Issue 8 by Emerson Argueta

issue 8 FALL 2008

RHAPSODY a journal of Urban Affairs at Columbia University

International Issue

From The Editors A fellow student, arriving back from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, described a city growing so fast, its infrastructure cannot keep up. He described a flyover built over a major road before anyone realized a footbridge went right through its path at the center; it was abandonedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a real bridge to nowhere. For urbanists abroad, theory only goes so far. For the student overseas, the urban environment offers a challenge. A new city is overwhelming, limitless. And from the moment of arrival, the struggle begins to make sense of it. What holds a city together, sometimes seemingly against all odds? What makes it tick? A city tries to come to terms with theeffects of its 30 year division. Another seeks the remedy for the crumbling foundations which threaten its prized cultural legacy. A dense urban fabric knits together the public and private spaces of an urban landscape. In this issue of Rhapsody in Blue, we travel overseas to think about the shape of cities, and what shapes our experience of them.

Editor-in-Chief Emma Jacobs Layout Editor Emerson Argueta Treasurer Katie Magiera Associate Editors Emma Jacobs Katie Magiera Carly Hoffman Anna Collura Caitlin Barrett Rain Che Bian Contributing Writers Anne Krassner Kate Marpel-Cantrell David Berke Eric Hirsch Tom Breen David Vega-Barrochowitz Wen Zhou Photo Credits Contributing Writers flickr/jensaar flickr/simulation flickr/will_hybrid estadao.com.br

Contents

Urban Perspectives an interview by Anne Krassner

Travelogue: Buenos Aires by Avigail Oren

Resurrecting the Phoenix by Kate Marple-Cantrell

Idle Italia: Cities on the Verge of Breakdown by David Berke

“Peru is in Lima”Center, Periphery, and Everything In Between by Eric Hirsch

Reconciling Past and Present in East Berlin

by Tom Breen 15

The City and its Ruins by Dave Vega-Barochowitz

The Anatomy of Saigon Wen Zhou

Urban Perspectives

onas Rabinovitch, a native of Brazil and an urban planner with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, debunks some urbanization myths in an interview with Urban Studies major Anne Krassner.

Right now, worldwide, “megacities” are not the cities growing the most. Actually, they are growing proportionately less. Medium-sized cities are growing the most. This creates a tremendous opportunity so that the mediumsized cities of today do not repeat the same kind of mistakes that the socalled “megacities” have made. Are these mediumsized cities aware of this and preparing? No, I don't think so. As usual, they just wait for problems to become serious to begin thinking about them. To prevent can be 100 times cheaper than to remediate. In my view, there is a tremendous opportunity for planning, for thinking about the cities of the future in terms of development trends so they don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. People have an impression that cities grow because of urban-rural migration, but it has been

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demonstrated that rural-urban migration today is not the main reason cities grow—It’s natural growth, the difference between the number of people who die and the number of people who are born. In terms of migration, the biggest numbers are from rural areas to rural areas and from urban to urban areas. This means people are going from one small village in a rural area to another small village in a rural area, from one small town to another small town. The physical manifestation of poverty is moving from rural areas to urban areas, particularly to the “informal city”. Usually managers see the formal city, the city that exists in statistics and maps. But there is a whole city that is informal—favelas in Brazil, for example. They are not part of the formal city, but they contribute to the economy are growing more proportionally, requiring new social integration policies to accommodate this growth on the part of the formal administration of cities.

If poverty is shifting from a rural to an urban setting, what can be done about this from an urban planning standpoint? Action can be taken at various levels: local, national, regional and global. Independently, the most important thing is that governments, especially at the local level can have inclusive policies or not. At the end of the day, whether a family has a meal for their children or not is a result of governmental policy at all levels. As you know, the quality of water is much more important to health than the number of beds in hospitals. If people in low-income areas depend on water that is not healthy, to drink or to use, their children will have diseases. So every municipality in the world, in my view, has a responsibility to implement socially inclusive policies that give priority to employment, to health, to education, and to the improvement of the quality of life of low-income people. There has been specific discussion of the future of cities in Brazil, which I believe reflects global issues. For the first time in the history of humankind, most people will be living in urban areas. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had a situation like this in whole the history of humankind. This requires an innovative set of policies. The energy crisis, the food crisis, the financial crisis, all these issues must be combined to handle cities and their growth as a productive force. Investing in people is more important than investing in bulls, bears and capital speculation.

