the INCREMENTAL house

For my last stint in South America, I returned to the outskirts of La Paz , Bolivia , to the sprawling city of El Alto . I decided to rent a room in the neighborhood of Senkata ($30 a month, no bathroom) and get to know the built environment and people a little better than I had on my previous visit ( http://incrementalhouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/bolivia-la-paz-and-el-alto.html ). I was really curious to better understand the built environment of a city that has been termed the ” Rebel City .” Because on the surface, there seemed to be nothing rebellious about most of the housing. It was a bit of tense time, as the country almost fell into chaos, after Bolivia’s own ‘9-11’, when almost thirty people were killed in a clash between supporters and detractors of President Morales and his attempts to shift revenues from the wealthy lowlands to poorer highlands. For background, see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/americas/15bolivia.html?scp=1&sq=bolivia%20ma...

The marked and empty buildings are striking. There are so many of them, but they have still continued to have an active live and connection people even though their formal uses have disappeared. Some buildings just aren’t finished. And while some are just ‘tagged’ others have been taken over by people seeking housing and shelter in good locations. If there are so many empty spaces (40,000 abandoned buildings) and so many people that need housing (15,000 homeless people), why not? And Sao Paulo is a city of extremes. For a couple of years, Sao Paulo had the largest squat in Latin America . I think it would be hard to find a larger one in the world. Stretched over 22 floors (without working elevators) close to 3,000 people occupied this building for almost two years. The Prestes Maia building was occupied by the Movimento Sem Teto (MSTC) ‘roofless’, extending out of Brazil’s strong Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST) ‘landless’ to bring attention to crazy and diffi...