Placemaking for the 'Forth World' in a Network City - Case Studies from Colombia

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Placemaking for the ‘Fourth World’ in a Network City Case Studies from Colombia

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning

by Nikolas Andreas Koschany

School of Urban and Regional Planning Ryerson University April 14th, 2016

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Abstract By 2030, over 70% of the world population will be urbanized; of these populations, 25% will live in informal squatter settlements, or ‘slums’ (Gadanho, 2014). Organically, these settlements developed around agoras similar to societies in Europe, where placemaking is by-and-large a result of the surrounding community. Previously, slum clearance strategies leveled these communities, while erecting large brutalist towers for the slum dwellers to instead live in. With the failure of modernism, this strategy is now being forsaken for an integrative approach that rapidly incorporates slums into their abutting urban networks through various types of flow, including Wi-Fi networks, and transit lines (Gadanho, 2014). With the introduction of these flows, Castells (2010) argues, contemporary placemaking is now driven arguably not by surrounding communities, but by the overlap of large global spatial networks. To date, there has been very little research on the direct impacts of flow on placemaking, particularly in slums.

In October 2015, I visited three slums in Colombia: Quan Matitres, Comuna 13, and Santo Domingo. There I conducted quantitative and qualitative research, made contact with interviewees, and heard from secondary sources, to determine what impact flow has had on place. Results from the analysis show that 1) the introduction of flow into slums decreases rather than increases hostility between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ within agoras; it may however increase hostility in other parts of the slum dependent on whether the agora or flow came first into the community; 2) different flows have different effects on placemaking dependent on whether they are public or private, outdoor or enclosed, and centralized or decentralized; 3) the introduction of flow into a community-based place does not automatically make the agora network-based – network-based and community-based places can exist simultaneously, though it is unclear whether this state of co-existence is temporary or permanent.

This paper is both a first step in researching and connecting the topics of place, flow, and slums, and a plea for planners, designers, architects, urbanists, and researchers to refocus the discussion from mobility as a whole towards the relation between flow and place. The current paradigm, which suggests any type of flow is good for a community, needs to be thoroughly re-examined, in order to understand how we can best serve slums and their inhabitants.

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Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to acknowledge two professors at Ryerson’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, for their help in my research and writing of this paper. The first is Professor Lawrence Altrows. When I approached Lawrence in the winter of 2014 asking if he would consider doing a trip to South America, I never thought that it would culminate in me writing a paper of this magnitude. For all your hard work in planning the trip, connecting me with my secondary sources, and giving me the context for my research, I cannot thank you enough. Next time the two of us are in Colombia, I owe you a cervesa.

The second professor I want to thank is my supervisor, Dr. Zhixi Cecelia Zhuang. You helped me narrow and distill my topic immensely, and kept me on track through this process by continually asking questions about my research, and providing timely feedback. In doing so, you made me understand whether my research was actually going somewhere, or whether the ideas and questions I was having were delusional thoughts that only made sense in my head. Thank you as well for allowing me to conduct my own primary research, I don’t think this paper would be half as strong without it.

A few other people I need to thank: Alejandro Cifuentes, who helped organize my trip with Lawrence Altrows, and opened my eyes to the culture in Colombia. Jeanne Maurer, a professor of Geography here at Ryerson, who lent me a book, and whose guidance on my research and life in general has always been appreciated David Escobar Arango, who I met by coincidence at a parks conference in Toronto in March, but whose’ willingness to help me by being interviewed guided much of my analysis for Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo. My contact in Bogota who I met back in October, who gave me not only research, but unconditional friendship, and who I hope to visit again one day. Francesco Fiorani and Elias Villalobos, who kindly acted as translators for me in Colombia, and without whom, this research would not have been possible.

And Kim. Thank you for being there for me all this time. Whether you realize it or not, your support means the world to me.

It’s been an amazing experience writing this thing. I hope it doesn’t take as long to decipher my research as it did to conduct it and put it into this paper.

Sincerely,

Nikolas

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In dedication to Ringo,

You were my friend throughout high school, and through most of university. You were the best dog I could have asked for, and I miss you every single day.

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Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 7 Literature Review ........................................................................................................................................ 11 Network Societies and Displacement Drives .......................................................................................... 12 Placemaking Practices............................................................................................................................. 13 Networked Placemaking ......................................................................................................................... 17 Hypothesis............................................................................................................................................... 21 Research Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 22 Data Collection Matrix ............................................................................................................................ 26 Limitations .............................................................................................................................................. 27 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................................... 28 Quan Matitres ......................................................................................................................................... 30 Context ................................................................................................................................................ 30 Placemaking Index Measures.............................................................................................................. 33 Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow ........................................................................................................ 35 Effects of Flow on Place ...................................................................................................................... 39 Local or Networked Placemaking? ...................................................................................................... 41 Comuna 13 .............................................................................................................................................. 43 Context ................................................................................................................................................ 44 Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow ........................................................................................................ 46 Effects of Flow on Place ...................................................................................................................... 48 Local or Networked Placemaking? ...................................................................................................... 50 Santo Domingo........................................................................................................................................ 53 Context ................................................................................................................................................ 54 Placemaking Verification..................................................................................................................... 55 Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow ........................................................................................................ 59 Effects of Flow on Place ...................................................................................................................... 61 Local or Networked Placemaking? ...................................................................................................... 64 Discussion and Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 66 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................. 75

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List of Tables

Table 1 – Data Collection Matrix……………………………………………………………………………………………………………27 Table 2 – Placemaking Indicators for Quan Matitres…………………………………………………………………………33-34 Table 3 – Placemaking Indicators for Santo Domingo……………………………………………………………………….55-56

List of Figures

Figure 1 - An illustration of Placemaking Elements by the Project for Public Spaces (2009). .................... 13 Figure 2 – Quan Matitres and foreshadowed development. ..................................................................... 31 Figure 3 – A Soccer game in Quan Matitres, October 4th, 2015. ................................................................ 32 Figure 4 – Laundry hanging out to dry in Quan Matitres............................................................................ 35 Figure 5 – Watchdog at the top of the hill. ................................................................................................. 36 Figure 6 – Comuna 13 outdoor escalators. ................................................................................................. 44 Figure 7 – Comuna 13 before the escalators (Reimerink, 2014). ............................................................... 45 Figure 8 – Comuna 13 slides ....................................................................................................................... 45 Figure 9 – Comuna 13 artwork. .................................................................................................................. 47 Figure 10 – Comuna 13’s winding road, as highlighted. ............................................................................. 48 Figure 11 – Comuna 13 agora being used as an outdoor living room. ....................................................... 51 Figure 12 – An unused phone booth in the right area of Santo Domingo.................................................. 57 Figure 13 - Small Path in Santo Domingo.................................................................................................... 58 Figure 14 – Thank you Metro-Cable! .......................................................................................................... 62 Figure 15 – Example of Metro-Cable Car Socialization. .............................................................................. 63 Figure 16 - Santo Domingo Library on the Left ........................................................................................... 64

All photos contained in this paper are ©Nikolas Koschany, and may not be shared or used outside this report, without the express permission of the author.

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“Silicon is the new steel. The internet is the new railroad.�

-William Mitchell.

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Introduction Whether in Europe or South America, pre-contemporary urbanism (from around the 16th to 19th century) was largely defined by the creation of communities around an agora or urban core (Busquets, 2007). These spaces, often the plazas of key buildings such as churches, acted as the centre of urban life, and defined community by reflecting the cultural values which the community was built around. Placemaking 1, in these spaces was by and large a result of the community which surrounded them.

The creation of urban spatial networks, arguably starting with the introduction of streetcars in the late 19th century changed this placemaking dynamic. Suddenly, people were not forced to live and work in the same communities, because long distance transportation was affordable. While this type of network connection was already in place for those select few with larger disposable incomes via carriage or steam train, the obtainability of mobility for lower classes made possible a placemaking paradigm shift. The centre of a community shifted from a town square to the street which facilitated mobility. Streetcar suburbs pose an example of this, as many employees would work downtown, ride the streetcar home, and stop a few blocks before their residence in order to buy groceries (Hodge, 2003).

With the introduction of the automobile, telecommunications technology, and now the internet and smartphones, these urban networks have expanded even farther. Forces of globalization have made easier the presence of ‘flow’; of capital, information, labour, and people. Manuel Castells (2010) calls this the rise of the ‘network society’. Yet, without a As defined by the Project for Public Spaces, Placemaking involves the creation of a physical space that is comfortable and pleasant, that has access and other linkages to the urban fabric, that promotes sociability, and has a wide variety of programming and/or programming options for uses and activities within the area. Beyond all, placemaking involves the prioritization of pedestrians, usually at the expense of space for automobiles.

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physical permanence to these new ‘flows’, contemporary placemaking is now driven arguably not by surrounding communities, but by the overlap of large global spatial networks. 2,3 Castells (2010), argues that we are seeing the emergence of a new spatial form which he calls “the metropolitan region,” and these regions are becoming globally connected, because with globalization, networks have no boundaries (2010, p. 2738).

At the same time, globalization is leaving people behind, who are often abutting, but not connected to these networks because they cannot afford to connect to them. As urban growth becomes privatized through neoliberal trends 4, so too do urban networks, therefore marginalizing the people who cannot afford to use them (Gadanho, 2014). Castells (2010) calls such populations ‘fourth world’ societies, as they live in so-called third world conditions, but next to those living in first world conditions. Slums 5, or informal urban settlements, defined by David Gouverneur (2015) as “self-constructed cities [which] evolve without prescribed planning, design or legal guidelines” (p. xxiii), pose the greatest example of fourth world societies today.

Slums often locate in proximity to global cities, which have the greatest network presence (Castells, 2010); in Colombia, slums are most prevalent in Bogota and Medellin (Gouverneur,

Spatial networks can include transit lines, flows of capital, tourist destinations, etc. One example of this overlap creating place from my home, the City of Toronto, would be Dundas Square.

3 This is not to discount the placemaking of these networked spaces, but merely to highlight the difference in how and why these places are accessed. Hampton (2010), has actually shown an increase, rather than a decline in the use of public spaces due to the presence of smartphones.

4 By neoliberal trends, I refer to the mass series of market-friendly policies starting in the early 1980s that cut taxes for the wealthy, privatized parts of the public sector, and loosened financial and other regulations on large corporations. This has led to a reliance on the private sector to provide what used to be public goods (Gadanho, 2014).

5 I unapologetically and provocatively use the word “slums” to refer to the illegal and quasi-legal squatter settlements that contain much of today and tomorrow’s world population. In using such an umbrella term to refer to extremely different urban fabrics, I hope to highlight the inherent contradiction of painting every informal settlement as being somehow the same. Slums today are not the same, just as European cities in the Middle Ages were not the same. To suggest otherwise is to discount the very idea that slums are and will continue to be a legitimate urban form in the future, as countless research before this has shown.

