacerbados por el cambio climático y están aumentando en frecuencia e intensidad, obstaculizan significativamente el progreso hacia el desarrollo sostenible. La información existente indica que, en todos los países, el grado de exposición de las personas y los bienes ha aumentado con más rapidez de lo que ha disminuido la vulnerabilidad, lo que ha generado nuevos riesgos y un incremento constante de las pérdidas relacionadas con los desastres, con un considerable impacto en los ámbitos económico, social, sanitario, cultural y ambiental a corto, medio y largo plazo, en especial a nivel local y comunitario (Oficina de las Naciones Unidas para la Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres. [UNDRR], 2015, p. 3)

Conforme a esta cosmovisión, apoyada sobre las estructuras de la gobernanza desarrolladas a fines del siglo xx y principios del siglo xxi, se han logrado visibilizar una serie de actores (mayormente sociales) que se distinguen como la primera línea de afectados en estas problemáticas y, por ende, son los que condensan la mayor sabiduría, nos encontramos con un nuevo marco sobre el cual ponderar el valor del sustrato natural como soporte de la estructura urbana.

También hay un punto interesante a destacar, nuestra naturaleza hoy es la ciudad, somos naturales a lo urbano y, por consiguiente, vivimos un nuevo paradigma llamado urban landscape⁹ o paisaje urbano, el cual se distingue y reconoce a nivel mundial y en él hay una relación arrastrada del proceso de suburbanización analizado anteriormente. Es a principios del siglo xxi que las clases altas comenzaron en a retornar a los centros urbanos, cansadas de la saturación de los suburbios y sobre todo de las infraestructuras que, inevitablemente, al no reconocer los procesos naturales de la ciudad y su sustrato natural, fallan en su planificación a mediano plazo. Esto se ve enfatizado por la ineficacia de los Estados para ver y acompañar el crecimiento suburbano, dejando a manos del mercado la activación de los suburbios y solo garantizando las infraestructuras troncales, una visión retrógrada del neoliberalismo subdesarrollado que gobernó, mayoritariamente, a los países de Latinoamérica en los años de 1990. Así mismo, al inicio de la década del 2000 y con el cambio de signo, en muchos de estos países, hacia paradigmas de corte más keynesiano¹⁰, fomentando los mercados internos y el desarrollo de la industria, el suburbio volvió a tener el signo de las clases trabajadoras, terminando de conformar por un lado el desarrollo de guetos¹¹ de clase alta (por ejemplo, Nordelta, en el Partido de Tigre, Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires) o bien el retorno de dichas clases a las estructuras exclusivas de las centralidades (como Puerto Madero) o incluso los barrios tradicionales de ese nivel socioeconómico.

Este retorno tiene un residuo cultural, el paisaje. En su paso por el suburbio, las clases altas ponderaron la creación de un paisaje antropizado¹² que hoy intentan reimplantar en los centros urbanos. Es importante destacar que si bien tiene ribetes positivos esta lógica es solamente una relectura superficial del problema, montada sobre la mutación natural de las ciudades que al apoyar procesos de valoración cultural no configura una mirada estructural sobre el problema.

Son muy pocos los casos de miradas sistémicas y equilibradas, en estos más de doscientos años de historia de nuestras ciudades, siempre la mirada cortoplacista, atada a procesos políticos inestables, superó la posibilidad de pensar la ciudad como un sistema asociado a un sitio.

2. MARCO CONTEXTUAL

Por su parte, la ecosofía mental se verá obligada a reinventar la relación del sujeto con el cuerpo, el fantasma, la finitud del tiempo, los “misteriosˮ de la vida y de la muerte. Se verá obligada a buscar antídotos a la uniformización “mass-mediática” y telemática, al conformismo de las modas, a las manipulaciones de la opinión por la publicidad, los sondeos, etc. Su forma de actuar se aproximará más a la del artista que a la de los profesionales “psy”, siempre obsesionados por un ideal caduco de cientificidad.

Guattari, 1990, p. 18

Avanzamos hacia un nuevo imaginario en donde la naturaleza (actual y natural) es el aglutinador de un nuevo urbanismo integrador. Como vimos, históricamente existe una disociación constante entre el pensamiento proyectual de los procesos urbanos, la aplicación de estos por parte de los Estados o desarrolladores y —por último y fundamental— la reinterpretación del espacio urbano generado, por parte de los usuarios.

La ciudad es una estructura (o infraestructura, hablando en términos técnicos) superpuesta a un sustrato (preexistente en la topografía y el ambiente) que reemplaza otra matriz, la matriz natural —a ese sustrato—. A partir de allí absorbe, de manera parasitaria¹³, las alteraciones políticas, económicas, culturales y sociales que la van densificando, expandiendo y transformando, manteniendo mayormente indeleble su estructura, que sólo es perturbada por acciones o reacciones del propio sustrato original o por consecuencias advertidas por su ambiente o las secuelas que se hallan producido sobre el mismo (que en oportunidades suceden como catástrofe). Podemos, por ende, establecer que la estructura de las ciudades nunca (o pocas veces) se altera, la ciudad resiste, solo hasta que la naturaleza (situación previa a la ciudad) lo decide. Esta paradoja nos manifiesta el aporte concreto que hacen las ciudades al cambio climático y, por consiguiente, una consecuente y cíclica modificación del ambiente, en tal caso, en cada etapa de crecimiento urbano existe una nueva —y ya no previa— situación “natural” del ambiente antropizado. Los efectos y consecuencias de este proceso cíclico de cambio (que podríamos asumir como mutación) constante del soporte natural radican en una agudización de los procesos naturales al sitio, por ejemplo, si se modifican los caudales de lluvia y consecuentemente se modifican los canales de irrigación originales, el riesgo de inundaciones ya es incontrolable, pero siempre se dará por las mismas cotas que estaba previsto.

