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About two weeks ago I was invited to a seminar at the Polytechnic School
hosted by the Ministry of the Cities and with Júnia Santa Rosa,
who's the Secretary for Housing and who's an economist, coming from a totally different field.
And she had invited a group of English and German researchers
to talk about the issue of the new possible urban formulations
to improve the program Minha Casa Minha Vida.
At first that made me think of two questions that I even talked with her about.
Firstly, concerning the relevance: It's obvious, or at least it seems so,
that no one is very happy with what is being done.
The populations seems to be, though. Those living there that leave...
She gave us examples families that have never seen a shower for at least four generations.
For them there is no question. In a house with a heating system
that is sustainable and so on, it's logical that the satisfaction rate is complete.
I have no doubts concerning that.
But the question that she has ben placing as the spokeswoman of the Ministry
is that, if the model is wrong, then what should the model be?
She asked several architects and everyone says what we all always do:
"It needs commerce in the ground floor. It needs to be integrated in the city."
But how? How much?
And the architects don't know how to answer. How will I integrate it in the city?
Because her point is: Those houses are like the houses where you live.
They're just a bit more impoverished, smaller and so on.
But they are gated because you also live in gated communities.
They're in scattered areas because there's a lot of people living in Alphaville or in other areas alike.
So, how can you wish for the New Middle Class, something that you, as architects and urban planners,
didn't create even for yourselves.
Appart from a small ghetto of super cool people living in super cool places.
But that's not the reality of the big Brazilian cities.
Especially of Brazil as a whole.
So, that absence in the academic and research world... Because the critique is very well structured.
The critiques to Minha Casa Minha Vida, everyone reads and believes them.
And finds them sufficient.
Nobody, I believe that no one looks at those housing models and says:
"No! This is City!"
The question of the seminar was:
"What are the demands of the New Middle Class in what concerns housing?"
I would replace it for a more general question:
"Which kind of city do we wish for ourselves?"
That could be the answer, the same city. Possible for the New Middle Class as well.
That's a tension of the moment.
It can be different, though. We could think: "No. We live in a city of the market."
The possibility of the State stepping in in the construction
of a specific urbanity for the New Middle Class
can reveal the possibility of the State, as a force,
to build a hypothesis of a city that is bettter than the one we live in, which is the city of the market.
That could be an option, but it has to be constructed
regarding a theoretical and economical framework. And that's not the case.
Today, the city that is managed -- because it isn't really directly financed -- by the State
and the city of the market, they follow very similar paradigms.
And that is a question that I've been posing very often lately, concerning the urban models
for the housing programs for the New Middle Class.