Los Angeles boasts lowest homicide rate in 40 years

Los Angeles boasts lowest homicide rate in 40 years
Emily Henry | 1-4-2011

The LAPD reported a total of 297 homicides in the city this year, making it the quietest year for murder since 1967.

“I am proud to announce that last year the City suffered fewer murders than at any point since 1967," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa during press conference. "This is not just a year-end statistic; it is perhaps the most powerful statement on the state of our city and our Police Department."

More than 40 years have passed since the total number of homicides in the city equaled less than 300.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck hailed the men and women of the police force for their part in homicide reduction, but added: "There are more lives that can be saved. Working together with our communities, the LAPD will be committed to doing just that in 2011."

The drop in homicides represents a five percent decrease since 2009, and a 22 percent decrease since 2008. Murder rates have continued to fall in the past few years, declining by one third since 2007. With fewer than 300 murders in 2010, the city has experienced a 75 percent drop in homicides since 1992, when murders peaked to 1,092.




Homicides have been decreasing throughout the county, with a total of 596 murders in 2010. The year previous, 2009, saw 739 homicides in L.A. In 2008, there were 879 murders and in 2007 there were 939. Factoring in population, 2010 represents the lowest homicide rate per capita since 1964. In 1992, the most recent peak of violent crime in Los Angeles, there were 3.09 homicides per 10,000 people. In 2010, there were 0.74 homicides per 10,000 people.

“Even during tough economic times, we have kept our sights on a more hopeful, promising and safer future and the statistics once again shed light on a much brighter outcome for our City," said Villaraigosa. "Our unwavering commitment to public safety has yielded tangible results and has saved lives.”




The LAPD Valley Bureau saw the greatest reduction in homicides, with an 11.76 percent drop since 2009. The Central Bureau, however, reported an increase from 93 to 95 killings in the area from 2009 to 2010.

Although the year ended well statistically, a slew of murders around the Christmas period included four killings on Christmas Eve and five murders on Christmas Day. Both 2007 and 2009 had fewer murders on Christmas Day, with 10 murders on Christmas Day in 2008.

Statistics and graph from LAPD Online.

The Place Making Dividend (La identidad del lugar )

The Place Making Dividend

22 December 2010 - 2:29pm

Author:

• Edward T. McMahon

Edward T. MacMahon of ULI explains why cities and towns with unique character have an economic advantage over the sameness of chain stores and malls, and why people should fight to preserve and create a sense of place.

In June 2010, the technology giant Apple finally opened its first store in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The grand opening was the culmination of a saga stretching back two and one half years to when Apple bought a building that formerly housed a women's clothing store.
It took Apple eight months to build its new store, but it took them more than twice as long to get design approval (19 months) for the new building which replaced the former clothing store. The protracted design review process began when Apple proposed their standard (off-the shelf), modern façade (they are, after all, a high-tech company) that they use in suburban stores all over the country. The Georgetown Design Review Board balked at this and reaped a heap of criticism for letting historic preservation stand in the way of retail progress.
The new building, which is now complete, looks pretty much like dozens of other historic commercial structures that line Georgetown main commercial thoroughfares. Some may think the façade is bland. Others will say it fits right in. Whatever you think, one of the things the new design proves is that when a chain store developer comes to town it generally has at least three designs (A, B, or C) ranging from Anywhere USA to Unique (i.e., sensitive to local character).
According to retail consultant, Bob Gibbs, "which one gets built depends heavily upon how much push back the company gets from local residents and officials about design and its importance."
While the Apple store owners were no doubt frustrated by the community's demands and the design review process, they will assuredly do very well in their Georgetown location. As local blogger Toper Matthews said, "Most simply won't notice the building's architecture at all and will instead hone in on the toys inside."