Could countries try to stop growth, perhaps try to move people back to rural areas? Many countries tried policies to revert ruralurban migration. Some tried to bus migrants back. Some countries put barriers, checking for documentation. These didn't work. Practice demonstrated that it is practically impossible to curb rural-urban migration only through policy-making. People are entrepreneurial; they want to live where they have better chances to improve their lives and the lives of their children. I don't think we should try to prevent ruralurban migration, but instead let it happen and prepare cities. People are the richest asset we have. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think we should see people as a problem, I don't think we should see cities as the problem. In fact, in my understanding, cities are the solution, and people are the solution. They are more part of the solution then part of the problem. We only have a problem if the policies exclude people; we only have a problem if the policies exclude cities. Anne Krassner is a junior at Barnard College and is an Urban Studies major.

Usually managers see the formal city, the city that exists in statistics and maps. But there is a whole city that is informalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;favelas in Brazil, for example. Fall 2008

Travelogue - argentina

uenos Aires is the cultural capital of Argentina. An excerpt from Avigail Oren's (BC ‘09) travelogue follows, describing a one-night marathon tour of the city's cultural institutions.

On Buenos Aires' 5th annual "Noche de los Museos," all the city’s museums were free and open to the public from 6 pm until 2 am. My friends and I began the evening at the museum inside the old Cabildo—which refers to both the colonial legislative assembly and the building that housed it—where men and women dressed up in period costumes performed old European dances fashionable around the age of Argentine independence (1810). At the museum inside the Banco Nacional de Argentina, an ancient docent pointed out a peso bill printed by Rivadavia, a 19th century government minister and later president. Obsessed with the United States, he had his peso bills printed in the US because US-printed

bills are obviously far superior. However, they featured portraits of George Washington and Simón Bolivar (the Venezuelan "great liberator" of South America, along with General San Martin. Bolivar freed the north, and San Martin freed the south). With the driest possible delivery, the docent looked at the group gathered around him and said, “That's like Kirchner (the current president) printing up a peso bill with the portraits of George Bush and Hugo Chavez." Everyone cracked up. We also visited the small museum inside the Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos (aka Argentine Customs). A fun band playing on their patio outside can make up for slow exhibits. We moved on to el Museo Nacional del Grabado, dedicated to "graphic works emblematic of the history of Argentine art"—works of pre-computer graphic design. The highlight of the evening however, was el Museo del Libertino. My dictionary offers this definition of "libertine": a person, especially a man, who behaves without moral principles or a sense of responsibility, especially pertaining to sexual matters. Obviously, the museum was devoted to erotic art! As if the art itself wasn't exciting enough (pun intended), they had a garden in back with yet another live band. We ended the night at an organ concert. Continued on Page 19

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Resurrecting The Phoenix

arajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is picturesque. The city is nestled in the valley of the Miljacka River, surrounded by mountains on three sides. The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 90s, however, left Sarajevo with a sinister legacy – that of the site of the longest siege in modern history. After the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to Bosnia’s bloody ethnic conflict in 1995, international focus shifted away from the country and the city. When I traveled to Sarajevo I found people know a lot about what happened there, but not about how the siege affects the city today. Though significant changes to Sarajevo’s built environment occurred as a result of the siege, its most devastating consequence was the social and psychological upheaval residents experienced. Those who stayed in the city watched it became a crumbling war zone. Trapped within the siege lines, residents experienced two great shifts—first finding a way to survive in a new world of destruction and inhumanity, and later readjusting to a normal life in a changed city. Those that left Sarajevo hung on to every piece of news that crossed the line of the siege, but viscerally experienced the city’s changes only upon returning months or years after the war. Post-war, the city’s most palpable changes are demographic ones. Sarajevo has a long multicultural tradition. Muslim Bosnjaks, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Serbs have coexisted in relative peace and equality for centuries. Sarajevo was known as the most