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2015). Placemaking in these non-connected areas often follows the same trajectory of those agoras mentioned at the outset of this paper, where place is defined by the surrounding community, rather than the overlapping of networks. This often leads to the marginalization of outsiders from these communities due to issues of trust, safety, and xenophobia (Turner, 1972; Gouverneur, 2015).

Previously, slums in both North and South America were subject to clearance strategies, which replaced the settlements (and the placemaking they provided) with large modern brutalist towers, and placeless locales 6 (Gadanho, 2014). With the slow abandonment of slum clearance strategies over the past three decades however, a new approach has been taken that rapidly integrates slums into their abutting urban networks, rather than replacing them. This is done through technologies like wi-fi, and various types of transit lines, including cable-cars (Gadanho, 2014). Such a rapid transition from a community-based to network based society, poses questions on the nature of placemaking in these slums, and whether it in fact changes them just as much as modernism did. This paper hence sets outs to explore the effects of introducing network connections on the community and placemaking of slums and fourth world societies.

Specifically, the paper asks: 1. Does placemaking lessen hostility within fourth world societies? Does the rapid introduction of ‘flow’ in fourth world societies, (defined here as any technology that facilitates urban linkages) make communities more open or hostile to outsiders as a result of rapid network integration?

2. Does the introduction of different ‘flows’ affect placemaking differently in fourth world societies? If so, how?

The failure of brutalist modern architecture to support placemaking has been addressed thoroughly by Jane Jacobs, William Whyte, and countless others, and does not warrant being addressed in this paper in any way other than in passing.

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3. Is there a juxtaposition between a community-based place and a network-based place, or can one location be both types of place simultaneously?

To answer these questions, I conducted an extensive literature review on placemaking practices and network flow, and visited three slums in Colombia, one in Bogota, two in Medellin. While in these areas, I conducted quantitative and qualitative field research, obtained secondary data from relevant architects and academics, and established contacts whom I later conducted interviews with. This data was then aggregated, analyzed, and compared to ascertain whether placemaking and flow affect hostility levels, the different effects flow has on placemaking, and the overlap between community-based and network-based place.

Key findings suggest that a few things. First, the introduction of flow into a slums decreases rather than increases hostility between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders,’ within agoras, but may increase hostility in other parts of the community dependent on whether the agora or flow came first into the community. Second, different flows have different effects on placemaking dependent on whether they are public or private, outdoor or enclosed, and centralized or decentralized. Lastly, it was found that the introduction of flow into a community-based place does not automatically make the agora network-based. Several agoras were observed where global and local tourist networks harmoniously overlapped with community-based agoras, showing that network-based and community-based places can exist simultaneously. Whether this state of co-existence is temporary or not should be studied in future. Ultimately, a new paradigm has to be found within fourth world societies, to better understand the relation between flow and placemaking.

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Literature Review While the literature on both network cities and placemaking strategies is abundant, there is little literature connecting the two topics, hence making this research topic exploratory in nature. The issue is compounded because the literature that does exist addressing the two topics focuses on cities in North America and Western Europe, not on those in Latin America or the global south. In other words, the research available is rooted in the context of developed countries, while the research being conducted is within a developing country. This literature review hence has two tasks. The first is to separately connect placemaking strategies and network city theory to a Latin American and fourth world context. The second is to establish a link between network flow and placemaking in cities. If both the link between placemaking and network flows can be established, and both topics have been related separately to fourth world societies throughout this review, then ipso facto, the connection between placemaking and network flows must be relevant in fourth world urban space as well.

The literature review hence is split into four sections. The first section is not focused on placemaking per se, but reviews existing literature to establish the characteristics of a network society and how they facilitate displacement drives against the poor resulting in the creation of slums within these cities. The second section reviews the literature on traditional placemaking practices, and the relevance of these practices in Latin America and its slums. The third section of the review attempts to tie the previous two pieces together by showing the implications of networked placemaking. And the fourth section ties the literature together and lays out a broad hypothesis on how network flow might affect placemaking.

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Network Societies and Displacement Drives Castells (2010), defines the network society as a global society “because networks have no boundaries” (p.2737). Global communications technologies, Castells argues, have made easier the presence of ‘flow’; of capital, information, labour, and people, thereby transforming the economic structure of cities. Specifically, network flow creates new spatial structures by forming network connections between metropolitan areas, and ‘nodes’ where flows overlap – often the sites of placemaking initiatives per the topic of this paper. Sassen (2011) argues many of these nodes are located in ‘global cities’ which she defines as “strategic sites in the global economy because of their concentration of command functions and high-level producer-service firms oriented to world markets” (p. 27). Because of this, many nodes are sites of increased wealth, and strive to improve their image to improve global investment (placemaking being a part of this). The more network flows intersect at these nodes, the greater the attractor of wealth a node becomes (Dupont, 2011), and arguably the greater the demand for placemaking initiatives.

To be clear, an increased presence of network flows has not created the displacement – beatification drives acting as displacement drives in Latin America can be traced back to the Law of the Indies signed in 1573 (Hodge, 2003). Rather, an increase in network flow has exacerbated socio-economic inequalities that are already occurring in cities promoting nodal network strategies for development.

Dupont (2011) argues the focus on these nodes has benefited certain parts of metropolitan regions, while marginalizing other portions of the population, particularly the poor, and those living in slums. Beautification drives acting upon network nodes are simultaneously attracting global investment while acting as displacement drives against the poor, thereby driving those in

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slums to locate at the periphery of points of network access (Sassen, 2005, p. 37). These nodes are not always located within traditional downtowns or central business areas. Kourtit and Nijkamp (2012) argue that the decentralization afforded by increased network presence is facilitating the rise in urban agglomerations where said networks are present. It can thus be concluded that placemaking is a relevant part of this process, as its application on top of network nodes, or vice-versa can determine whether forces of displacement occur or not.

Placemaking Practices The established literature on placemaking, mainly taken from Jacobs (1961), Whyte (1980), and Gehl (2012), focuses on the aforementioned community-based placemaking rather than networked based placemaking or newer forms of so-called “virtual place making” (Mitchell, 1999). Despite this, such research serves as important background information in this research paper, as it allows a method of determination for successful “places” without large-scale network connections.

Placemaking has come to include several concepts over the past half century, including sociability, comfort and cleanliness of a space, access and linkages to other urban areas, and the uses and activities that can be flexibly programmed into a place (PPS, 2009). These areas are often “third places,” defined by Oldenburg (1999) as a location different from home (the first place) and work

Figure 1 - An illustration of Placemaking Elements by the Project for Public Spaces (2009).

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(the second place). Oldenburg’s characteristics of such third places are summarized by Crick (2011) as: 1. Spaces that people enter and leave at will; there is no criteria for entry or membership. Because of this, third places are often non-descript rather than glamorous, to prevent the commandeering of the space by pretentious or high-income users; use of the space is not controlled by class.

2. Spaces where conversation is the main activity.

3. Spaces that are accessible, both physically and temporally, with long hours to accommodate unscheduled visits.

4. Spaces that have regular attendees that facilitate character and provide “a home away from home” with a familiar environment.

Crick also identifies third places other than ‘traditional’ urban areas including the ‘commercial third space’ (like coffee shops) and ‘the spectacular third place’ (like tourist attractions such as Museums). These types of places will be acknowledged when addressing networked placemaking in the third section of this literature review, but the remainder of this section shall focus on placemaking in ‘traditional’ urban third places.

Whyte, in his 1980 book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces identifies seven elements that make these traditional urban places become sociable, and comfortable by extension. They are chairs and steps for people to sit, sunlight, green space, proximity to food, water features, and

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triangulation 78. An urban space containing these elements does not necessarily have a sense of place, but the elements create the conditions by which placemaking can occur, often by facilitating spontaneous social encounters or forms of triangulation. The emphasis on small urban spaces shows that the nature of placemaking is in a human scale with a focus on pedestrian-oriented experiences.

Gehl’s film The Human Scale (2012), argues similar to Whyte, that the conditions for socialization are created with neighbourhood scaled developments that allow for comfort and lounging rather than just movement. Gehl also furthers Whyte’s argument on spontaneous social encounters, by arguing they are driven by pedestrianized spaces; he uses the example of a snowball fight in the newly pedestrianized Times Square in New York City, as spontaneous programming that was never planned for when the space was designed, but that occurred nonetheless. William Mitchell (2010), another urban designer whose work is explored in the third section of this review, argues that cars are currently unconducive to social environments because they become isolated rooms once they are moving. Again, as noted by Gehl (2012), a focus on the automobile ties to social equity, particularly for those in the global south, where those who cannot afford a car cannot connect to certain urban networks.

Jacobs in her own seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) furthers this argument again, by contending pedestrian orientation and human scale is the driving force behind not only community, but community safety. A focus on large-scale monuments Triangulation is defined by Whyte in two ways. The first is in the relationship between elevated seats or step and the public plaza, almost to create an audience-stage relationship whereby the passersby become the performers and the seated become the audience. The second is in the relationship between people and an external stimulus (such as a monument or art piece) which “prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not” (p. 94).

8 Whyte’s seventh element of a successful public space, proximity to the street, shall be explored later in this review.

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(largely a result of city beautiful movements that occurred throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America), she argues, can actually harm placemaking and urban safety by creating obstacles to pedestrians, particularly if the monuments in question are used as traffic circles. In contrast, Jacobs argues a human scale and focus on the pedestrian creates street life, hence fostering ‘eyes on the street’ which then reinforces the safety and comfort (and therefore placemaking) of a public space.

While the above literature is based on case studies from the west, the placemaking principles established above are just as applicable within Latin American slums. Peter Kellett in his 1998 article The Construction of Home in the Informal City, explores the process of informal place-making. He concludes that, in contrast to reductionist views that slum dwellers are only focused on their own housing needs, many slums contain central meeting places that allow for a flexibility of uses. Because of the lack of external actors in slums, Kellett argues, a series of complex relationships is often formed between slum dwellers, hence creating a demand for these centralized meeting points (pg. 23). With the exception of greenspace in these places, (something Kellet attributes to a separation between nature (monte) and built culture (cultura)), many of the slums in question have the seven characteristics that Whyte describes as contributing to successful social spaces. Some urban elements, shown by John Turner, in his iconic work Let Them Build (1972) include makeshift places to sit, locations in sunlight, proximity to food (often in conjunction with fire pits), water pumps, and spaces to observe others in the community.

Turner also argues that many slums are hostile to outsiders, hence casting potential doubt on the validity that placemaking in slums and the western world are implicitly the same; however, this argument is dispelled when considering Jacobs (1961) argues that the same hostility to outsiders occurs in New York City in some public housing developments such as

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Morningside Heights. The cause of this hostility in cities in both the west and the south is not due to culture, but rather, a lack of external actors in these communities, and suspicion of topdown planning and placemaking processes (McCartney, 2009).

