Policy or action to support informal development strategies meets some problems. In Cañada Real it is the negative perception such squatter settlements create. If we were able to think of this as a transition settlement, affording newcomers a way to gain access to the city of Madrid, its jobs, its services, perhaps with the integration of youth education and training centres, then such settlements might be seen as performing a service to the city proper. Many cities – London, New York, Montréal – developed this way by providing a stepping stone for immigrants usually near the point of entry; over time these fringe communities became more established and were incorporated into the fabric of the city. Todo Por La Praxis proposed an action plan whereby improvements could be made to Cañada Real, with community input, to bring housing up to code and to upgrade its urban realm. The justification is an economic one: it is cheaper and less wasteful to invest in an existing community than to relocate residents and demolish the settlement. Nonetheless, it appears this argument may not be enough to sway the perceptions of those in power. ~
Foucault has posited the urban periphery as a site of ambiguity which operates outside the social and political spheres of the city. 2 As such, edges are ripe for transformation. On Madrid’s periphery lies Cañada Real. 3 In the thirteenth century it was a drover’s route but it is now used by city garbage trucks to transport waste to outlying processing plants. Bordering the road for 15 kilometres is Europe’s largest informal settlement, which has existed on the fringe of the city since the 1970s. It is continuously tarred in the media for its illegal status as a squatter settlement and its reputation as a drugs ‘supermarket’. Through processes of eviction it steadily declines, yet it remains a functioning community of around 40,000 people with bars, shops, restaurants and parks. Residents are resourceful and economical; recycling is a way of life. Regular demolitions have turned the area into a war-torn zone; residents continue to fight for their right to occupy the land. There is much at stake. Private development interest in surrounding areas puts rising pressure on the authorities to end the settlement’s forty-year informal history and to re-designate the land. Despite this, informal uses continue to thrive on the city’s left-overs. Street artists and designers use stealth practices to exploit weaknesses in the city’s formal arrangement. Individual practitioners such as Santiago Cirugeda 4 and organised groups such as Todo Por La Praxis 5 , an organisation representing the residents of Cañada Real, promote continuous adaptation of the city by salvaging remnants of space. This is a very different process from gentrification which exploits overlooked value in neighbourhoods through property development (and with which Cañada Real is now threatened). In this case the communities are building from the ground up. They exploit the temporal qualities of these ambiguous sites and transform them to serve culture. It is about developing a street-level perspective of the city, rather than top-down planning. As Walter Benjamin’s flâneur wandered the streets of Paris, as ragpickers of Madrid travelled across the social strata of the city, today’s artists, gardeners and street guerrillas move through left-over spaces, transforming them as they go. This unstructured, weak urbanism is a counterpoint to traditional forms of urbanism. In the case of Madrid, it is exacerbated by a situation of intense property development followed by economic frailty. While these weak systems have their advantages, they are not a viable alternative to the formal planning process – rather they are a by-product in that they are in many ways co-dependent. Insurgents exploit weaknesses in the form and social arrangement of the city, re-defining spaces to provide social benefit. These are strategies that are effective because they are applied to the formal city.
73
Will Craig
2 Foucault, Michel, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), 22-27 3 See Will Craig’s video, Cañada Real www.youtube.com/ watch?v=n62D0QpIVp8
4 Santiago Cirugeda: www.recetasurbanas.net 5 Todo Por La Praxis: www.todoporlapraxis.es
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator