Urban Emergencies

In the newspaper!

2009-05-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

They have changed our text and turned us into a ONG, we find it an enormous honor to be in the paper La Verdad

Presentation 24 04 09

2009-04-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

Presentation 24-04-09

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Open Source House: On the road

2009-04-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

The last 2 months we have gathered a lot information about the manner in which barrios are built. Which in the last 50 years has consolidated to something you could call a tradition of construction which is passed down through word of mouth, based on a trial and error process.
We have learned what the predominant building materials are, where they’re from, and how they are used to build.
We noticed also that a lot of professionals and institutions are busy with creating innovative strategies on improving their housing quality in the barrios, but the dispersal of this information, structurally lacks. A very important issue is that the enormous existing and self-constructed housing stock is absolutely not resistant against seismic earthquakes, long and heavy rainfalls, and structurally lack many other services.
So besides building better new houses, many existing houses are in need of immediate of improvement.

The three questions we got out of this were:

How can you spread knowledge?
How can innovation reach the barrios?
How can you help people reinforce their houses?

Open Source House is an internet based knowledge network. The only problem is that the people for who Open Source House could be useful, in the most of the cases don’t have internet, and if they do would never think of using it for this purpose.
Basically, this means that the information will never reach them.

The proposal: “How to built my house mobile”.

The idea is to make a distinct mobile vehicle which once in a while goes around to barrios with professionals, volunteers and in our case governmental organizations. This mobile should include knowledge, books, materials, toolkits, maps etc.

The collaboration of institutions that will run the mobile-project should structurally be in contact with the international world and for example Open Source House thus, introducing innovations like new materials, construction methods, water and waste systems etc.

Our Focus:

Our architectural assignment will focus on a retrofit-kit to reinforce houses against earthquakes, which is the biggest threat for Venezuela. At the end we want to design a kind of a toolkit which includes all the materials, tools and explanations so people can reinforce their casa or rancho themselves.

Slideshow 3 - Venezuela

2009-04-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

Slideshow - 4

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Halfway Presentation

2009-04-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

The next weeks we will be finishing up the survey and interpretting the data. Almost every survey was accompanied by long conversations, which didn´t speed up the survey but gave us loads and loads of insights and perpectives from the local community.

The 24th of april we´re inviting various groups (Red Cross, Civil Service, Autoridad Unica, Corpovargas), who were involved in the reconstruction to show what we found so far.

Based on what we have found so far in Macuto, and the feedback from the presentation, we´ll propose several in depth interviews in other cities. Basically, we´ll be testing some of the lessons and hypothesis we´ve learned in Macuto, and if they have regional validity.

Tragedia del Mocoties (2005)

2009-04-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

This week is Semana Santa in Venezuela; Holy week. For us a reason to depart from our research area, Macuto, because of a massive inflow from Venezuelan tourists into El Litoral. This means a lot of regaeton, alcohol, litter and crime!

We have chosen to go to Merida (located in the east of Venezuela), due to the beautiful landscape, it being a reknown safe/student city, and the possibility for another comparative case study called Tragedia del Mocoties in 2005.

In the valley of Mocotíes, intense and prolonged rainfall caused several landslides in the Santa Cruz de Mora in 2005, resulting in 70 deaths and a lot more affected.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with the reconstruction of a similar type of disaster, in another part of Venezuela. We will soon post our findings on the blog.

Another fun twist to our trip to Merida was our meeting with a paraglider / aerial photographer. By coincidence he photographed the entire coastline from his paraglider. He has offered to share the photos, and maybe make a trip in the air with us. An amazing opportunity, which we obviously will pursue.

Survey

2009-03-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

We are currently starting a survey, which you can download in the download section (it is in Spanish).
The data corresponds to households of addresses in a disaster struck area. The same survey is distributed in the formal as well as the formal area of town. The data will be processed into maps that will reveal certain info on the current, disaster and intermediate situation in Macuto.

