Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:09]
A
It is the eve, the exciting eve of our rediscovery of South America. The next morning and the excitement continued. But before us lies the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. As amazing to every newcomer the world over. There's no setting like this for a city. There's no setting like this. Rio de Janeiro is off refer to as the divided city. I disagree. It's not the city that's divided, it's the state that divides the city. There's no setting like this. There's no setting like this for a city. The circus will move to Rio. That's it. London was 2012. Rio is 2016. The people of Rio have the ocean at their front door. Cocopa Cabana B We are using the great global events to catalyze urban transformations and to produce a more co. If you say water city. What, what, what a city, you'll be quite right to show the exact same experiences we've had in East London compared to what we was going through with the favelas is real knowledge exchange the world over. There's no setting like this for the rippers for a city. Welcome to this first episode in a series on Brazil from the LSE Review of Books podcast. I'm Cheryl Brunley. LSE Cities and the Alfred Herrhausen Society recently held their annual two day urban age conference in Rio de Janeiro. 70 speakers, ranging from urban planners, politicians and academics, came together to discuss city transformations, bringing in a range of expertise on design, governance and finance. Famous for its beachside neighborhoods, urban rainforest and electric party atmosphere, Rio de Janeiro also grapples with some harsh realities as a high level of violent crime and stark inequalities loom large. Meanwhile, the rapid urban transformation experienced in recent years has left many feeling unsettled about the pace of change, while those in charge argue that it's securing Rio's future as a modern city. Ricky Burdett, director of LSE Cities and architectural advisor to the London 2012 Olympics, talks more about Urban Age and how it drew upon its setting in Rio. We have at the heart of the Urban Age one fundamental intellectual project which is understand the relationship between space and society in cities that are changing at very fast speed throughout the 21st century. We've been doing this since 2004. We've been to 12 cities. The first was New York, last year was London and this year was Rio de Janeiro. We focus on a theme which is the transformation, the physical transformation of the city. We then moved into a panel that looked at social impacts of these big changes. Basically what happens to those at the bottom end of the scale and whether cities are becoming fundamentally more unequal as they grow. Answer is yes. We had a session to frame all this with very specific presentations by the deputy mayor of Barcelona on Barcelona critic on Mexico City. I gave one on London. And then the city architect talked about Rio de Janeiro. And we have a secret. We have a secret in Barcelona. That's why Barcelona, when you go to Barcelona, even though we are in trouble, you don't see much trouble. The secret that we have is that Barcelona was, still, is and will be a social project. This image, which is really what London is about, this is actually much more London than anything else that we showed you. And it's not Barcelona. You saw that beautiful, sexy picture of Barcelona a moment ago. It's not Paris. It's a mess. It's a complete mess. It's an organic sort of mess. It's not planned. But what is important is you see the River Thames winding its way east. And this was of course, the backbone of the economy of London. My name is Washington Fajardo. I'm in charge of the heritage of the city of Rio de Janeiro. And I'm also a special advisor to the mayor, Eduardo Paez. We are facing new social conditions, new economic conditions, and now in the age of the information, this process of changing are becoming faster and faster. So the city as physical environment needs to. To be adapted to these new conditions. We moved through a series of examples around the world of retrofitting, as we call it. How do you fix, in a way, what you already have? And different projects literally across the world, from the Far east, from Mumbai through to Hamburg in particular, which has done a lot of sort of important change. What is urban transformation to you? And can you put this into the context of Harfin City? In terms of Harfin City, it means creating not only a waterfront at the River Elbe, but also in the core of the inner city, what we call a new downtown. Residential and working spaces, cultural spaces, universities, schools and public spaces are finely grained. They are, so to say, mixed versus very intensely. And the project of Hafon City is probably the world's project with the highest degree of mixing of functional uses. And the second day we switched to really looking at Rio itself. But we framed it with an important introduction which links, of course, London to Rio in these years under the theme of city transformation, which is the Olympics. We had the Olympics last year, so we're dealing very much with the legacy. Rio will have it in three years time and is beginning to think about that. So we framed it with Tessa Jowl, who was the post minister for the Olympics in London, still an mp, and the people responsible for delivering the games in Rio, but in very much an urban context. And there is a brutality about mega events that we should be under no illusion about. I remember asking the chief executive of locog about 3 years ago what happened after the closing ceremony. He said, the circus will move to Rio. That's it. London was 2012, Rio is 2016. You've got to create a new economy and sports and entertainment are a big, big part of that economy. At the same time, the city has to work for people and the real human needs that have to be address and that economy that you're building or trying to regenerate or trying to expand