Guattari (1990) plantea que “[e]l planeta Tierra vive un período de intensas transformaciones tecno-científicas como contrapartida de las cuales se han generado fenómenos de desequilibrio ecológico que amenazan, a corto plazo, si no se le pone remedio, la implantación de la vida sobre la superficieˮ (p. 7), al definir el marco de crecimiento actual que requiere un reequilibrio de las matrices y un ajuste en las metodologías de acción que se aplican a las estructuras urbanas vigentes.

Una serie de preguntas surgen entonces: ¿podemos seguir operando con las mismas premisas?; ¿son efectivos los procesos tecnocientíficos vigentes?; ¿podemos ponderar la eficiencia urbana si las estructuras existentes fomentan el desequilibrio?; ¿podemos pensar soluciones análogas en ciudades con distinta complejidad y soporte topográfico?

3. METODOLOGÍA Y DEFINICIONES

El sujeto no es evidente; no basta pensar para ser, como lo proclamaba Descartes, puesto que muchas otras formas de existir se instauran fuera de la conciencia, mientras que cuando el pensamiento se empeña obstinadamente en aprehender a sí mismo, se pone a girar como una peonza loca, sin captar ninguno de los territorios reales de la existencia, los cuales, por su parte, derivan los unos en relación con los otros, como placas tectónicas bajo la superficie de los continentes. Más bien que de sujeto, quizá convendría hablar de componentes de subjetivación, cada uno de los cuales trabaja por su propia cuenta. Lo que conduciría necesariamente a reexaminar la relación entre el individuo y la subjetividad, y, en primer lugar, a separar claramente los conceptos. Estos vectores de subjetivación no pasan necesariamente por el individuo; en realidad, éste está en posición de “terminalˮ respecto a procesos que implican grupos humanos, conjuntos socioeconómicos, máquinas informáticas, etc. Así, la interioridad se instaura en el cruce de múltiples componentes relativamente autónomos los unos en relación con los otros y, llegado el caso, francamente discordantes.

Guattari, 1990, p. 21

Esta investigación propone repensar las metodologías vigentes, desmitificando el valor de lo obvio¹⁴ y ponderando la representación como un modelo de subjetivación sobre los soportes que definen la eficiencia urbana de las ciudades latinoamericanas. Para eso se establece un proceso de reinterpretación y mapeo de la topografía y naturaleza del sitio, la trama urbana, el tejido social, la estructura económica, el legado histórico y la matriz política vigente de cada ciudad para luego yuxtaponerlos y establecer procesos objetivos y subjetivos que nos permitan generar interpretaciones equilibradas.

El concepto de “mapeoˮ, definido por la Real Academia Española como “Acción y efecto de mapear (representar las partes de un todo)” y, por ende, “mapear” como “1. Localizar y representar gráficamente la distribución relativa de las partes de un todo; como los genes en los cromosomas. 2. Hacer mapas. 3. Trasladar a un mapa sistemas o estructuras conceptuales”, nos permite reconocer el territorio de una forma plástica, establecer procesos. Este mapeo de datos incluye el desarrollo de planimetrías que ilustran diversos indicadores como: densidad (hab./ha, usos del suelo, ocupación del terreno, etc.); topografía, cuencas, esteros, humedales, etc.; viario (importante para verificar conectividad con la ciudad, la llegada a los centros urbanos, la calidad, velocidad y jerarquía de las calles); infraestructuras; plano de llenos y vacíos, grano y tipología; programa, centralidades y funcionamiento; espacio urbano; modelo de gestión (gestión privada, pública, a largo o corto plazo, mixta); parquización, densidad verde, natural/artificial, de carácter público, semi-público y privado, bosques, humedales, huertas, reservas, jardines, etc.

Este sistema de representación por capas nos facilita generar relaciones entre los procesos, comprender de forma gráfica y pensar desde otro ángulo las posibilidades dinámicas del espacio. Así mismo, al ser sistémico para todas las ciudades nos posibilita encontrar patrones y mecánicas de referencia. Este modelo de análisis, basado en la representación, mapeo y yuxtaposición de diversas capas de información, permitió trabajar sobre la hipótesis planteada, encontrando puntos en común entre las ciudades establecidas en cada una de las regiones. Esta condición principalmente se manifestó en el carácter físico de la topografía, que luego se trasladó de manera directa al tejido, influyendo sustancialmente tanto en aspectos globales como en la organización sociopolítica de las ciudades, en aspectos puntuales como la estructura vial de las mismas y su consecuente efecto en la huella de carbono o el nivel de emisiones de CO₂ emitidas por el transporte. La metodología nos plantea claramente un diferencial congénito en la eficiencia de las ciudades ubicadas en la costa del Atlántico y las establecidas en la costa del Pacífico, radicado en su perfil topográfico. De esta forma se encuentra una relación estrecha en las problemáticas que ambos grupos de ciudades expresan y potencian así la voluntad de encontrar o ensayar soluciones comunes. “Hoy menos que nunca puede separarse la naturaleza de la cultura, y hay que aprender a pensar ‘transversalmente’ las interacciones entre ecosistemas, mecanosfera y universo de referencia sociales e individuales” (Guattari, 1990, p. 34).

