City of Walls: Summary Chapter 6. SAO PAULO, THREE PATTERNS OF SPATIAL SEGREGATION

Caldeira distinguishes three different types of urban segregation: 1. -1940, ‘different social groups packed into a small urban area and segregated by type of housing. 2. 1940-1980, segregation by ‘great distances: the middle and upper classes concentrated in central and well-equipped neighborhoods and the poor exiled into the hinterland. 3. Since 1980, poor and rich are living closer again in terms of distance, however, now they ‘are separated by walls and technologies of security, and they tend not to circulate or interact in common areas. Caldeira see the fortification of the city as a threat for the modern city, undermining the principles of the modern city such as free circulation and openness.
Important statement Caldeira makes is that in São Paulo the ‘public space no longer relates to the modern ideals of commonality and universality. Instead, it promotes separateness and the idea that social groups should live in homogeneous enclaves, isolated from those who are perceived as different. Consequently, the new pattern of spatial segregation grounds a new type of public sphere that accentuates class differences and strategies of separation.’

The concentrated city of early industrialization 1890-1940
During this period of time the rich and the poor originally lived together, however, to rich more and more started to move to more homogeneous areas such as Campos Elísios and Avenida Paulista. The main reason for this was the fear for epidemics, comparable with the fear for crime nowadays. There were all kind of initiatives to ‘open the city’ as Hausmann had done in Paris, to provide free circulation, wide streets, hygiene and social control. ‘The first laws on construction and zoning were passed in the mid-1910s, and the most important pieces of urban legislation and intervention come in the late 1920s. The execution of the so-called Plano Avenidas (plan of avenues) that started in the beginning of the 20th century was one of the first originators of spatial segregation: the prices of rents started to increase and the working classes were driven out of the center to the periphery. Another reason why the poor working class started to move to the periphery was because of the lack of affordable houses to rent. The rapid process of urbanization caused a high rents, a simple consequence of supply and demand. The government of Vargas tried to stop the rising rental prices by freezing the rents at the level of December 1941. Initially this had to last only for two years, however it was renewed unit 1964. ‘In São Paulo the immediate consequence was a tightening of the rental market, as fewer residence were build. This trend accelerated the departure of the working classes to the periphery, where the could find cheap (and irregular) land on which to build their own houses. (…) In the new arrangement, poor and rich lived apart: distance, economic growth, and political repression allowed a peculiar inattention to one another.’

Center-Periphery: The dispersed city
‘The new model of urbanization is usually called the center-periphery model, and it dominated São Paulo’s development since the 1940s. It has four principal characteristics.
1.) Lower population density: form 110 inhabitants per hectare to 53 in 1963.
2.) segregation of social classes: Rich live in legal, well-equipped neighborhoods, poor in autoconstructed, precarious, mostly illegal periphery.
3.) Home ownership became the general rule for both rich and poor.
4.) Transportation depends on roads, busses for the working classes and automobiles for the middle and upper classes.
The major cause of the rapid urbanization of the periphery was the launching of a public bus system at the end of the 1930s to make the area accessible for the working classes. Many of these bus systems were owned by private investors who also where selling the parcels in the periphery. ‘Speculators developed a multitude of illegal and irregular practices aimed at maximizing profits, from outright fraud to failure to provide basic urban services or minimum lot dimensions required by law.’ Another aspect is that many workers build their houses without registrating them, this results in an illegal construction on a legal parcel. The result is that now 65% of the population of the city lives in houses that are illegal. Autoconstruction has become the main form of working-class housing.
Caldeira continues to explain the immense vertical orientation of São Paulo, something that started especially after the 1960s when the apartment building became the main type of residence for the middle and upper classes. ‘Until the late 1950s, the construction of high-rise was relatively incontrolled by the city. From 1957 on, however, municipal laws aimed at controlling the expansion of construction in the city affected, in particular, the building of high-rises. The laws had two main effects.’ They excluded the poor from buying an apartment, and it directed the high-rise out of downtown, where the prices of the lots where cheaper. Another reason for the middle-class to move in these apartment buildings is because they were financed by the BNH and SFH, [see book for meaning, JvB] - systems that were originally meant to finance houses for the poor – were now only used to finance the apartment buildings of middle-classes.