that economy has to serve those human needs. I'm Anthony Williams and I'm the former mayor of Washington D.C. i think here the discussion today and about how the different cities, Rio, the Netherlands and London are balancing this I thought was fascinating. You know, there's been a lot of negative experience of bold plans going awry and being very destructive of the city. So something one has to do very carefully and I think this conference is doing to explore how large scale change and urban transformation can be done in a way that promotes a city that's physically, economically and socially inclusive. Andy Altman is the former chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company. So bringing 40 planners, politicians, analysts, academics to talk to people in Rio to show the exact same experiences we've had in East London compared to what Rio was going through with the favelas is real knowledge exchange. And I think has an impact at two levels. One is literally just changing the terms of the discussion. That's not just an academic ivory tower thing. It's actually saying, oh, we can actually talk about the use of a mega event like the Olympics to actually improve the health of people. Well, frankly, in Rio, no one had thought of that. And that's exactly what the whole politics of the legacy of London Olympics is about. So that was useful. We are using the great global events to catalyze urban transformations and to produce a more equal city. So it's very important to see the specialists and other city experiences to, to help us in that process. And then we had an afternoon session which was extremely rich with all the major actors in the city, which was, to be fair, very dynamic, I mean, very confrontational, not easy going at all. Rio de Janeiro is often referred to as the divided city. I disagree. It's not the city that's divided it's the state that divides the city. When the state distributes its resources unequally, it segregates the city. My name is Jaelyn da Silva from the Favela Observatory. The southern zone of Rio is much better to live in because the state invests so much more there than anywhere else. You need to create mechanisms to eliminate territorial divisions and you need to create a more holistic and a more global understanding of the long term objectives. You know, it's a city which is really profoundly unequal in terms of what it's like living in a sort of favela with hardly any light and people crammed to a room not very far from beautiful modern apartment blocks made out of shining concrete and steel just next door. And how these two worlds come together is really what was being discussed in Rio. There are lots of guards now in the newly pacified favelas. Pacification, which has liberated the favela residents from the despotism of the traffickers, has also made them safe for gentrification. Our local tour guide in Rocinia yesterday told me that rents in some cases have tripled after pacification. I met young Europeans and Americans who are living in Cantagalo and enthusiastic about the great views and the vibrant country cultural scene. All that is wonderful. The favelas need to be integrated into the rest of the city. As long as the young Europeans and Americans and the young Brazilians from outside the favelas don't push out the people who've been living there when it was just a dangerous slum. We were there at what is undoubtedly one of the most difficult moments, even in the democracy of this country of Brazil, because only a few months earlier, and while we were there, the tensions against the mayor, against the governor, who then didn't show up because basically this house is being picketed, tell you something. That something is so foreign to us. So to be able to provide that sort of sounding board, which is what the IRC has done there, is, I think, very, very significant. So it's not just for us. Hopefully something comes out of them for them. At urban age, I was one of the only people from civil society there. Most of the other people in the panel were government officials, which is why it looked like I was the only one saying what was really happening and not what the officials wanted to hear. At most conferences, an opposing view wouldn't be invited, but people were treating me with a lot of respect there. I wasn't cursing anybody. I was just proposing a different form of public management at a second level. It's actually, I think on the ground political influence. I mean, in the sense that lessons will have been learned and therefore have an impact in that way, in the way that the financing of some of these projects put together, the design of some of these projects will be different as a result of the exposure to these many different ideas put on the table by the conference. For me, to be here in Urban Age is very interesting because it's an opportunity to put in perspective what some cities in Colombia are doing. And especially for us in Medellin, we share a lot of things about Rio de Janeiro because we are not the same Medellin and Rio, but we have problems of inequality, poverty, and both cities are working very hard to improve some precarious areas and so on. So it's a moment to learn and to talk and to do some network. And I think it's very useful for us generally with these events. I'm always blown away by the quality of the presentations. I suppose in the last session, what struck me the most was the Sao Paulo presentation. The quality of understanding the different layers of problems, but also the clarity of recognizing that the city supported a set of economic logics. And unless you really understand that, you're not going to deal with economic inclusion. So, yeah, the presentation by Fernando from Sao Paulo Municipality was really gripping. Tessa Jowl and I'm here from the uk. I'm Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Coast. I think it's been a wonderful conference with very rich discussion. I think what stands out for me is the focus on the integrity of communities and finding new forms of governance that empower local communities in a context of transparency, a war on corruption and a culture where the, if you like, the elected powerful elites listen to the voices of local communities. That was Ricky Burdett and a host of conference speakers on Urban Age and city transformations. Discussions at Urban Age also focused around this idea of circumstances, city ness, which has been described as the social and creative energies of urban forms. City planners from New York, Sao Paulo and a miners town in Chile called Antofeggiosta highlighted the delicate balance between improved quality of life and the maintenance of a city's character. Amanda Burden, Silvia Torres and Maria Olivia Ricard have more. My name is Amanda Burden and I'm the Planning Commissioner for New York City. When people think of New York City, they think of its skyline, its density and its skyscrapers. But really what makes New York City great are the vibrancy of its streets and public spaces. And in fact, we always judge our project by how a street Feels I bring back many, many things to New York, where I learn things here. And when you learn something that might work in your city, you try it. I thought the whole experiment with social housing in Sao Paulo using abandoned warehouse space was a very good use for transformation of a city and making it more equitable. Sao Paulo holds the largest amount of people living in meager housing conditions in risk areas. And housing politics are harder to implement due to its land prices, which are the highest in the state. So the only way to provide houses for the people who need them the most is through government subsidized funding. Even the most developed countries have large flows of migrants. Now. The urban impact in so Paulo will be different from others in the sense that we don't possess either the previous planning history or the means to act. In some areas. That requires a developed dialogue that hugely delays projects. It's a demand that we. Something that for example, in the United States is much easier to accomplish in New York, Germany or the Netherlands. However, in so Paulo, we're still paving the way for it through this joint action of opposing parties, limiting the ideological influence, which I believe will allow us to reach our goal in a faster way way. And I learned certainly from Antofagasta, that the planning should take place in a very slow but deliberate fashion, bringing people into the process. I thought that was very important. As you pointed out, especially when they were talking about density, that there is a difference between cities. And you pointed out in Latin America it often means that densely is undesirable. Well, and it used to be that way in London too, 15, 20 years ago, or in New York 30 years ago. Living in a neighborhood of vulnerable people, where you had to live in a building was always the synonym of chaos. And we are there now. And what we have to do is prevent chaos or mitigate chaos. And that means again, getting in the blood of the social tissue and trying to take change the way people relate to themselves. And how can we build this trust between the public sector, the private sector and the civil society? Even though our plants are big, we try to focus on the neighborhood and the human scale. And responding to New Yorkers needs is at the center of our approach. The social networking that you have to build to prepare to grow as a city and develop an income has to do with many factors. But if you're not prepared on values, on civic values and participation, then we will always be afraid as individuals and you know, moving my house, getting into a building, or I have to use the subway, or as politicians, as the fear of change and what will people do? Or the fear of having them participate? That's all for this episode. Join us next month for the second installment in our series on Brazil as we delve deeper into social inequality in Rio, uncovering the homegrown movements that have transformed life in its favelas. With LSE's Sandra Djobchelovic and more experts and leaders from around the city. We give special thanks to DJ Swono and the Preluder Archives for the music and sound used in this episode. You can find more podcasts and daily book reviews on subjects ranging from gender to climate change. I'm Alice E. Reviewofbooks.com Of course, at a conference full of urbanists, one is never short on material about the wonders and the complications of city life. I'll leave you with more city chat from Urbanage. I'm Cheryl Brumley and thanks for listening. The city has never been a more exciting place to live. The great urban writers know this. Balzac, Dickens, Calvino know this. If you read their books, you might understand why people continue to live in cities. A migrant from Bahia or Bihar will feel the same thrill and pride in his city as he walks along the beach in Copacabana or Marine Drive as gringos like you or me might, they want to be part of the celebration. A good city is one that is good for people, which is very obvious. But unfortunately, we have been making cities more for cars and for people. My name is Enrique Bernalosa and former mayor of Bogota. More than half the people in developing countries don't have cars and they walk. So if we make cities more for people, more for bicycles, we also make cities that are more egalitarian. There is more inclusion, more social justice. The miracle to me is that cities are always in a process of transformation. And the miracle to me is that they actually retain any kind of identity over time. You know, the notion of a Rio de Janeiro or a London or a Seoul, they persist down through time. And when I think about transformations, it's really that continuity that isn't simply a matter of being located on the same physical site. But there is an essence. There is a DNA, there is a something, there's a realness, there is a New Yorkness.