ethnically tolerant city in the former Yugoslavia. Before the war, the city had the nation’s highest rate of mixed marriages. Sarajevo lost much of its former diversity during the Bosnian conflict. Many members of non-majority ethnic groups fled the city and Bosniaks poured in as refugees from ethnic cleansing in eastern Bosnia. The majority arrived from small towns and villages, and their lifestyle and outlook has clashed with that of the more cosmopolitan native Sarajevans. Bosniaks now hold a strong majority in the city for the first time in many years. Many residents express discomfort with the capital’s new homogeneity. Residents often identify their Sarajevan identity as more important than their ethnic one, and many still believe and hope the city can regain its ethnic openness. Related to these demographic shifts is the loss of neighborhood life in the city. Before the war, bonds were strong between residents of the same neighborhood and especially of the same building. Many ascribed to the idea that a family should be closer to the neighbors than to their own relatives—if something happens, the neighbors will arrive first. But during the war, that trust broke down. Some Sarajevans informed on their neighbors. Others looted

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Not only were the lives of Sarajevans threatened by the siege, but also the existence of the city itself. houses whose owners had fled. Today many are suspicious of their neighbors. Longtime residents lament a newfound sense of dislocation. In some way though, the siege reignited a buried love for the city within residents many struggle to hold onto today in the face of continuing political and economic stagnation in the region. An old antagonism between rural and urban fuelled one threat of the Bosnian conflict—urbicide, the destruction of the city. Not only were the lives of Sarajevans threatened by the siege, but also the existence of the city itself. Sarajevans fought to carry out their daily routines, to teach university classes, to organize scholarly conferences, to produce art, to simply go to work, even though there was no money to be made, partly to preserve civilization in the face of chaos. The siege was a time of great suffering but also one of great purpose and in the gruesome absurdity of the everyday there lingered the sense that Sarajevo was becoming something larger than itself. In the FAMA Sarajevo Survival Guide, a tonguein-cheek Michelin-style guidebook written for visitors of the besieged city, Bora Cosic begins, “We, at the end of a century, and possibly of history itself, must gain a different insight…Our actions mark us as the witnesses to and interpreters of the moral degradation of a moment in mankind's history.” In this context the return to normal life, with its everyday banalities and frustrations and no larger struggle to imbue it with meaning, inevitably disappointed.

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Today many Sarajevans have returned to find closure for a part of their lives abruptly cut short. Some have vowed never to leave again. Most agree that the spirit of Sarajevo—a popular phrase, and one that takes on many meanings—has dimmed. Dzevad Karahasan links the city to a lost Jerusalem in his memoir, Sarajevo, Exodus of a City, “[Sarajevo] flew toward the deepest recesses of reality where it can be loved and dreamed about, and from where it can shine back upon us, rich with meaning, like a beckoning destination.” At the same time residents struggle to reconcile their feelings about Sarajevo, many also maintain hope for the city’s future. Many work as activists, facilitating Continued on Page 19

Idle Italia In Southern Italy, David Berke reports, cities are on the verge of a breakdown.

ur stove exploded, and no one cared. In our Rome apartment, the stovetop shattered, hundreds of sharp shards whizzing across the kitchen. My family was nearby, but thankfully, no one was impaled. We explained the disaster to the landlord, but our near-knifing was met with quintessential Italian insouciance, an answer amounting to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;that's life.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Earlier on our vacation, sipping wine at a scenic hillside cafĂŠ, we had welcomed that laissez-faire attitude, but it seemed an incongruous response to a nearly blinded family. While such easygoingness has often been hailed as an Italian virtue, the relaxed outlook has morphed into a national stagnation. Although it affects the entire country, this malaise has had the most acute consequences for urban centers. On the national level, the country is perennially on the precipice of recession. Italy's economic indicators, from high public debt (over 120% of GDP and rising) to low or negative growth, are far worse than European averages. Italy is ranked 47th in global economic competiveness, barely beating out Botswana. In an international corruption survey, Italy fell to 55th, bested by South Africa. A lot of this stagnation has to do with the country's makeup. The Italian population grew just .01% in 2007. As the native population

levels off, an influx of less educated immigrants has arrived, most moving into cities. The number of legal foreign residents alone jumped 17 percent last year. The urban immigration boom and lackluster economy have become flashpoints for crime and bigotry. In raids throughout Italian cities, the right-wing government has cracked down on immigrant populations, arresting hundreds. The government apprehended 12,000 illegal immigrants this year. Parliament has approved legislation allowing courts to sentence illegal immigrants to significantly longer prison terms than citizens who commit identical crimes. To support its hardline immigration policy, the government deployed 3,000 military troops in August to Italy's major cities, including Rome, Milan and Naples. The southern city of Naples has been a particular hotbed of xenophobic tension. Earlier this year, vigilantes set fire to an immigrant camp on the city outskirts and an alleged mafia attack that left six immigrants dead led to riots. In Milan, ethnic distrust piqued in September after two barmen killed an African immigrant. Italian newspapers have been writing of a "racism emergency." The jingoistic flare-ups in Naples come in tandem with crippling public sector failures. The city's garbage crisis, so severe that it has at-