Last night (31-3-09) we had a meeting with the committee of housing of the barrio in Macuto (read report: Conjunto de Vivienda), they offered to help us and distribute and pick up surveys, in exchange for recieving all the maps when we leave, as well as adding in a few questions.

Next to the community, we have a meeting with the Red Cross on thursday, who offered to enter areas for interviews etc, which currently are to dangerous for us to enter. In that case they will send in personel to do the survey’s and accompany us dressed in IFRC outfits, which supposedly is one of the few things that give absolute safety in this country.

Materials in the barrios and their origin.

2009-03-29T11:51:00.001-07:00

Materials in the barrio

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Foto Analysis; Excursion Red Cross

2009-03-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

Invasion: A contested form of transitional shelter

2009-03-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

The landslides that destroyed the coastal cities in Vargas, Venezuela, woke up a nation, unprepared for the impact of natural disaster. Although disaster is recurrent in the area, the amount of affected persons drastically amplified, due to the increase of urbanization in high-areas of last decades. When disaster struck, quick solutions were improvised to cope with the situation. Besides many official solutions to provide shelter to the victims, there was one other more unorthodox way of providing temporary shelter, which ten years later still provides highly contested urban condition, namely invasion.

La Tragedia, coincided with the national election to revise the Venezuelan constitution, which - if won - would pave the way, to what Hugo Chavez calls: “a social-democracy of the 21st century”. This attempt to reorganize Venezuelan society, based on an ideological background of equality, social values and a community/state-structured organization, was incipient at the time and many ministries, the national currency, laws, etcetera were being reorganized to fit this project, which ten years later is still in full progress.

When the landslides indiscriminately destroyed poor as well as rich upper middle-class neighborhoods of the cities during the night of 15 December 1999, many people fled and sought refuge with their family, friends or in camps organized by the government called “refugios”. Those who didn’t leave, or had no other place to go, pragmatically, started “invading” the houses of people who had fled. Given many of the houses were second homes of the richer middle-class of Caracas; these invasions were justified within the national agenda of equality, and a newly created decree ambigously handing out contested tenure documents. Also the lack of any other solution, and the limited capacity of camps, contributed to the invasions getting a “temporarily” tolerated status until new plans were made.

While landowners complained, the invasion continued, and it soon became apparent that people from all over the country, and even abroad, had gotten word of this opportunity. Thus many areas saw a complete shift of their population.

Now, ten years later, when driving through Caraballeda - the worst damaged city on El Litoral - you see an interesting image of derelict villas, abandoned hotels and apartment buildings retrofitted with phenomena usually found in the barrio’s like, make-shift red hollow brick extensions, boarded up windows, tangled wires of tapped electricity circuits and political phrases graffitied everywhere. You could say the informal sector dramatically expanded, only this time growing on a preexisting formal urban and architectural form, versus the sequential growth of the “original” barrio. As you might understand the temporal character of invasions does not really apply, and still today an alternative solution to housing has not been realized.

Depending on your perspective, invasions can be described as righteous or illicit, innovative or opportunistic, symbolic of the revolution or just the result of the absence of any other solution. As you can imagine, the contemporary urban condition is highly contested. People who lost their houses say, Caraballeda is dead to them, and supposedly the only way for them to get their house back is to pay crooked cops vast amounts to forcefully evict the current invaders. On the other hand people who invaded proclaim a victory of the socialist state, and claim that Chavez supports their cause.
The question is how one interprets private property in a time when lives are at stake. Is it possible to manage the temporary use of private property to solve a national humanitarian crisis, and then slowly reinstall its previous and rightful owners? Or is this just a utopian illusion?

Editorial - On Dependency

2009-03-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

At the entrance of  Ciudad Miranda, a newly developed social housing project, one finds a huge banner of President Chavez; both of his arms are raised in a gesture of power and leadership, while  in the background thousands of houses line up in an military‐like  repetitiveness . In a cartoonish perspective the banner seems to say: “The houses are here. We’re saved! ”. Funny at first glance, the image also raises questions about the implications of social  governmental projects.