La yuxtaposición es la acción y efecto de yuxtaponer (poner algo junto o inmediato a otra cosa). El concepto está formado por los vocablos latinos iuxta (‘junto a’) y positˮo (‘posición’). Este concepto nos ayuda a comprender que el valor de los datos no es, relevarlos, como se pensaba en épocas pasadas, ni mapearlos (lo cual es fundamental pero no exclusivo), como se pensó posteriormente, sino en yuxtaponerlos, y de esa acción de ponerlos juntos obtener conclusiones. Poner en relación dos o más variables nos permite abordar las dinámicas urbanas desde distintos focos, en algunos casos, prever consecuencias y equilibrar, siempre, las diversas matrices. Sin embargo, este concepto tan básico puede sonar obvio y en muchos casos previsible, pero no por previsible se hace visible, entonces el valor radica en “dar visibilidad”.

Del griego topos, ‘lugar’, la topografía se comprende como la descripción y delimitación de las características de una zona geográfica. Esta primera acepción fue completada en los diccionarios del siglo xix (Larousse y Littré) por el arte de representar por medio del diseño, a través del croquis o la “carta”, una forma cualquiera a gran “escala”. Pierre George, en su Diccionario de geografía (1970), solo retiene la definición original: “Descripción de la configuración de un lugar, o descripción de los lugares, es decir de una porción de espacio terrestre”. Este segundo sentido ancla a la topografía en el dominio de las técnicas. Ampliando la condición de lugar, que incorpora etimológicamente la palabra “topografía”, podemos incluir allí los sistemas bióticos originales, las cuencas hidrográficas y las variables climáticas, entendiendo la naturaleza de un territorio como un todo, conformando un ecosistema en el más amplio sentido. Esto nos ubica en un “grado 0” del territorio, en su estado natural, que luego mutó a partir de la acción del hombre.

Esquemas producidos para esta investigación que manifiestan el soporte topográfico, la estructura vial y la mancha urbana de Buenos Aires, San Pablo, Santiago de Chile y Lima.

4. SISTEMAS DE CIUDADES, UNA MIRADA TRANSVERSAL

Dividiremos a las ciudades en dos grupos, las ubicadas dentro del macizo andino de la costa del Pacífico y las ciudades de la planicie Atlántica de América del Sur.

Las “ciudades del Pacífico” serán entonces las que se ubican en el área geográfica que contiene la cordillera de los Andes, cordillera del Caribe, precordillera Andina, cordillera de la costa peruano-chilena. Destacamos, en esta primera etapa de análisis, a las ciudades de Santiago de Chile, Lima, Guayaquil, Quito, Medellín, Bogotá y Caracas.

En cambio, las “ciudades del Atlántico”, dentro del área geográfica que involucra al macizo de Brasilia, la llanura amazónica y el macizo de la Patagonia, destacamos en esta primera etapa las ciudades de Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Porto Alegre, Río de Janeiro, San Pablo, Recife y Georgetown.

Figura 4. Descomposición de la estructura topográfica, principales ejes viales y mancha urbana de las ciudades de Buenos Aires, San Pablo, Santiago de Chile y Lima

Fuente: Dibujos de la arquitecta Ayelén Betsabé Zucotti

5. CONCLUSIONES

Las conclusiones pertinentes a esta investigación buscan encontrar patrones comunes en la escala regional, establecer procesos de mitigación y acción válidos, comprobables, ponderando la acción común para mejorar la eficiencia de las ciudades latinoamericanas. A lo largo de la historia de estas ciudades latinoamericanas encontramos procesos urbanos e infraestructurales superpuestos. Hasta aquí consideramos que existe una desvinculación entre el proceso de planificación urbana y el sitio, experimentando deficiencias en la estructura urbana resultante. Fundadas, como vimos, en marcos contextuales iguales, y luego surgiendo de procesos sociales, políticos y económicos conexos, estas ciudades de la región se diferencian, principalmente, en su sustrato natural, por tal motivo concluimos que a partir de aquí es al menos recomendable comenzar procesos de estudio que puedan equilibrar el valor del soporte topográfico al de las otras variables mencionadas, a la hora de planificar y desarrollar los proyectos urbanos. Esta mirada promueve la generación de estructuras de asociación para las ciudades, en relación con su soporte topográfico y, a partir de allí, desarrollar procesos de investigación conjunta.

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ABSTRACT

This paper examines the surfaces of cities as loci for claiming the right to the city, and for expressing inclusive, political urban identities. Based on case studies of surfaces from London, UK, I argue that the surfaces of cities are places of resistance against exclusionary neoliberal urbanism, and propose their examination as places of urban cultural heritage.

Using London’s surfaces and signs as my main territory of enquiry, the paper exposes a number of fundamental issues to the development of Western neoliberal cities: social exclusion and inequality; privatisation and corporatisation; creative homogeneity and a lack of support for vernacular, non- profit-driven urban cultures; and a politics of regulation and control, which leads to securitised, surveilled and hostile urban environments.

