More than half the world population today lives in cities. In India alone, it is estimated that within the next two decades 380 million people will migrate from rural areas into metropolises. That is equal to 20 new cities the size of Mumbai or São Paulo. In this context, it is somewhat ironic that Western real estate firms are promoting sprawl in Indian cities as the norm. As demographic and geographic developments in Asia, Africa, and South America will inevitably lead to increased urbanization, one might think that cities in these regions should prepare for the numerous ‘consequences’ that come with dramatic population shifts to urban zones. Surprisingly few politicians, bankers, and urban planners, however, have thought it necessary to take action.

Within the contemporary city and contemporary global context (more specifically in what we have termed the Global South) there exists a network of restrictive borders, a network of limiting mechanisms generated by physical, geographical, political, social, cultural, and economic difference. These apparatus manifest themselves in various ways to inhibit essential forms of interaction and communication within the urban context by generating privative difference. But this milieu of restrictive edges also presents a valuable opportunity, one in which new forms of social design and communication are made possible. These borderlands introduce the possibility of manipulating their inherent, yet conventionally ignored, flexibility into new spaces of interaction. Social design can be strengthened through this critical engagement with the plasticity of the edge – by unearthing the territory of Border-Space.

Trans 18: Politics

‘Trans-Borderlands: Activating the Plasticity of Urban Border Space’

Publications

Countless institutions all around the world refer to the more than a billion people who live in informal settlements on the fringes of the world’s megacities. But the approach is often characterized by distance to a deeply challenging yet fascinating environment. Time to wake up, to employ new methods and tactics. Traditionally, architecture has mostly been defined by a lateral exchange within the Northern Hemisphere. Europe, the United States, and possibly Japan formed a lateral ring of mutual exchange and stimulation. This was nowhere more apparent than within universities and their architecture departments. Today, countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, and the UAE form new nodes on that ring and have started to distort the geography of architectural education and provision of spaces for production.

Archithese: Space and Pedagogy

‘Southern Exposures: Towards a Social Responsibility in Architecture and Architectural Education’

Caracas is located some 1,000 meters above sea level, in a 20 kilometre wide valley. It is a megalopolis of 800 square kilometers, home to nearly six million people. To the extent that the rest of the world knows Caracas, they associate it with Venezuela’s staggering economic growth, its membership in OPEC, and the machinations and manipulations of its leadership. This is one Caracas. But Caracas is two cities: the formal city of tall buildings, gated homes, enormous wealth, and private transportation, and the informal city. The latter, sprawling to the east, covers an area four times larger than the 1950s-era metropolitan boundaries and is home to almost one million families.

Title	MAS Context 10: Conflict
Authors	Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Release	June 2011
Editor	Iker Gil
Publisher	MAS Context
Pages	140

‘Build Simply: South of the Border’

MAS Context 10: Conflict