Suchergebnisse

List of Figures and Tables; List of Abbreviations; Preface; Introduction Urban Living and Architecture; 1 -- Intermediate Andean Cities; 2 -- Neighborhood Dialectics; 3 -- Habits in House Building; 4 -- Fashionable Homes; 5 -- Transformations in Cuencan Architecture; 6 -- Riobamba, Disordered City; 7 -- The Ordinary City; Appendix Ethnographic Urban Research; Glossary; References; Index

AbstractIn Lima's pueblos jóvenes—the vast informal settlements that surround the city—migrants who settled there also founded graveyards. Cemeteries are a natural socio‐spatial extension of the settlements and houses that urbanites constructed with their own hands. Lima's peripheral cemeteries are permeable spaces which are often regarded as zones of risk and insecurity. Visitors, vendors and taxi drivers fear theft or assault. Grave looting and trafficking of burial land are common occurrences. Moreover, as a breeding ground for mosquitos, cemeteries are potential hotbeds of lethal diseases. Adding to such 'measurable' risks are the intangible risks and risk aversion connected with spiritual activities. This essay grapples with the conceptualizations of insecurity and risk in areas where the houses of the living and the dead converge, taking Lima's municipal district of Villa María del Triunfo and its Virgen de Lourdes cemetery as a case study. This intervention hence proposes a spatially inclusive conceptualization of security which embraces deathscapes as part of the inhabited urban space. Furthermore, based on the diverse 'threats' and 'risks' encountered in the cemetery space, I propose an intersectional approach sensitive to tangible and intangible insecurities and to the responses to avert these. With this approach I aim to unravel the various dimensions of (im)materiality in the security debate.

Cemetery planning in high‐density urban areas is essential for more equitable societies in Latin America. This paper addresses the implementation of a cemetery master plan in Bogotá to explore the effects of public policies. I argue that tensions between the 'city of the dead' and the 'city of the living' demonstrate how politicians and planners increasingly envision public cemeteries as urban infrastructure rather than public space, making it more difficult to manage cemeteries as a public good. This paper engages with debates about urban planning in contemporary Latin America.

AbstractThis article explores how the urban poor use global flows of people, goods and ideas as resources to counter the stigma of poverty, focusing on home improvement activities in Ecuadorian informal settlements. Whereas urban poverty is usually associated with deficient housing and slums, the article describes how residents of informal settlements use imported architectural designs and cosmopolitan facilities to improve their homes. It is argued that the mobility of cultural products offers the urban poor potential resources to achieve higher levels of social prestige and wellbeing, thereby analytically connecting the notion of symbolic mobility to current poverty debates.RésuméAfin d'examiner comment les habitants pauvres des villes exploitent les flux mondiaux de populations, de biens et d'idées pour échapper à la marque de la pauvreté, cet article s'intéresse aux améliorations réalisées dans les habitats informels en Équateur. On associe souvent la pauvreté urbaine à des taudis ou logements insalubres, mais les occupants des habitats informels utilisent des concepts architecturaux importés et des installations cosmopolites pour améliorer leur maison. L'analyse montre que la mobilité des produits culturels procure à la population urbaine pauvre des ressources qui lui permettent d'élever ses niveaux de prestige social et de bien‐être, établissant ainsi un lien entre la notion de mobilité symbolique et les débats actuels sur la pauvreté.