KEYWORDS

urban surfaces, surface semiotics, surface

inscriptions, the right to the city, neoliberal

urbanism, London

RESUMEN

En este artículo examinaremos las superficies de las ciudades como lugares para reclamar el derecho a la ciudad y para expresar identidades urbanas políticas e inclusivas. Basándonos en casos de estudio de las superficies londinenses, argumentamos que las superficies de las ciudades son lugares de resistencia contra el urbanismo neoliberal excluyente, y proponemos su análisis como lugares de patrimonio cultural urbano.

Usando las superficies y los signos de Londres como nuestro principal territorio de investigación, exponemos aquí temas fundamentales para el desarrollo de ciudades occidentales neoliberales: desigualdad y exclusión social; privatización; homogeneidad creativa y falta de apoyo para culturas vernáculas y urbanas que no generan ingresos; y una política de regulación y control, que producen entornos urbanos titulizados, vigilados y hostiles.

PALABRAS CLAVE

superficies urbanas, semiótica de la superficie,

inscripciones en la superficie, el derecho a la

ciudad, urbanismo neoliberal, Londres

1. INTRODUCTION

Urban surfaces are social spaces and repositories of political activity. They are the stage on which urban stories unfold, or become hidden, and they mediate between the cultural forces and the physical objects that make up the city. They are fascinating because they are specific physical loci, yet they afford readings and interpretations that expand far beyond their material existence. Urban surfaces have been of interest to scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, including sociology (Brighenti, 2009, 2010), anthropology (Noland, 2005), architecture (Unwin, 2000; Lavin, 2011), linguistics (Pennycook, 2009; Harris, 1995; Henkin, 1998), geography (Mould, 2015), literary theory (Nandrea, 1999), urbanism (Tripodi, 2008, 2009), visual culture (Bruno, 2014), photography (O’Neil, 2008) and communication (Irvine, 2012); and there are currently two upcoming publications dedicated to the study of the politics and aesthetics of urban surfaces (Brighenti and Kärrholm, 2018; Brighenti and Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2018). This paper draws on knowledge from this body of work, and develops semiotic and legal analytical models as original contributions to the understanding of urban surfaces as repositories of urban cultures.

The paper proposes six theses for understanding surfaces, each of which will be discussed as a separate section.

1. Surfaces are intensive, expressive and deep

2. Neutral surface mode does not exist

3. Surfaces visibilise law, specifically private property and public order

4. Inscriptions turn private property into a precarious commons (precariousness is accessibility)

5. Surface conflict is spatial justice

6. The right to the city is the right to the surface

2. SURFACES ARE INTENSIVE, EXPRESSIVE AND DEEP

Surfaces are spaces of friction, tension and expression. They are the patchy areas between the hard and soft parts of the built environment, between stuff and air, between private solids and public fluids. Surfaces separate and expose, they contain and endure, and they brandish their cracks and colours in public view, often for public access. Classes of surface materials can be read as inventories of building technologies, but they are also objects of expressive interest and textural intensity, exquisite imperfections and variations on the battered body of the city.

Just like derma on living creatures, the skin of the city is deep and multi-layered: it accumulates paint and colour, creating a palimpsest of testimonies and experiences, but it also sheds its fabrics in an unaffected process of self-preservation. Like skin, surfaces develop rifts and intervals, signs of deliberate modelling and trauma, which they continue to flaunt nonchalantly, always prepared for more.

Surfaces and their displays can be interpreted through clusters of visual and textual expression, alongside a series of overlapping ideological and material territories, to produce knowledge about the city.

A methodological focus on the surface comes from geosemiotics (Scollon & Wong-Scollon, 2003) and semiotic landscapes (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010), two analytical tools which account for the communicational and locational diversity of urban signage. Geosemiotics and semiotic landscapes are closely related in method and scope, and are anchored in the multifaceted, localised nature of the semiotic sign, emphasising its location and meaning-generating capacity.

Scollon and Wong-Scollon proposed geosemiotics as a method with a specifically urban scope, which is designed to foreground the places of discourse (not just the discourse itself). As its name suggests, geosemiotics reflects on the placement of semiotic markings within the material world, and is built on the principle that every sign is actively and intrinsically connected to its location, generating discourse and information through its bare presence. Simply being there, occupying a surface, is therefore a meaningful act: according to this theory, all signs are functions of material and territorial accessibilities and constraints.

Similarly, the concept of semiotic landscape proposed by Kress and van Leeuven (1996) and further developed by Jaworski and Thurlow (2010) aims to incorporate not just textual utterances in the urban environment, but also visual and non-verbal discourses, cultural values, the law, as well as architecture and the built environment.

The place of visual communication in a given society can only be understood in the context of, on the one hand, the range of forms or modes of public communication available in that society, and, on the other hand, their uses and valuations. We refer to this as the ‘semiotic landscape’. […] so particular modes of communication should be seen in their environment, in the environment of all the other modes of communication that surround them, and of their functions. (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 33)

There is a strong sense of emplacement here as well, which is not limited to looking at the places of discourse, but also includes the inherent semiotic function of those places (for example, their assigned and disputed legal and territorial functions). Jaworski and Thurlow go on to define semiotic landscapes as any spaces “with visible inscription made through deliberate human intervention and meaning making” (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010, p. 2) — a definition which prioritises places over inscriptions and suggests that inscriptions can generate as much knowledge about their supportive places, as places can about their supported inscriptions. Inscriptions become tools to understand surfaces, and surfaces become mechanisms of exploring the city.