In the same vein that placemaking must be encouraging of spontaneity, it must also encourage community participation, whether from the surrounding urban area, or as part of a broader definition of ‘community’ based on network connections across the globe. McCartney (2009) argues that a “bottom up” design based approach can resolve these issues by facilitating community interaction within the planning process (pg. 37). This process (also known as ‘tactical urbanism’) is prominent in slums, which often have a “do it yourself” attitude in the absence of adequate resource provision by either the government or the marketplace. This type of urbanism is especially prominent in Latin America, where a rising inequality and urban migration are pushing more people into slums, and the government either cannot or will not provide (Gadanho, 2014). Flexible programming therefore becomes more important than ever in slum placemaking because it reflects a community governance structure on top of a social structure. The introduction of flow into an established slum’s third place can therefore be damaging if it results in a decrease in flexible use of the space.

Networked Placemaking With the rise of digital technology, Crick (2011) introduces two new types of third places accommodated by increased network flow. The first is the “virtual third place” commonly manifested in virtual realities such as Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs), and online chats and forums such as Facebook. Narayan (2013) calls such spaces “digital agora[s]” (pg.

32). While there is some disagreement to what effect these digital agoras offer the same quality

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of communication as in the physical agoras 9 Crick argues that virtual spaces fulfil Oldenburg’s four aforementioned characteristics of a third place.

The second and more interesting type of third place Crick introduces is the “hybrid” third place, defined by overlap between virtual third places, addressed above, and physical or commercial third places. This overlap is established when wireless internet access is provided in any space. Due to the widespread prevalence of communications technology and the internet in the west, we might say that any third place with internet access is by default a hybrid third place to those who can access it with digital devices. This view is echoed by William Mitchell (1999), who argues digital networks are not just delivery systems for flow, but part of a “whole new urban infrastructure” that will need to eventually accommodate virtual places that are layered on top of physical ones.

Mitchell takes his argument a step further by arguing “traditional urban patterns cannot coexist with cyberspace” (p.3). He starts his argument by using the example of the village well, which served as a centralized social place for those gathering water. With the introduction of indoor piping, Mitchell argues, that aspect of public life was discontinued; similarly, with the introduction of the internet, ‘digital pipelines’ are uprooting physical opportunities for socialization because “mindwork no longer demands legwork” (pg.7). With all of this, Mitchell argues urban placemaking must be refocused to include flow digital places on top of physical

Currently, technology has not reached an apex where you can eat the same food as someone online, physically interact with them, or smell the same things as them. One reason many long distance relationships do not work is because there is a lack of a chemical called “Oxytocin” which produces feelings of comfort, and is released into the bloodstream whenever you are touched – something communications technology cannot yet offer (Barton, 2014).

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ones, as well as the integration of physical transportation linkages into how we view architecture and public space.

Mitchell argues the concept of networks disrupting a city’s social structure is not new.

Just as the expansions of river ways in Amsterdam and Venice expanded Dutch and Italian societies with new urban realms for socialization, so too did steam trains, and later the automobile provide linkages between cities in the Western and Southern United States. Mitchell argues one trait of new networks is that they start by connecting the activity nodes sustained by earlier networks, then later replace them. For example, he argues, Los Angeles was formed because a series of towns in California were interconnected via rail networks, and the suburbs that formed later were connected by highway networks into a much broader networked metropolis. Later, the local stores sustained by pedestrian networks were replaced by regional malls sustained by a network that was created for automobiles.

Charles Montgomery argues in his book Happy City (2013), that the failure of modernism was that its pursuit of mobility and speed for the automobile created third places that were not in the public sphere; instead, spaces were moved outside the public realm, accessed by those only with the ability to access them (in this case, with a car), thereby creating a social equity problem.

With the rise of the internet, and other advanced digital communications, is society relegating third places now to the digital realm that can only be accessed with a smartphone or internet enabled device? What are the implications for those without that technology? And what are the implications for slum populations who may not be able to afford digital devices?

With physical networks (largely transit links), the linkages between corresponding proximity to the network epicenter in most cases is reflected in land values because as Mitchell argues, “all networks produce privileges places at their junction and access points� (pg. 78).

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This, as Castells (2010) remarks, can result in largescale gentrification, sprawl (depending on zoning), and the rise of informal fourth world settlements across the globe, as those without access to networks seek to locate in closest proximity to access points.

With digital network expansion however, despite increased decentralization potential addressed earlier in this review, the same physical spatial marginalization between those at the network access point and those at the fringes occurs (Castells, 2010). Mitchell notes that even though someone can hypothetically locate on the top of an isolated mountain and be connected to the digital network society, “locational freedom does not mean locational indifference” (pg. 79).

Noted urbanist and planner Peter Hall, in his 2003 article The End of the City? takes this argument further by writing transportation and communication costs are not “spatially indifferent” (p. 141); in other words, both transportation and communications costs are regressive – the greater the distance, the greater the cost of communication, physical or digital.

Because of this, Hall takes the approach that proximity to digital access points will still be driven by physical distances, particularly for those populations who are poor and cannot afford long distance transportation or communication costs.

Mitchell’s argument is that locational preferences will be driven towards “24-hour” areas that have historical or cultural value, and that can accommodate live/work dwellings, and electronic meeting places as well as physical ones. While many of the meeting places in these new neighbourhoods will be digital in nature, these neighbourhoods according to Mitchell, will also look like the ideal neighbourhoods described by Jane Jacobs in Death and Life of Great American Cities (pg. 79).

All of the above shows the importance of traditional placemaking practices, even within a networked city. While digital communications have expanded the earlier effects that networks

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imposed on cities, there is little theoretical basis behind the idea that “place” will become irrelevant as a result of increased network flows. Moreover, it may be said that successful public places have always required a network flow to thrive. In Whyte’s aforementioned 1980s study, he found that successful public plazas in New York City are ones closest to busy streets from which pedestrians can access them. And Jacobs notes that the so-called “ballet of the sidewalk” requires a continuous stream new actors and acts to make a place vibrant (pg. 65).

Current research also shows that an incursion of digital technology has not withdrawn people from the public realm, but actually added them to it. In 2010, three decades after Whyte’s book was published, his study was repeated by Dr. Keith Hampton of Rutgers University, to determine what impact technology has on the use of the same public spaces that Whyte studied in New York City. When he started his research, Dr. Hampton expected to see a decline in the use of public spaces, but the opposite held true. Rather than remove people from public spaces, technology has actually added people to them. Hampton explains the results by arguing that humans are choosing to do more activities in public with smartphones which were once only able to be performed in private, such as checking emails or making phone calls. This in turn would allow the lingering in public places for longer periods of time, because leisure and productivity are no longer bound to specific physical locations such as home or work. Interestingly, Hampton also notes that many people using smartphones in public spaces do so while waiting for someone, and put them away once they meet whomever they are waiting for has arrived (Hampton, 2010).

Hypothesis While the aforementioned research is focused on the western world, there is little reason to doubt its application to the global south. The prevalence of slum formation in close proximity

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to network nodes (digital and transportation) are apparent throughout the literature. Further, both Kellett and Turner have shown the placemaking principles of Latin American Slums to be consistent with those in the west. As the link between placemaking and network flows has been established in the western world, and both topics have been related separately to fourth world societies throughout this review, then ipso facto, the connection between placemaking and network flows must be relevant in fourth world urban space as well.

With all of this, it may be hypothesized that a community-based agora will not vanish from relevance with the incursion of networks, as the literature shows placemaking has always been about proximity to networks in some way or form; further, the above study from Hampton shows that an incursion of digital flow has actually increased the use of physical third spaces. It may then be assumed that “place� actually forms around nodes of network flow, and to an extent is dependent on it; the introduction of new types of flow may not be pertinent to placemaking, but the centralization or decentralization of flow may be relevant.

Therefore, what is made apparent in this review, is not that network incursion affects placemaking per se, but that it can harm the populace through displacement potential depending on who uses the network, by whom the network is leveraged, and whether the network nodes are restrictive of flexible programming and uses.

Research Methods A trip to Colombia was conducted in October 2015, which provided much of my data to be used in analysis. Data was collected from three case studies in Colombia (one in Bogota, two in Medellin), each case representing a slum with a different type of network connection; in

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highlighting the differences between each case, I hope to establish both positive and negative outcomes of network incursion on peacemaking in slums. The slums in question are Quan Matitres (Bogota), Comuna 13 (Medellin), and Santo Domingo (Medellin). Data collected outside the above literature review was mostly primary in nature, and consisted of quantitative data, qualitative field observations, and interviews or talks with relevant sources.

My quantitative research measured placemaking indicators as set out by Jacobs (1961), Whyte (1980) and Gehl (2012) in the above literature review; these indicators were used to establish a placemaking index, which in turn determined whether the locations in question under study were undergoing placemaking practices, and whether they could be classified as agoras.

The data was also used to determine the hostility to outsiders in these areas. Indicators (inclusive of numerical and attribute data) were sorted under each of the four categories of placemaking as set out by the Project for Public Spaces, including Sociability; Comfort and Image, Access and Linkages; and Uses and Activities.

Sociability •

Triangulation elements.

•

Number of places to sit.

•

Number of strange and/or hostile looks received.

•

Number of strangers who said buenos or some variant of ‘hello’ and/or smiled at me.

•

Number of groups seen congregating in public (where is a group is categorized as 3 people or more).

Comfort and Image •

Number of elders.

•

Number of unaccompanied children.

•

Number of women.

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•

Amount of sunlight and green space in the area,

•

Number of open residential doors (signifying community trust).

•

Greenspace

Access and Linkages •

Number of people on cellphones.

•

Type of network connection.

Uses and Activities •

Number of people playing soccer in an informal setting.

•

Proximity of food to the area.

•

Number of people watching the street from inside buildings (or ‘eyes on the street’).

The indicators were measured over a 2-hour period, once for each locale; for Comuna 13 the sampling could unfortunately not be conducted due to time constraints. Sampling size varied across slums, often due to their size, but in all instances, the brief behavior of over 50 people was measured (in Santo Domingo, the largest of the slums measured, the sample size was over 100 people). The measured data has been organized into excel spreadsheets and cross-analyzed to determine connections between each slums’ dataset, as well as the connections between each slum and the researched literature. In Santo Domingo, different data sets were created for different locations within the slum due to its size. The data was triangulated by reviewing photos and video footage that I had shot during my visits, in order to verify the counts.

Qualitative observational data was also gathered in these areas, to measure non-quantifiable observations. This includes the way I felt when walking in these areas (safe/unsafe, happy/stressed, etc.), as well as observations I made regarding how different types of network

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flow affected my sense of place in certain slums. The presented observational data is corroborated with photographs.

