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Click image to enlarge:

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Together with Jan, we mapped all the transmission lines in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In a fragmented city this seems to be the only open space connecting all types of urban fabric, from favela to condominio, from agricultural lands to parks, markets to shopping centres, from highways to stations, from Rio to São Paulo. For us, the space underneath the transmission lines is a cross section of the city. Hundreds of kilometers  of unused space. Can this space become public? Can we use it to create networks? Can it connect places?

On the photomontage is a section of 20 km for both cities, which we analyzed and printed on 7 meters of A3 paper (click the image to enlarge). More images here:

Agriculture and a small market under the powerlines in Cantinho de Ceu, São Paulo

A similar development in Rio. Just south of  the informal market is a big shopping mall.

Cañada Real, Madrid

The biggest informal settlement of Western Europe is the Cañada Real Galiana, about 15 km from the centre of Madrid. It counts 40.000 inhabitants. The settlement was established during the end of the Franco-regime, as many native rural immigrants, as well as immigrants from Northern Africa came to Madrid to work. As European borders opened, immigrants from Eastern Europe came to this area as well, most of them unemployed and with little outlook for employment in the formal sector. Additionally a number of illegal activities, such as drug-trade take place in the Cañada, leading to a growing number of drug users to visit the settlement.

The houses are illegally constructed along a road, leading to a linear morphology of the settlement. There is a lack of services, some of the houses are unserviced by the electricity company, and there are no public facilities such as public transport. The situation with the authorities is tense, as well as the situation among different groups in the Cañada. In 2007 there were major riots after, reportedly unanounced, evictions of illegally constructed houses and shacks.

Recently there has been a growing interest in this area. Le Fresnoy student Edgar Pedroza recently made a film about the Cañada, and Spanish architect Andres Jaque proposed a strategy to improve the conditions in the area.


Some links on the Cañada Real:
Abitare
Design proposal by Andres Jaque
Cañada Real Analysis
El País News Article
El País Article about Cañada
France 24 Documentary
Netwerk News Report (Dutch)


Cañada Real Galiana weergeven op een grotere kaart

Questions on quotations

Urbanization
"The thing called city, is the outcome of a process called urbanization" (Harvey, David 'Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference' 1996, p. 418)

If the city is the outcome of the urbanization-process, then is how urbanism still a discipline? Is the city the outcome of a process, or is the city a process itself?

Planning concepts
"The modernist dichotomies of rural/urban, traditional/modern, industrial/agricultural, religious/secular and local/global, which long ago began to lose their footing, have been pushed into even more extreme contortions by informality. Similarly, termes like [i]decentralization, networks, peripheral, sprawl[/i] and [i]post-industrial[/i], which largely characterize postmodern analyses of the city, are mostly applicable but far from adequate in describing urban qualities that exceed or even precede these concepts." (Fabricius, Daniela 'Resisting Representation - The Informal Geographies of Rio de Janeiro' in Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Summer 2008, 16-17)

Is the informal a quality of the city?

Urban Inhabitants
"It is strange that those with the least money inhabit the most expensive commodity -earth-,; those who pay, what is free -air." (Koolhaas, Rem "S, M, L, XL" 2005, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, p.1253)

Does this account for all cities? Is the city inverse concept if the rural?

City Sense
"The city is an instrument of metaphysical function, an intricate instrument, structuring action and power, mobility and exchange, societal organizations and cultural structures, identity and memory. Undoubdetly the most significant and complex of human artifacts, the city controls and entices, symbolizes and represents, expresses and conceals. Cities are inhabited excavations of culture, exposing the dense fabric of societal life." (Pallasmaa, Jahuni 'Encounters, Architectural Essays' 2005, Rakennustieto Oy, Helsinki, p. 142)

Pallasmaa is really the anti-thesis of Koolhaas, describing the city as a live and vivid place. Is the liveliness of the city defined by the formal entity, the interior? Or is it defined by the informal entity, taking part on the ground? Should we excavate the earth or the air?

Agglomeration
“The concept of agglomeration is next to useless to us as urban designers because we know next to nothing about its form beyond the fact that it is centered somewhere and has boundaries at some rather vague line where agglomeration ends.” (Read, Stephen & Fuchs, Anthony 'From the Creative to the Vital City' 2008, Link)

In line with Koolhaas remarks, what is the difference between the city and the agglomeration? Does an agglomeration have a centre? Is an agglomeration not defined by the filled up space in between multiple centres?

Urban cores
"If new towns are built without a core they will never become more than camps." (Tyrwhitt, J.; Sert, J.L.; Rogers, N. (eds.) 'The Heart of the City: towards the Humanisation of Urban Life' 1979 (or. 1951) Kraus Reprint, Nendeln, p.165)

Do informal settlements need a core to become more than a camp?

The Five Stages of Squatting

This scheme was used in a lecture by MIT professor Rahul Mehrota. It shows 'The Five Stages of Squatting', as he calls it; the five steps that a Mumbai street vender has to go through to become a more or less established part of the urban domain.

In the first stage the new street vender stalls out his food, goods, or whatever he is selling on some cardboard sheets or on a small carpet. He barely has any products on stock, so that he can easily run away if the police appears. A small number of people get interested in the goods he is selling. After a couple of weeks he obtains a hand full of costumers who regularly come back, causing him to move into stage two. Our friend needs to have more products on stock. If necessary he is able to invest his earnings in bribing the police, so that he can stay in place, and his costumers know where and when to find him. After a while he earns enough to bribe his way into stage three. Our street vender is less flexible, but he is able to bribe the police when necessary. In stage four he expands his business and by offering more products and appeal to a wider range of costumers. By now he is a well-known street vender, but he needs prepare himself for the rain since monsoon is approaching. Therefore, in the final stage our friend builds a small cover and is now an established part of the urban fabric.

Just a brief notion of Rahuls views on the development of Mumbai. Rahul speaks of Mumbai as being a 'Kinetic City', as opposed to a static city. The Kinetic City is full of energy and able to adjust itself to changes. According to Rahul there are no urbanists in Mumbai. How can you develop a city with approximately 18 million residents with no urbanists?

Thanks to Gregory Lee, who uploaded the image at his Flickr-site