3. NEUTRAL SURFACE MODE DOES NOT EXIST

Surfaceality is a quality of city surfaces which makes them interesting and active as places of display and public life. The concept was proposed by sociologist Andrea Mubi Brighenti (2009), who started from the premise that walls are not simply boundaries between territories, but also territories in themselves, and they possess inherent communicative potential. Brighenti defined the significance of surfaceality in addition to verticality (see below), encouraging a focus on the semiotic richness of vertical boundaries.

The walls offer a visible surface, which becomes a surface of inscription for stratified, crisscrossing and overlapping traces […] the wall becomes part of the struggle for public attention and a key element in the configuration of an urban regime of visibility. (Brighenti, 2010, p. 323, original emphasis)

Even before they become sites of inscription, surfaces are the deep mirrors of cities, made from paper and glass, concrete and wood, paint and brick. Vulnerable, contested and always open to dispute and change, surface territories are shifting, superimposed functions of materiality and communication, profound in their flatness and generous in their exposure of information. Surfaces express the dynamics of urban life in their acceptance or rejection of signage, and reveal the knowledge of the city through their morphing configuration.

Not only is any surface more than a blank canvas, but it also bears upon it layers and layers of material and visual codes, and it stands as part of a larger physical and inscriptive system. This surface palimpsest was captured by geographer Oli Mould in the following passage:

The surfaces of the city are multi-layered – one could argue that it is a palimpsest of past and present stories, cultures and economies etched onto each other over time. This layering of the city by a long history of planners, architects, activists, commentators and ordinary inhabitants creates a multiplicitous canvas which has been concocted by an anachronistic recipe of play, creativity, activism and art. (Mould, 2015, p. 92)

Surface landscapes are integrative and invented environments, and not simple canvases, contexts or containers for expression (Pennycook in Shohamy and Garter, 2009). They drift, they expose, and are constantly subject to dispute, claiming and reclaiming. They are untotalisable, unmasterable, re-markable and renegotiable (Noland, 2005), reflecting on the fluid nature of urban life and the urban environment.

In addition to surfaceality, surface territories also possess verticality, the property of vertical urban structures to form interfaces of exposure and display. Simon Unwin described surfaces as “interfaces between space that can be occupied and solid that cannot” (2000, p. 36), but surfaces are also sites of occupation themselves. They are hard ‘things’ of legal persuasion and material determination, bordering, screening, supporting or protecting ‘content’, either beyond them (as is the case with walls or hoardings) or before them (billboards, posters, notice boards). Surfaces are frontiers and liminal spaces, in-between spaces, margins, edges and walls; but they are also partitions that can be shared, and are primary forms of habitation of the material world: “inscriptions open surfaces into depths of meaning and multiple physical dimensions” (Bruno, 2014, p. 3).

Banal, mundane and sometimes hostile walls, are principal sights of exploration for the myriad inscriptions that occupy their surfaces. Other vertical structures such as billboards or street signs, hoardings or bus shelters, electricity boxes or doorways, are all significant components of the urban visual landscape. Their surfaces open the built structures of the city as potential sites of transmission and networking. Any one of these vertical elements can potentially also be used to show presence, to surprise, to defy. In Nandrea’s words,

These walls are not simple horizontal borderlines dividing up space; they are vertical planes that, through inscription, can be transformed into unexplored and multidimensional spaces, becoming frontiers in the dictionary sense of undeveloped areas or fields for discovery or research. (1999, p. 111)

Urbanist Lorenzo Tripodi calls these vertical surfaces spaces of exposure (2008, 2009) and he defines them as “functional, structured spaces where city users are exposed to the spectacle of goods, entertained, impressed by flows of images” (2008, p. 308). These images accumulate and overlap, forming intricate visual palimpsests with layers upon layers of colours, messages and materials, of temporary communicative presences. The spaces of exposure draw our attention to the vertical creation of meaning, and they are useful for understanding not just the impressive neoliberal spectacle of corporate imagery and sponsored muralism, but also less sensational visual iterations and inscriptive claims.

There is no such thing as an impartial surface, free from invisible tensions and palpable material constraints. All surfaces are part of the lawscape (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015); some form artscapes and communicative networks (Stewart, 1988); and most contribute to economies of exposure and visibility (Tripodi, 2009).

Surfaces generate capital by hosting consumerist messages or promoting citywide agendas of regeneration and placemaking; they become objects of adoration and unattainability when embellishing contemporary architectural icons; they evolve into bi-dimensional monuments of aesthetic and heritage interest; and they are tools of exclusion and control in the fight for the image of the city. In fact, I would suggest that surfaces are the image of the city, hence the high stakes in protecting their desired aspect and predicting any potential threats to their integrity.

The spaces of exclusion of the neoliberal city often appear in the form of private ownership of public spaces, which also reflects in the treatment of surfaces. Hostile surfaces, just like hostile architecture, are designed to preclude any unwanted inscriptions and to offer customised, built-in rejection of nonconformist signage. Anti-graffiti coatings densify surfaces even more, and they slyly politicise the materiality of the surface by sometimes not declaring their presence. The resulting under-cover surfaces will less readily accept dispute and inscription, but they will nevertheless maintain their exposure and vulnerability, albeit in a less accessible way. Ultimately, it all goes down on the surfacescape: reinforcements, breaches, commodification, struggle, acceptance, segregation, conviviality, occupation — and there is no better way to examine these than by looking at inscriptions.

