The urban explosion of the last years of economic boom also produced dramatic marginalization, resulting in the explosion of slums in many parts of the world. This polarization of enclaves of mega-wealth surrounded by sectors of poverty and the socioeconomic inequalities they have engendered is really at the center of today's urban crisis. But I want to begin tonight by suggesting that this urban crisis is not only economic or environmental. It's particularly a cultural crisis, a crisis of the institutions unable to reimagine the stupid ways which we have been growing, unable to challenge the oil-hungry, selfish urbanization that have perpetuated cities based on consumption, from southern California to New York to Dubai. So I just really want to share with you a reflection that the future of cities today depends less on buildings and, in fact, depends more on the fundamental reorganization of socioeconomic relations, that the best ideas in the shaping of the city in the future will not come from enclaves of economic power and abundance, but in fact from sectors of conflict and scarcity from which an urgent imagination can really inspire us to rethink urban growth today.
Nagla širitev mest v zadnjih letih gospodarske rasti je obenem povzročila dramatično marginalizacijo, ki je vodila v ogromen porast revnih četrti v mnogih delih sveta. Polarizacija izjemno bogatih enklav, ki so obkrožene z revščino, in s tem povzročene družbeno-ekonomske neenakosti so v središču krize današnjih mest. Ampak danes bi želel začeti s predlogom, da ta kriza mest ni le gospodarska ali okoljska. Je predvsem kulturna kriza, kriza institucij, ki so nesposobne reinterpretirati neumne načine, na katere smo rasli, nesposobne izzvati nafte lačno sebično urbanizacijo, ki ohranja mesta, ki temeljijo na potrošnji, od južne Kalifornije do New Yorka in Dubaja. Z vami hočem le deliti razmislek, da prihodnost današnjih mest temelji manj na stavbah in, pravzaprav, temelji bolj na osnovni reorganizaciji družbeno-ekonomskih odnosov, da najboljše ideje o oblikovanju mesta prihodnosti ne bodo prišle iz enklav gospodarske moči in obilja, ampak iz sektorjev v konfliktih in pomanjkanju, od koder nas lahko nujna domišljija resnično navdihne, da razmislimo o današnji rasti mest.
And let me illustrate what I mean by understanding or engaging sites of conflict as harboring creativity, as I briefly introduce you to the Tijuana-San Diego border region, which has been the laboratory to rethink my practice as an architect.
In naj vam pojasnim, kaj mislim, z razumevanjem in predstavitvijo konfliktnih zon kot zatočišč kreativnosti, ko vam na kratko predstavim obmejno območje Tijuana-San Diego, ki je laboratorij za ponovni premislek o mojem delu kot arhitekt.
This is the wall, the border wall, that separates San Diego and Tijuana, Latin America and the United States, a physical emblem of exclusionary planning policies that have perpetuated the division of communities, jurisdictions and resources across the world. In this border region, we find some of the wealthiest real estate, as I once found in the edges of San Diego, barely 20 minutes away from some of the poorest settlements in Latin America. And while these two cities have the same population, San Diego has grown six times larger than Tijuana in the last decades, immediately thrusting us to confront the tensions and conflicts between sprawl and density, which are at the center of today's discussion about environmental sustainability. So I've been arguing in the last years that, in fact, the slums of Tijuana can teach a lot to the sprawls of San Diego when it comes to socioeconomic sustainability, that we should pay attention and learn from the many migrant communities on both sides of this border wall so that we can translate their informal processes of urbanization.
To je zid, mejni zid, ki ločuje San Diego in Tijuano, Latinsko Ameriko in Združene Države Amerike, fizični simbol izključevalnih planskih uredb, ki ohranjajo delitev skupnosti, pristojnosti in virov po svetu. V tej obmejni regiji najdemo nekatere izmed najbogatejših nepremičnin, kar sem enkrat odkril na robu San Diega, komaj 20 minut stran od enih izmed najrevnejših naselij v Latinski Ameriki. In čeprav imata ti dve mesti enako prebivalstvo, je San Diego v zadnjih desetletjih postal šestkrat večji od Tijuane in nas nemudoma prisilil v soočenje napetosti in konfliktov med širjenjem in gostoto, ki so središče današnje diskusije o ohranjanju okolja. Zadnja leta zagovarjam, da lahko barakarska naselja Tijuane pravzaprav veliko naučijo razraščena področja San Diega o trajnostnem družbeno-gospodarskem razvoju, da moramo biti pozorni in se učiti od mnogih priseljenskih skupnosti na obeh straneh mejnega zidu, tako da lahko prevedemo njihove neformalne procese urbanizacije. Zakaj rečem neformalni za ta primer?
