exclusion[CITY] SEMINAR
Armando Montilla
The dynamics of Cityspace today respond to multiple forces from socio-economic spheres of power and influence shaping urban environments in ways that create different levels of participation and exclusion across all levels. From the political point of view, former systems of control get redefined in empires of biopower (Negri), while architectural and spatial infrastructure in the city organizes itself in layers of selective filtering sorting splintered urban systems (Graham, Marvin), making the city an instrument where the lines between public and private become blurred, as physical manifestations of exclusionary organization ruling architectural and non-architectural space enforce socioeconomical segregationand the pledge to an authoritarian monitoring eye. Conditions of ‘Big Brother’ and Blade RunnerUrbanism (Davis) are only simplistic versions of a larger system of exclusioncity in the verge of becoming. The purpose of the Seminar is to analyze through practical examples from the realm of the experience of cityspace located at the empirical level in the analysis of the city - infilm, literature and from the realm of speculative critical discourse how exclusioncity lives among us, how it develops and how it becomes a norm today. How social and cultural diversity serve to exclusioncity system, and when the limits of accepting criteria star shaping exclusioncity in non-cognotive ways. During the course of the Seminar film and other specific examples proposed to and submitted by the students will serve as material of discussion, while present speculative discoursewill be assigned to the naming of exclusioncity conditions in the context of perceived situations found in the city, added by the anticipation of exclusioncityfuture developments.
"Wehave been continuously assisting to a disintegration of urbanism as a discipline directed by design-oriented and social-directed guidelines, leaving a clear way towards a geo-spatial order directly linked to economics and capital. More and more the skyline of cities are the direct product of gigantic operations of private investment development, catering to specific targets and bearing complexities more so familiar to an investment banker than ever to an architect or even to an urban planner. The heritage of modernist planning has died in benefit of hyper-capitalist dystopia. This architectural and urban transformation, mediated by exploding Real Estate and development industries has (and will further have) a big impact on cities, particularly on coastal and exploitative warm-climate urban (and suburban) areas...[...]...As new form of urbanism generated by investment and capital emerge, new territories of urban and suburban character take shape in dramatic ways, affecting the work of thousand and directly impacting the nature of the profession of the architect. In order to look closely at this phenomenon, we must look for full-blown examples available worldwide...[...]...While spatial segregation...[...].. is directly determined by the value of property market and the degree of access to it in the part of the local (and non-local) population, Dubai’s spatial segregation occurs following other socio-economical and work distribution factors proper of an off-shore enclave. Still, luxury tourism and part-time luxurious living in Dubai seems to be the target of the developing architectural Skyline, and land reclamation projects such as The World...[...]...are only the beginning of a field for waves of speculative Real Estate property values to come, stimulated by the existence of a Tax-Free Zona Franca, free of tough US-style Immigration restrictions and attracting wealthy capitals in the search of a safe heaven, discouraged by an antiMuslim atmosphere in America..."
Armando Montilla: “Babel City: Real Estate and Part-time-living Speculative Architecture in Miami ” in George Katodrytes (Editor) 2A Architecture and Art n. 4: “Architecture and Tourism”. Dubai UAE: American University of Sharjah (AUS) February 2007.