Putting too much emphasis on the leader may turn him in to an even further romanticized  figure in the eyes of the people ‐ following in the footsteps of Simon Bolivar, Chavez promises to “free” poor Venezuelans from poverty, hunger, insecurity and hazardous living. To conquer the territory from within and return it to its rightful owners‐ the people. Everyday small victories are achieved all over the country – bridges, roads, dams, housing.

The question: Is the nowadays president the answer to the country’s long term problems? remains a mood point one thing is sure – constrained by poverty most of the people have anchored themselves on his ever‐present image. Underlying the paternal attitude of the state, present in every media available a subversive process of dependency has been slowly consolidating over the years.

By monopolizing “rescue efforts”, the government not only makes international aid and private development difficult, but also directly deters ‘the people’ from taking action themselves. Based on the huge amount of revenues coming from the national oil company‐ PDVSA considerable sums of money are spent every day subsidizing food products, gas, residences, or by simply giving money to people “for free”. This policies go hand in hand with the “central savior” image previously mentioned, and gradually turn aid (or the more ambitious “salvation”) in to a syndrome of internal dependency, of the people to The Government. At the same time all the social awareness messages, also abundantly present in the media tend to become secondary, almost invisible.

The dependency syndrome also influences urban developments. The new residential neighborhoods (i.e. Ciudad Miranda), or “dormitory‐cities” as they are often called here, where houses are offered for very little or no money at all seem to be incubators for dependency. These cities efficiently meet housing shortage but at the same time, due to location – usually outside big cities, inflexibility of the urban plan and standardization become both isolated and dependent on governmental aid. Confused by a sudden fulfillment of their dream through exterior forces people tend to forget all about personal action.

Another good example is the Barrio: this spontaneous process of urbanization, which from the first built ranchio aims at becoming part of the city, and fulfill a city‐related vision of good, is heavily inhibited. Instead of working towards integration most people become anxious to voluntarily achieve their helpless condition – as they depend on it for governmental money. The idea of community is referred to as something that should be, but never is, as individuals profit individually from the government’s help.

After the landslides of 1999 many of the people in the Vargas state were moved to housing projects like Ciudad Miranda. Being unable to rebuilt a lifestyle they ended up selling what they got from the government and returning to the area of the dsaster. Some of them got back to their initial jobs (like fishermen) others simply took advantage of governmental aid during the rebuilding period. The more unusual cases were invasions of deserted private properties, or even building in the high‐risk zones, given people knew they could receive money for moving their houses‐ voluntary victimization. While the formal sector slowly recovered, the informal lost most of its energy profiting the opportunistic economy of the redevelopment.

Just like foreign aid, internal humanitarian actions are meant at helping people in a moment of acute need and just like foreign aid if prolonged beynd a certain point these actions give rise to negative  effects that inhibit development. While helping momentarily they also seem to deepen the artificial divisions of the country. Between left and right, , between reach and poor, between formal and informal.

Diagrams

2009-03-19T17:18:00.001-07:00

Diagram 1: This diagram shows the postdisaster displacement after la tragedia in 1999

Diagram 2: This diagram shows the understanding of communities in barrios. For more information about it see: downloads > meeting5 marisabel pena.

Diagram 3: Processes and main actors involvement in the redevelopment of the Vargas region

Trip into the barrio of Macuto

2009-03-19T16:37:00.001-07:00

From Ranchio to Casa

2009-03-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

Slideshow 2 - Venezuela

2009-03-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Slideshow 2 - Venezuela

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Barrio La Catia film

2009-03-11T15:48:00.001-07:00

Atificial Boundaries: a week in Caracas

2009-03-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

Our first week in Caracas confronts us with the contradictions between a city described by many anxious stories of soaring crime rates, extreme poverty, a harsh political-social divide, and our own experience and observation of a much more subtle and nuanced story of a city full of optimistic, engaged and resourceful people, trying to make sense of a vastly complex urbanization process.