The Apple Store in Georgetown. Image courtesy of Flickr user trekkyandy.
Georgetown is one of the single best retail locations in the nation. Why? Because the historic neighborhood is one-of-a kind. It is charming, walkable, and filled with tech savvy young adults. Georgetown is the kind of neighborhood that provides "a place making dividend." This simply means that people will stay longer, spend more money, and come back more often to places that attract their affection.
We sometimes forget that every building has a site, every site has a neighborhood, and every neighborhood is part of a community. Georgetown is a successful retail location primarily because it has a unique sense of place. What would happen to the Georgetowns of the world if every chain store operator could build their standard, off-the-shelf building? Georgetown would simply cease to be a special place. It would lose its place-making dividend. Place is more than just a location or a spot on a map. A sense of place is a unique collection of qualities and characteristics – visual, cultural, social, and environmental – that provides meaning to a location. Sense of place is what makes one location (e.g., your hometown) different from another location (e.g., my hometown), but sense of place is also that which makes our physical surroundings worth caring about.
Land use planners have spent too much time focusing on numbers: the number of units per acre, the number of cars per hour, the number of floors per building, and not enough time on the values, customs, characteristics, and quirks that make a place worth caring about. Unfortunately, many American communities are suffering the social, economic, and environmental consequences of being places that simply aren't worth caring about. The more one place (one location) comes to be just like every other place, the less reason there is to visit or invest.
Just take tourism, for example: the more a community comes to look just like every other community, the less reason there is to visit. On the other hand, the more a community does to enhance its distinctive identity, whether that is natural, cultural, or architectural, the more reasons there are to visit. Why?
Because tourism is about visiting places that are different, unusual, or unique; if one place was just like everyplace else, there would be no reason to go anyplace. Similarly, when it comes to 21st century economic development, a key concept is "community differentiation." If you can't differentiate your community from any other community, you have no competitive advantage. Capital is footloose in a global economy. Natural resources, highway access, locations along a river or rail line, have all become less important.
Larry Goldman, a leading authority on economic development, has said, 'How people think of a place is less tangible, but more important than just about anything else.”

Where is this? Image courtesy of Flickr user ravenksy.
Today, however, the subtle differences between places are fading and larger regional differences hardly exist. Now, if you were dropped along a road outside of most American cities or towns, you wouldn't have the slightest idea where you were, because it all looks exactly the same: the building materials, the architectural styles, the chain stores, the outdoor advertising.
Building materials can be imported from anywhere. Hills can be flattened and streams put in culverts. We can transform the landscape with great speed and build anything that fits our budget or strikes our fancy. Technological innovation and a global economy make it easy for building plans drawn up at a corporate headquarters in New Jersey to be applied over and over again in Phoenix, Philadelphia, Portland, or a thousand other communities.
Over the past 40 years America’s commercial landscape has progressed from unique to uniform, from the stylized to the standardized. Author Wallace Stegner once said, paraphrasing his friend Wendell Berry, "If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are." We all need points of reference and orientation.
A community's unique identity provides that orientation, while also adding economic and social value to a place. To foster a sense of place, communities must plan for built environments and settlement patterns that are uplifting and memorable – and that create a special feeling of belonging and stewardship by residents. A community also nurtures sense of place by understanding and respecting its natural context, such as rivers and streams, hills and forests, native flora and fauna, but also its community landmarks, whether historic or unique.
This is what heart and soul planning is all about. It is about helping communities adapt to change while maintaining or enhancing the things they value most. It is both a process and a philosophy. The process seeks to engage as many citizens as possible in community decision making. The philosophy recognizes that special places, characteristics, and customs have value.
As Lyman Orton, owner of the Vermont Country Store, and Chairman of the Orton Family Foundation, likes to say, "When a community takes the time to get to know itself, it gains a sense of identity and purpose that informs decisions about the future."
Similarly, for me, heart and soul planning is about helping communities ask the question: "Do you want the character of your community to shape the new development – or do you want the new development to shape the character of your community?"
Given the opportunity, I think I know how most communities will answer this question.

---

Edward T. McMahon is Senior Resident Fellow/Charles E. Fraser Chair for Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy with the Urban Land Institute.

La arquitectura clasica, las tres grandes mentiras

Classical Architecture: Three Fallacies

7 May, 2010 | By Robert Adam

Classicism has been wronged, argues Robert Adam. Although its longevity proves people still want classical buildings, three fallacies about style, relevance and authenticity are used to justify the hostility it receives from the profession