My data collection also consisted of interviews with contacts I made while in Colombia, and kept in contact with after journeying back to Toronto. One contact is protected by confidentiality, but is an elected community leader within Quan Matitres in Bogota, who has lived in the community for over thirty-five years, and has played (and continues to play) an active role in the slum’s development. My other contact David Escobar Arango, has waived confidentiality; he was the Private Secretary (similar to chief of Staff) for the Mayor of Medellin from 2004-2007, and is the current director of Confama, a non-profit organization that provides health service, cultural programs, and low-income housing development (Confama, 2016). As part of his work on project management of “Integral Urban Projects” (PUIs) David worked extensively with planning and architecture teams on slum integration and regeneration strategies on Comuna 13, Santo Domingo, and another slum called “Aurora” which I was unfortunately unable to visit during my time in Medellin. Within these communities, David and his team planned and developed hundreds of different projects including parks, public spaces, schools, health centres, and transportation connections. In his words, “the whole idea was to build community, to create a sense of belonging, and to generate trust” (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016).

To formally interview these contacts, I filled out an ethics review for Ryerson University, obtained consent from the interviewees, and contacted them through separate mediums on separate dates. My interview with the community leader occurred on March 28th between 9:45pm and 10:45pm EST through Facebook video messenger. While I did not get to interview David in person, I was able to email him a list of my questions, and he was able to send me his responses.

During these interviews I asked a wide variety of questions that had been created between myself

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and my supervisor, Dr. Zhuang, over a period of three weeks. Topics discussed included: qualifying experiences and projects that my interviewees had worked on; the comfort and safety of outsiders vs. insiders in slums; the prevalence (or lack) of mass transit in the areas, and its impact on mobility; the prevalence of agoras within the community, and common activities that occur there; the linkage of separate agoras to each other through network flows; the transition from a “community based” to “network based” agora; the rise of digital telecommunications technology in slums, and its impact on communities; whether place gathers around nodes of network flow, or whether network flow is introduced to preexisting places, and; the difference in sociability that different types of flow create.

Lastly, while in Colombia, I gathered secondary data from a variety of academic sources as part of a field research course organized by another one of my professors, Lawrence Altrows along with his assistant Alejandro Cifuentes. This included talks from architects, planners, and some active community members of areas we visited. This data, while not used as extensively within my research as my primary data is, has played a role in developing background context for each of my case studies, and also providing some mixed-method data including the history of the slums in question.

Data Collection Matrix The following matrix outlines my three research questions, and the data sources that I will use to attempt to answer these questions. The questions in this matrix will be returned to in the discussions and conclusions portion of this paper.

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Research Question

Data Collection Method(s)

1. Does placemaking lessen hostility within fourth world societies?

• •

fourth world societies (defined here as any

• • •

technology that facilitates urban linkages)

•

1.1. Does the rapid introduction of ‘flow’ in

Head counts Non-obtrusive nonparticipant observations Interviews Head counts Non-obtrusive nonparticipant observations Interviews

make communities more open or hostile to outsiders as a result of rapid network integration?

2. Does the introduction of different ‘flows’ affect placemaking differently in fourth world societies? If so, how?

• • •

3. Is there a juxtaposition between a community-based

•

place and a network-based place, or can one location

•

Non-obtrusive nonparticipant observations Interviews Secondary Sources Non-obtrusive nonparticipant observations Interviews

be both types of place simultaneously?

Table 1 – Data Collection Matrix.

Limitations I was only able to visit Colombia for a two-week period in October of 2015. While this means that my data is both up to date and verifiable, it also means the data is only a snapshot in time. Because of this, I cannot perform a temporal analysis on each of these sites to determine what the impact of networks has been on placemaking in these areas over a period of time. As well, since my research was conducted solely in Colombia, my findings may only be applicable within a Latin American context. Moreover, as I do not speak Spanish and was raised in a very European family, there may be cultural factors I am unaware of, which act as hidden causal variables which I am also unaware of. To reduce these limitations, my interviews focused on both the time based changes of the areas in question, and partially on cultural contexts of each

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area and project. While this does not entirely rectify these two limitations, it provides enough data to ensure my analysis is not compromised.

The other limitation of my study is, due to the limited time I spent in Comuna 13, quantitative data was not gathered in this location. To address this, I have drawn upon the works of Letty Reimerink, who in 2014 did her own quantitative analysis on Comuna 13, measuring the ages, genders, and times in which the agoras in this slum were used. While the dataset does not measure all indicators in my placemaking index, l also have included qualitative observations and primary and secondary head-count data to ground my research and base my conclusions upon.

Data Analysis Analysis on the gathered data is split into three sections, each dealing with one of the case studies in question. The data within the case studies is organized in the following manner.

First, a contextual background to the area, as well as the places and flows under observation will be provided. Second, based on the placemaking indicators established in my research methods, I will prove that each area under observation is an agora, in order to further verify my research.

Third, my observational data will be analyzed in conjunction with primary interview data and some secondary data to explore the topics related to each of my research questions; these topics will be broken down into the following categories: hostility; effects of flow on place, and; local or networked placemaking.

Throughout the analysis, findings are compared and contrasted with the reviewed literature, in order to link broader concepts from the authors to specific observations. While the

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literature will not be the prime determinant in answering my research questions themselves, it will be a factor in the analysis of each case. The connections from each case study between my observations and the established literature will be used to make conclusions on the impact of the flow in each area. This will in turn inform the answers in the following section to my research questions posed at the beginning of this paper.

Case Study 1 - Quan Matitres

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Figure 2 – Quan Matitres and foreshadowed development.

Context Quan Matitres is a formally-illegal (now legalized) settlement located in eastern Bogota, and is only a few blocks large. It, and three other slums in the area were founded as part of a land invasion led by a priest named Father Domingo 71 years ago (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2016). Over the past decade, however, these connected slums have been replaced with large towers serving so-called “strata 5” or upper income residents 10, construction of which is shown in figure 2. As a result of these towers’ development, many of the residents formerly in these areas have been displaced, often ending up in Ciudad Bolivar, an inner-city slum 11 (Personal

In Colombia, there are six recognized stratas or “classes” ranging from strata 1 to strata 6.

Rather than being an informal squatter settlement, Ciudad Bolivar is an inner city neighbourhood that simply fell into serious decline. Bolivar is considered a strata 1 neighbourhood.

10 11

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Communication, March 28th, 2016). When I interviewed my contact, who is currently running to be president of Quan Matitres, he told me he unfortunately does not expect his community to be around in another five years, as developers have already started buying out the land from residents at cheap prices, as they did with previous slums in the area.

Figure 3 – A Soccer game in Quan Matitres, October 4th, 2015.

The community agora is at the top of a hill around the intersection of three roads, Calle 65a, Transversal 1 Este, and Carrera 1. In the middle of this intersection is a painted soccer field, which is used extensively by the community as the main gathering point, and a source of triangulation within the community (figure 3). Gatherings have occurred and soccer has been played at this intersection for over 50 years. This could be (as my other contact David, says) because crossroads often attract social and commercial activities, but it could also be, as my

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contact points out, because the area is the only flat land within the barrio where soccer can be played. The painted field has only been around for five years; according to my contact, it was painted by the local community “in the absence of local government or the market to provide.”

Every Sunday, a soccer game is held in the slum, which not only attracts residents from within the community, but from other slums as well. My contact explained to me that there is a sense of solidarity not only within the barrio he is a part of, but barrios from the surrounding areas, therefore forming a kind of network. When I asked my contact if he would like to have a proper soccer field built in his area, he was nonchalant. Quan Matitres already has a community centre, he said, and that isn’t used nearly as much as the field is, though it is one of the main gathering places for the community (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2016).

Placemaking Index Measures Sociability Triangulation Elements Number of Places to sit Strange or Hostile Looks Received Hellos/Buenos/Smiles Received Groups (3 persons or more)

Quan Matitres Soccer Players, Food, Laundry Chairs, Curbs 7 3 68

Comfort and Image Number of Elders Children (Attended) Children (Unattended) Children (Total) Equal Number of Women (y/n) Number of open residential doors Presence of Sunlight?

Presence of Shade?

Greenspace?

25 32 17 49 y 5 yes yes none

Access and Linkages Number of People on Cellphones Network Connection

3 Bus (15 minute intervals, 800m stop spacing)

Koschany, 34 Uses and Activities Informal Soccer Players (Not in Stadium) Proximity of Public Food Eyes on the Street (In Buildings or Outside)

17 Through Fire Pits 197

Table 2 – Placemaking Indicators for Quan Matitres.

I conducted my observations for Quan Matitres on Sunday October 3rd, 2015. Based on the indicators attached in Table 1, Quan Matitres fulfills all four categories of placemaking.

Sociability is provided for through triangulation, and in fact, so many people were in the barrio when I visited that many in the absence of chairs were simply sitting on the curb. While this may show a lack of physical infrastructure to accommodate socialization, it also shows a great demand for socialization, which is Oldenburg’s (1999) first characteristic of a third place. The amount of groups gathering within the area to talk also shows a high degree of socialization.

Comfort and image of the location is verified through the number of elders and children I observed within the barrio, particularly the number of unobserved children. The presence of many children without adult supervision shows that the area is safe; this fact was also verified through my contact, who told me he allows his children outside at nighttime without worrying about them (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2016). Meanwhile while I could not get an exact count, a discrepancy between the presence of women and men was not apparent, therefore showing the area to be accessible to different social populations.

Not focusing on its social dimension, the area was also physically accessible, with a wide variety of linkages to other parts of the city. In addition to the three roads mentioned at the outset of this case study, a bus runs through the area (discussed later in this paper), and a system of pedestrian laneways and stairs act as midblock connections within the community, serving as alternate routes up the hill. All of these linkages congregate at the soccer field, making the area very connected, and not isolated by its surroundings. In my visit, I did not witness a large

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coverage of cellphones, indicating that the connections being made in the area are still communal in nature, rather than network based.

Lastly, the activities conducted in the area were various. While the main source of triangulation for the community was the soccer game, many other activities were taking place in the area as well when I visited, including the cooking of food, the hanging of laundry, and general people watching.

Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow When I asked my contact if his barrio was safe, he enthusiastically responded “ci!� While he does not feel safe outside at nighttime in most parts of Bogota, his barrio is an exception because of the bonds between community members. According to him,

Figure 4 – Laundry hanging out to dry in Quan Matitres.

members of his community are bound by a social contract not to harm or steal from anyone, insiders and outsiders alike. As a testament to this rule, when my contact toured us around his barrio, he waved at laundry hanging outside in the public drying in the sun (figure 4), and the many residential doors which simply stood open, despite having no one directly inside the structures.

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Figure 5 – Watchdog at the top of the hill.