Proximity and walls in the 1980s and 1990s
Caldeira see three basic factors for the tranquility between center and periphery in the way it emerged in the 70s. In the first place because the rich only encountered only a few central areas. Second, between the 50s and 70s there was the believe that economic growth would change the differences. And third, the repression of the military government that ‘banished political organization and public dissent.’ It was because of the reorganization of trade unions that the people in the periphery started to reorganize themselves; contrary to what the political elite expected. They thought that their house ownership would keep them outside the political arena, however, the opposite happened. They started to organize themselves in order to improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
On page 231 and 232 Caldeira gives one of the most important descriptions of the city saying:

‘São Paulo today is a more complex metropolitan region that cannot be mapped out by simple opposition of center-rich versus periphery-poor. It is no longer a city providing conditions for inattention to class differences, but rather a city of walls, with a population obsessed by security and social discrimination.’

This process started in the 80s and 90s, a moment when the way of living of both rich and poor started to change. This had various reasons. In the first place there was a growing tendency among the rich to leave the center and settle in gated communities in the northwest and southern part of the city, where first only the poor lived. ‘At the same time autoconstruction on the periphery has become a less viable alternative for the working poor because of the impoverishment caused by the economic crisis of the 1980s, the improvements in the urban infrastructure in the periphery, and the legalization of land resulting from the pressure of social movements and action by local governments. In other words, while the incomes went down, the periphery improved and became more expensive.’ This is the moment when the cortiços started to appear, and when the favelas start to grow. The process of walling the city because of the increase of violent crime exacerbated the process of segregation and suspicion.
The improved situation of the periphery had enormous consequences for the quality of live. A good indicator is infant mortality: ‘it dropped from 50.62 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 26.03 in 1991. In São Miguel Paulista, one of its poorest districts, where Jardim das Camélias is located, the infant mortality dropped from 134 in 1975 to 80.46 in 1980 and 27.29 in 1994.’
‘The social movements influenced the action of the local administration not only in creating public services and urban infrastructure but also in transforming the legal status of the periphery. One of the main demands of the social movements was the legalization of properties on the periphery. Social movements forced the municipal governments to offers amnesties to illegal developers, making it possible to regularize their lots and bring them into the formal property market. The Lehman Law in 1979 made it easier to prosecute real estate developers selling land without the infrastructure required by law.’ The negative aspect of this was that the prices of the lots started to rise because of two reasons: first the lots were legal now, which made them more valuable on the market. The second reason for the price-rice was because of the improved infrastructure. The consequence of this was that the poor people had to move to the fringes of the city and start to build new neighborhoods again. Another option is to move in a cortiços, with the advantage of living more close to the city center.
Something else happened to the market of apartment buildings. In 1986 the BNH ended and the inflation started to rise again. Without the BNH financing and the high inflation it was for the middle classes very difficult to buy one of these apartments. What happened with the production of appartement buildings is what ‘some analysts call an “elitization”’ of the apartment market. This changes after the successful control of the inflation after Plano Real, and the possibilities for lifelong financing. It is at this period of time that the closed condominium starts to become a popular place to live in for the middle and upper-classes.

In Morumbi you need a car for everything: to buy bread, to bring your children to school, to go to the supermarket. In many place there even no sidewalks. The rest of the infrastructure is also very bad. However, the inhabitants of Morumbi want to pay this price in order to feel save.
The reason why many closed condominiums start to appear in the originally poor southeastern border of this city is because the land is cheap over there, so investors can make their investments more profitable.
[I made a separated post about the gated communities in Santana do Parnaíba, because if found it that much bizarre that it needed a special post. To read more about it click here. JvB]
According to Caldeira the urban transformations as occurred in contemporary São Paulo are caused by several processes at the same time. She mentions them as follows: ‘the reversal in demographic growth; the economic recession, deindustrialization, and expansion of tertiary activities; the improverishment of the working classes; the displacement of part of the middle and upper classes from the center; and the widespread fear of crime (…).’ The GINI coefficient ‘increased from 0.516 in 1981 to 0.586 in 1991.’

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p. 213-255.

Misdaad en Straf: Ad Verbrugge

Dit artikel bevat een bespreking van het essay “Zinloos” geweld: Misdaad en straf in een tijd van cultuurverlies, (2004) geschreven door de Nederlandse filosoof Ad Verbrugge. [1] Hoewel ik Verbrugge soms een wat moraliserende of conservatieve toon vind hebben bied zijn essay goede argumenten in relatie tot het onderwerp publiek domein en de rechtsstaat. Ook laat het zien wat de relatie is tussen vrijheid en gemeenschapszin. Verbrugge is er onder andere van overtuigd dat zonder gemeenschapszin het rechtssysteem haar betekenis verliest.

