Urbanophilia

About the Book

In Latin America, 80% of people live in cities. This figure is even higher in Europe and Asia. Yet most books on urbanism are written for specialists, not for citizens who sense their neighborhoods could be improved but have no clue where to begin. Urbanophilia fills that void: rigorous yet accessible, it is an essay written by an interdisciplinary team of economists, data scientists, and mobility specialists that seeks to turn urban design into a civic conversation. Its thesis—that a city is a verb, that every person who sets foot on the street is making it—has universal resonance, regardless of language or latitude. It offers a perspective from the Global South, which sets it apart from Anglo-Saxon and European traditions in the genre and makes it especially appealing to Latin American, Iberian, and Southeast Asian markets looking for their own models. A book for publishers of non-fiction aimed at active readers: those who vote, participate, gather, and strive to understand the physical world they inhabit.

Excerpt

Over 80% of us, the people who live in South America, reside in cities. In some countries, like Argentina, that figure rises to 90%. This means that 9 out of 10 people—by choice or forced by circumstances—live close to others. Sprawled or overcrowded, in peace or surrounded by conflict, in the center or the periphery, but always with others. Grouped. We don’t even have a universal criterion to define what a city is. While in China the minimum is 100,000 people, Denmark sets the floor at 200,000. In any case, it is always a system of coexistence sustained by an infrastructure, so unavoidable it is scary, so beautiful it can make you fall in love. 

Urban Design as a program of studies in universities has existed for some decades now, but people have been designing cities for thousands of years. As an emergent phenomenon, it has existed since the moment we decided to build one house next to another. From that day on, we have designed cities with every possible sense and nonsense. We have built walled cities to protect ourselves from the enemy, ill-ventilated cities where plagues decimated populations, monumental cities for gods who do not exist or for dead people who cannot inhabit them. We have erected cities planned to perfection—harmonious and symmetrical—and we have also piled stone upon stone, with no well-devised plan, guided by necessity, urgency, and intuition. Right or wrong, we have never stopped designing, building, and inhabiting cities. 

But no design is neutral. Every design is political, and in urban design this is true in a very straightforward way because altering or creating something new in a city changes people’s lives. The impact of those acts of design varies widely and depends, among other things, on who carries them out and how they are biased in terms of class, ethnicity, and gender, as well as on who are the people who benefit from or have to endure them.

Nevertheless, there are some universal truths: for instance, that cities change. They are a verb, not a noun. A constant process of becoming. In fact, we give the name of “ruins” to cities with no people, life, or movement. Every day, when you get out of bed and leave your home —be it by car, train, or on foot to study, shop, or work—you are making your city. Making it in a way which is more relevant to the general ecosystem than if you constructed a new building.

Some other truths can be a bit more uncomfortable: the likelihood that the city where you live has been designed for cars, not for you, is extremely high, and that does not even depend on whether you drive a car or not. The chances that your city is not prepared to deal with climate change and that a heat map might reveal the existence of barely liveable areas are also very high. It is safe to say that many of the people who live in your city do not share your political views; what’s more, they do not agree on what the city should be like. And if you have children, are an elderly person or have some kind of disability, or are living in poverty—in other words, if you are the weakest user—your chances of enjoying the city are sharply reduced. But don’t panic, not everything is lost. 

There is a particular kind of citizen, the one who, aside from inhabiting the city, is tasked with its management. This is, in a way, a job like any other, but it is also an exceptional honor. Given that cities are subnational entities, there is a whole universe of laws that mayors, heads of district, lawmakers, and other civil servants cannot bend or bypass. But the remaining room for maneuver is immense. As is the responsibility. If you happen to be reading this and remember that your monthly income is justified by a certain power that people have entrusted to you, there are some things you need to know.

Every city is the result of a tension between the individual, the civic, and living beings. These elements can be balanced or, better yet, set in motion through political will. The bad news is that things are not as simple as “listening to the city residents”. To begin with, residents are not always right. Some are, some aren’t. Or, what’s worse, they may all be right but want different things. For instance, reducing parking spots to regain pedestrian life is almost always a good idea, unless you ask the handful of drivers who use those spots. Cutting down a tree is rarely justified, but if the plot of land is to be used for social housing that will lower rent in the area, densify appropriately, and improve neighborhood security, then you may have to think twice. Normally, this kind of disputes require a great deal of dialogue, compromises, compensation systems, analyses by professionals from diverse fields, and a fair share of will and good reputation. Many choose to let the clock tick until it is no longer their responsibility. Luckily, you are not one of them.

The good news is there is a minimal feasible urbanism that is also politically profitable. Things that do not require a huge budget and are never frowned upon: lighting, flowerbeds, appropriate lane separation, tree planting, parks, and (not unfriendly) urban furniture tend to work as a guarantee of re-election. There are countless examples around the world. Sometimes the difference between good and bad is settled by drawing a line, usually with yellow paint. 

And then, there are the great things, reserved for those who strive for bronze. We are talking trains, subways, housing, schools, climate change mitigation, the transformation of highways into greenways, and the daylighting of streams. The true urban epic. Yes, it is tougher. Everything must be done beneath a storm ceiling, while above, the winds of national politics are driven by forces of a different kind—much more titanic, obscure and unpredictable. But you can start with baby steps. Making better cities, managing and distributing public access, taking care of residents, developing infrastructure, and enhancing quality of life by all means possible is, at the end of the day, your responsibility. Let’s put it this way: if you want a monument in your honor to be erected in the park, first you need to build that park. 

Fortunately, many other things can be done without requiring a decision—sometimes heroic, other times haphazard—by a mayor. A kind of urban design that is, above all, optimistic. It consists of a series of interventions, large or small, conceived from the bottom up, capable of transforming cities, bit by bit, until they become what they always aspired to be: the best place to live. 

In Tokyo—one of the most crowded cities in the world—there’s a practice called taiken-nouen, in which citizens use rooftops to grow collective vegetable gardens and host workshops on urban farming. Valencia adopted a similar approach with empty plots of land in the city center. In Barcelona, groups of parents that walk or bike their kids to school have mapped out common routes so they can travel together, creating safer conditions.

In the city of Buenos Aires, a group of residents from the neighborhood of Almagro decided to protect a vacant lot where native flora grows by turning it into a natural reserve and a shared courtyard, which helps to lower temperatures, limits the spread of concrete, and improves everyone’s quality of life. Moreover, residents use a Telegram group to exchange worms, compost, wood, and dry material, reducing waste and producing fresh soil for their plants. In Rosario, they have built a community vegetable garden. In Bogotá and Medellín, some streets are closed on weekends to make them pedestrian. 

The actual list is endless. None of these ideas die within the walls of the city where they were born. They are effective because they are generous; they are generous because they can be replicated. And they don’t require much: a flowerbed, a fenceless park, a line of paint, a few foldable chairs on the street, a group of well-located cones waiting for the space they enclose to be used, settled—all waiting for the moment in which there is no choice but to build a better and more permanent infrastructure. It’s dynamic, it’s thrilling. It’s pure urbanophilia. 

Translated by Martín Juan - Edited by Alejandra Rogante