Surfaces host a conflict between the institutionally-enabled dominance of monophonic discourses, and the fluid, editable, re-inscribable proposals of a communally produced, polyphonic language. The single discourse can appear as a policy of cleansing and eradication, support for fiscally-conformist commercial messages, or strategically backed muralisation and artification of specific urban areas. Political agendas and administrative strategies determine the visual forms of surfaces, from localised, plural, materially-embedded inscriptions to prolific, replicable, globally-palatable icons.

4. SURFACES VISIBILISE LAW, SPECIFICALLY PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PUBLIC ORDER

To understand the legal bindings of city surfaces, I turn to the discipline of legal geography, which explores connections between law, space and society, looking at how cities regulate space (see Blomley, 1994, 2004, 2011; Delaney, 2010; Blomley, Delaney and Ford, 2001; Layard, 2012; Layard and Bennett, 2015; Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, Keenan, 2015; Braverman, Blomley, Delaney and Kedar, 2014). Legal geography developed as part of a wider context of the ‘spatial turn’ in humanities and social sciences, as law’s response to the need for a fundamental engagement with space from within the legal discipline. This is based on a recognition that law operates through space rather than upon it, and is a considerable shift from “legal judgments, executive powers, legislation and legal commentaries [that] tend to treat space as something to be planned over, built on, cultivated, bought, sold and/or protected; a blank canvas or platform to be smoothly acted upon” (Keenan, 2015, p. 21).

Legal geographers have argued that law and space cannot exist outside each other, and have further emphasized the embeddedness of legal geographies into social and political systems. These readings can provide critical understandings of the governance and regulation of urban environments, of how law appears in cities and determines their daily operations. I want to propose an application of the methods and procedures of legal geographies to the study of surfaces, and I focus on legal scholar Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’s conceptualisation of the lawscape (2015) as my main tool of investigation. Exposing the law and its emplaced workings, the lawscape describes the legal complexities of city surfaces, and their entanglements with sanctioned and unsanctioned inscriptions.

The surface lawscape is of the material world, but is conditioned by social manipulation and legal instrumentation: the law produces it, and it produces law. It is a material, cultural and political artefact, reinvented with each new development of surface coating technologies, reconfigured by each addition of an LED billboard display and strained with every conviction of criminal damage and vandalism. Non-definitive boundaries between public and private, surfaces are actualised anew with each occupation, in a recurring process of activation, materialisation and visibilisation, all of which tilt the law to different degrees. However, one thing they cannot do is escape the law, or function outside it, because law is everywhere. This understanding enables a heightened visual and material unfolding of the spaces of the city and the surface, just like adding a permanent base filter to one’s perception of the environment: no surface, no inscription, no sign can exist outside the law.

“While you are reading this, you are in the lawscape […] the law spreads on pavements, covers the walls of buildings, opens and closes windows” (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, p. 38). “We-you, I-are never outside of the nomosphere, never free of its effects; never not pragmatically engaging nomospheric traces” (Delaney, 2010, p. 25). “Even when no coercive force is apparent, […] law quietly shapes the built space and the social interactions that take place in it. And as it does so, certain cultural values are literally built into the urban fabric” (Valverde, 2012, p. 21).

Urban surfaces are thoroughly legally bound and materially produced, beyond the obvious razor wires, keep out signs and anti-climb paints. Surfaces are relational spaces and legal products (Blomley, 2014), and they are uniquely relevant to understanding two fundamental postulates of the legal city: private property and public order. Property and order are inscribed in the way surfaces are equipped to deal with approved and unapproved signage, and can be inferred through an understanding of surface inscriptions and materialities. The surface lawscape becomes an engulfing, dominating force, whose influence is exerted past the obvious physical markers, and whose subversions are resilient objects of further legal contention. Space is law is surface.

The first claim at territories is always associated with ownership and is often exclusionary, as the rights to public visibility and display come second to the right to property and its integrity. When ownership takes precedence, there is no envisioning of property scenarios by non-owners, which is why graffiti is damaging and not welcome.

Offending against property is not just an offence against a thing, but also against the values that make it and the bodies who own it. Breaking, cutting, scratching, tearing and damaging are all done to the physical surface, but they acquire symbolic meaning as being done against the owned property, and against the right to private ownership itself. Scratching a surface is not just altering the surface matter, it is also violating the idea of property and its implicit entitlements and restrictions.

5. INSCRIPTIONS TURN PRIVATE PROPERTY INTO A PRECARIOUS COMMON (PRECARIOUSNESS IS ACCESSIBILITY)

Blomley argues that property is deeply social and political, structuring immediate relations between people as well as larger liberal architectures, such as the division between public and private spheres (Blomley, 2004, XVII). Property is material and tangible, but it is also social, ideological and political, and it shapes all these spheres. This is supported by David Delaney, who speaks of a continuous conditioning of our spatial performances and imaginaries by the spatialities and materialities of the public and the private (Delaney, 2010, p. 44). Our understanding of the public and the private determines our understanding of the world, what is allowed, what is proper and where it is proper:

we cannot conceive the ‘what’ without grasping the ‘where’: how we can be, where we can be, the traces we are allowed to leave there – are all closely bounded by property and ownership. Spaces can serve as means of enforcing laws of inclusion and exclusion (who can belong where), but they also constitute the identities of the subjects they include or exclude. (Keenan, 2015, p. 30)

When law protects ownership, it restricts access to property, establishing exclusionary citizenship as just and good, and enabling the identity formation of the property owner as entitled and privileged. This is the hegemonic ownership model for understanding property, sharply explained by Felix Cohen (Blomley, 2004, XIV):

“Property to which the following can be attached: To the world: Keep off X unless you have my permission, which I may grant or withhold. Signed: Private citizen. Endorsed: The state.”