Ad Verbrugge begint zijn essay met een intelligente definitie van vrijheid waarin gemeenschap een belangrijke rol speelt: ‘het [is] van belang te beseffen dat eenieder van ons pas werkelijk vrij kan zijn, doordat hij leeft in de werkelijkheid van een zedelijke gemeenschap waarin die vrijheid als een recht van iedereen wordt erkend. Dat ik niet louter in naam, maar in werkelijkheid beschik over mijn eigen lichaam en mijn eigendom en ook bescherming daarvan geniet, heb ik niet aan mezelf te danken, maar aan de gegeven werkelijkheid van een levende gemeenschap waarin mij dit recht is geschonken en waarin ik omgekeerd de plicht heb dit recht op me te nemen en anderen te doen toekomen, om dit recht aldus werkelijk te laten zijn. In een toestand van rechteloosheid of slavernij is deze vrijheid niet gerealiseerd en beschikt iemand dus ook niet werkelijk over zichzelf of zijn bezit als een algemeen erkend en dus geldend richt binnen de gemeenschap.’
Verbrugge benadruk dat de straf die een misdadiger krijgt wanneer hij de wet overtreed niet louter genoegdoening van het slachtoffer en is uiteindelijk ook niet het motief voor de strafmaat. ‘De misdadiger heeft immers niet alleen een misdaad begaan jegens het slachtoffer, hij heeft ook een misdaad begaan jegens de gemeenschap waarin de persoon – en dus ook hijzelf en het slachtoffer – dergelijke rechten en waarden hebben gekregen.’ De straf is echter ook bedoelt om ‘de werkelijkheid van het recht’ uit te drukken. Het is de belichaming van de wil van de gemeenschap, gerepresenteerd door de uitspraak van de rechter. Verbrugge benadrukt dat de straf niet in de eerste plaats een verzoening is tussen slachtoffer en dader, maar ‘uitgaande van deze gedachtegang verzoent het slachtoffer zich dus primair met de gemeenschap’. Dit omdat het slachtoffer ‘door de handeling van de misdadiger [is] genegeerd in de werkelijkheid van zijn vrijheid.’ Dit werkt twee kanten op, ook voor de misdadiger, hij heeft zich namelijk door zijn misdaad ‘afgezonderd van de gemeenschap’ en is daardoor dus niet vrij meer. Het is juist door de straf dat hij zich weer als vrij mens in de samenleving kan bewegen. ‘In ieder geval moet duidelijk zijn dat het straffende recht als uitgangspunt niet de vergelding van het gevoelde leed van het slachtoffer of morele verbetering van de dader heeft. Dergelijke fenomenen zijn hoogstens bijverschijnselen van zijn eigenlijke betekenis, namelijk dat het straffende recht de werkelijkheid is van de algemene wil van een gemeenschap, zoals die in het recht is uitgedrukt. Zonder straf is het recht niet werkelijk en blijven de waarden van de gemeenschap iets abstracts-vrijblijvends, iets dat slechts in gedachten bestaat.’ Het bestaan van een rechtvaardig rechtssysteem wil volgens Verbrugge nog niet zeggen dat mensen werkelijk in vrijheid kunnen leven. Volgens hem is ‘iedere misdaad tegen de persoon een misdaad tegen de mensenrechten.’ Dat betekend dat er dan ook niet zo veel verschillen zijn tussen ‘totalitaire regimes’ en de ‘gewelddadige getto’.
Absolute vrijheid is volgens Verbrugge geen vrijheid. De ‘verabsolutering van de individuele vrijheid’ leidt uiteindelijk tot asocialiteit. ‘Wanneer (…) radicale individualisering overal om zich heen grijpt, desintegreert de gemeenschap die de voorwaarde is voor iemands werkelijke vrijheid. In het ontstaan van levenssferen waaruit het gemeenschapsgevoel verdwenen is, wordt ook het recht – als uitdrukking van de algemene wil van een gemeenschap – abstracts: iets dat niet meer werkelijk wordt geleefd, maar nog slechts als een juridische ‘spelregel’ bestaat. Een scherpe conclusie is dan ook: ‘individualisering tendeert naar een asociale samenleving, een ethos dat zich onder andere manifesteert in geweld. [Het publieke leven is dus van groot belang, ook voor het in stand houden van het rechtssysteem. Dat kan mijn conclusie zijn van deze opmerkingen van Verbrugge. Juist de publieke ruimte kan een fysieke representatie zijn van het gemeenschapsgevoel. Wanneer er geen gemeenschapsgevoel meer is in de maatschappij zal ook het straffen weinig zin hebben. Dit helemaal het geval wanneer we kijken naar clanmatige organisaties of gangs. Dit soort organisaties opereren buiten de gemeenschap en hebben vaak hun eigen regels en mores. Misdaad wordt dus niet gezien als misdaad tegen de gemeenschap maar tegen iets dat ‘daarbuiten’ zich afspeelt. Straf is nu geen noodzakelijke afzondering uit de maatschappij om rehabilitatie mogelijk te maken maar in de ogen van de misdadiger een betekenisloze daad – om de eenvoudige rede dat de misdadiger geen deel uit maakte van de gemeenschap. In een gesegregeerde samenleving is het onmogelijk om met straf ‘de werkelijkheid van de wet’ uit te drukken. Simpelweg omdat zowel dader als slachtoffer geen deel meer uitmaken van de maatschappij. Straf verwordt nu tot louter vergeling. Het wegvallen van gemeenschap maakt het recht inhoudloos.
Het gebrek aan gemeenschap wijdt Verbrugge in eerste instantie aan het wegvallen van het gezin als stabiele factor en het aanleren van het ‘sociale’. De afwezigheid van volwassen rolmodellen zorgt er voor dat het kind niemand meer heeft om zich aan te spiegelen. ‘Reeds Aristoteles heeft duidelijk gemaakt dat de mens slechts door goede opvoeding en gewenning tot de deugd als zijn hoogste zelfontplooiing kan komen.’
Concluderend kunnen we zeggen dat het vertrouwen in het rechtssysteem het gevolg is van de afbrokkelingen van gemeenschapszin. Alleen in een maatschappij die ‘samenleeft’, kan misdaad ook als zodanig worden opgevat, anders blijft het een private zaak tussen dader en slachtoffer. Misdaad kan alleen dan publiek worden wanneer er een algemeen vertrouwen is in de rechtsstaat. Alleen op die manier krijgt straf haar betekenis en dient het als middel tot rehabilitatie om terug te keren in de maatschappij. Een samenleving die volledig gesegregeerd is, waar het leven zich afspeelt in geprivatiseerde ‘security bubbles’ daar wordt ook het vertrouwen in de rechtsstaat uitgehold.