What do I mean by the informal in this case? I'm really just talking about the compendium of social practices of adaptation that enable many of these migrant communities to transgress imposed political and economic recipes of urbanization. I'm talking simply about the creative intelligence of the bottom-up, whether manifested in the slums of Tijuana that build themselves, in fact, with the waste of San Diego, or the many migrant neighborhoods in Southern California that have begun to be retrofitted with difference in the last decades.
Pravzaprav samo govorim o skupku družbenih praks za prilagoditev, ki omogočajo mnogim od teh priseljenskih skupnosti, da prestopijo uvedene politične in gospodarske recepte urbanizacije. Govorim enostavno o kreativni inteligenci od spodaj navzgor, ki se izraža v barakarskih naseljih Tijuane, ki so se dejansko zgradila iz odpadov San Diega ali v mnogih priseljenskih soseskah v južni Kaliforniji, ki so bila obnovljena z raznolikostjo v zadnjih desetletjih. Kot umetnik sem se zanimal za meritve, opazovanja neformalnih tokov čez mejo:
So I've been interested as an artist in the measuring, the observation, of many of the trans-border informal flows across this border: in one direction, from south to north, the flow of immigrants into the United States, and from north to south the flow of waste from southern California into Tijuana. I'm referring to the recycling of these old post-war bungalows that Mexican contractors bring to the border as American developers are disposing of them in the process of building a more inflated version of suburbia in the last decades. So these are houses waiting to cross the border. Not only people cross the border here, but entire chunks of one city move to the next, and when these houses are placed on top of these steel frames, they leave the first floor to become the second to be in-filled with more house, with a small business. This layering of spaces and economies is very interesting to notice. But not only houses, also small debris from one city, from San Diego, to Tijuana. Probably a lot of you have seen the rubber tires that are used in the slums to build retaining walls. But look at what people have done here in conditions of socioeconomic emergency. They have figured out how to peel off the tire, how to thread it and interlock it to construct a more efficient retaining wall. Or the garage doors that are brought from San Diego in trucks to become the new skin of emergency housing in many of these slums surrounding the edges of Tijuana.
v eno smer, iz juga na sever, tok migrantov v Združene Države, in iz severa na jug, tok odpadkov iz južne Kalifornije v Tijuano. Govorim o recikliranju teh starih povojnih bungalovov, ki jih mehiški pogodbeniki pripeljejo na mejo, ko se jih ameriški razvijalci znebijo v procesu gradnje bolj napihnjene verzije predmestij v zadnjih desetletjih. Torej, to so hiše, ki čakajo na prečkanje meje. Čez mejo tu ne hodijo samo ljudje, ampak se celotni deli enega mesta selijo v drugega, in ko so te hiše postavljene na vrh teh jeklenih okvirov, zapustijo prvo in postanejo drugo nadstropje in so zapolnjene z več hišami, z malimi podjetji. Takšno nalaganje prostorov in gospodarstev v sloje je zelo zanimivo opazovati. Ampak ne samo hiše, tudi manjši odpadki iz enega mesta, iz San Diega, v Tijuano. Verjetno ste mnogi že videli pnevmatike, ki jih uporabljajo v slumih za gradnjo podpornih zidov. Ampak poglejte, kaj so ljudje naredili v razmerah družbeno-ekonomske nuje. Naučili so se, kako olupiti gumo, kako jo naviti in preplesti, da so napravili bolj učinkovit podporni zid. Ali pa garažna vrata, ki jih pripeljejo iz San Diega v tovornjakih, in postanejo nova plast v kriznih gradnjah v mnogih slumih na obrobjih Tijuane. Medtem ko je za arhitekta zelo zanimivo opazovati to kreativno inteligenco,
So while, as an architect, this is a very compelling thing to witness, this creative intelligence, I also want to keep myself in check. I don't want to romanticize poverty. I just want to suggest that this informal urbanization is not just the image of precariousness, that informality here, the informal, is really a set of socioeconomic and political procedures that we could translate as artists, that this is about a bottom-up urbanization that performs. See here, buildings are not important just for their looks, but, in fact, they are important for what they can do. They truly perform as they transform through time and as communities negotiate the spaces and boundaries and resources.
se hočem vseeno zadržati. Ne želim romantizirati revščine. Želim samo predlagati, da takšna neformalna urbanizacija ni samo slika negotovosti, ampak, da je neformalnost tu, neformalno je pravzaprav niz družbeno-ekonomskih in političnih procesov, ki jih lahko prevedemo kot umetniki, da je to urbanizacija od spodaj navzgor, ki daje rezultate. Poglejte, tu stavbe niso pomembne samo zaradi izgleda, ampak so dejansko pomembne zaradi tega, kar lahko naredijo. Resnično pokažejo rezultate, ko se spreminjajo čez čas in ko skupnosti izpogajajo prostore in meje in sredstva.