The solitary owner exercising exclusionary rights over a bounded space, in a politically authorised claim, forms the basis of what geographer Don Mitchell described as the intentionally exclusive public sphere, a legal construct where the “legitimate public only includes those who have a place governed by private property rules to call their own”. (Mitchell, 2001, p. 16)

They also get to regulate the aspect and purity of space and what is proper, and all non-property-owning publics can do is to either comply or defy: “The rights of the private owner are seen as legitimately trumping those of the collective, and are deemed both anterior and superior.” (Blomley, 2004, p. 4)

Blomley speaks of the politics of urban property in Unsettling the City (2004), arguing that property in all its manifestations has a relation to the state, and that enjoyment of property frequently depends on the disposition of others. However, the political regulations behind the property-owning system are easily obscured, because we perceive them as given and we rarely question their legitimacy: it’s not yours so you can’t touch, you don’t make the rules, because you are not the owner. Is it possible then to define a legal space outside private property, or alongside, besides, in-between, additional to private property? Is there a way for surface-occupying inscriptions to specify a legal space of their own, through occupation? If, legally, “there is no category of public space in England and Wales” (Layard, 2012, p. 262), then where would we start to define such a space? A space determined by co-creation, inclusion, subversive opportunity and plural access, where graffiti acquires a legal status not just as criminal damage, but also as public culture, it’s yours so you can touch, overwrite, challenge or ignore it, you (too) make the rules, although you are not the owner. Contributor without documents, non-property-bound decision- maker, owning it without being the legal owner.

Cities produce this every day through their surface claims and occupations, so perhaps this layer of common property is already being sufficiently activated, it’s not yours but you can touch, you (too) can make some rules, although you are not the owner. Surfaces sit in a space between the public and the private, and they are of an ambiguous communal type which has been referred to as an alternative to private (but not public) (Hardt and Negri, 2009), the grey area between private and public (Visconti et al, 2010) and a type of property which subverts “hegemonic power relations” and “[is] experienced as something in-between public and private by those who engage with [it]” (Keenan, 2015, p. 92). Not public, nor private, but communally used; unwittingly exposed to inclusion and resilient in its support for dissent: such is the nature of the surfacescape.

Surfaces are territories of friction between owned and claimed, and between private and public. Envisioned as part of a commons, surfaces become a political imaginary as well as a material aspiration and an organising tool (Chatterton, 2010), not just the public-facing boundary of exclusionary property. Chatterton argues for the commons as a key tactical repertoire in the struggle against spatial enclosure and privatisation, and surface inscriptions demonstrate a scenario of social production and collective authorship for such a project. Surfaces unlock the power regimes inscribed in private property, while simultaneously triggering property’s social function through their reluctant or willing acceptance of signs and inscriptions. Graffiti exposes the conventions of private property again, and again, and again, until it turns property into a precarious commons, a permanently temporary communal space, more visible than any certificate which designates the property’s exclusive privacy (Dickinson, 2008). In the words of Alison Young,

The persistent acts of mark-making that constitute situational art enact a legality in which citizens are authorised by adaptation and by proximity rather than by use or ownership. In each act of installing a situational artwork, then, the artist demonstrates a way of thinking not only about the image of the city, but also the city as image, and an image crucial to the foundation of a public city. (2014, pp. 56-57)

Surfaces are therefore the bearers of damage to private property, but they are also the enablers of a public formation, a volatile space of public usage which functions despite, or regardless, the legal severity of ownership. Surfaces are privately owned, but publicly used, in public sight, like an open-source book of urban production and participation. Layard describes a similar situation in the legal allowance of communities and locals to envision their public spaces through the Localism Act 2011, which enables residents to shape neighbourhoods in their own image (Layard, 2012, p. 262). Urban surfaces are also shaped in the image of city inhabitants, some by legal provision and others from personal impetus.

The cultural force of the property ownership model is its clarity, certainty and order: “the visible geographies of property (the maps, fences, signs and so on) give a reassuring legibility of property” (Blomley, 2004, p. 14). What happens on surfaces, however, is a complexification of this certainty, whereby property and its marks become ambiguous, uncertain and challengeable. In fact, this lack of stability is the clearest strength that surfaces possess, as they can and will keep transforming. This makes them more resilient and ultimately impossible to control by any single discourse, be that of private property or urban order. This understanding of surfaces resonates with Keenan’s characterisation of space as movement and becoming, as never finished and constantly performed, as full of internal conflicts and not possessing any single identity (Keenan, 2015, p. 42). Surfaces enable a heterogeneous experience of property, which becomes malleable, subversive and politically productive in its support of alternatives (Keenan, 2015).