[1] Ad Verbrugge, “Zinloos geweld: Misdaad en straf in een tijd van cultuurverlies, in: Tijd van onbehagen: Filosofische essays over een cultuur op drift, 2004, pp 11-41.

Fragmenten uit: HET BELANG VAN HANNAH ARENDT - Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (under construction)

In het boek Het belang van Hannah Arendt [1], geschreven door Elisabeth Young-Bruehl – bekend van haar uitgebreide Arendt biografie - vond ik een aantal interessante toelichtingen op citaten uit het werk van Arendt. Zo schrijft zij onder andere over het boek Man in Dark Times (1968) het volgende:

‘Er is sprake van duisternis als de openbaarheid, de lichte ruimte tussen mensen, de publieke ruimte waar mensen zich kunnen uitspreken, wordt geschuwd of gemeden; duisternis staat vijandig tegenover het publieke domein, tegenover de politiek. “De geschiedenis kent vele donkere tijden waarin het publieke domein verduisterd werd en de wereld zo onbetrouwbaar was geworden dat de mensen niet meer van de politiek verwachtten dan dat er rekening gehouden werd met hun primaire levensbehoeften en persoonlijke vrijheid.” Mensen die de wereld hebben afgeschreven, die denken dat ze zichzelf erbuiten kunnen plaatsen zonder zich openbaar te maken in het publieke domein, maar alleen onder vrienden blijven of zich beperken tot activiteiten in afzondering, begrijpen niet dat “primaire levensbehoeften en persoonlijke vrijheid” [2] betekenisloos worden als ze nagestreefd worden zonder de bekommernis voor de rest van het mensdom.’

Dit citaat laat nog eens het belang zien dat Arendt schonk aan het publieke domein, iets dat op zeer vergelijkbare wijze naar voren komt in ‘The Human Condition’ (1958).

