The New Century of the Metropolis: Urban Enclaves and Orientalism
Planning Perspectives
necessitated action from Ayub Khan’s military government to house millions of refugees. Khan cons... more necessitated action from Ayub Khan’s military government to house millions of refugees. Khan construed these ‘modern’ housing projects, ventures between the state and Western relief organizations, as justification for his continual rule into the early 1970s. The chapters in ‘Engineering and Culture’ pit cultural memory (the local) against international modernism (the global). Lucia Allais recounts the relocation of two-dozen ancient Egyptian temples for the Aswan High Dam’s reservoir. Stewarded by the Nasser government and a UNESCO preservation initiative, nearly one-third of the temples were dispersed to Western cities, optimizing visitation and cultural importance while allowing parts of rural Egypt to modernize. Meredith Tenhoor uncovers the move of Les Halles from central Paris to one of its suburbs. Torn between Old World tradition and the post-war trend to modernize, the beloved open air food market saw transfer to Rungis, adjacent to Orly airport and accessible by the Periphérique and rail lines. Similar to Philadelphia’s post-war relocation of its Dock Street Market, this reassignment of space altered the distribution and consumption of food while ostensibly improving traffic flows. Arindam Dutta examines Arup Associates, an architectural consulting firm with operations in 37 countries. Deflating the primacy of celebrity architects such as Gehry, Libeskind, and Koolhaas, Dutta calls their profession a ‘boutique practice’ dependent upon Arup’s ‘para-statal’ reach and its arbitrary power to modify design according to local laws and regulations. Governing by Design, while highly informative, presents complicated theories and, at time, arcane terminologies. Each chapter is meticulously researched and complemented with photographs, graphs, and other relevant visual images. Perhaps the book’s greatest strength rests in how each author treats architectural form and function as mechanisms that noticeably or unnoticeably govern human lives. Though not recommended for casual readers or undergraduate audiences, this collection will be of immediate interest to experts in urban, architectural, or planning history.
The Latin American Metropolis and the Growth of Inequality
NACLA Report on the Americas
... La Paz (Bolivia), 1,210. ... The huge labor surplus in the Latin American metropolis is as ne... more ... La Paz (Bolivia), 1,210. ... The huge labor surplus in the Latin American metropolis is as neces-sary to transnationals as the small proportion of the ... The first urban planning regulations in Latin America, promulgated by the Spanish Crown in the sixteenth century "Laws of the Indies ...
The Contributions of Jose Carlos Mariategui to Revolutionary Theory
Lat Amer Perspect, 1986
... Jose Carlos Mariaitegui was no historical anomaly. ... His subjects included both cultural an... more ... Jose Carlos Mariaitegui was no historical anomaly. ... His subjects included both cultural and political figures: Lenin, Trotsky, Tolstoy, and Gorky in Russia; Croce, D'Annunzio, Pirandello, and Marinetti n Italy; Zweig, Zola, Sorel, and Barbusse in France; Diego Rivera and Jose ...
Community land trusts have often promoted owner-occupied single-family housing in rural areas and... more Community land trusts have often promoted owner-occupied single-family housing in rural areas and small towns, but many CLTs have sizeable numbers of multifamily rental and cooperative units. As CLTs are engaged in a national dialogue about "scaling up" production, there is renewed interest in multifamily options in cities. This paper examines the costs and benefits of a multifamily project by the Cooper Square Community Land Trust in New York City. Comparisons are made with new construction and rehab projects of the Burlington Community Land Trust (Burlington, Vermont) and Northern California Land Trust (Berkeley, California). The Cooper Square CLT is a unique case that has so far not been studied. It provides low-income housing with guaranteed long-term affordability in a dense urban setting where gentrification is removing affordable units from the housing stock. Tenant and neighborhood organizing that started over four decades ago, which has resulted in a broad array o...
Land, including communal holdings, was then valued for its capacity to produce commodities in the... more Land, including communal holdings, was then valued for its capacity to produce commodities in the global marketplace, leading to the dispossession and displacement of the majority of the population. It was this gigantic land grab and not any 'free choice' that produced urban Latin America. At the same time, urban land became a new battleground for class warfare. Wealthy elites controlled the land in cities, but since they had little interest in accommodating so many new immigrants there were land invasions, overcrowding, and vast areas that lacked basic urban services such as safe water and sewers. Much of what is written about cities in Latin America, particularly from the global North, evades the fundamental economic, social, and political questions. Violence is the most critical urban question today. The fallacy is that this is strictly a matter of violent cities; the truth is that the entire continent has been engulfed in violence supported and financed by the US and its...
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Papers by Tom Angotti