In Europe, the Americas, the Antipodes and even India you can’t get away from classical architecture. It’s been around for 2,000 years and has had an unbroken run in Europe for 500 years. Classical forms are so deeply lodged in our collective subconscious that every time an architect designs a building with a row of columns, square or round, and puts a beam over them, there seems to be something classical about it. Some contemporary architects, like Eric Parry, say this is deliberate, while others, like David Chipperfield, claim it isn’t. Classicism can even be attributed to its antagonists: RoberVenturi claims that Mies van der Rohe was a classicist and architectural historian Colin Rowe famously linked Le Corbusier’s houses with Palladio’s villas.
For all this, 60 years of anti-traditional architectural education have created profession largely ignorant of the history and vocabulary of classical architecture. Although they don’t know much about them, few architects will condemn great buildings of the past. To give their designs some sort of classical pedigree, architects sometimes claim they’ve used classical proportions (often of dubious provenance) or have drawn inspiration from the abstract qualities of a classical building. When dealing with literal new-classical designs, however, there’s little sympathy, and they’re frequently attacked as being ‘pastiches’ or ‘not of our time’.
Justifying this hostility, and fuelled by ignorance, architects entertain three common fallacies about classical architecture. The first is that classicism is just one style. While there is a common ancestry in ancient Greece and Rome, the differences between the renaissance, baroque, rococo and early 20th-century ‘Swedish Grace’ styles (to name only the most obvious) are profound and very visible. Use-types have moved from temples to churches, huts to palaces, and offices to airports. Following the single-style fallacy is the idea that classicism inevitably represents some distasteful political regime that corresponds with one period in its history. But such is the variety, flexibility and ubiquity of the type that it has, in its time, been used to express democracy in the USA, autocracy in Nazi Germany, civic pride in the 19th century, paganism in antiquity, Christianity from the renaissance onwards, and much more besides.

Now, to the surprise of many, the traditional construction at the source of classical design turns out to be the most sustainable

The second fallacy is that, due to its antiquity and origins in ancient building technology, classicism simply doesn’t belong in the modern world. But this can only be claimed if you have some determinist theory of what the modern world ought to be. Classical architecture is a part of the modern world. It continues to be widely demanded and supplied (both well and badly) around the world. It’s never been limited to one form of construction: the ancient Greeks imitated wood; the Romans not only added the arch, but made brick structures look like marble; renaissance domes introduced tension members and the industrial revolution cast-iron; early skyscrapers were classical; and glass walls date back to the 16^th century. Now, to the surprise of many, the traditional construction at the source of classical design turns out to be the most sustainable.

new urbanism in the corviale Rome

Nikos Salingaros presents the case for demolishing a modernist eyesore in Rome and replacing it with a high-density, mixed-use New Urbanist neighborhood.

The Corviale building outside Rome is a social housing block that exemplifies the established Corbusian tradition of treating human beings as battery chickens. It was built during 1972-1982 as a single one-kilometer-long building. It is now estimated to house 6,000 people. Apologists who are nostalgic of Soviet-era social experiments continue to defend its paradigmatic modernist design on the grounds that every resident is EQUALLY oppressed in this inhuman environment, an ideal consistent with totalitarian notions of social equality.

Photo: a depressing view of the front of the Corviale Building.
Apartments in the Corviale Building. (Photo courtesy of Flickr user Matteo Dudek)

I am involved in an architectural revolution that is occurring today in Italy, and which may hopefully spread to the rest of Europe and the World. We are proposing tearing down the Corviale and replacing it with new urbanist fabric consisting of 3-5 storey buildings tightly knit together with pedestrian and vehicular connections, and supported by a network of urban spaces and green on the human scale. This comes as a shock to many Italian readers.

Immediately after the Italian elections of just a few weeks ago, incoming politician Teodoro Buontempo announced that he is going to tear down the Corviale. The Corviale monster (also called the "Giant Serpent") will be replaced by a high-density mixed-use city. At this moment, we have three very nice projects by three of my friends in Italy: Ettore Maria Mazzola, Gabriele Tagliaventi, and Cristiano Rosponi. These very different new urbanist designs offer three responses to the problem of building new urban fabric and replacing existing urban tissue that is gangrenous.
The Corviale plan.
The Corviale site as it is currently planned.

