Wk 8 reading

SP enclaves

Fortified enclaves are privatized, enclosed, and monitored spaces for residence, consumption, leisure and work

• created a new model of spacial segregation

• Transformed the quality of public life in many cities

Sao Paulo social inequality is obvious

• spatial inequality expressed well

• high walls and fences, armed guards, surveillance

“the physical distances separating rich and poor have decreased at the same time that the mechanisms to keep them apart have become more obvious and more complex.”

1980s = lost decade of Brazil and Latin America

• inflation, unemployment, and recession

1970 = miracle years

• Auto-construction = buy cheap lots in distant parts of city and build homes there - expanded city (life in the periphery)

• poorest moved to center of town

democratic government after 21 yrs of military rule - peaceful election but unions and social movements

• periphery invested into, less supply of lots

Economic activities restructured

• commerce, finance had consequences on the urban environment

• deterioration and gentrification

increase and violent crime and fear → changes the landscape

condominiums/middle and upper = explicitly treat separation, isolation, and protection as a matter of status, physical distance

elevators: different classes are not supposed to mix or interact in the public areas of the building

The basic method of control is direct and involves empowering some workers to control others (patriarchy)

Security = residence → emphasized in Sao Paulo not US (gates and security)

edge city increased appeal and price of specific enclaves

• also racial and social differences

• fences and walls; on the other, large

  empty spaces creating distance and discouraging pedestrian circulation.

• In sum, the images of openness, freedom, and possibilities of incorporation

• which constituted modernity have never been completely fulfilled, but have never

  completely lost their referential role either.

• enclaves have - surrounding walls, no street corridors, back and plain modernist facade

LA = more disperse than SP

• zoning regulation from homeowners to keep segregation

  • SP upper class have not held a social movement for helping segregation

• Defensible architecture, however re-

  grettable as a social tactic, also protects the rights of individuals and

  threatened groups

Colonialism, California’s Central Valley

native american reservations

• Central Valley Project (CVP), a massive network of water infrastructures intended to provide reliable and subsidized irrigation flows for agriculture in the Central Valley

• the process of reclamation: the production of agricultural property via the enclosure and elimination of wetlands and semi-arid landscapes.

  • Reclamation represents an intersection between terra nullius and terra economica, and thus between colonial and capitalist mandates broadly: to occupy the land and make productivity

• The logic of elimination motivated the murder, enslavement, and displacement of thousands of Indigenous people during the California Genocide of 1846
  1873 and continues to drive policies that perpetuate erasure, assimilation, and dispossession today

• The hydrologic rift—can be generally characterised by the extraction of a resource and its transport to distant sites of consumption, driven by scientific and technological advancements which facilitate agricultural production at ever-greater scales.