So while waste flows southbound, people go north in search of dollars, and most of my research has had to do with the impact of immigration in the alteration of the homogeneity of many neighborhoods in the United States, particularly in San Diego. And I'm talking about how this begins to suggest that the future of Southern California depends on the retrofitting of the large urbanization -- I mean, on steroids -- with the small programs, social and economic. I'm referring to how immigrants, when they come to these neighborhoods, they begin to alter the one-dimensionality of parcels and properties into more socially and economically complex systems, as they begin to plug an informal economy into a garage, or as they build an illegal granny flat to support an extended family. This socioeconomic entrepreneurship on the ground within these neighborhoods really begins to suggest ways of translating that into new, inclusive and more equitable land use policies. So many stories emerge from these dynamics of alteration of space, such as "the informal Buddha," which tells the story of a small house that saved itself, it did not travel to Mexico, but it was retrofitted in the end into a Buddhist temple, and in so doing, this small house transforms or mutates from a singular dwelling into a small, or a micro, socioeconomic and cultural infrastructure inside a neighborhood.
Medtem ko gredo odpadki na jug, gredo ljudje na sever za dolarji in večina mojega raziskovanja je o učinkih priseljevanja na spremembe v homogenosti mnogih sosesk v Združenih Državah, zlasti v San Diegu. In pravim, da to nakazuje, da je prihodnost južne Kalifornije odvisna od rekonstrukcije velike urbanizacije - mislim, na steroidih - z majhnimi programi, družbenimi in gospodarskimi. V mislih imam, kako priseljenci, ko pridejo v te soseske, začnejo spreminjati eno-dimenzionalnost parcel in nepremičnin v družbeno in gospodarsko bolj kompleksne sisteme, ko začnejo z delom na črno v garaži ali pa ko zgradijo nelegalno stanovanje za babico, da pomagajo širši družini. Takšno družbeno-ekonomsko podjetništvo znotraj teh sosesk resnično namiguje na spreminjanje v nove, vključujoče in bolj pravične politike rabe zemljišč. Mnoge zgodbe izvirajo iz teh dinamik sprememb prostora, kot je "Neuradni Buda", ki pove zgodbo o majhni hiši, ki se je rešila sama. Ni potovala v Mehiko, ampak je bila na koncu prenovljena v budistični tempelj in s tem se je ta mala hiša preoblikovala ali mutirala iz enostanovanjske v majhno ali mikro družbeno-ekonomsko in kulturno infrastrukturo znotraj soseske. Tako te akcijske soseske, kot jim jaz pravim, dejansko postanejo navdih,
So these action neighborhoods, as I call them, really become the inspiration to imagine other interpretations of citizenship that have less to do, in fact, with belonging to the nation-state, and more with upholding the notion of citizenship as a creative act that reorganizes institutional protocols in the spaces of the city.
da si zamislimo drugačne interpretacije državljanstva, ki ne pomenijo pripadnosti nacionalni državi, ampak podprejo pojem državljanstva kot kreativno dejavnost, ki reorganizira institucionalne protokole v mestnih prostorih. Kot umetnik sem se pravzaprav zanimal za vizualizacijo državljanstva,
As an artist, I've been interested, in fact, in the visualization of citizenship, the gathering of many anecdotes, urban stories, in order to narrativize the relationship between social processes and spaces. This is a story of a group of teenagers that one night, a few months ago, decided to invade this space under the freeway to begin constructing their own skateboard park. With shovels in hand, they started to dig. Two weeks later, the police stopped them. They barricaded the place, and the teenagers were evicted, and the teenagers decided to fight back, not with bank cards or slogans but with constructing a critical process. The first thing they did was to recognize the specificity of political jurisdiction inscribed in that empty space. They found out that they had been lucky because they had not begun to dig under Caltrans territoy. Caltrans is a state agency that governs the freeway, so it would have been very difficult to negotiate with them. They were lucky, they said, because they began to dig under an arm of the freeway that belongs to the local municipality. They were also lucky, they said, because they began to dig in a sort of Bermuda Triangle of jurisdiction, between port authority, airport authority, two city districts, and a review board. All these red lines are the invisible political institutions that were inscribed in that leftover empty space. With this knowledge, these teenagers as skaters confronted the city. They came to the city attorney's office. The city attorney told them that in order to continue the negotiation they had to become an NGO, and of course they didn't know what an NGO was. They had to talk to their friends in Seattle who had gone through the same experience. And they began to realize the necessity to organize themselves even deeper and began to fundraise, to organize budgets, to really be aware of all the knowledge embedded in the urban code in San Diego so that they could begin to redefine the very meaning of public space in the city, expanding it to other categories. At the end, the teenagers won the case with that evidence, and they were able to construct their skateboard park under that freeway.