It is worth discussing what these solutions represent within their broader political, historical, and social implications:

1. This is probably the first time that new urbanist projects are laid out in front of the Italian public accompanied by strong political support. Thus far, the press has conspired with the Universities to bury any traditional urban projects so as to be able to deny their very existence. That way, the architectural establishment could continue to live off the deception that buildings and cities "simply cannot be built that way anymore".
2. Mazzola's project is new (2010). Tagliaventi’s project (A Vision of Europe, 2008) was published in magazines and on the internet but was ignored by the mainstream media so that no one remembers it as having existed at all. Rosponi's project (Agenzia per la Città, 1997) was presented to the Italian government about 13 years ago, which then included Teodoro Buontempo in a less powerful position than he holds today, but the design was not implemented and was buried in the cupboard by the succeeding administrations.
3. Having three very different new urbanist projects on the table exposes the second great deception of modernist urbanists: the claim that traditional architects supposedly offer the same tired solution which copies old buildings. This self-serving statement is false. Having discovered the correct mathematical rules for human-scale architecture and urbanism, we can generate an infinite number of adaptive solutions, each one different from the other, yet all comparably human. It is the modernist image-based pseudo-solutions that turn out oppressively similar in their non-adaptivity to human needs.

The Tagliaventi plan.

.






The Ettore Maria Mazzola Plan

.The Cristiano Rosponi Plan

Since all three protagonists are my friends, and I could be involved with the detailed execution of one of the designs when it is chosen, I will not compare the relative merits of these three alternatives. They are distinct in approach and show many interesting differences in implementation. All three are viable alternatives and have valuable urban lessons to teach. Suffice it to say that we welcome having even more new urbanist suggestions on a new Corviale: even a fourth and fifth design of a living quarter on the human scale, just to show the Italian public the rich variety of adaptive design possibilities without the need for any duplication.

All three proposals plan to build one portion of new city, then move some of the residents and demolish the vacated space, repeating this process in stages until the entire Corviale has been replaced. Increasing the eventual total area of habitable space without spreading beyond the original grounds will enable the new urbanist projects to largely pay for themselves.

The Critics
We are facing competition, unfortunately supported by the Italian press as being of comparable value to our more radical proposals for rebuilding, coming from young architects who are still fixated upon formal geometries and propose some superficial changes such as paint, making the wall surfaces look "contemporary", and other palliatives. Those architects haven't learned that the human use of architecture depends upon its basic geometry, not upon surface appearances. It is the inhuman scale of the cement slabs and they way they are arranged that create the Corviale's deadly oppressive environment. The absolutist out-of-scale geometry was wrong to begin with, and that error has to be admitted before the built environment can be fixed. Friendly surfaces are certainly essential, but if placed upon the wrong forms they can never fix the basic problem.

Another argument that has blocked previous attempts to condemn the Corviale in the past as an architectural, social, and political failure is the following. Apologists keep mentioning the "incompleteness"of the project, supposedly needing more investment to realize its initial dream (of course); with just some more money everything will turn into a dreamland of joy and happiness. The planned shops on the fourth storey were never completed; the lovely play gardens were never built. But children are happy to play anywhere they feel psychologically comfortable, yet such spaces are sadly missing in the Corviale. Here, the most basic laws of urban structure were ignored, because urban complexity arises through people's movement, which can never occur on the fourth storey. Healthy commerce develops and thrives from network connectivity. What happened instead is that the optimistically labeled "commercial" spaces were occupied by squatters (and still are). Calls for evicting those illegal settlers ignore that they are merely obeying urban pressures to occupy vacant unconnected interior space. The squatters turn out to be better informed about urbanism than the original architects.

Commerce did in fact develop as appropriate to the Corviale's geometry of dreary and dark corridors. The Corviale is recognized as a thriving center for the narcotics trade, prostitution, and a variety of criminal activities. The business perfectly matches the architectural and urban form. If you want retail commerce and schools, then you simply need to change the geometry.
Photo: another view of the Corviale Building.

Another view of the Corviale Building. (Photo courtesy of Flickr user Matteo Dudek)

Tearing down the Corviale is a great opportunity for human-scale urbanism. But there also exist strong obstacles of a deep ideological nature. I urge readers around the world to watch this battle because the modernists and their political allies could choose to make a last stand. It is not simply an argument about a monstrous and ugly building, but about the monstrous and ugly ideology that permitted such a building (and many others like it) to be built in the first place. Losing Corviale to New Urbanism could well represent the beginning of the end of totalitarian rule in urban morphology, and so for the entrenched ideologues, it's worth fighting to preserve it.