Hoofdstuk 2: The Human Condition en het belang van handelen
Young-Bruehl noemt in haar commentaar op de ‘The Human Condition’ een ‘inleiding over hoe we de res publica, de publieke zaak, moeten herkennen, evalueren en beschermen (…)’
Om het werk van Arendt goed te kunnen plaatsen is het van belang om term ‘politiek’ toe te lichten. Cruciaal is dat er twee soorten van denken bestaan over politiek. ‘Aan de ene kant kun je politiek zien als regeren, als een vorm van overheersing (een, een paar of veel), wat dreiging met of gebruik van geweld mogelijk maakt. Maar aan de andere kant kun je, net als Arendt, over politiek denken als de organisatie of de constitutie van de macht de mensen hebben wanneer ze samenkomen als sprekende en handelende mensen. Hier ligt haar nadruk op het beschermen van de macht van mensen door een regering die het volk vertegenwoordigt: potestas in populo.’
Interessant is het onderscheid tussen macht en geweld dat door Arendt gemaakt wordt. Om dit te kunnen begrijpen moet eerst het principe van het ‘handelen’ (action) uitgelegd worden. Handelen hangt niet af ‘van georganiseerde of wettelijke gecreëerde ruimten, maar gewoon van mensen die samenkomen om woorden en daden met elkaar te delen: “de onbetrouwbare en slechts tijdelijke overeenkomst van vele wensen en bedoelingen”. Dit samenkomen van handelende personen noemde Arendt macht, een macht die zij nadrukkelijk onderscheidde van individuele kracht (onafhankelijkheid) en van instrumenteel geweld of dwang.’ (p.91) Arendt ‘meende dat mensen hun toevlucht tot geweld nemen wanneer ze geen macht hebben of die kwijt zijn’.

Het boek geeft een goede uitleg over Arendts afkeer van de term ‘maatschappij’ in het Engels vertaald met ‘society’. Ik heb hiervoor een lang citaat nodig uit het boek:

‘Arendt had in The Human Condition gesteld dat er in de posttotalitaire wereld een ‘consumptiemaatschappij’ of een ‘technologische maatschappij’ of een ‘arbeidende maatschappij’ – ze gebruikte die drie termen in verschillende contexten – aan het ontstaan was, wat uniek was in de geschiedenis. Het woord maatschappij verwees voor haar naar een modern domein van de Industriele Revolutie, privé nog publiek, maar in een ongekende overvloed aan goederen en technieken om meer goederen te maken, inclusief destructieve goederen. Deze maatschappij (…) ontwikkelde zich op een paradoxale manier: door technologische vooruitgang, met name de automatisering, werden veel arbeiders verlost van de slopende, geestdodende vormen van arbeid die karakterestiek waren voor de Industriele Revolutie, maar daarbij waren ze nog niet verlost van het arbeidsethos. Ze kregen door die bevrijding evenmin de mogelijkheid zich bezig te houden met hogere vormen van denken en oordelen, waardoor ze opnieuw opgeleid zouden moeten worden, opgetild zouden moeten worden uit de massamaatschappij van degene die geen mogelijkheid hadden zich te onderscheiden, te openbaren wie ze waren. In tegendeel, de meeste mensen in een consumptiemaatschappij beschouwen zichzelf als arbeiders, die gewoon een baan hebben, zelfs vakmensen en degene die zich bezighouden met handelen of denkactiviteiten. Ze ‘verdienen de kost’ en voorzien naar eigen idee in hun noodzakelijke behoeften (ook al zijn de ‘noodzakelijkheden’ op geen enkele manier noodzakelijk om te leven). Mensen die ‘de kost verdienen’ kunnen zich, in de woorden van Arendt, niet in vrijheid onderscheiden of echt nadenken over wat ze aan het doen zijn; ze doen slechts hun werk. Een bureaucratie is een goede omgeving om een gedachteloos iemand te worden, maar iedere baan is daarvoor geschikt zolang degene die die baan heeft alleen maar gewoon zijn werk doet.’ p.151, 152.

[Ik moest bij dit citaat denken aan American Beauty, prachtig geregisseerd door Sam Mendes. Onderschat wordt zeker Alan Ball, de schrijver van memorabele dialogen en monologen zoals deze:

Lester Burnham: Both my wife and my daughter think I am this gigantic loser. And they are right. I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back. [3]]

[1] Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Het belang van Hannah Arendt, Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Atlas, 2007. oorspronkelijk: Why Arendt Matters, Yale University Press, 2006.
[2] Hannah Arendt, Man in Dark Times, 1968.
[3] Sam Mendes, Alan Ball, American Beauty, 2000.