From my own observations, this contract of non-harm becomes more apparent the closer to the community agora that you are. When I walked into Quan Matitres for the first time with two of my colleagues, I was nervous the entire walk up the hill. As a white male in Latin America speaking English, it was obvious that I was not a local, and I felt the eyes of many people upon us. A system of pedestrian laneways and stairs act as midblock connections within the community, serving as alternate routes up the hill; at one point, my colleagues and I attempted to walk up one of these sets of stairs, but turned back when we viewed a man at the top looking at us suspiciously (figure 5).

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Whether this hostility was real or perceived is not within the scope of this paper.

However, when my colleagues and I reached the soccer field, much of this hostility disappeared, and we were but members of the crowd watching a game. By my observations, the soccer game acted as a form of triangulation, which unified people around a singular occurrence, regardless of their differences. It was only when I started taking pictures that eyes of the community turned on us and appeared hostile again, most likely because a white man taking photographs draws more attention than the soccer game itself. This when I first met my contact, who was generous enough to properly show us around the area.

The laneways and midblock connections, despite having some homes front onto them, do not act as gathering spaces, and when walking through them, residents viewed us with suspicion and hostility until they saw the community leader walking with us 12. Heading back to the agora, the hostility lessened, and sociability improved. Even though the soccer game had concluded by that point, other elements of triangulation remained in place, namely food; community members offered my colleagues and I some empanadas and beer, a place to sit around the table, and even made some lighthearted jokes.

When I asked my contact about the three slums that were replaced by towers in the surrounding areas, and whether they had agoras of their own like this one, he solemnly replied no. According to my contact, the three other slums were centres for drug trafficking around the time of Pablo Escobar in the 1980s; while these slums had community centres, they lacked a central outdoor agora like Quan Matitres has; for this reason, he said, they were unsafe, as locals

11 out of the 17 hostile looks I received were in the barrio’s laneway. Only 2 hostile looks were received in the agora. The other 4 hostile looks were received on the way up the hill towards the soccer field with my colleagues.

12

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in those areas did not have strong social ties with each other. The community centres were interventions that came “too little too late� (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2016).

The above observations seem to confirm my hypothesis, that placemaking lessens hostility. While this could be due to the anonymity that large public spaces provide, my data here seems to indicate, at least for smaller agoras, a reduction in hostility is due to the opportunities that third places provide for interaction with locals; triangulation elements provide not only the means for connecting people, but an excuse for outsiders to be in the locations they are in. On the street, loitering draws suspicion (like my observations in the barrio’s laneways) as there is no purpose in being there; in a third place like an agora, however, lingering is encouraged because triangulation elements provide the purpose. In the case of Quan Matitres, triangulation seem to have lessened this hostility, but as I show in my future case studies, while hostility always lessens with placemaking, this is not always due to triangulation.

In regards to the effect of flow on hostility, Quan Matitres is serviced by the Transmilenio bus system, which was introduced less than a year ago into the community; many barrio-members catch the bus in the morning during the week from the same intersection where the soccer field is located, in order to work outside of the area during the daytime. When I asked my contact whether the community had become more receptive to outsiders since the bus system was introduced, he replied in the affirmative. Some of the wealthy people living in the towers that have been recently developed take the bus to work, according to my contact; as do many of the people in the barrio itself. This could promote a social mix on the bus, which in turn causes the community to become more open and receptive to having outsiders in their community. This is supported by my observations, where on entry to the community, several times I witnessed barrio members, and more expensively clothed members from the nearby tower communities

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standing and waiting for the bus together. While most interactions around the bus stop I observed were between members of the barrio (often higher-income members were using their phones), there was no hostility between the two groups.

Similar to how triangulation and placemaking provide excuses to linger in an agora, it could also be that the bus provides an excuse for entry into the barrio. Since the bus was introduced, the number of shops in the barrio has increased. Whether this is a result of members of the barrio wanting to present a certain image of their community, or simply a byproduct of this community’s friendliness in particular is beyond the scope of this paper, and cannot be answered with the data available. This said, the existing data in this case (and future ones) seems to indicate that the introduction of flow does reduce hostility to outsiders within the community in some capacity.

Effects of Flow on Place The flow in Quan Matitres runs through its agora, given it is at the intersection of three roads. While buses start running through the barrio at 4:56am, and don’t stop until 11:59pm (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2015), they have headways, and as a result, their flow is not always present within the community; therefore, while buses represent the introduction of flow into the area, their disruption of place is only temporary, and due to scheduling, can be planned around. In contrast, cars present a continuous, unscheduled, and private flow 13, which I observe to have a very different effect on the communities. In my observations, the only disruption to the soccer game was when cars passed through the agora; as the painted field is not

Here I define private flow as modes of mobility that are either not accessible to the public, or are closed off from the space they are flowing through.

13

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formally closed off to traffic, vehicles will occasionally flow through the area. A bus that flows once every fifteen minutes through a community does not impact the ability of people to socialize as much as a continuous flow of automobiles does; if cars were the dominant form of transportation within the barrio, a continuous flow would disrupt community soccer matches far more often, and as a result, placemaking in Quan Matitres would likely be diminished.

A continuous flow (or in the case of less car travel, uncertain flow) is not the only negative effect cars have on placemaking. When I asked my contact if those who own cars use the community agora as much as those who do not, he replied that many who own cars tend to be less active members of the community, and this “is noticeable� (Personal Communication, March 28th, 2016). My contact hypothesized this has to do with income: those who can afford to own a car, he said, can also afford go out more, and as a result, they use the local agora less.

However, my contact contradicted himself on this point earlier in the interview, when I asked if those of higher incomes leave the community more often; on this question, my contact told me that rather than going out more often, those with higher incomes tend to save up and go on road trips with their family to neighbouring towns once or twice a year. Because of this discrepancy, with respect to my contact, I would disagree with his initial statement about income affecting agora use, and instead argue that the car itself is directly to blame for this community passivity, with income being only a contributing factor.

In Colombia’s culture, the automobile is still seen as a symbol of class and freedom; therefore, those of higher incomes (or those attempting to emulate a higher income lifestyle) are more likely to own one (Montgomery, 2013). As established by my contact, most residents of his barrio do not own cars, and instead take the bus to work and back; this requires them to walk to and from the agora at least twice a day, where they are likely to see neighbours, friends, and

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family, even if only temporarily. For those who own cars however, this daily community interaction is not necessary. My contact has a car, but being the vice-president (and soon possibly president) of his barrio, he is usually around his community when he is not working, and therefore has opportunities to socialize and interact with the community. If this position were not his, would my contact interact with his community as much?

Just as Mitchell (1999) argues indoor plumbing destroyed the community around waterwells, so too does ownership of the automobile destroy the community that forms public transportation networks, in this case a bus stop. This case illustrates that placemaking requires daily use of a space for reasons of necessity as well as luxury or tranquility, and also that flow can have a damaging effect on a community agora, when it is decentralized from it. Similar to Whyte’s (1980) observations that the best used public plazas were those closest to a busy street, the best agoras in slums seem to be those that have a centralized form of flow running near them. Further analysis will be drawn from Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo in support of this hypothesis.

Local or Networked Placemaking?

The introduction of the bus line into the community does not seem to have affected the community based nature of the place in question. With an exception of the soccer games, which draw in people from other barrios, my contact says the community is not used much by outsiders, even by those in the nearby towers. The soccer games that draw members of other barrios into Quan Matitres could indicate that the agora becomes a networked-based place on Sundays when the major soccer games are held. From my own observations however, even during these games, the agora was very locally used – there was no competition for the spaces’ use between local

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community members and the wider city-based network of other barrio members. When I visited Quan Matitres on days the major soccer game was not occurring, the only difference was the number of people in the agora. Beyond this, the activities being conducted were the same, including conversation, dining, and (smaller scale) soccer games.

This case shows that a network-based place can host the same activities as a communitybased place, and ultimately, indicates that these two typologies of place can exist simultaneously.

Whereas the introduction of flow into Quan Matitres has not changed the locality of placemaking at all, the flow in question may be too small to affect anything, or it may be too soon to tell whether there will be any lasting effects from the buses’ introduction. No conclusions can be fully made on this topic until the other two cases are analyzed.

Case Study 2 - Comuna 13

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Context

Figure 6 – Comuna 13 outdoor escalators.

Comuna 13 is a squatter slum located in northern Medellin, that encroaches upon the side of a mountain. I conducted my observations for the area on Friday October 9th. The settlement is connected to the rest of the city, and to a colectivo (mini-bus) system (which in turn is connected to the metro system) by a series of outdoor escalators, running up the mountainside (figure 6).

Before the installation of the escalators, local residents had to climb 384 steps, or the equivalent of twenty storeys, in order to reach the top of the hill, as buses could not run in the community due to small road widths (figure 7, next page).

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Agoras in the community are located not at road intersections, but at the entrances and exits to these escalators. Like in Quan Matitres, which has its agora at the intersection of crossroads, Comuna 13 shows that placemaking is to a degree connected to the access of flow. The community agoras act as places of socialization and comfort, and fulfil all of Whyte’s (1980) seven criteria for successful public places, including benches, chairs, and stars to sit on, sunlight, greenspace that provides shading, and access to food and water through surrounding shops. One of the agoras even has a slide built into the hill that children play on, which acts as a source of triangulation for

Figure 7 – Comuna 13 before the escalators (Reimerink, 2014).

parents (figure 8). Children, teenagers, adults, and elders alike use the spaces, with an almost equal presence of men and women (Reimerink, 2014).

In my interview with David, I asked whether Comuna 13’s agoras existed before the escalators were put into place, and he responded that part of the intervention in the area was actually the creation of the agoras, which

Figure 8 – Comuna 13 slides

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previously did not exist. This is not to say community interaction did not occur (as shown in figure 7) before the intervention, merely that it was not necessarily concentrated in specific areas and spaces during this time.

Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow My experiences within Comuna 13 were very benign and friendly; one local resident had no problem with me taking a video of him playing with his dog; another resident had no problem when one of my colleagues started flirting with her; and I was able to purchase an ice cream from a nearby cafĂŠ on recommendation from a friendly local. It was only when I reached the top of the escalators and decided to venture further up the mountain that I started to feel unsafe.

While the escalators reach the top of the mountain, the slum sprawls down the other side of it, and no immediately perceivable interventions have been made in that area, either through placemaking or through flow. The further away I was from the escalators (and by extension the agoras), the less painted buildings became and the more garbage I encountered on the streets.

Unlike in Quan Maitires, I did not feel a sense of hostility when I walked away from the agoras, but I did feel a greater sense of belonging the closer I was to them.