The Corviale was sadly built just at the time when the US recognized that monstrous social housing blocks were an inhuman mistake, a failed experiment on a massive scale. Pruitt-Igoe in Saint Louis began to be dynamited by the Government in 1972, whereas Corviale was begun at exactly this time. It’s a pity that the Italian architecture community did not learn from American mistakes, as it would have saved them a lot of grief. Corviale was called "visionary", a term still used in Italian academia. Urban crimes against humanity are taught to architecture students as examples to follow, and their architects presented as heroes. Severe criticism of inhuman housing projects in Italy over several decades has not made the slightest difference.

If the reader does not mind me quoting from one of my papers, I wish to conclude on a note of warning about the seriousness of the underlying issues:

"Choosing to erect anonymous blocks without the slightest reference to the essential properties of a house, projects are then executed with pseudoscientific accuracy… they have been planned, exalted, advertised, and studied in all the universities. Those projects have been taught as positive examples to students, by architects who have transformed a vision they originally declared to be "ethical" into an "aesthetic" dimension, which ended up as a mix of mechanization and political ideology… Four examples of public housing built in Italy: Monte Amiata in Milan, Corviale in Rome, Scampia in Naples, and Zen in Palermo, were condemned by European urbanists in 1991 as being total and abysmal failures. Nevertheless, 15 years later, those very projects were spotlighted in an exhibition of innovative Italian architecture, which toured the major Italian universities. These examples, wherein similar cases gave rise to opposite lessons, underline that the discipline itself stubbornly sticks to a failed ideology."

-P. Pagliardini, S. Porta & N. A. Salingaros, "Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry", Chapter 17 of: Bin Jiang and Xiaobai Angela Yao, Editors, Geospatial Analysis and Modeling of Urban Structure and Dynamics, Springer, New York, 2010.

Dr. Nikos Salingaros is professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and is also on the architecture faculties of the University of Rome III and the Delft University of Technology. He is consultant to the Schools of Architecture of the Catholic University of Portugal, Viseu, and the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico. Dr. Salingaros is Associate Editor of Katarxis III -- an online journal of New Architecture, New Science, and New Urbanism; the Nexus Network Journal; and the Online Planning Journal. He also ranked 11th in Planetizen's 2009 poll of Top Urban Thinkers.

TECNOCAPITALISMO

El buen uso de la tecnología sigue siendo la clave del futuro de la vida humana en el planeta. Sin embargo, desde hace siglos la rentabilidad capitalista ha impuesto la tecnología aplicada como medida de todo. Por ello, la alternativa radica en su utilización responsable y socializada; en recuperar y continuar las tradiciones que entienden la modernidad como promesa de liberación e igualdad, tal como han sido las construcciones de Konrad Wachsmann y João Filgueiras Lima Lelé o como plantea el pensamiento activista de Vandana Shiva y Rosi Braidotti.
Lamentablemente, lo que hoy hay detrás de muchas de las presuntas arquitecturas avanzadas es la primacía del saber científico-técnico por encima de lo social-artístico. En La ciudad del futuro que publicaba el Ciberpaís del 28 de enero sigue dominando la idea impositiva y deshumanizadora de una tecnología que se pretende autónoma e igual en cualquier lugar, cuando cada sociedad es distinta. Por mucho que se diga, estas arquitecturas verticales no son sostenibles, y estas ciudades no son inteligentes, sino urbanizaciones exclusivas. Por mucho que se argumente, lo que quieren es homogeneizar; su objetivo es implantar una nueva versión de la sociedad de la seguridad y el control; una nueva forma de tecnofascismo que cuele como vanguardia.
Estos proyectos empresariales no ponen en duda el dominio del negocio y del consumo, las exigencias de una movilidad insostenible, la urbanización de lo que queda de campo y de naturaleza, y un gasto energético suicida. Sus imágenes son las de unas sociedades elitistas, que marginan la pobreza que recorre el mundo. La tecnología se sigue pretendiendo imponer con criterios instrumentales por encima de los humanos y culturales y, aunque se presente con nuevas apariencias, aumentará la desigualdad y el riesgo. En el fondo del conocimiento instrumental de la tecnología hay siempre una voluntad de poder que, o se deja en manos de los que quieren dominar para aumentar su riqueza, o se exige que revierta en toda la sociedad para facilitar el acceso a la calidad de vida, vivienda digna y redes de infraestructuras.