The jingoistic flareups in Naples come in tandem with crippling public sector failures. Fall 2008

tracted international attention, continues to fetter normal urban life. Recently, Naples has been shipping its garbage by train to German waste facilities, but this transnational pickup is a temporary solution. For months, Neapolitan garbage has piled up in the streets, surpassing 100,000 uncollected tons. The extremity of Naples' troubles derives, in part, from the general sluggishness of Italy's South. Other southern cities have gone bankrupt. Ethnic tension, corruption and economic woes are pervasive, and some of the major troubles are at the top. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, dubbed by The New Yorker: "the most investigated head of state in postwar European history," has proven ineffective. The county's richest citizen, much of his administrative energy has been spent pushing laws to consolidate his business interests and insulating himself from criminal prosecution. On critical issues, he has shown an unsteady hand. At a recent economic press conference (in Naples, no less), Berlusconi, instead of inspiring desperately needed investor confidence, floated "suspending the markets"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a complete international shutdown. Berlusconi's government has also cut over a billion dollars in cultural funding, and because of the cuts, many urban cultural heritage sites and museums are now struggling to stay afloat, threatening the tourist industry, part of the country's economic backbone. While Berlusconi has flopped, Italy's hidden titans, the leaders of its organized crime, have continued to cultivate an un-

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derground economy estimated at 27% of GDP. The prevalence of crime has especially hurt urban public works. Criminal control stymies city upkeep. Naples' garbage struggles are exacerbated by the mob, a major player in waste management. North, Pompeii has fallen apart as inefficient mobtied companies snag the maintenance contracts for cultural sites. Traveling in Rome and Florence, the strain on public works was painfully apparent. On buses, no one checked tickets. Every trip was a free ride. Riding trains, it was rare to see a conductor, much less one validating tickets. Labor strikes are so frequent, one Italian website is devoted entirely to tracking transportation shutdowns. Italians are cognizant of their country's floundering, but enthusiastic about reform. The citizenry voted themselves the least happy nation in all of Western Europe, but despite the gloom, Beppe Grillo, Italian comedian-turnedprogressive-advocate, draws tens of thousands to his anti-establishment Continued on Page 19

Peru in Lima

Center, Periphery, and Everything In Between

hivay, a small town with one central square and a population of less than ten thousand, is a bustling market center and growing tourist hub. Located at the entryway to the Colca Canyon in the southern region of the Peruvian Andes, Chivay is the largest city for miles. It sits at the center of a small network of villages throughout the valley and on the sides of the second deepest canyon in the world. This area has recently begun to receive attention for its “off-thebeaten-track” appeal to international tourists. About a block away from the town square, I sat with Zacarias Osca, a tour guide who has lived in Chivay for many years. “Here,” he told me, “one more easily identifies with the local, with what is ours. People are more regionalist. We think that Peru is in Lima. We are from Colca. This is our land.” I had spent most of the recent months in Lima, Peru’s largest city, which can seem to encapsulate the entire country. A fast-paced, modern metropolis, Lima houses an ethnic diversity unparalleled anywhere else in Peru. Lima’s metro area holds a third of the country’s population. Many Creole whites hold unrivalled positions of wealth and power. Economically, the city represents forty-five percent of the nation’s GDP. Highly protected wealth abounds in Lima, with homes in upscale neighborhoods secured by fences, walls, barbed wire, security cameras, and guards. On Lima’s peripheries are a series of pueblos jovenes, recently thrown-together shantytowns. The pueblos jovenes offer exceedingly low standards of living and crime abounds. Still, these settlements continue to draw immigrants to the city, mostly from the Andes.

