Law of the urban jungle

The city I am researching, Patos de Minas, seems to be growing in a very informal way. Informal in this sense must be read as non-formalized, non structured, a natural way. I suppose we all agree that an urban environment needs some sort of structure, or a set of rules to define organizational patterns, to be able to provide good living conditions for all inhabitants.

I am saying this because if no such thing as an overall structure is applied, what happens? Well, Brazilian cities show the answer to this question: we fall back to the law of the jungle; the survival of the fittest. If your neighbor suddenly decides to tear down his house, and is going to construct a 25 story apartment building so he can make more money, you can do nothing against it. Unless you have more money as he does and have more influential friends as he does.

Where people live together there exists a need for organization, whether on a physical, social, cultural or economical level. This is equal for every society, every city, every country. The differences therefore, are noticed by the type of system which is applied. The type of the applied organizational system, and the amount of control/freedom of the citizen, depends totally on the governmental system and the philosophy behind it. We can, for example, distinguish monotonous social housing in communist countries with complete governmental control. A social democratic system in the Netherlands, where regulation is meant to protect the citizens rights, which means in practice an almost completely controlled system with little freedom for individual initiatives. And we distinguish the (maybe developing countries) system, where the government just supplies the basic infrastructure and the free market determines the content of the city. A so called self-organizing system.

The result of the system in the Netherlands is that the individual has many ways to protest against developments which could harm the quality of his territory. Even if the development is of great benefit to the whole society, many times the interest of the individual is given preference. In China however is no space for the individual, and complete neighborhoods and villages are replaced if it is in the interest of society. In Brazil is the importance of the individual determined by his position on the scale of hierarchy in society. The higher the position, the more importance and space (=freedom) is given to the individual. Self-organizing therefore, with no control from above.

A few reasons for picking this subject

When I traveled through Brazil some years ago, I ended up in a city called Patos de Minas. It lays in the inlands of the state Minas Gerais in between smooth hills and surrounded by country land and forests. A real provincial town with already nearly 150.000 inhabitants. That is almost the size Almere!
Though almost as big in size, I noticed one big difference: city services. A little two-room cinema, a small theater, a few clubs, a number of bars and restaurants, and that’s it. Apart from that housing (mainly one-family), shops and small companies and a few large factories.So, what surprised me was to see a city of such a size and a city services level of a small town in the Netherlands. No clear, visible city plan, no planned public realm. A church, a square, a park, and nothing more. At the mean time local inhabitants told me new initiatives in the city (like a new club) were embraced really quickly, being the talk of the town for a few moths, and then dropped as fast as they rose.

This phenomenon triggered me strongly, and I got really curious to discover what the causes were, and, more important, what could be done to change it. I wanted to discover what the secret or hidden reason was behind this behavior. And, as a real solution-based TU Delft product, find a way to change things structurally to the better in this city.

The need for city planning in Brazil

In the past 35 years Brazil doubled it’s inhabitants, from 90 million in 1970 to 190 million in 2006 (cia fact book). The growth of the population is shrinking, but is still over 1% a year (almost 2 million inhabitants). Meaning that in 2010 Brazil will reach the number 200 million inhabitants, making it the fifth most populated country in the world, inhabiting nearly 3% of the worlds population (IBGE). In the year 2000, a total of 68 million inhabitants, which is 40% of the total population of the country, lived in metropolitan areas. Meaning that still 60% lives outside of these metropolitan areas. But, like everywhere else, the big cities draw all the attention. Since metropolitans in general provide more possibilities for architectural and urban masterpieces, all the focus lies on them. Also in Brazil, where São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília get like 90% of the credits.

But what about these thousands of smaller cities? They also need development! They also doubled their inhabitants in the past 20-30 years. They also need urban planning to guarantee good living conditions and good architecture to give the city a new identity. Who is going to design these plans?

When I was explaining my plans and ideas to a Brazilian exchange student here in Delft, he said to me: “Brazil needs this. Brazil needs good urban strategies for her cities to develop.” As you could imagine, this little phrase gave me an enormous boost of good energy, for it confirmed me in my feeling that I am doing the right thing.