Before the escalator was introduced to the area, Comuna 13 was one of Medellin’s most dangerous areas in the city (the other being Santo Domingo) (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016). Gangs at the bottom of the mountain were at war with gangs at the top of the mountain, and twelve people were killed during the construction of the escalators due to these turf wars, including a 9-year-old boy. In the aftermath of the escalator construction, the number of gangs in the community have dropped from five to one, and the violence within the area has decreased immensely, (Reimerink, 2014). Reimerink, in her own study of Comuna 13 found that the

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escalators created a culture of safe social interaction in the communities where before it did not exist. She cites a heartwarming example of an 86-year-old man who previously did not leave his home before the escalators were constructed, but who now takes leisurely evening strolls using the escalators. In another example from Reimerink’s research, a man named Leidy disclosed, “my family members that lived outside Comuna 13 never came to visit because they were too afraid. Now they’re not afraid anymore and they come like normal […] everybody feels safe” (2014, p.86).

This is not to say the escalators alone are responsible for a drop in crime rates or an uptake in safety. As part of Medellin’s Integral Urban Projects, Comuna 13 also benefited from substantial public art subsidies, which literally coloured the area, while creating a distinct community that engages youth (figure 9). A nearby not-for-profit art centre named Casa Kolacho

Figure 9 – Comuna 13 artwork

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does programming with children and teenagers, including street-art, film-making, photography, and hip-hop and rap music videos, in order to keep them out of the aforementioned gangs (Personal Communication, October 9th, 2015). This said, the music the teenagers create is uploaded to YouTube, an online video sharing website; while not a physical network, YouTube is a word-wide digital network, and internet access could be considered a type of flow; this is of course, debatable. It is questionable to what extent lessened hostility is due specifically to an increased spatial or digital flow via Comuna 13’s escalators and internet; clearly however, flow has had an effect on decreasing hostility in some form or another.

Effects of Flow on Place

Figure 10 – Comuna 13’s winding road, as highlighted.

As the road widths within Comuna 13 are small, the area has no cars. However, there are a high degree of bicycles and motorcycles in the area, which provide alternate methods of flow to the escalators, via a curving road that winds its way through the slum (figure 10). The agoras

Koschany, 49

are slightly offset from this road, and because of this, the flow of motorcycles does not affect the placemaking in these areas, with the exception of the noise produced. Unlike the automobiles and buses in Quan Matitres, or the metro-cable cars in Santo Domingo which will be explored in the next section of this paper, the escalators in Comuna 13 represent a type of flow that does not separate itself from place. Unlike cars, which “from a social perspective” according to Mitchell (2010) act as “isolated rooms on wheels” (p. 50), or the metro-cable cars which are much the same, the escalators in Comuna 13 allow for chance encounters between those on the escalator, and those off of it. In this sense, the flow becomes an extension of place itself.

In one telling observation, I saw a teenager say goodbye to a group of his friends, hop on the escalator, realize he had forgotten his wallet on a bench, yell back to his friends, and run back up the other escalator in order to retrieve it. This type of interaction would be impossible had the teenager said goodbye to his friends by getting on the bus, or onto the metro-cable. Yet because the escalator was not enclosed, its flow was not isolated from place like in Mitchell’s example of an automobile. I saw no encounters of this sort for people riding motorcycles in Comuna 13, nor for any other type of transportation flow in other slums that I visited.

When I asked David about this, he acknowledged that the escalators facilitate interactions even as people move away from the agoras they are interacting with; yet, David also attributes this the community’s context of inclusion and connectivity. Public transport according to David, facilitates a sense of belonging because it is communal. Cars on the other hand, according to David, facilitate none of this, given they are an individualistic mode of transportation. This is similar to the arguments of Jacobs (1961), who contends automobiles are the “prime destroyers of communities” because they remove chance encounters (p. 61). From this, it may be concluded that different technological flows do have different direct impacts on placemaking, but moving

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beyond this, it can be concluded that different flows can facilitate, or not facilitate the community cohesion that contributes to placemaking in the first place.

Local or Networked Placemaking?

Comuna 13, has clearly become connected to city-wide and global networks via the internet and its escalator system. In my interview with David, he emphasized that Comuna 13’s escalators have made the area a tourist attraction for locals and foreigners alike (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016); this arguably also makes the space connected to a global tourist network. With all of this, it becomes questionable whether the area’s agoras are still entirely local.

Despite the introduction of spatial, artist, and tourist networks into the area, however, local uses persist. In one agora located along the escalator lines, two families I observed had set up the public space like an outdoor living room, with cushions put on benches, laundry hanging outside, and a barbeque cooking their dinner (figure 11, next page). This type of use is intrinsically local, and shows how an agora can be community-based and network-based simultaneously. Whether these local uses will persist over time in the face of global networks however, poses a larger question.

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Figure 11 – Comuna 13 agora being used as an outdoor living room.

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In David’s view, the wanting of outsiders to see the slum has led to “a sense of dignity and belonging” among the community (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016). This is a very different viewpoint from those taken in other countries. In Italy, Pitchler (2012) explores the negative effects of catering to tourists in Venice; Reimerink, (2014) mentions the same critiques for cities in the Carribean; and both Sassen (2005) and Robinson (2002) worry that in the pursuit to become a so-called ‘global city’, many interventions in cities in the global south become about creating a certain city look, rather than servicing the actual inhabitants of that city. Though Comuna 13’s interventions were conducted not as a tourist strategy but as “local projects, for local benefits, and impact” to better integrate the slum into the city as a whole (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016), as time progresses, will the interventions within the community continue to focus on the local population? Just because an agora can be both community based and network based, will it remain this way indefinitely? Castells (2010) argues that in the “absence of active social demands and social movements” from a local community, “the mega node imposes the logic of the global over the local” (p.2743). Whether this will be the case in ten years for Comuna 13 is beyond the scope of this paper, but raises a future research question on whether an overlap between community-based and network-based placemaking can be permanent.

Case Study 3 - Santo Domingo

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Context Located on the side of a mountain, within Comuna 1, Santo Domingo is by far the largest slum I visited while in Colombia. According to one of my secondary sources Oscar Santana, an architect with the National University of Colombia who worked on integrated development projects within Santo Domingo, the population of the comuna on the mountainside overall is over 280,000 people. The entire comuna area was one of the first to receive an integrated PUI (Proyecto Urbano Integral or, ‘Integral Urban Project’) from the city, and was subject to hundreds of interventions, including bridges, ravine trails, a metro-cable-line, and a “library park” that was at one point visited by the King of Spain (Personal Communication, October 9th, 2015). While the results of an intervention of this magnitude cannot be simplified to just one element, the most notable area intervention was the introduction of the metro-cable.

Santo Domingo is the topmost of three metro-cable stations, each with their own integrated community and agora at the base of the station. Before the metro-cable was built, according to David, Santo Domingo was still the main commerce centre for the community, but it was ingrained with a history of violence, inequality and mistrust. “What we did” says David, “was enrich, potentiate and widen a place that was already [there]” by taking it beyond shopping (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016). Unlike in Comuna 13 where the agoras were generated around the point of access to flow (between the escalators), in Santo Domingo this process was reversed, and the flow was instead inserted into an existing agora, much like with Quan Matitres’ bus system, except at a larger scale. This contrast could potentially inform the hostility of an agora towards outsiders; where the creation of new community areas may attract outsiders and insiders alike to share the same common spaces, the introduction of spatial flow into an already existing local community may lead to feelings of ‘infiltration’ from outsiders (Turner, 1972).

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Alongside the metro-cable station, part of the intervention involved the repaving of the area surrounding it, and the introduction of greenspace, lighting, waste bins, and public art.

David remarks that it is only after these interventions occurred that the location could truly be called an ‘agora’ (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016).

Placemaking Verification San Domingo (Left)

San Domingo (Central)

San Domingo (Right)

None Front Stoop, Ground

Transit Station, Stores, and Phone Booth Stairs, Chairs, Ledges

Murals, Phone Booth, School Stairs, Front Stoops

9

9

8

2

14

1

3

32

9

14 38 4 42

33 61 15 76

18 45 27 72

n

y

y

17 Yes None

N/A (All Commercial) Yes Around the station

6 Yes Adjacent Ravine

Access and Linkages Number of People on Cellphones Network Connection

5 None

13 Metro-Cable, Bus Line

2 None

Uses and Activities Informal Soccer Players (Not in Stadium)

13

0

8

Sociability Triangulation Elements Types of Places to sit Strange or Hostile Looks Received Hellos/Buenos/Smiles Received Groups (3 persons or more) Comfort and Image Number of Elders Children (Attended) Children (Unattended) Children (Total) Equal Number of Women (y/n) Number of open residential doors Presence of Sunlight?

Greenspace?

Koschany, 56 Proximity of Public Food Eyes on the Street (In Buildings or Outside)

None

Through Restaurants and stores

None

75

26

39

Table 3 – Placemaking Indicators for Santo Domingo.

Due to the size of Santo Domingo, the quantitative analysis was broken into three parts, one for each section of the community. Because of this, unlike Quan Matitres, where my observations were taken over a period of two hours, in Santo Domingo, each analysis was conducted over a period of 45 minutes. Because the areas left and right of the metro-cable station did not have discernable agoras, the data collected was done while continuously walking through the areas, rather than while sitting still as was done for the study of the central area. The analysis on three separate areas in Santo Domingo was important to establish whether placemaking within the area was confined to the vicinity of the transit node or not.

Looking at the above chart, the only part of Santo Domingo that can be classified to have placemaking is the central area around the metro-cable station. The high number of groups congregating in the area (n=32), shows a large sociability. If this number is adjusted to reflect a two-hour period 14 the number jumps to 85, which is higher than the number of groups congregating in Quan Matitres. In addition to this, a high degree of elements within the area promote triangulation opportunities, including public art pieces, restaurants, and also two phone booths near the metro-cable station, which were frequently in use. This multiplicity of activities merges to create a cohesive social environment defined by a wide range of ‘low intensity contact’ (Gehl, 2012) and micro-encounters. The surrounding areas in comparison, particularly heading right from the metro-cable station had very little of this sociability. Past a five-minute

2h/45m = 2.67. Therefore, to loosely determine numbers from my placemaking index in Santo Domingo for a two-hour period, I simply multiply the existing number by 2.67.

14

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walk from the agora, with the exception of a school and a lone telephone booth (figure 12), all triangulation points vanished from the community, and the number of groups congregating in public dropped exponentially. To the left of the metro-cable station, this situation is worse; streets with local shops on them very quickly turn into dirt trails with little to no pedestrian activity. As shown later in this paper, this leads to a lack of anonymity, and hence hostility to outsiders in these areas.

Figure 12 – A lone telephone booth

Santo Domingo’s central area is also both physically and psychologically comfortable; I spotted high number of elders and children in the area, and there were a roughly equal number of women to men, showing the area to be inclusive to all ages and genders. A variety of programmable seating options were available, within the area. Outside Santo Domingo’s central area, this was not the case. The high number of unattended children to the right of the area is largely because of the presence of a school within the area; at the time I did my observations in the early afternoon, the children had been let out for the day. Nevertheless, an area that is only in use at one particular point in the day, by Oldenburg’s (1999) definition of third spaces needing constant temporal use, cannot be called an agora. To the left of the area, the majority of people I came across were adult men – while I did see elders and children, these groups were largely inside their homes, or watching the road from the front stoop, rather than interacting with the public realm (hence contributing to the high number of eyes on the street). I did not notice many

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women. In terms of physical comfort for these areas, many of the people I encountered were either sitting on private property in their homes, or on the ground outside.