Lima has the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas. Globalization has begun to penetrate here. Starbucks, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, and many other American chain companies have firm roots there, some in Lima’s sprawling malls. Other Peruvian cities have similarities. Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, an intellectual center, houses much of the country’s old money. Lima is a center of wealth, academics, cultural diversity, and international exchange. Yet, sitting on the coast, seemingly with one leg in Peru and the other in the West, Lima rests at the geographical periphery of the “heartland” of the country. A long bus or car ride from most important Andean cities, the city is connected by airways, but air travel is very expensive. Unlike neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia, Peru has no sprawling major metropolis in its Andean heartland dou-

Fall 2008

bling as a capital city. Both Ecuador and Bolivia have national capitals in the Andes. In Ecuador, Guayaquil’s economic power often conflicts with Quito’s political power, but the country maintains a social balance with the center of the nation’s wealth far from the nation’s capital. Similarly, Bolivia, currently undergoing political tensions under leftist president, Evo Morales, has one of its national capitals, La Paz, toward the west of the country in the Andes, while the hotbed of the conservative autonomy movement lies in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, also the cradle of a large part of the nation’s wealth. These cities exist in distinct contrast with Lima, the site of a concentration of both wealth and political power. Along with a few smaller cities dotted along the coast, Lima is different from the Andean sierra and the jungle which all lie within the nation’s border. Once the colonial center that managed these new Americas, Lima seemed on the verge of sliding off the continent to float over to Spain. The distance between the center of the Spanish Empire, Spain, and Lima is reproduced in the distance between the center of the republic and its hinterland. Mr. Ocsa said that Peru is over there in Lima. My host, Gerardo Huaracha would describe Lima as an unclean space of contaminated modernity. From the periphery, Lima was is the center. Many insist Lima is not like “us,” making Lima at once the nation’s center and its periphery. Eric Hirsch, CC’09, spent the spring and summer travelling in South America. He is currently writing a thesis in Anthropology on center-periphery dynamics in Peru.

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Megacity Mumbai, India

Photo credt: estadao.com.br

Fall 2008

Reconciling Past and Present in East Berlin

Today, a two-brick line follows the path of the wall that once stretched 96 miles through the middle of the city.

n June 15, 1961, Walter Ulbricht, Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) stood before a press conference in East Berlin. He spoke with the shameless, blunt and humorless dishonesty that we remember the mouthpieces for the Soviet Union from the latter half of the 20th century for today. “No one,” he assured the international press, “has the intention of building a wall.” Two months later, the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, closed the border between West and East Berlin with a barrier that would divide the two cities for the next 28 years. Known as the Mauer to West and East Germans alike, the

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Berlin Wall would stand for the better part of three decades as a physical and symbolic reminder of Berlin’s position on the border of the Capitalist and Communist worlds. East Berlin would become the seat of power of one of the more formidable regimes in the Soviet bloc and a locus of popular resistance to political oppression under Communist Party rule. Walking through the modern, reunited city, nearly two decades since the Soviet Union fell, the notion of Soviet-style Communism can seem as anachronistic as the Soviet Union itself, but the physical and psychological traces of the city’s divided historical legacy still remain on today’s bustling and chaotic

streets. The origins of this complex attitude date back to the Allied defeat of the Nazis and the post-war origins of the GDR. Preaching a doctrine of cooperation and peace, communist politicians had strong appeal in the post-World War II landscape of Eastern and Central Europe. Survivors in these regions were weary of violence, desperate for leadership, and terrified of right-wing political institutions. Other European left-wing parties had been decimated during the war. Communists, deriving sustenance from a victorious Soviet Union, were ready, able, and eager to lead. They lay claim to an unquestionable region-wide popularity based on their heroism in the underground resistance movement to Nazi rule. Consolidating power in the late 1940s, the Communist Party of Germany became the sole and absolute authority of the nascent state of the GDR, headquartered in East Berlin. Physical symbols marked out territory of severe political repression which East German citizens consistently contested. In June of 1953, nascent tension between the ruling party and the people of East Berlin came to a head over labor disputes. German building workers took to the streets, exercising the only vote still available to them. 300,000 workers participated in over 300 strikes in a single day. Although Communist Party military and police quelled the uprising, East Berlin’s workers had set a precedent in the Soviet bloc for expressing popular discontent through revolt, one that would be met with answering repression for decades. The pot would eventually boil over. Eric Honecker, Walter Ulbricht’s successor as Secretary of the SED enacted severe censorship. The 1970s international oil would send East German debt from $1 billion to $12 billion in a decade. The combination of political authoritarianism and economic distress contributed to a rising feeling of suffocation

