2023-12-09 19:16:00
The city is an unmissable sight. Flickering lights, streets and avenues, parks and squares make up a wonderful event that reflects all its magnitude, its brilliance and its splendor. Its forms – that beat, that roar, that contain, that exclaim – resemble a human face, that external surface that is inseparable from the inner force that animates it, that contains the before and following, fatigue and hope. .
Cities are not only places in space but also stories in time. In them, meaningful places survive over time where memory and identity appear intertwined.
Reviewing the city in the light of the last four decades implies delving into processes linked to democratization of public spacewith collective participation and dispute of interests towards a desired growth horizon.
In this period we have witnessed the fading of the old urban structure (with its singularity, its compactness, its varied density) in the face of the emergence of new and complex forms of urbanization that express the accentuated social inequalities, the selective provision of equipment in the territory and an extensive and hierarchical, fragmented and discontinuous urban landscape, where the parts are assembled in an ambiguous relationship.
The emergence of highways marked the hegemony of the private automobile and produced new patterns of urban growth. The sectors with the highest socioeconomic level developed under this new paradigm, while the middle sectors did so on the traditional structure and, the lowest, in areas not suitable for habitation.
More recently, a reappropriation of those automobile territoriesgaining the street to public use.
The deconstruction of industrial fabrics, the expansion of the financial economy, the development of new residential building typologies, new forms of commercial distribution, the emergence of new modalities of leisure marketinginvestment in road structure to boost movement and, as a counterpart, the increase in precarious settlements, were characteristic processes of this scenario.
An important step taken has been the reconversion operation of Madero Port, where the city advances on disused port lands, maintaining the traditional character of the old English buildings. It quickly became a fashionable place, with a wide gastronomic offer and, following that, a gradual process of palermization of many neighborhoods, which are embarking on regenerating their fabric with walkable public space.
Democracy of four decades and facing an unprecedented challenge for the political system
Complex dynamics are observed in the extreme periphery, with high land consumption, due to the lower cost of land in edge areas. There the city grew expansively with armored enclaves in which those outside might not enter and those inside did not want to leave. It is regarding the gated communities, with a walled perimeter, linked to the highway network. Examples of this are “closed neighborhoods”, “countries”, “farm clubs”.
At the same time, an important and accelerated commercial transformation It was also carried out on the spaces that the industry left vacant. The new commerce and leisure centers tended to take the form of mega-venues that privileged the use of an efficient connection with the internet and which can be identified in -at least- three types: the “shopping centers”, the “ hypermarkets” and “multiplexes”.
As a sophisticated version of the traditional shopping gallery, the shoppings centers They constitute building complexes that bring together a large number of sales premises within the framework of an artificial landscape that acts as a disseminator of a consumerist message in which architecture is dematerialized in favor of scenographic effects. They have attractive stained glass windows, varied food courts, an air-conditioned environment and careful hygiene of the place.
The so-called hypermarkets They entered the scene to replace the old neighborhood store. They correspond to a type of retail business supplying products of various needs, with a self-service system and large attached commercial spaces. This modality increases the tunnel effect in the movements of its inhabitants, who circulate from enclave to enclave, from fence to fence, from the logic of the private car.
Democracy is not binary
On the other hand, while the traditional neighborhood cinemas closed their doors or were converted into evangelical temples, the multiplex cinema complex and with this began the return to cinema as spectacle, a habit that had fallen into disuse with the boom of video stores. They form a closed public area, intended for recreation, whose main characteristic is its provision of several simultaneous projection rooms.
In summary, cities have developed from the open nature of their plot, where the street, the corner or the square became civic instruments of social cohesion, strengthening neighborhood relations. And in a democratic scenario, cities were embracing their public space, the street as a meeting place, one in which society is represented, which consecrates identity and quality, which articulates the public and the private.
* Architect and Doctor in Urban Planning; 1st Vice President of the Strategic Planning Council of the City of Buenos Aires; www.guillermotella.com / @guillermotella
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