City of Walls: Summary Chapter 5: POLICE VIOLENCE UNDER DEMOCRACY

[Chapter 5 focuses on police violence. Something I don’t understand is the issue that the Brazilian people on the one hand support the ‘tough’ police and sometimes even want to have a stronger police, on the other hand they consider the police as being corrupt, cowardly, dangerous and even stupid. The attitude seems to be ambivalent. The following interview comes from a men (22) from Jardim das Camélias, (Poor working-class periphery).]

‘Many times, when there is a robbery, the neighbors say. “it was that one, that one.”But the police say, “We haven’t caught him in the act, so we don’t arrest him,” and they go away. And what happens? The guy wants vengeance and goes around killing a lot of people, as it happens today. When a crime happens on the street, the population doesn’t collaborate with the police because of that… It’s the fear of vengeance (…). If I see a robber killing someone, I won’t want to know anything about it. I’ll pretend I haven’t seen anything. If the police ask me, I’ll say, “I haven’t seen anything.”

‘They [the workers, JvB] are paralyzed between the fear of the police, fear of criminal’s vengeance and, (..) a belief that the justice system is unable to provide justice.

SECURITY AS PRIVATE MATTER
The rise of private security is seen as one of the basics of urban segregation, that in Brazil started during the military dictatorship. Security was privatized in order to drive back the large amount of bank robberies. Caldeira distinguishes three different types of guards active in the city.
First the official guards. To become an official guard in you have to finish a 120 hour course, provide by a private enterprise. After that the private guards are allowed to ‘carry .32- or .38-caliber guns, but only while they are at their posts. The guns are owned by the companies and not by the guards. (…) The owners of private enterprises realize the increasing desirability of their services and the potential for expansion in a deeply unequal society afraid of high crime rates and unable to count on its police forces.’ In Brazil there is a rising tendency to see the private security sector as something for the rich and the middle-classes, and the public sector as something for the poor. José Luiz Fernandes, president of the national association of private security enterprises (Abrevis) has said: “Leave the civil and the military police for the less favored, according to the law – which does not work!”
The second segment in the security market is the so called ‘organic security’. The people that work in this industry have formal labor contracts but are registered under other occupational categories. A lot of shopping centers, offices complexes, condominiums, ect, rely on this type of security. ‘Approximately 50 percent of private security services in the state of São Paulo are provided by organic security.
The third type is the illegal ‘clandestine security’ market, most of the people that work there are either policeman or ex-policeman. Despite the fact that it is forbidden by law a lot of policeman do combine the ‘private’ and ‘public’ job, in many cases they use their police weapons. Some of the enterprises closed by the federal police were run by ex-policeman involved with the Esquadrão da Morte or other vigilante groups. The costs to hire these kind of security guards are lower than the guards from the formal market. Also in this segment is used by condominiums.

The phenomenon of the justiceiros is a typical example of the vague border between public and private and the relativity of the sovereignty of the state when it comes to law and justice. The justiceiros ‘literally “justice makers,” are groups of men who kill people they consider to be criminals, especially on the periphery.’ In many cases this is the only access the poor have, when it comes to justice. Also for example shopkeepers use the power of the justiceiros in order to keep the neighborhood save from criminals.
‘With the spread of private security, the discrimination against the poor by “security” forces becomes twofold. On the one hand, the poor continue to live, work, and shop in fortified enclaves, using private security services to keep the poor and all “undesirables” away, the poor will be victims of new forms of surveillance, control, disrespect, and humiliation.’
Caldeira is convinced that the role of private security is a reason for the increase of violence because crime is removed from the judiciary system. Especially the judiciary system is very effective because it makes ‘vengeance from a private into a public matter. She uses the arguments given by the French social scientist René Girard quoting him from his book Violence and the Sacred (1977): “Our judicial system (…) serves to deflect the menace of vengeance. The system does not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectibely limits it to a single act of reprisal, enacted by a sovereign specializing in this particular function. The decisions of the judiciary are invariably presented as the final word on vengeance.” It is the judiciaries lack of authority, and therefore also a lack of credibility that the cycle of violence still exists. The violent police makes a this even worse.
Caldeira doesn’t want to make the easy conclusion that the cycle of violence has a direct relation to poverty. Although she states that ‘most of the elements that have generated the current cycle of violence have a socioeconomic basis,’ and that ‘poverty and inequality (…) are crusial to explaining some of the inequalities’ and ‘the spread of violence,’ to Caldeira it is in the first place the incapacity of the institutions that are the main raison for the cycle of violence.