under Soviet rule. Soviet General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev, visited the city in October 1989 for the GDR’s 40th anniversary. Wildly popular for his policies of economic and political change, Gorbachev met with throngs of cheering East Berliners. The Soviet reformer’s visit signaled the end of an era of repressive rule. Quickly tumbling out of control, the entire executive body of the Soviet State resigned on November 8. The destruction of the Berlin Wall began the next day. Today, a two-brick line follows the path of the wall that once stretched 96 miles through the middle of the city. In the architecturally eclectic city of Berlin, the physical symbols of the decades of Soviet rule are not ostentatious but they epitomize a profoundly ambivalent gap—the presence and absence of a past era in the current day city. Formally reunited since October of 1990, the history and culture of East Berlin still show in the German capital. A main road through central Berlin is the “Street of June 17th” commemorates the 1953 uprising. The idiosyncratic East Berlin crosswalk symbol, the Ampelmann, persists in the eastern half of the city. These elements testify to the presence of the Soviet era in the city’s collective memory. Though now able to freely travel the city’s landscape, people’s struggle to come to terms with the legacy of what Berlin was and could have been has lasted a good deal longer. In 2003, the film Good Bye, Lenin! would recount the struggle of a young man to preserve and redefine the GDR. Four million Germans would come out to see the film in its first month. Tom Breen, CC10, is majoring in history.

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The City and its Ruins

hether windswept by desert sands or blackened by the soot of a bustling metropolis, a city’s ruins not only transport the onlooker into the past, but also shed light on its modern politics and identity. Two cities—Athens and Istanbul—present a dialectic between city and ruins. The former, a sprawling European capital struggling to keep pace with the rest of the EU, treats its ruins as its defining symbol. Istanbul, meanwhile, rises organically from its successive historical epochs, from Constantine to Ataturk, each accruing and overlapping in a complex urban fabric. These metropolises present diverging approaches to the treatment of the ancient city amid the progress of the modern one. The ruins of Ancient Athens have a historical and architectural significance that goes far beyond the boundaries of Greece, or even Western Europe. Yet a visit to modern Athens requires

a mental disjunction between its heritage and the city itself. Though the Acropolis, and its anchor, the Parthenon, may forever inspire a pervasive aura of contemplation and meditation, the city at its feet possesses a different quality. From the arid hilltops inside the city center, modern Athens sprawls toward the port of Piraeus in an exhausting and monotonous symphony of low-rise apartment buildings. Taxis speed between dense and characterless districts. Beyond the white marble of its ruins, the city lacks a unifying color or material like the whitewashed walls of Santorini. Within this bustling maelstrom, the ruins of ancient Athens seem divorced from the modern city. In addition to the citadel of the Acropolis, encircled by a wide walkway, the Library of Hadrian and the Bathhouse of the Winds, both from the city’s Roman period,

As it continues to grow and evolve, modern Athens does so in deference to it monuments.

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are set off from the street like exhibits at an archaeological museum. Informational plaques tell visitors both were laid waste in the year 267 by the Herulians, a Germanic tribe from the North. The two structures have seemingly had minimal impact on the urban fabric since. Paradoxically, Athens’ identity rests on its historical reputation. Its latest redevelopment for the 2004 Olympics reinforced this legacy, carving a historical playground of antiquities into busy and crowded neighborhoods. Even sewage pipes and small houses, ruins often left to decay in other ancient cities, have been fenced off and given descriptive plaques. As it continues to grow and evolve, modern Athens does so in deference to its monuments. Though Athens’ civic upgrades have improved its image and infrastructure, its emphasis on its ancient legacy overshadows the complex cultural character of the city and its inhabitants in order to appeal to a popular myth of the city. Unlike Athens, Istanbul’s Constantinian, Byzantine, and Ottoman incarnations intermingle and overlap in an overwhelming tangle of historical layers. Each site bears the stamp of not one ruler, but of a succession of emperors and sultans who co-opted the symbols of their predecessors to advance their own legacy of power. Today, on the peninsula facing the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, the ruined Palace complex and the ancient Hippodrome of Constantine stand adjacent to the 6th C. Hagia Sophia (transformed into a mosque), the Hammam of Roxanna, the enormous Blue Mosque, and the famous Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Sultans. Imagining the Parthenon, the Coliseum, and St. Peter’s Basilica all within a square mile begins to conjure up of the historic, structural, and symbolic scale of this site. Like