The conceived boundaries that surface during many of our conversations, intuitively give the impression that these boundaries might act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Perceptions driven by fear, blurry statistics (numbers on the murder rates varying from 60 to 500 violent deaths a week), and rigid classifications seem to lead to a voluntary confinement into various sub-groups in the city. Aflredo Brillembourg stated: “How Goethe described architecture as frozen music, Caracas can be described as frozen politics” (UrbanThinkTank, 2005), to this, although related to politics, we argue it is necessary to add the notion that the relationship might not be so top down, but that the individual interpretations of the complex urban condition of Caracas are largely influencing the shape of the city. While the wealthy barricade their homes and shops behind electric fences, the relatively poor confine themselves to their barios to protect their ranchios: gates, barbed-wire, and subversive graffiti capture the image of this territorial struggle. Obviously many of these actions have their political counterpart, but as it seems, a lot might be the product of a vicious cycle of exaggerated stereo-typification.

The insights and understanding we’re creating of Caracas is in various ways relevant to our study in Vargas. First of all the existence of human activity in the Vargas region in a great extent is validated through its commercial relationship with Caracas. Another similarity is the linear orientation of both urban formations, although incomparable in scale, both cities are limited by natural boundaries to a linear orientation. Both linear cities, as well as other cities in Venezuela and Latin-America, have witnessed the large growth of informal self-constructed houses (ranchios) becoming the majority of the housing ‘market’.

Besides these comparisons, an ironical fact about the Vargas region is that the land suitable for construction is all a direct outcome of a natural process of reoccurring landslides from the Avilla mountain range that creates fan-shaped land in the ocean. This naturally raised the question if such a precarious site should even be reconstructed. Needles to say re-habitation of the area was already on its way during these discussions.

Next week we’ll move to Tanaguarena (Vargas), this relatively mildly hit area will be our departure point to explore the whole strip state of Vargas; from the totally devastated and never rebuilt Carmen de Uria, to the historic harbor and commercial center of La Guaira.

Too see pictures of our current adventures click here.

URBANTHINKTANK, A. B., HUBERT KLUMPNER (2005) Informal City - Caracas Case, Berlin.

First impressions Caracas

2009-03-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

Hola,

we arrived 2 days ago in Caracas.. the first two days were really impressive! We looked around a lot and tomorrow we will have our first meetings. We expect they can tell and teach us a lot about this chaotic city. We have allready a little grip on it but this is so enormous that it is impossible to understand everything. This city is not that dangerous as we thought as long as you stay out of the barrios. The centre of the city is a busy and living place.
It is also quite expensive.. we have to think maybe about drink gas in stead of water

Chao grupos Venezuela

Slideshow1 - Venezuela

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Presentation 20 02 09

2009-02-21T05:36:00.000-08:00

Pres 20 02 09

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Slum typologies

2009-02-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

Slum Typologies

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TODAY: Referendum Chavez

2009-02-15T06:58:00.000-08:00

Venezuelans will hold a referendum Sunday on a constitutional amendment which could allow Chavez and all other elected officials to run for re-election indefinitely.

learning different tools

2009-02-15T01:44:00.000-08:00

last week we learn how to use GPS, Arcmap and Space Syntax. These will be tools that we use in venezuela.

Final Destination

2009-02-12T12:27:00.000-08:00

21.27, We're still sitting at the faculty of Architecture, but we finally booked our TICKETs!! So, after many meetings and discussions it's finally Venezuela!! We leave the 3rd of february and return the 22nd of may 2009!

The timeline of Venezuela

2009-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Slideshow of the 1999 Landslides

2009-02-12T07:41:00.000-08:00

Venezuela Slideshow

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Welcome

2009-02-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Dear Visitor,

Our Urban Emergencies group will be studying the case study of Venezuela, with a focus on the Vargas region. In the coming three weeks we will update this blog with our newest developments. Currently we're studying the history of Venezuela and origin of the disasters to get a better understanding of the context we will be entering, this will be visualized in an evolutionary map. We're also starting to create a tentative strategy and work plan for the three month study that will be conducted.

So currently work in progress, but keep an eye on the blog for the presentation and more news....

Hasta Luego,

Team Venezuela

Nina, Alex and Chris