Tecnocapitalismo
JOSEP MARIA MONTANER 15/03/2010
EL PAÍS 15.03.10

L'Urbanisme d'avui ben resumit

De lo urbanístico

16.02.2009 -

JUAN CHIRVECHES

E L dios del urbanismo sí que ha jugado a los dados con las construcciones, edificaciones y urbanizaciones. El dios del urbanismo, que en lugar de ente vaporoso es sustancia de ladrillo, ha arrojado los dados de los edificios sobre el tapete del paisaje, y han ido cayendo y se han ido quedando como Dios le dio a entender: sin orden ni concierto; apretados, apelotonados y amontonados unos sobre otros tal como si lo moderno hubiera sido construido por titanes beodos en una tarde de borrachera.

A la buena de Dios. A la buena de este dios del urbanismo que propende al caos. Urbanismo: la noble palabra, el noble concepto que ha sido tan distorsionado, adulterado y manoseado por políticos irresponsables, promotores-constructores sin ética, cómplices arquitectos de estética birriosa o particulares listillos y asociales. que hoy día, paradójica e injustamente, la palabra urbanismo sugiere todo un mundo de sensaciones y actuaciones negativas o fraudulentas.

En las últimas tres o cuatro décadas se ha edificado en toda España de forma tan bruta y tan brutal, en cuanto a la calidad, en cuanto a la calidad y en cuanto a la altura, anchura, largura y caradura que no salimos de nuestro asombro.

La sañosa agresión a nuestras ciudades, pueblos, playas y paisajes ha sido de una violencia sin parangón en los países de nuestro entorno. Hemos sepultado media España con una losa de ladrillo corrompido bajo la que se ha lavado el dinero negro de la delincuencia nacional e internacional; se ha desacreditado, más si cabe, la clase política municipal y regional; se han traicionado alevosamente los modelos arquitectónicos propios de cada región o comarca y se han cambiado por otros de estilo importado, plano, de pésimo gusto, repetido hasta la angustia tanto aquí como en Madrid: igualitariamente igual de feo y uniforme en Cabra, en Jaca o en León. Qué animalada. Conocido es el dato; en los últimos años, año tras año, se construía, sólo en nuestro país, más que en Alemania, Francia y Gran Bretaña juntas, estados que nos superan con amplitud en movimiento económico y renta per cápita, pero también en número de habitantes ya que en conjunto quintuplican al nuestro: España, 45 millones; Alemania, Francia y Gran Bretaña, 200 millones.

Esta locura generalizada e incontrolada ha sepultado vegas protegidas, ha invadido riscos y cerros, ha tapado ramblas, ha roto paisajes, ha cegado perspectivas y luces, ha enladrillado vientos y ha fomentado una ramificada corrupción en los consistorios, infinidad de ellos convertidos en auténticas cuevas de ladrones.

Ha habido ciudades donde el número de viviendas construidas en su cinturón urbano ha superado en un 150% el índice de aumento de su población. Y numerosos pueblos de 2.000 o 3.000 habitantes nos tenían proyectados planes para construir, en pocos años, 12.000 o 15.000 innecesarias viviendas en su término: a comisión cada permiso, claro, para el bolsillo del alcalde y del concejal. Los planes generales de ordenación urbana, en muchos casos, no han sido otra cosa que semillas de papel y letra plantadas en un territorio que, regado por licencias dudosas y no dudosas, dio una monstruosa cosecha de plantas de ladrillajo y cementón.

Todo a lo bestia: a lo bestia la desmesurada cantidad; a lo bestia la ínfima calidad; a lo bestia el mal gusto; a lo bestia los modelos arquitectónicos ajenos e impropios; a lo bestia la reiterativa imitación, grosera y paupérrima, de Le Corbusier.

No se ha construido en España, como debiera ser, entre el paisaje, en el paisaje, con el paisaje, para el paisaje, desde el paisaje y hacia el paisaje, sino, desafortunadamente, contra el paisaje y encima del paisaje. De igual modo, no se ha construido con la ciudad ni para la ciudad, sino, en demasiados casos, contra la ciudad y encima de la ciudad: no continuándola, completándola y respetándola, sino desvirtuándola y destruyéndola.

Casan mal con los centros históricos, y aledaños, de las viejas ciudades europeas o españolas, no digamos con nuestros pueblos, los altos bloques de pisos, la terraza corrida, las paredes ladrilleras, el espanto del volumen excesivo que nos cae encima como si nos sumergiera una ola de piedra en medio de un mar de ladrillo.

En ningún país se ha abusado tanto como aquí de esas intrincadas selvas de bloques de pisos, muy feos y extraños. En vez de tender a que toda la ciudad parezca centro (al menos estéticamente), hemos conseguido que toda la ciudad parezca arrabal. Hemos mutado la ciudad calmada y tranquila por la ciudad nerviosa, ruidosa y espantosa: menudo negocio.

Lo antiguo tiene y trae calma: uno se siente sosegado, hay como una paz en las cosas y en las calles antiguas que se transmite a quien las contempla. Sin embargo, no hemos respetado el modelo de ciudad aquilatado por los siglos. No hemos sabido continuarlo: ¡cuántas calles antiguas hemos desmantelado! Y seguimos. ¡Cuántos edificios con solera han caído y se han visto sustituidos por espantos completamente ajenos al tipo tradicional de la calle!

Se suceden los movimientos artísticos. Lo nuevo sustituye a lo viejo. En literatura, música o pintura la novedad reemplaza a lo gastado, pero no lo destruye. El problema de la arquitectura es que, en más ocasiones que las deseables, lo nuevo arrasa lo antiguo, lo destruye y lo liquida. Lo bonito, y lo difícil, sería saber conjugar lo nuevo con lo antiguo, sin suplantarlo, sin violentarlo, sin montarse encima.

El urbanismo, lo urbano, debiera tender a ser una línea continua en el tiempo y en los modos de la ciudad. Y una línea continua de la naturaleza, del paisaje, de la geografía en la que tal localidad se ubique; y no un punto y aparte como ha venido siendo en los últimos muchos años. Las intervenciones debieran estar tan integradas en el entorno que casi no se notaran. Lo demasiado evidente es, creo, un error. Las mejores actuaciones son aquéllas que de tan tenues nadie repara en que allí se ha actuado artificialmente.

Es lo mismo que aquella mujer a la que alguien dijo en una fiesta: ¡Qué elegante va usted, señora! Y ella contestó: «No, si usted lo ha notado».

Pues igual.