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p. 158-210.

City of Walls: Summary Chapter 4. THE POLICE - A LONG HISTORY OF ABUSES

This chapter deals about the history of the Brazilian police and its dark history. Caldeira writes about the many bad things that the police did. To illustrate the police violence I give some numbers: ‘in 1991 the military police killed 1140 people in the state São Paulo during “confrontations with criminals”; in 1992, that number was 1470. This includes 111 prisoners massacred inside the Casa de Dentação, São Paulo’s largest prison.’ 87.5 percent of these killings occurred in the city of São Paulo and its metropolitan region. To compare: in 1992 the Los Angeles police killed 25 civillians in confrontation, New York police killed 24 civilians. Respectively 2.1 percent of the number of deaths in LA and 1.2 percent of the deaths in NY. [For my projects the extensive details Caldeira gives about this subject are not so interesting. JvB]

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p138-157.

City of Walls: Summary Chapter 3. THE INCREASE OF VIOLENT CRIME

‘The increase of violent crime is the result of a complex cycle that involves such factors as the violent pattern of reaction of the police; disbelieve in the justice system as a public and legitimate mediator of conflict and provider of just reprisal; private and violent responses to crime; resistance to democratization; and the population’s feeble perception of individual rights and its support for violent forms of chastisement [Dutch: tuchtiging, JvB].’
‘The majority of occurrences of larceny [Dutch: diefstal, JvB], robbery, and physical abuse, then, are not reported to the police. People either do not trust the police to deal with conflicts and crime, or they fear them because of their well-known brutality. Similarly, the justice system is perceived as ineffective by the majority of the population.’ In the southeast region of Brazil, 50.71 percent did not used the justice system after they were involved in a conflict.
Torture is something that is applied very often by the civil policemen, especially for the poorer suspects. The rich sometimes pay the police to find the people who robbed them, contrary to the poor who are neglected when they are being robbed. The upper-class also sometimes pay the police to torture the suspects.
Caldeira want to make clear that the statistics reporting crime are not so reliable. This because of the corrupt police, but also because the people do not report all of the things that happen to them. Another reason why the statistics are not accurate is because of the different branches in the organization of the police apparatus.
‘Increases in violence have been lower in the center, where the wealthier population lives, than in the outskirts, where the majority of the population is poor. (…) the rates of crimes against property are highest in the upper- and middle-class neighborhoods, whereas the rates of homicide are highest in the poorest districts of the city.’ (…) A recent study (…) showed that the districts with the highest incidence of homicide had a bad quality of life and a predominance of low-income families. (…) the districts with the highest murder rates were mostly very poor’ or lived in deteriorating central districts of the town. ‘The lowest rates were among middle- or upper-class districts in central areas.’ However, the districts with the highest robbery rates where also the wealthy and central districts. The increasing amount people that is in possession of a gun (legal and illegal) is significantly increasing. Caldeira sees this a sign that people ‘increasingly taking the task of defense in their own hands. Also the increasing trade in drugs is followed by more violence, ‘however, such claims are difficult to confirm because of the lack of concrete information.’
In order to understand they way crime works in a city like São Paulo Caldeira uses the following explanations:

1.) ‘crime is related to factors such as urbanization, migration, poverty, industrialization, and illiteracy.’
2.) ‘it is connected to the performance and characteristics of the institutions in charge of order: primarily the police, but also courts, prisons, and legislation.’
3.) ‘cultural elements such as the dominant conceptions about the spread of evil and the role of authority, and the conceptions about the manipulable body.’
4.) ‘the widespread adoption of illegal and private measures to combat criminality.’
5.) ‘policies concerning public security and patterns of police performance: the violent action of the state’ makes the situation only worse instead of controlling it.