6. SURFACE CONFLICT IS SPATIAL JUSTICE

The struggle between bodies to occupy a specific place, at a specific time, is defined by Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos as spatial justice, a form of spatial tension that keeps bodies moving and generates territories. Other scholars have written about spatial justice as a form of critical spatial thinking, among which most notably geographer Edward Soja and the Los Angeles School of Urbanism (Soja, 2010).

Closely related to Lefebvre’s radical ideas about the right to the city, Soja theorised spatial justice as a tool to spatialise political debate and social struggle, and to advocate for equitable distribution of resources and services. Space is socially produced and can therefore be socially changed, a process which is apparent at surface level through struggles over surface occupation. Inscriptions as bodies, coatings as bodies, the buff as a body, advertising and dominant neoliberal architectures as bodies, abstract and coloured bodies, all fight over surface occupation in the same place, at the same time. The thing about surfaces is that multiple bodies can occupy the same space at the same time, and can co-exist in parasitic, belligerent or agreeable terms. Surfaces allow for multiple occupation because of their specific type of spatial depth, which concentrates materials and expressions within broad two-dimensional spaces. The fight for visibility and territory could then be read as a form of surface justice, with inscriptions as bodies performing a complex, fluctuating occupation:

Bodies carry law and space, indeed generate law and space, through their moving on the lawscape. Just as any surface, the lawscape is tilted [and, just as any lawscape, the surface is tilted]. Bodies fall more readily onto other bodies, and the sliding is more easily allowed by the terrain. Some bodies weigh more than others, and are more powerful than other bodies and force the latter out. The conflict of bodies carries on, mostly on unequal footing. (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, p. 192)

Inscriptions generate territories, they repeat and invent norms and they set up habits — all of which become legal modulations. Surface territories are not only material and cultural artifacts, but they are also political achievements, as they communicate and convey meaning about a variety of different claims (more on the functions of territory in Delaney (2005). Each new addition to the lawscape mutates, even if barely noticeably, the web of spatial desire around it. Surfaces appear magnetic and matter becomes attractive, they oppress and they enable, as spatial justice unveils at surface level. The right to occupy the same space at the same time must be fought for, so there will be surface treatments and cross-overs, discrete subversions and dominant pictures, in an ongoing fertile battle. While there is conflict, justice is encouraged, because conflict is movement, change and inclusion, and conflict is just. Conflict can be interpreted as the spatial justice of the surfacescape. Solve the conflict through apparent consensus, and the lawscape becomes a dictatorship, by excluding, censoring and silencing attacks against its precarious order. Embrace the surface conflict, and you are looking at the continuous making of surface spatial justice, in its thickly layered, political displays of entitlement and exclusion.

When alternative claims to property overlap, surfaces emerge as sites for productive conflict. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos speaks about the violence of space and argues that all space is violent, because only one body (or assemblage) can occupy “a specific place at a specific time” (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2015, p. 198; Blomley, 2003). I suggested that surfaces are nevertheless able to tolerate multiple occupation, as they keep on public display their archives of challenges and impositions. Surface bodies can outwrite, obscure or sanction each other, and the process can be violent, but this continuous tension and lack of resolve is the very bloodline of surface production and participation. What would the city look like if these multiple and overlapping property claims were formally acknowledged? (Blomley, 2004, p. 155). Acknowledged by whom, one must ask: by councils and governments, by courts and legislators, or by individual property owners?

Acknowledgment enables power over the acknowledged, it implies entitlement and allows one to define and control its object of recognition. It happened when graffiti was acknowledged as an art form, setting the stage for the development of overbearing sanctioned paintings, and it happens every time an independent, outsider, or underground culture becomes legitimised and included in the mainstream discourse of, for example, the creative city. If all existing inscriptions and their spatial claims were legally sanctioned, there would appear a new visual language staking claims illicitly, and keeping the politics of the urban edge alive and kicking.

The surface lawscape is legally suspended between the protection of within and the regulation of without. The law compresses surfaces until a point of complete reduction, where they ideally become no more than planar borders, frictionless transition points between two regimes of control that were instituted and are managed by a single system of governance. The thinner the surface, the less problems it poses, as its materiality disintegrates, its visuality is restricted and its embodied presence is obliterated by urban territory regimes. The border as concept, as legal threshold between two qualitatively different spaces of here and there, of public and private. The paper sheet that exists only conceptually, to demarcate its public and private sides, and to reject any subversion or contestation.

However, just like sheets of paper are material objects and not just bearers of inscription, borders are never pristine lines of demarcation and exclusion: they are loci of contestation and tangible physical conflict, sites of materiality which become activated through social production. With each meddle, surfaces swell, they become larger and meatier, and they cumulate and stack every addition and reclamation.

“Surfaces become complicated for the law because they form interstitial repositories of potential, of the neither public, nor private, of the legal and spatial ambiguity of threshold spaces, neither within, nor without” (Brighenti, 2010). The thicker the surface, the harder for the law to issue comprehensive mechanisms to control it, and so surfaces become a third type of space, in-between the public and the private.

Open to access and vulnerable to conflict, surfaces as commons are sites of tactical engagement and spatial co-production, where censorship and exclusion are co- designed out of the picture. Every protective coating gets nailed by a tag, and each tag is overwritten by another, which then gets cleaned by the buff, which is covered by a billboard, which is replaced by a mural, which in turn gets tagged and restored and tagged again. Exclusion prevention through multiple co-design; plural inscriptions designing out the single authority; spatial justice through ongoing conflict. Temporary concessions, with no resolution in sight.