zbiranje številnih anekdot, urbanih zgodb, da bi zmogel pripovedovati o odnosu med družbenimi procesi in prostorom. To je zgodba o skupini najstnikov, ki so se neke noči pred nekaj meseci odločili zasesti to mesto pod avtocesto, da bi začeli graditi svoj skejterski park. Z lopatami v rokah so začeli kopati. Čez dva tedna jih je ustavila policija. Blokirali so prostor, najstniki pa so bili pregnani, ampak so se odločili, da se bodo borili, ne z bančnimi karticami ali slogani, ampak z izgradnjo kritičnega procesa. Najprej so priznali posebnosti politične pristojnosti, začrtane za ta prazen prostor. Spoznali so, da so imeli srečo, da niso začeli kopati pod Caltransovim območjem. Caltrans je državna agencija, ki upravlja z avtocesto, tako da bi se bilo zelo težko pogajati z njimi. Imeli so srečo, so rekli, ker so začeli kopati pod delom avtoceste, ki pripada lokalni skupnosti. Prav tako so imeli srečo, so rekli, ker so začeli kopati v neke vrste bermudskem trikotniku pristojnosti, med pristaniškimi in letališkimi oblastmi, dvema mestnima četrtima in revizijskim odborom. Vse te rdeče črte so nevidne politične institucije, ki so zapisane v ta ostanek praznega prostora. S tem znanjem so se ti najstniki rolkarji spopadli z mestom. Prišli so v pisarno mestnega odvetnika. Odvetnik jim je povedal, da če hočejo nadaljevati s pogajanji, morajo postati nevladna organizacija in seveda niso vedeli, kaj je nevladna organizacija. Morali so govoriti s svojimi prijatelji iz Seattla, ki so šli skozi enako izkušnjo. In tako so spoznali potrebo, da se morajo globlje organizirati, začeti zbirati denar, organizirati proračun, da bi bili resnično seznanjeni z vsem znanjem vgrajenem v mestnih pravilih San Diega, da bi lahko začeli spreminjati sam pomen javnega prostora v mestu in ga razširili na druge kategorije. Na koncu so najstniki dobili primer s temi dokazi in lahko so zgradili svoj skejterski park pod avtocesto. Za mnoge izmed vas se lahko ta zgodba zdi nepomembna ali naivna.
Now for many of you, this story might seem trivial or naive. For me as an architect, it has become a fundamental narrative, because it begins to teach me that this micro-community not only designed another category of public space but they also designed the socioeconomic protocols that were necessary to be inscribed in that space for its long-term sustainability. They also taught me that similar to the migrant communities on both sides of the border, they engaged conflict itself as a creative tool, because they had to produce a process that enabled them to reorganize resources and the politics of the city. In that act, that informal, bottom-up act of transgression, really began to trickle up to transform top-down policy.
Za mene, kot arhitekta, je postala osnovna pripoved, ker me nauči, da ta mikro skupnost ni samo ustvarila drugih kategorij javnega prostora, ampak je tudi ustvarila družbeno-ekonomske protokole, ki so morali biti vpisani v ta prostor za dolgoročno vzdržljivost. Naučili so me tudi, da podobno kot priseljenske skupnosti na obeh straneh meje, so tudi oni uporabili konflikt kot kreativno sredstvo, ker so morali ustvariti proces, ki jim je omogočil, da so reorganizirali sredstva in politiko mesta. Na ta način je neformalni prestopek iz dna dejansko začel curljati k vrhu in spreminjati politike usmerjene zgoraj-navzdol.
Now this journey from the bottom-up to the transformation of the top-down is where I find hope today. And I'm thinking of how these modest alterations with space and with policy in many cities in the world, in primarily the urgency of a collective imagination as these communities reimagine their own forms of governance, social organization, and infrastructure, really is at the center of the new formation of democratic politics of the urban. It is, in fact, this that could become the framework for producing new social and economic justice in the city. I want to say this and emphasize it, because this is the only way I see that can enable us to move from urbanizations of consumption to neighborhoods of production today.
Ta pot od spodaj navzgor k spremembi vrha mi danes daje upanje. Razmišljam, kako takšne skromne spremembe prostora in politike v mnogih mestih po svetu, prvenstveno v nujnosti skupne domišljije, ko skupnosti razmislijo o svojih oblikah upravljanja, družbeni organizaciji in infrastrukturi, so dejansko v središču novega oblikovanja demokratične politike mest. Dejansko je to lahko tisto, kar bi lahko postalo okvir za proizvodnjo nove družbene in gospodarske pravičnosti v mestu. To želim reči in poudariti, ker je to edini način, ki ga vidim, ki nam zdaj lahko omogoči, da se premaknemo od urbanizacije potrošništva k soseskam proizvodnje. Hvala.
Thank you.
(Aplavz)
(Applause)