The central area also had an extremely high number of access and linkages, both physical, and through telecommunications.

Physically, Santo Domingo’s station area is connected to five roads, and a bus line as well as the metro-cable. Digitally, David says he has noticed an increase in cellphones in slums to the same extent as in the rest of the country. Through my quantitative research, I noticed the most of these phones in the central area, as though one network flow was facilitating another. To the left and right of the area, similar to Comuna 13, the

Figure 13 - Small Path in Santo Domingo

roads get so small, that eventually cars and other mobility devices cannot enter the area (figure 13), hence decreasing the number of linkages available.

Lastly, one area where the central station actually fares worse on my Placemaking index than its abutting side areas, is in flexibility of uses and soft programming. This said, while this element is important to my placemaking index, Oldenburg (1999) establishes the main activity of an agora to be socialization and talking; as the area has a high degree of shops and restaurants to facilitate conversation, I consider it to fulfil this element of my placemaking index.

Evidentially (and perhaps redundantly) from this and my prior qualitative observations in Quan Matitres’ and Comuna 13’s midblock connections, it becomes clear that placemaking in

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slums is fundamentally focused around agoras, rather than the roads leading to them. This gives credence to the idea that place is inherently related to the spatial location of flow.

Hostility, Placemaking, and Flow Given that my quantitative data was here applied to three areas within Santo Domingo, a comparative analysis can be conducted between data-sets to determine whether I received more hostility in one part of the slum compared to another. The first time I visited Santo Domingo, I was with my colleagues and Oscar Santana, who was giving us a tour of the area. Because of our large group, and the fact that Oscar’s conversation with us was being translated to English, locals realized we were tourists, and waved at us. Later in the afternoon, a local cafe we stepped into gave us all free coffee. This type of welcome backs up David’s assertion that visiting outsiders bring a sense of “dignity and belonging” to those living in the area.

This type of friendliness is unfortunately constricted to Santo Domingo’s agora; the further I got from the metro-cable station, the more hostile the populace became. There was one exception to this: to the right of the agora, around the school, I also felt safe. While the area around the school does not qualify as an agora based on my placemaking index, it could be that the proximity to institutions creates a tolerance/acceptance to outsiders, hence making the area not as hostile.

Looking at the quantitative data, (specifically the number of hostile looks received, eyes on the street, and greetings received), the hostility in both areas other than Santo Domingo’s agora is not apparent until one recognizes the number of people in these areas is significantly less than at Santo Domingo’s core. In other words, while I received the same number of hostile looks in the agora as I did to the left of the area, the percentage of people who gave me those

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looks was far higher. The number of smiles or times people said buenos (hello) to me was also much lower in these areas.

The left area of Santo Domingo was the location where I felt most in danger not just in this slum, but over the course of my entire trip. While this area had the most eyes on the street, many of the people watching us were doing so from their private homes, or the side of the road.

Like the gazes received in the laneways of Quan Matitres, “the eyes on the street” (1961, p. 65) were not protective like Jacobs suggests they always are, but hostile. In one telling instance of this hostility, my friend and I passed two young men who were sitting down on the ledge of a stairwell while I was conducting my research. When the two young men saw us, one of them nodded to the other, and then yelled something 15 at us in Spanish. When neither one of us responded, both men started yelling in unison, and began to follow us up a hill. When my friend and I got to the top of that hill, we ran. This scenario fully represents the xenophobia and aggression Turner (1972) talks about in Freedom to Build that occurs towards outsiders in slums.

Without a purpose to be in the slums I was in, Turner (1972) would argue that I was seen as an ‘aggressor.’ While placemaking provides an excuse to be somewhere, and at its basics, facilitates a culture of socialization oftentimes through commerce, this culture is lacking without the spaces to facilitate it.

From this and my other observations, I conclude that without a centralized meeting space, a tolerance will not be built towards outsiders, hence contributing to hostility; remembering the interview with my contact in Quan Matitres, he told me the other slums were

My friend, who speaks some Spanish, told me later that the exact phrase was directed towards her. It was something extremely vulgar and hostile, the likes of which do not deserve to be in this paper.

15

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dangerous because they did not have a central meeting area; this appears then, to confirm my hypothesis that placemaking lessens hostility in fourth world populations.

Effects of Flow on Place The main flow in Santo Domingo is a metro-cable which runs through the air, and connects with a metro-station at the bottom of the mountain. The metro-cable provides a continuous flow from 6:00am until 11:59pm, after which, night-buses start running up the mountain. The cable-car station rises high into the air, and is separated from Santo Domingo’s agora, exemplifying what Busquets (2007) calls a multiplied ground. In her view, this layering of urban fabric allows for the separation of complex infrastructures, which in turn allows for different activities on different vertical levels. Therefore, unlike in Quan Maitires, where the continuous flow caused by cars disrupts place, the continuous flow of cable-cars in Santo Domingo is not emblematic of this, as flow is on a separate layer from where the community’s placemaking activities occur.

Despite Santo Domingo’s flow being on a separate layer from its placemaking activities however, the flow is arguably now isolated from place much like the automobile. As discussed in the case on Comuna 13, the metro-cable cars are a form of closed flow, which, like cars, might act as “isolated rooms” (Mitchell, 2010, p. 50); the moment you are in flow, you are out of place.

When I brought this topic up with David, he disagreed, with my characterization. In his view, seeing the city from the sky allows an element of quiet reflection and interaction with the city; he

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argues “you see art on the rooftops, you understand the urban logistics, you talk about the city, you meet with your neighbours and visitors…closed off depends on the attitude” (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016).

Indeed, on my multiple journeys up and down the cable-car, one rooftop in particular stood out to

Figure 14 – Thank you Metro-Cable!

me, shown in figure 14. Translated into English, the message reads “thank you Luis Perez 16 for the metro cable”.

This type of message can create a sense of belonging for the community, and creates a further distinction between private and public flows; David frankly states that automobiles “don’t help us on [co-existence]” because they don’t “create a sense of belonging” like mass transit does (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016). To this end, David remarks, “what we did goes beyond mobility…for us, those projects were about connections, both among neighbourhoods, and with the rest of the city. It was about integrating a city: creating the sense of belonging to one city: Medellin” (Personal Communication, April 4th, 2016). In this context, it is not only

16

Luis Perez was the governor elect in Antioquia Colombia in 2011 (Paris, 2016).

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what form of technology flow takes that affects place, but the context of the ownership of the flow itself. Castells (2010) notes that the existence of ‘community networks’ such as transportation networks, help to encourage social mobility.

Over the course of my

Figure 15 – Example of Metro-Cable Car Socialization with Oscar Santana

observations, I also rode the cable car a total of seven times. The insides of the cable-cars are arranged in a manner that encourages socialization because the seats are facing each other. On three of those occasions, I witnessed conversation start between strangers, and on another two occasions, I was part of the conversation. This means I experienced socialization within the cable-cars more often than I did not, therefore showing the public-based nature of the flow. As Montgomery (2013) observes, private cars create a competition for space on public roads, whereas transit creates a sense of collaboration and tolerance because it is owned by all. This raises the question of whether shared autonomous vehicles could replicate the effects of the cable-cars in the future if they are publically owned, however, this goes beyond the scope of this paper.

Lastly, David remarked during a keynote speech in parks conference in Toronto that before the metro-cable was introduced to the area, there were less than ten shops throughout the entire comuna. Today, there are over 300, mostly local, and mostly located around the metrocable stations, and along the road beneath it (Arango, 2016). This lends credence to the idea that

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flow, rather than detracting from Santo Domingo’s local community-based place, has added to it greatly.

Local or Networked Placemaking?

When first visiting Santo Domingo, my colleagues and I were given a tour of the site by Oscar Santana. Oscar is an architect with the National University of Colombia, and worked on integrated development projects within Medellin, including projects in Santo Domingo. In his presentation to my colleagues and I, Oscar stressed how his team did not want to emulate the socalled “Caribbean effect” where projects are done only for the tourists. Instead, his broad goal was the “creation of community networks” through tactical interventions using a bottom-up planning approach (Personal Communication, October 8th, 2015).

According to David, unlike Comuna 13, Santo Domingo did not create an attraction of local newcomers to the area, because much of Medellin’s population believes Santo Domingo to still be a Figure 16 - Santo Domingo Library, on the Left

violent neighbourhood.

The area still acts as a global tourist hub however, both because of the interventions received such as the library (figure 16), and because the area is necessary to pass through if heading to

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ArvĂ­ Park. The latter is an ecological reserve, national park, and archaeological site, and also acts as a tourist centre within Medellin (Personal Communication, October 8th, 2015).

Like Comuna 13, however, despite the overlap of global spatial networks on the community, Santo Domingo still retains its local characteristics and community-based place.

From my observations, many of the shops in the area are locally owned, an assertion also backed up by Reimerink (2014). As well, the users of the social interventions in the community (like the library) are mostly locals (Personal Communication, October 8th, 2015). Through this, like Comuna 13, it can be concluded that Santo Domingo has a simultaneous overlay of communitybased and network-based placemaking. Less clear, is to the extent the entire Comuna is covered by this overlap. When touring the area with Oscar, the locations we visited were constricted to areas around the agora, and a ravine trail, which also links the areas together.

The hospitality caused by a global tourist network clearly does not extend through the entire area however, as my prior observations on hostility in the area have shown. This then poses the question, if like my analysis of Comuna 13, the global tourist network supersedes and eventually eliminates the local community based network, will this then lead essentially to the creation of new fourth world societies in the area? Such questions of displacement were raised in the literature, including Dupont (2011), Hodge (2003), and Sassen (2005). Through this, what steps can be taken to expand the network-based community across the Comuna without leading to largescale gentrification in the process? This question goes far beyond the scope of this paper, but needs to be addressed in the context that increased demand to network-based flow may further displacement drives today, much like beautification projects for slums did in the past (Hodge, 2003).

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Discussion and Conclusions Generally, the conclusions support the initial hypotheses set out at the end of this papers’ literature review. Community-based agoras have stayed relevant and in fact become more relevant to placemaking with the incursion of networks, but only through centralized flow.

Placemaking, like hypothesized, often occurs at, or in direct proximity to spatial networks. And lastly, while an overlap is shown to exist between localized and network-based communities, displacement drives against current slum-dwellers poses a threat to the nature of this communitybased placemaking. From the case studies and data analysis found above, I have drawn conclusions for each of my research questions, discussed in below sections.

