Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In 1949, in the inaugural speech for his second presidential term, Harry S. Truman proclaimed an agenda of collaboration between the United States and the underdeveloped areas of the world, aiming to reduce poverty through development driven by U.S. knowledge and technological advances. In 1973, Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank, called for the eradication of absolute poverty, promoting strategies that would achieve a more equitable distribution of the benefits of economic growth. Both international agendas included housing policies to achieve their objectives. This article explores the role of architecture and urban design in these programs by reviewing housing developments built in cities and landscapes in Latin America, Africa and Asia in the context of the Cold War.   In both historical moments, assisted self-construction was used to reach populations with low economic resources. On one side, among the many criticisms made to these operations was the social segregation they would generate. On the other side, we will see how these developments would articulate urban fragments that, through their design and community equipment, would support the social growth of the inhabitants. The first reviewed moment corresponds to the beginning of the international promotion of self-construction policies by U.S. institutions; the second is the moment when the World Bank expanded this program globally incorporating, for the first time, the urban housing problem into its agenda. In these two periods, housing was included to promote economic development, as well as to extend the geopolitical frontiers of the first world -led by the United States- towards third world countries.

In the last decades we witness an urban transformation which is characterized by exclusivity. Gated neighbourhoods are being constructed all over the world in an attempt of the middle and upper-middle classes to protect themselves against the other, in this way perpetuating methods of spatial injustice. What is distinct though at the case of gated neighbourhoods is the fact that the exclusion of the ‘other’ is combined with the (self-)restriction of the ‘normal’, while at the same time the concepts of interior and exterior, in reference to spatiality, are being reinterpreted and redefined. In this context the contemporary city appears in new forms that deviate from the Modern spatial normality and the usual correspondences of spatial and social structures. The following questions are explored here: What are the spatial and social qualities of the gated neighbourhoods? And, how has the socio-spatial phenomenon of gated neighbourhoods transformed the contemporary urban space? Based on theory and content analysis of a novel, this paper aims to investigate the ways that the urban landscape is being reversed through the contemporary urban reality of the socio-spatial exclusions.

The border between Mexico and Guatemala results from the geopolitical confluence of two countries with different priorities, generating different ways of organization in the lives of its inhabitants and the people who transit through this zone. This context has created conditions of interaction on what each country consider legal, illegal and punishable, leading to several interpretations of the migratory phenomena. We are facing real contexts that adopt the transit of human beings. Situations that are possible and give meaning to the lives of many people in divided contexts. This article presents an overview of two cross-border locations between Mexico and Guatemala that intend to describe the border zone and the mobility of people as a social phenomenon. What motivates people to move between both countries? and what are the relationships and decisions linked to someone or something being able to move and decide to do so? even more when this mobility means the crossing of a politically delimited border? are some of the questions raised in this article. To respond to the questions raised, I carried out a qualitative approach, which will also allow achieving a better understanding of the dynamics of people who live in these places.

The term ‘regeneration’ has become ubiquitous in urban planning and is often used loosely to describe many urban interventions, including those of a purely commercial nature that renew (and often destroy) urban fabric purely for private profit. There is nothing inherently wrong with development for profit, but regeneration should imply something subtler, complex and multi-faceted. If, as urban practitioners, we ignore the social dimension of urban change and fail to redress existing imbalances then we are complicit in perpetuating social inequalities. Urban regeneration should be driven by an agenda to improve social wellbeing. As practitioners we have a moral imperative to address inequalities and develop design strategies to remove barriers to social integration, real or perceived. On the surface, London appears to be a multi-cultural city without the political or stark socio-spatial divisions that are seen, for example, in the banlieues of Paris. There are wealthier and poorer neighbourhoods of course but, due to its history and post war planning policies, most neighbourhoods are socially mixed. The divisions in London, however, are subtler and fine grained. The city is open (and indeed there are few, if any areas that are too dangerous to enter) but perceived barriers exist – invisible lines that divide the city, isolate some of its inhabitants and inhibit social mobility. This paper will look at the conditions that create divisions in London and will examine strategies that can break down the physical and psychological barriers within cities. It will use the Kings Cross regeneration scheme as a central case study.

This paper examines the Falls Road (located in West Belfast) which is a largely Catholic/Irish Republican neighbourhood particularly relevant during the conflict known as The Troubles, which affected Northern Ireland for some forty years from the late 1960s until 1998. During this period and to this day, Falls Road became the heart of Irish republicanism and the most divided street in Western Europe. The human cost of the conflict was more than 3,500 dead. On the other side of the wall is the other street, the Shankhill Road (Protestant and Unionist). This gives a clear picture of the impact of the conflict in the context of street life before The Troubles began. The Falls Road in West Belfast, which runs from Divis Street to Andersonstown, derives from the expression túath na bhFál, which in Irish means "territory of the enclosures". I have worked as an architect and researcher for over a decade in the city on both sides of the wall. This paper examines the typology of the divided street and its transition into a successful example of Irish renaissance culture and urban regeneration. The paper is divided into two parts in which the Falls Strip will be dissected:1- The Falls (lower part of the street), 2-Bombay Street (architect Seán Mackel). I will use Manuel de Solà-Morales' approach to the construction of this street in Belfast as an "urban city of conflict", as a succession of episodes, data, dates, facts, details and events and interpretations and the opening of the street in this case to understand the lessons that can be drawn from a clear typological study of the street in two sections.