generations past, modern Istanbulis have adapted ruins for current uses. The walls of Constantine are incorporated into seaside shops and restaurants, crumbling and unprotected. Istanbul’s ruins attest to the city’s struggle with modernization and secularization. A cultural tension between East and West, progressive and traditional, and secularism and religion are manifest in its historical collage. The Topkapi Palace, the main symbol of the Ottoman Empire, draws more attention than Justinian’s Hagia Sophia. The Galata Tower, built by Genoese merchants, crowns the city’s most European section. The 4th century Column of Constantine miraculously still stands, but in poor condition, seeming haphazard and forgotten along the busy Mese. While Istanbul does not reject its Western heritage, the recent prospect of EU membership has forced the city and Turkey as a whole to confront a conflicted cultural identity. Athens and Istanbul share a prominence on the Western historical stage. In the end, manipulations of cities’ physical landscapes not only preserve history, but promote preferred local attitudes towards a collective heritage. Athens, a city striving to unearth its golden age, carves and excavates signs of its ancient prestige. Meanwhile, Istanbul allows its histories to accumulate in successive layers, but in so doing privileges its more recent Turkish heritage at the cost of its wealth of significant ancient Roman and Byzantine sites. Moving forward, the physical remnants of the pasts of both will evolve with the tensions and attitudes of each modern city towards its past. David Vega-Barrochowitz is a junior at Columbia College majoring in Urban Studies.

Fall 2008

Anatomy of Saigon

oming out of the old post office, I see a dense crowd of motorbikes across the street, murmuring at attention in front of the cathedral, spilling out from the main gates and into the broad avenues on either side of the figure of Notre Dame, now ignored on her pedestal as the faithful lean forward into a sound that spreads across the square. I wind my way through the shifting mass of wheeled bodies that come and go, come and go, to the eerily green-lit interior where I can just hear the echoes of a chorus singing midnight mass. It’s quite still here. The crowd sighs and I leave, pulled back into the frenzy of the erupting edge as motorbikes break away from this momentary sanctuary and others shift inwards to take their places, rejoining the pulsating circulation of city streets in the heart of Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Minh City, a dot on the bottom of the curve in the Sshaped country of Vietnam. Later that night, walking back to a hotel on Lê Quý Đôn, I discover I no longer know how to get there. I had crossed the main avenue of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, running along the northern boundary of a large park behind the Reunification Palace. A phalanx of motorbikes waits for the light to change, and watch me as I cross before their ranks once more to return to the other side. The crosswalk is clear of other pedestrians. The drivers are silent as they trace my path into the terrible shade of the park, and a few minutes later observe another crossing as I grow increasingly disoriented. I imagine myself seen from above—the solitary actor onstage, stumbling from one corner to another in a sort of mad

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dance, a tragicomedy, a spectacle for the audience in the shadows. During the day, I disappear into conspicuous anonymity as my two-legged state marks me as clearly as any stage spotlight, a blip in the perpetual rush of peoples and things in Saigon. Crossing its streets demands the painful—subsequently liberating—disregard for the perfectly reasonable instinct to selfpreservation, as the forward charge of a battalion of motorbikes appears determined to find a way around—if not through— me. It’s like an arcade game on a human scale, with the imminent threat of collision intensified by the noise and heat and heavy humidity of Saigon, and compromised by the suspicion that losing one life doesn’t come with three more to spare. When I ride a motorbike for the first time I fee,l at every swerve, my body’s irrepressible inclination to meet the ground speeding past close beneath my feet. The wind stings when we drive too quickly down an empty lane, and despite the bulky reassurance of my helmet I feel incredibly vulnerable amidst so much volatility. Over time, I hunger for that same lingering taste of exposure in the acrobatics of traffic, to become an indistinguishable member of the wheeled ranks during the morning rush, the leisurely lunch breaks, the late night sprees from café to karaoke bar, noodle stall to sweets shop. The streets circulate in a frenzy of motion that transfuses Saigon with an audible pulse, a vigorous current that intoxicates those who join in the life of road. The accidents, when they occur, are sharply visceral

