the INCREMENTAL house

On my first day back, I went on some house visits with one of the nurses at the local health clinic, and spent the day looking at some rooms where I could stay for a month. Wandering around Senkata, it still feels like a ghost town. Is this what was recently considered the fastest growing city in Latin America ? Where is everyone? Knocking on doors, it became very clear that many people were away, working….somewhere. Probably in La Paz . Returning to La Paz from El Alto, we passed a massive line of people waiting for transportation back to El Alto. The people have to live so far away to make a living in the modern metropolis. It is a taxing journey packed into small vehicles, dodging traffic and everything else. Even though, people are hidden behind the walls of their homes. The nurse told me that people are afraid of thieves. I wonder what applications Jane Jacob’s ‘eyes on the street’ has here. If the public and private realms were more permeable and peo...

source:http://www.rc.unesp.br/igce/planejamento/gpapt/links.htm One day, I got lost in a city of walls. It was pretty extraordinary how fortified and different the affluent neighborhoods are. I went wandering trying to find a favela. I found Paraisopolis, only through some images on from the internet. I was interested in the juxtaposition. It was one of the most extraordinary I had seen. Private swimming pools on balconies cantilevered over a favela. I was on foot. I followed a google map I had. It showed clearly streets running through the suburban type rich neighborhood into the densely packed favela right next to it. The google map was wrong, and it was impossible to move between the two zones. In fact, there were walls, barbed wire and security guards. Not surprising at all, stark and amazing on the ground and in person. The guards were everywhere. On the entrance to the substreets. On the actual streets, on foot, cars, and on bikes, and then in the doorway...