This paper interrogates the existing spatial realities of Johannesburg as it was shaped by colonialism and the challenges of providing an inclusive urbanism between the centre, the periphery and the in-between. Johannesburg is a major urban centre in South Africa, and Southern Africa, with increasing economic and spatial inequality. The inherited spatial realities are still evident today; these structural realities are restrictive, unsustainable, and disadvantage communities ecologically, economically and socially. The paper is premised on an understanding that economic inequality is related to spatial inequality. The author draws on the personal lived experiences of being born on the periphery and the limitations of escaping the legacies of colonial spatial planning including the challenges of living on fragmented urban morphology. The author looks at the typology of the segregated post-apartheid township and the negative elements of apartheid spatial planning, especially focused at the restrictions it has on housing, employment opportunities, transport and public space on the periphery in comparison to the centre and how the in-between spaces further perpetuate socio-economic disparity. The author attempts through research to understand the resilience adopted by the Soweto community to have a safe and welcoming place despite the persistence of structural restrictions. The intention is to address the fragmentation and segregation caused by the inherited spatial structures. The planning of colonial cities, especially Johannesburg was based on achieving maximum control. The urban morphology was many times based on policies that organised people through race, class, and ethnicity.  Its spatial planning was defined by separating citizens into different racial groups and economic classes. The rich white people located in the suburbs in the centre and the poor black people located in townships at the periphery separated by wide natural and man-made buffers in-between. The urban morphology of Johannesburg will be studied with a comparison analysis with other African cities which have similar patterns of spatial fragmentation in urban form due to colonial powers. The aim is to observe, compare and propose a defragmentation process towards the transformation of Johannesburg.

This paper discusses the concepts of conflict and border in relation to place and identity reflecting on narratives and meanings of dividing urban and civil borders. It takes the divided Greek and Turkish society living in Nicosia as a case study. The significance of the wall, as an explicit expression of division, is discussed but also overturned by looking at its closure and its permeability when Nicosia’s sealed borders opened again for everyday crossing. The inquiry speculates an alternative path informed by Glissant’s concept of Opacity, Agamben and Nancy’s non-essentialist approaches non-community to look at entangled deep-rooted ethnic divisions and fragments of shared cultures. To inform urban epistemology, two bottom-up examples are analysed using De Certeau’s concepts of everyday life: Home for Cooperation, which is a neutral space in the buffer zone for unified collectively and Occupy Buffer-zone Movement, which has occupied a non-place and transformed it into a public square through grassroots activism. The paper highlights that in order to draw a feasible future of Cyprus, an anti-essentialist acceptance of the multiple and eclectic origins of the context is needed. In this sense, the tangible and intangible meaning of division requires a shift of meaning, from delimitation, classification, separation to a porous element of balance and calibration. The top-down urban models and concept of inclusiveness have been shaken by the temporal civic grassroots communities, and this demonstrates that collective participation fosters the reappropriation of public space, overturning the perception and the experience of the border of differences. This contributes to theorizing a critical and reflective, rather than idealistic, practice of participation in urban design.

The colonialism implemented by the European powers in Sub-Saharan Africa, from the late 19th century until the middle to later 20th century, would fracture its history and its urban territory, leaving a mark that is still visible today in the great regional differences resulting from the macrocephalic organization of the European colonies, and in the urban layouts of some of its cities where racial segregation has given rise to a socioeconomic segregation that is enhanced by colonized thinking and knowledge that resort to European models to conceptualize and codify the city. A codification that the colonizers deployed in their colonial cities in such a way that everything that escaped their understanding and 'ways of doing' city was assigned the code of 'informal'. These 'informal' urban structures in which Africans were confined would become arenas of social, technical and cultural creation and innovation: hybrid urban forms that integrated western and traditional influences. These hybrid cities build today more than half of the urban fabric in some African countries, they are places of experimentation and learning —border thinking incubators— that, however, remain trapped in an inadequate conceptual framework that materializes spatially and mentally between two extremes: the 'curse' and the 'exotification'.

Miami is not a newcomer to the history of gentrification that has reshaped the urban fabric in cities all over the world. Yet a new mega project to be implemented in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood represents a strategic capitalist modification of the city’s previous processes of class-based and racialized socio-territorial dispossession and displacement. As we argue in this paper, Little Haiti’s Magic City Innovation District stands emblematic for a global boom in financialized urban corporate accumulation, which presents new challenges to local communities. We ask, what practical political options does a predominantly poor minority community have in confronting such challenges? Our discussion of Miami’s Little Haiti suggests two conclusions: first, that real estate mega speculation potentially exacerbates politico-social divisions within such a community, subverts its capacity for resistance, and renders it more vulnerable to large-scale dispossession and displacement; and second, that mega speculation exacerbates socio-territorial divisions and inequalities within the fabric of a wider metropolis.

From the early history of Homo sapiens, survival of the fittest depends on co-operation. Humans formed settlements where the hunter-gatherers became warriors, while agrarians became farmers. This created a mutual relationship, where the warriors offered protection in exchange for produce. Later colonial settlements were established by explorers, from Europe, as hunter-gatherers, but they muted into farmer-producers for expansion and then back to warriors for survival. Colonial explorers annexed new terrain using Western forms of contract and title deeds unknown to those who roamed these lands before. The colonizers used addictive substance such as alcohol and tobacco which was almost unknown to indigenous tribes, weakening their morale and opening the door for exploitation. In Africa, as in other colonized terrain, these events left a bitter tension between colonizers and indigenous inhabitants, with a history of slavery, war and racial divide as the long term damage. Legal systems were used to manipulate and control, from the Cape to Johannesburg and in between. This history and its outfall is summarized with reflection on the current status quo which has moved from racial to economic inequality, described in Soweto and Alexandra, two prominent townships of Johannesburg.