blows to the system – the crunch and then screech of steel against pavement – but traffic and speed quickly reassert their primacy in the relentless surge forward. Behind the sonorous avenues of CáchManh Tháng Tám, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Lê Loi, Hai Bà Trong lies the Saigon of hems. These alleys branch off from the main streets to dart in any which way, forming enclosed neighborhoods that divulge no outside trace of their existence. Capillary extensions of the truly inner city, they’re canyon-like between multistory, pastel-painted buildings on either side. A raucous parade of cars and motorbikes force their way into these narrow corridors to deposit their cargo into homes that range from those both barred and gated to others that appear to have no fourth wall, interior lives in easy dialogue

with the street. At the end of every day I too eventually return to the place I have come to claim as my own, unlocking the front gates to my adopted home to greet my centenarian grandfather sitting quietly in bed, before heading up to my room on the second floor. A balcony here overlooks the familiar sights of the alley, as the guava juice woman sets up her display and the noodle chef chatters to a customer seated on his bike, pausing in transit to somewhere else again. But for me this is the end of the road, where a breath of stillness emerges even as perpetual motion hums just outside the door. Wen Zhou,CC09 is majoring in Anthropology.

The streets circulate in a frenzy of motion that transfuses Saigon with an audible pulse, a vigorous current that intoxicates those who join in the life of road. Fall 2008

Continued from Travelogue - Argentina As a port city, Buenos Aires has attracted and fostered intellectual debate and cultural infrastructure since before Argentina declared independence. The 102 museums and galleries featured during "La Noche de los Museos" make up only part of the city’s cultural framework, which includes theaters, orchestras, a national opera, and an internationally renowned film industry. Avigail Oren is a senior at Barnard College.

Continued from Resurrecting the Phoenix reconciliation so that the conflict of the nineties will never repeat. Less than fifteen years after the siege, much about the war’s long-term effects on Sarajevo remains to be seen as Bosnia and the region still struggle to stabilize. Despite this turbulent history and continuing fight to rebuild from its losses, Sarajevo still exudes a special feeling that eludes Europe’s bigger, flashier capitals. The siege’s effects on residents are palpable though and resonate with anyone that has lived in and loved a city. Kate Marple-Cantrell is a senior at Columbia College majoring in Urban Studies. This article is an abridged version of research that she conducted while studying abroad in Sarajevo.

Continued from Idle Italia demonstrations in Italian cities. On September 8, 2007, an estimated two million took to the streets of 220 Italian cities to rally for Grillo's "VDay." V stands for an Italian curse meaning, to phrase it decorously, go screw yourself—his message to the unresponsive government. On V-Day in Bologna, when Grillo spoke, more people showed up than did for Italy's World Cup victory. The fearsome unknown is if reform will come fast enough. As the socioeconomic situation deteriorates, Italy's cities likewise stand on the verge of losing their long-term viability. While the will for improvement exists, the country's grim outlook indicates that cities may not get the timely reform they need to avert a permanent slump. The consequences of delay were evident during that same trip to Italy. While I strolled through the Uffizi gallery in Florence, a rainstorm started outside. The docents in this renowned city attraction—at least the few on duty—did not react. Water blew in open windows, and puddles grew on the floor. The water level swelled higher, rising toward a priceless Caravaggio portrait on the wall. The rain stopped before causing a cultural disaster, but had the storm not ceased, it was only a matter of time before the bad weather damaged the painting forever. David Berke is CC, class of 2012.

Will you be abroad in the spring? Please contribute! We want to hear about the cities you travel to. Contact Emma at ecj2107@columbia.edu or Emerson at ega2102@columbia.edu to get involved. 19

Rhapsody

Come back to New York with us. Interested in advertising in Rhapsody this Spring? Contact Katie Magiera (km2291@barnard.edu) for more information. Interested in getting involved with Rhapsody? Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re looking for editors, web-designer, layout, photographers and writers. Contact Emma Jacobs (ecj2107@columbia.edu) for more information and Spring 09 pitch deadlines. All majors welcome.

Rhapsody On The Web Read Rhapsody in Blue online, find past issues and other resources at: www.columbia.edu/cu/rhapsody Also check out the new Rhapsody(abroad) Weblog at: www.rhapsodyabroad.wordpress.com

Fall 2008