How is Caracas made?

Current discussions in architecture and urbanism continue to consider individual use, guides to consumption, and the appropriation of space as the limits of what is possible in urban territories. Yet, appropriation and consumption do not imply a transformation of social and spatial relations. Since being in Caracas we have noticed forms of urbanism that are a part of a greater social transformation and not merely the appropriation of space within existing social relations. This is a transformative urbanism that is both spatial and social.

Formal and informal practices cut through all of the city – formal practices are not only the right of the powerful and informal practices are not merely the cultural domain of the weak. In Caracas, the struggle for new spatial relations is interlaced into a transformation of the formal and informal. Spatial programs like urban and rural land reform, land titles and urban agriculture are tied into and related with healthcare and educational programs. These programs are not solely administrated and executed from above by governmental structures -- although they link to these structures -- but are forcefully initiated from below by collective community organizations.

Collective everday practices produce the new spatial relations of Caracas, and in a larger sense, they produce Caracas. Following Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the ‘production of space’, in CARACAS, HECHO EN VENEZUELA, we emphasize the processes of the ‘production of the city.’ What are the specific sites and modes of production of contemporary Caracas?

We examine three entry points for the production of Caracas: modernist urban planning and architecture; participatory democracy; and the dominant economic force, the Venezuelan oil industry. To represent these forces, we have chosen 23 de Enero as an example of contested modernist urban planning and architecture and as a site of political struggle – for example, through the mass squatting of 1958. We use the new Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a state structure which has been appropriated for participatory democracy. Lastly, we take Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, as an economic force which has inscribed Venzuela into the global economic system and as a site of national political and economic struggle which shapes the city.

By engaging with these productive forces and tensions of the city, with CARACAS, HECHO EN VENEZUELA we address the urban/national and urban/global connections and the spatial relations of class relevant to the city and its people.

<<