Projetos Urbanos

The link below leads to the Subtopia forum discussion about the aesthetic respresentations of slums / favelas / shantytowns by artists like Dionisio Gonzales, with comments by architect Lebbeus Woods:
http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2007/11/squatter-imaginaries.html

The work of Gonzalez tricks the eye, making the slum look like an abstract composition of materials, and indeed very spacy streets. The question is raised wether Gonzalez has ever been to a favela himself, maybe he just picked the images from the internet and started cutting and pasting? Aestheticizing violence and poverty is concidered controversial, but somehow Western scholars and artists have become intrigued, almost obsessed, by the visuals of the third world slums. Even though these do not occur in the organized first world, or maybe just because of that.

In the third world, slums are normally considered result of social inequality and lack of planning. Some intellectuals of the West however, have regarded the slums of Africa, India and South America as innovative and alternative forms of building the city, a more “pragmatic” and direct one than traditional planning.

Where does the growing attention for slums come from? Are people triggered by the unjustice of slum removals around the globe, described in Mike Davis´ book Planet of Slums, are they disappointed by the results of slum urbanization projects? Or perhaps after a while some of the first worldeners just get bored of the organized, planned and clean aesthetics in which they live and start longing for something more “authentic” and chaotic? Actually, after taking a tourist tour through the Rocinha favela in Rio, one might get the idea that it is very nice and interesting to live in a favela, despite the drug traffic, poverty and lack of infrastructure.

Publications on the subject vary from very objective descriptions of the problem to rather quick judgements from a aesthetic and almost touristic point of view. Rem Koolhaas may have found his truly “generic city” exactly in the shantytowns. Unlike planned urbanization, the un-planned urban poverty looks the same anywhere in world, being the result of true (unvoluntary) minimalism.

Discussion about the following 3 books on slums:
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London, New York: Verso, 2006)
Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World (New York: Routledge, 2006)
Informal City: Caracas Case, Alfredo Brillembourg, Kristin Feireiss, and Hubert Klumpner, eds. (Munich: Prestel, 2005)
www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/current/27_Beardsley.html

More work of Dionisio Gonzalez
http://fiedler.null2.net/index.php?id=dionisiogonzlez

Forum on favelas (portuguese)
www.arcoweb.com.br/forum/discute.asp?forum_id=28215

“The informal city” at the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale 2007, featuring Caracas, São Paulo and Mexico
www.iabr.nl/page/DVD_Caracas_The_Informal_City

Arif Hasan, The Informal City
UNCHS (Habitat) Regional Symposium on Urban Poverty in Asia
Fukuoka, 27-29 October 1998
www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org/out/siryo/r07.html

Jananese university project on informal settlements
www.informalcity.com

Hungry inhabitants of Gaza invading the nomansland leading to Egypt, where they intend to do some shopping. In the process they leave the Israeli barriers look like a Richard Serra sculpture.

http://subtopia.blogspot.com/2008/01/small-death-in-nomadic-fotress-bossom.html

Known initially as VLP, than informally as Fura-Fila and as Paulistão, the project was notorious between 1997 and 2006 for its gigantic unfinished overhead structures hovering over the Avenida do Estado. The curious name Fura-Fila in portuguese suggests not exactly the solution to the traffic problem as a whole, but rather the temporary priviliging of a group of users, probably for the sake of votes in the Mayor´s elections.

With some adjustments the project is now operational. That is, between the terminals Parque Dom Pedro II and Sacomã, since the trajectory leading to Cidade Tiradentes, at the eastern limit of São Paulo, is not finished yet and will be implemented as a ground level lane instead of flyover.
The vehicles, originally conceived as new generation designs with electric traction, were manufactured similar to existing diesel buses. Celebrated architect Ruy Othake was brought in and suggested to change the color of the blue cladding, covering the flyovers, to yellow.

As to the transport problems I´m not sure, but looking at the urban landscape today there is no doubt:
Something has happened, something extensive and yellow.

www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=399159
www.arcoweb.com.br/memoria/memoria80.asp
www.emtu.sp.gov.br/tiradentes/mapa.htm
http://vejasaopaulo.abril.com.br/revista/vejasp/edicoes/1978/m0113984.html