Reprogramando la ciudad

¿Reprogramando la ciudad?
JOAN SUBIRATS 18/09/2008

El título de este artículo puede parecer excesivo, pero he de advertir de que mis pretensiones se limitan a la ciudad, y he añadido prudentes interrogantes. En la Bienal de Venecia de este año, el arquitecto Vicente Guallart, con mucha más valentía que yo y sin interrogante alguno de cautela, ha titulado su instalación Hyperhabitat. Reprogramando el mundo. Mi intención es aprovechar el manifiesto del comisario de la Mostra Internazionale di Architettura que se encuadra en la Bienal, Aaron Betsky, en el que plantea el dilema "edificios o arquitectura", para aportar mi granito de arena a tan ambiciosa tarea.
Hemos de superar esa visión estrecha que prima los lugares físicos y la ornamentación sobre las personas
Por lo que se desprende de los resúmenes de prensa que se han publicado acerca de los objetivos de la Mostra de este año, su planteamiento trata de evitar la tendencia a disociar la labor del arquitecto del entorno en el que se inscribe. Betsky denuncia que la tarea específica del proyecto de edificio, con las limitaciones cada vez mayores que incorporan los códigos técnicos y las condiciones de seguridad e higiene, ha ido reduciendo al mínimo la capacidad de experimentación de la arquitectura con relación a la estructura, a la forma o al espacio. "Una arquitectura que pretenda dar soluciones construyendo es falsa, está muerta. Los edificios son la tumba de la arquitectura". Como provocación no está nada mal, y de alguna manera se alude y se critica la moda de contratar arquitectos que dejan caer sus edificios en una ciudad o espacio con una lógica autista, indiferente a su entorno.
El problema es descubrir cuáles serían las salidas a esa hipotética parálisis autocontemplativa. Y por lo que aparece en los medios acerca de las propuestas recogidas en la Mostra veneciana, no podemos ser demasiado optimistas. Por una parte, se exploran diseños de interiores, de objetos, de muebles. Por otra, se apuesta por la interconectividad entre los espacios construidos y el mundo exterior. En la propuesta de Guallart, todos los objetos de las seis viviendas para jóvenes, con un macroespacio compartido, disponen de equipamiento electrónico, que les permite comunicarse entre ellos y con el exterior. El crucifijo con el Vaticano, la bombilla con la central nuclear. Y como afirmó Guallart al respecto, la paella con los potenciales interesados en su ingesta inmediata o la postergada de los restos que acaben sobrando. El objetivo aparente sería avanzar en la optimización de servicios y la autosuficiencia de cada pieza y de la vivienda en su conjunto, "en pos de una mayor eficacia, del ahorro energético, de una mayor interacción social, de un mundo más humano". El objetivo es ambicioso, ya que nada más y nada menos se quieren sentar las bases de una nueva organización mundial.
Simpatizo con la incomodidad que producen esos edificios icónicos convertidos en la expresión más evidente e hiriente de una arquitectura al servicio del marketing de ciudades, de la ciudad espectáculo o de la "ciudad de pensamiento único", en afortunada expresión de la urbanista brasileña Erminia Maricato. Y concuerdo con la necesaria búsqueda de espacios que permitan encontrarnos. Pero lo menos que se puede afirmar es que la propuesta de Betsky está llena de contradicciones, al plantear este tipo de dilemas invitando a "repensar el mundo" a arquitectos como Frank Gehry o Zaha Hadid, que más bien parecen representar la tendencia que se discute. Frente a las dinámicas económicamente hegemónicas, en las que se prima la hipermovilidad de unos cuantos (los frequent flyer class) y al mismo tiempo el repliegue defensivo del lugar en el que tratan de refugiarse, deberíamos poder postular políticas e intervenciones urbanas que traten, al mismo tiempo, de constituir un lugar común (de todos y para todos), la mayor facilidad para la movilidad colectiva (evitando el sentido de clausura, de exilio de la periferia) y la capacidad de gobierno conjunta de esos espacios compartidos. Y para ello hemos de superar esa visión estrecha que prima los lugares físicos y la ornamentación sobre las personas, y que acostumbra a dar por supuestas las prácticas o relaciones sociales a partir de lo construido.
Esa "ideología espacialista" (como dice Olivier Mongin) ha tratado de defender la idea que la clave de la convivencia estaba en el diseño de los lugares, en la combinación de edificios y flujos. Y sin restarle importancia al tema, deberíamos reivindicar la aceptación de una mayor complejidad conceptual y operativa. Para que los ciudadanos puedan hacerse suyos esos lugares, deben poder practicar en ellos su autonomía, ejercitar su diferencia, hacer reales las posibilidades de solidaridad e igualdad. Y sin empleo, sin formación, sin condiciones dignas de habitabilidad, sin transportes adecuados, sin salud o sin seguridad, ello se hace muy difícil. ¿Se puede reprogramar el mundo sólo desde la arquitectura? Necesitamos espacios, pero espacios practicados, espacios conquistados y vividos. Y espacios conectados. La condición de movilidad para todos es hoy esencial. Sin movilidad ya no podrá haber lugares. Una de las formas más evidentes de desigualdad social en la actualidad es precisamente las grandes diferencias que se generan en la capacidad de moverse, de desplazarse, de salir y entrar. Buscamos sitios en los que permanecer y vivir, pero también sitios de los que salir.
No acabo de ver (quizá por mi propia incredulidad ante esos ejercicios elitistas de aparente renovación conceptual que acaban cayendo en los propios vicios autistas y esteticistas que aparentemente denuncian) que las propuestas de la Mostra de Venecia apunten en esa dirección. Lo que necesitamos es conceptualizar y materializar nuevas aproximaciones a los problemas urbanos (sostenibilidad, inclusión social...) y hacerlo no con una estricta mirada disciplinaria, sino con diálogo y la puesta en cuestión de los parámetros que hasta hoy han impulsado la construcción de la ciudad. Y en un plano más operativo, no podemos desvincular esas reflexiones de la existencia de conflictos, de la necesidad de plantearnos nuevas formas de gobernar las ciudades. Una agenda urgente y exigente de nuevas políticas urbanas y sociales en la que la arquitectura, con sus espacios, edificios y capacidad reflexiva, debe estar presente, en diálogo con muchos otros actores y colectivos.
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Joan Subirats es catedrático de Ciencia Política de la UAB