Does placemaking lessen hostility within fourth world societies? Does the rapid introduction of ‘flow’ in fourth world societies (defined here as any technology that facilitates urban linkages) make communities more open or hostile to outsiders as a result of rapid network integration?

I can categorically conclude from my research, inclusive of my quantitative data, qualitative observations, interview data, secondary sources, and the pre-existing literature, that placemaking practices noticeably reduce hostility within the agoras of fourth world societies. In all slums I visited, I felt safest and most comfortable when I was in an agora. In smaller slums like Quan Maitires, this comfort was largely due to triangulation elements, like food and the soccer games, allowing me to become part of the community; in larger slums like Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo, this comfort was largely due to anonymity, and having the excuse to linger in place for a period of time.

Outside the agoras where no placemaking occurs, hostility worsens. Before meeting my contact in Quan Maitires, my attempts to pass through the midblock laneways and stairways with my colleagues were met with extremely aggressive staring. In Santo Domingo, my most

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frightening experience was when my friend and I were yelled at and partially chased when we were walking through parts of the slum that were not in proximity to the agora. The quantitative data for Santo Domingo also shows that in areas outside the agora I received the least smiles or “hellos” but the largest number of hostile or suspicious looks. A crowded agora facilitates anonymity, thereby removing the need to have a purpose to be in the area. In contrast, the dearth of people on side roads resulting from a lack of placemaking, facilitates the need to have a purpose in order to be in the area, therefore resulting in more hostility.

The hostility of places is also interrelated with flow. As the agoras in question were always at or adjacent to a transportation system, if I felt unsafe, I could always leave the area, hence contributing to my perceived safety. However, flow goes two ways, and also introduces outsiders to the area; this can have two separate effects. Either the community proudly welcomes those outsiders and becomes pleasant to them, or outsiders are rejected because they are seen to be infiltrating the community. I propose then, that this effect is facilitated by whether the agora or the flow came first into the community; depending on the result, questions of who the place ‘belongs to’ (Turner, 1972), may factor into hostility levels. In cases like Comuna 13 where I experienced no hostility at all and the community was extremely welcoming, the agoras were created at the same time that the escalators were put into place. Because the initial users of the space were both insiders and outsiders of the community, the agoras did not ‘belong’ to anyone before flow was established, and therefore it would not have created hostility.

In contrast, in Santo Domingo, a commercial centre was already in place before the cable-car was implemented, and in Quan Maitires, the agora has existed for over 50 years, since before the transmilenio, or any buses, started running to the area. In this sense, because the agoras already “belonged” to the community, the introduction of flow would be seen as a form

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of infiltration. While I did experience friendliness in the two agoras themselves, I experienced incredible hostility while outside of these spaces. Reimerink (2014), proposes placemaking may simply be creating a ‘waterbed effect’ whereby, when hostility is diminished in the agoras, it is increased in other areas. Whether placemaking and flow truly reduce hostility in fourth world societies as a whole, then remains to be seen; it can however be definitively said from my observations, interviews and quantitative data that the hostility is reduced in the agoras where placemaking and flow are centred.

Does the introduction of different ‘flows’ affect placemaking differently in fourth world societies? If so, how?

Based on my qualitative observations and primary interviews, I conclude that different types of flow affect placemaking differently, dependent on whether they are public or private, outdoor or enclosed, and centralized or decentralized. Each of the three case studies, addressed previously, highlight the differences in these traits. In Santo Domingo, the public nature of the cable-car was found to have created a sense of community pride and socialization among those riding it, while also providing for opportunities to observe and connect with the urban landscape below. In Comuna 13, the impact of outdoor transportation was visible because it provided for chance encounters, and kept people present in place, even as they were moving away from an agora. And in Quan Matitres, community members whose’ flow was decentralized via the car were found to be less participatory in the community than others who did not own vehicles.

On this last point, my observations also further an immense body of research on the negative social effects of automobiles in the city, some of which were brought to light in my literature review by Jacobs (1961), Whyte (1980), Hall (2005), Hampton (2005), Mitchell

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(2010), Gehl (2012), and Montgomery (2013). In the context of this paper, and how flow affects placemaking, cars have three negative effects. Firstly, cars decentralize a concentrated flow from the agora that public transit would otherwise provide; like Mitchell’s (1999) example of household plumbing destroying the social connections around a water-well, the transference and decentralization of flow to private vehicles takes away an opportunity for socialization within the community around the agora where flow would otherwise be centralized and public. In Quan Matitres, where most of the population does not own a car, it is necessary to interact with the community agora before the bus arrives, but for those with cars this local interaction often does not exist.

Second, as Mitchell (2010) rightly points out, cars are isolated rooms on wheels; given the speeds at which they travel, and their enclosed and private nature, cars decrease socialization with the outside world for those inside them. Despite my extensive observations, in all three of my case studies I did not once see an instance where a car slowed down so members of a community could interact with one another.

Lastly, cars often generate a continuous flow; this makes placemaking challenging, particularly in community-based fourth world societies like Quan Matitres which appropriate space from roadways in order to create an agora with flexible programming. While a layered separation of continuous flow, as with Santo Domingo’s metro-cable, can rectify this situation, the composition of multiple layers is costly; more realistic for the preservation of place is simply an offset of the agora from flow as in Comuna 13.

In contrast to the automobile, alternative and public flows can create a strong centralization among the community by members needing to use the transportation in question.

The escalators in Comuna 13 are perhaps the type of flow with the greatest positive impact on

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the community, not just because of the creation of miniature agoras at the tops and bottoms of the stations, but because the flow itself facilitates chance encounters, and in this regard becomes a part of place itself.

Finally, the research shows that in fourth world societies, a balance has to be struck between place and flow so the latter does not destroy the former. The less flow is contained within a place, the more successful that place will be 17, but in contrast, no access to public flow can make the community become isolated, and rely on private flows like the automobile, which further perpetuate a cycle of decentralization. Like Whyte’s (1980) study of New York City’s public plazas, the most successful agoras in my study were those with an access to flow, but that were also separate enough from it to avoid the negative impacts of noise, speed, and in some cases air pollution.

Is there a juxtaposition between a community-based place and a network-based place, or can one location be both types of place simultaneously?

Castells once remarked that “the space of flows [isolates] and [subdues] the logic of experience embodied in the space of places” (Himanen, 2001, p.157). Much of the abstract literature, specifically, Sassen (2005), and Kourtit (2013), follows this logic, and establishes a wide gap between a community-based place and a network-based place; in this model, the increase in one type of place comes at the expense of the other. In total contrast to this, my own data indicates that community-based place and network-based place can exist in the same space, and simultaneously.

17

The exception being if flow is layered beneath or overtop of place.

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While the type of flow introduced into Quan Matitres was not strong enough to attract many outsiders into the community, both Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo have become tourist destinations (hence attracting global tourist networks), while retaining their local users and identity. The outdoor living room from my observations in Comuna 13 in particular, demonstrates that an area can be both community oriented, and network oriented at the same time. To consolidate these discrepancies with the literature, if a network-based place is defined by the overlap of multiple network layers, there is no reason to assume a community based network cannot be one of these layers. The larger question remains however, is this simultaneous overlap of community and network, permanent? Or will “the mega node” in time, impose “the logic of the global over the local” (2010, p.2743), as Castells predicts, and make this overlap of place-type only temporary? It would be interesting to see a study done a decade from now, to determine whether the local nature of the community in Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo has persisted, or whether the slums fall into the same traps as Venice and the Caribbean discussed earlier.

Both David and Oscar noted that notwithstanding the interventions in Comuna 13 and Santo Domingo, the stigma surrounding both of these areas has not disappeared, despite their tourist allure and decline in hostility. As a basic trait of land-use economics, property values rise with an increase in neighbourhood demand (Jacobs 1969); should the stigma in these slums disappear and land values increase, a threat of displacement creates the possibility of a decline in community-based place, and the rise of a global tourist network that supersedes the original community.

All of the agoras examined in this paper were community-based before a public network flow was introduced. To this end, it is also unclear whether the process established by Castells

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(2010) can work backwards, and whether an agora can become community based after being established by the overlap of network flows. This question is beyond the scope of this paper, but is something to be answered in future research on this topic.

Future Research and Conclusion Given that this research is exploratory in nature, the discussion of my research questions poses more queries than it answers. Is income correlated with mobility and a placemaking decline more than this paper studies? As with centralization of flow and water pumps, to what extent is constant socialization in fourth world placemaking reliant on the necessity of visiting an agora, rather than the want to visit? Is the overlap between community-based and networkbased place only temporary, or can it exist permanently? Will autonomous vehicles change the nature of private flows? Like the escalators in Comuna 13, what other type of flows exist that cannot only facilitate entry to place, but become part of the node where placemaking occurs?

This paper is the start of what I hope will be a larger project, wherein my research provides the framework through which fourth- world placemaking, and the impacts of flow, can be studied in the future. Just as Quan Matitres, Comuna 13, and Santo Domingo were not identical, so too will many slums across Latin America, and indeed, the world, be dissimilar, and affected to varying degrees by the introduction of flow to their communities. Future research may even establish a typology of slums and flows, and the impacts that occur when the two intersect.

What this research does not prove, is that interventions in slums involving the use of flow alone, will solve the issues that fourth world societies face. In all instances of successful slum

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integration, the flow has been centralized within a community, where a multitude of interventions occurred. In Santo Domingo alone, over 100 interventions took place, many of them focused on social processes and outcomes that this paper does not even begin to address.

Moreover, a distinction has to be made between centralized public flows, and decentralized private flows when this research is conducted in the future.

Modernist architecture was famous for its inadvertent destruction of public agoras and associated micro-interactions, in exchange for a focus on private places, and the mobility between these spaces. Le Corbusier was obsessed with the idea that the city should run “like clockworks� (Brummett, 1999, p. 52) but in his obsession, he failed to recognize that increased private mobility was destroying the very grand places he hoped to create. Slums across the world today are still being replaced with Corbusian styled brutalist towers, with the mindset that the community is being helped (Gadanho, 2014). Instead, social cohesion within existing agoras is being destroyed in the name of private mobility flows which isolate community members, and are not attainable by many due to the high costs associated with owning a vehicle.

By refocusing the discussion from mobility as a whole towards the relation between flow and place, it is my hope that we can work towards a better understanding of what types of flow will actually improve placemaking in slums, while challenging traditional notions that any mobility (especially through automobiles) is good for a community. This conversation is not a simple one to have, but it must happen soon; by 2030, over seventy percent of the world is expected to be urbanized, yet a quarter of this population is anticipated to live in poor urban slums (Gadanho, 2014). A new paradigm has to be found; the urban tsunami cannot be stopped.

New and innovative ways must be found to address the mobility and placemaking issues faced

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by fourth world populations who are in the greatest need. To end with a line from Le Corbusier, “only then, will there be salvation� (1929, p.342).

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