Radical cities
Subtitle: across Latin America in search of a new architecture
By: Justin McGuirk
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 296
ISBN-13: 9781781682807
Subjects: Architecture and society; Cities and towns; Growth; City dwellers; History
Other titles: Ciudades radicales : Cidades radicais; Cidades radicais
Description: "In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of activist architects, politicians and radical communities. From Chile to Brazil, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers people who have begun rebuilding and redesigning their environments in radically new ways. After decades of political and architectural failure, a new generation has returned to the problems of the city to address the poverty and inequality. This is a generation of activists, pragmatists and social idealists, and together they are testing new ideas that the rest of the world can learn from. An architect in Chile has designed a new form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, the murder capital of Colombia, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over a 45-story skyscraper, Torre David; and architect Jorge Mario Jáuregui has upgraded Rio's favelas in exciting new ways"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: From Buenos Aires to San Salvador de Jujuy : Dictators and Revolutionaries; title: From Lima to Santiago : A Platform for Change; title: Rio de Janeiro : The Favela Is the City; title: Caracas : The City Is Frozen Politics; title: Torre David : A Pirate Utopia; title: Bogotá : The City as a School; title: Medellín : Social Urbanism; title: Tijuana : On the Political Equator.