The problems with criminality are not easily solvable with more investment in public security. The expansion of investment that started in 1984 did not effect the increase of crime and violence. We should also take in consideration that the ‘delegitimating of the judiciary system as a mediator of conflicts and [the] privatizing the process of vengeance’ only makes violence and crime worse.
Caldeira about the relation between poverty and crime: ‘The association of poverty and crime is always the first to come to people’s minds in discussion about violence. Moreover, all data indicate that violent crime is unevenly distributed and affects the poor especially. However, inequality and poverty have always marked Brazilian society, and it is hard to argue that they alone explain recent increases in violent criminality. Further, this argument often misrepresents violent criminality by allowing the view that poverty and inequality lead to poor people’s criminality. In reality, if inequality is an important factor it is not because poverty correlates directly with criminality, but rather because it reproduces the victimization and criminalization of the poor, the disregard of their rights, and their lack of access to justice.’ (p. 137) Also the behavior of the police is one of the reasons according to Caldeira, not so much their number of officers or their equipment. [My own experience close to the school was also very frightening. JvB]

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, 105-137.

Living in Bubbles

Paulo Arantes wrote an interesting article about the riots in May 2006 in São Paulo. It’s a very critical article that states that in the end the poor are the most vulnerable people in a society of fear, simply because the cannot afford the ‘commodities of fear’. Arantes makes the comparison between the poor Paulistanos and poor blacks of New Orleans after Katrina; in both situations the they seem to be forgotten by the government. About the wealthy middle classes he writes:

‘… [they] are the principal consumers of the main product of the industry of fear, namely the phantasmagoric “security bubble.” “Every morning cars leave their gated condominiums (bubble 1) to go to private schools with guards at the entrances (bubble 2); later, they continue on to entertainment zones or private leisure areas (bubble 3).” It is not surprising that the basic concept of the city has disappeared, and that the cordon sanitaire formed by such bubbles externalizes the latent insecurity.’ [1]

Paulo Arantes, Panic Twice in the City, 2007.

Mike Davis: The fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space

Mike Davis has in his book Planet of Slums (2006) a passage that summerises the problematics I want to work with. He writes:

‘It is important to grasp that we are dealing here with a fundamental reorganization of metropolitan space, involving a drastic diminution of the intersections between the lives of the rich and the poor, which transcends traditional social segregation and urban fragmentation. Some Brazilian writers have recently talked about “the return to the medieval city,” but the implications of the middle-class secession [Dutch: afscheiding, JvB] from public space – as well as from any vestige [Dutch: spoor, JvB] of a shared civic life with the poor – are more radical. Rodgers, following Anthony Giddes, conceptualizes the core process as a “disembedding” of elite activities from local territorial contexts, a quasi-utopian attempt to disengage from a suffocating matrix of poverty and social violence.’[1]

Davis refers here to an article by Dennis Rodgers called “Disembedding” the City: Crime, Insecurity and Spatial Organization in Managua. This article, about Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua can be used as a comparable situation with São Paulo.

Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso, 2006, p119.

First sketch about building public space to claim ‘The Right to the City’.

It is the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) who wrote about ‘The Right to the City’ for the first time. How this theme is elaborated in his writings I have to investigate further but it is the geographer David Harvey who also used this as a subject in his writings. In his essay ‘The Right to the City’ (2008) he writes: ‘The right to the city is far more that the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the process of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of human rights.’ What sometimes annoys me a bit is the lack of practical examples in these theories. Maybe its up to the architect the come up with these ideas. Maybe the it is especially the architect who can function between the theory and the ‘build practice’. Let’s give it a try:
I am really wondering whether it is possible to give people in autoconstructed neighborhoods the possibility the construct their own ‘res publica’, something like a number of buildings that provide public space. This process could work into two directions: first: the process of making should be a process of community, and second: afterwards there is the ‘artifact’ that represents a common achievement and that is of common use. By doing so it is possible people to, literally, reclaim ‘the right to city’, by building it. The question however, what is the role of the architect in this? And, isn’t this a bit too idealistic?
I have to work on this idea.

City of Walls: Summary Chapter 2. CRISIS, CRIMINALS, AND THE SPREAD OF EVIL

The Paulistanos interviewed by Caldeira, think that the spaces of crime are marginal, often related to favelas and cortiços. The solution to solve these problems are strong institutions and strong authorities.
Plano Collor was a plan that was developed to make the inflation decrease. However, it didn’t help, it even make the inequality bigger. Especially the middle-class was hit by the increasing inflation, their savings where frozen by the government and after a couple of months the value had decreased enormously. This caused among many people the distrust of the government. For other people it was a reason to stick to a hope for a strong government that could change all this, or even to look back with nostalgia towards Getúlio Vargas or the military dictatorship.
The interviews Caldeira took with three poor working-class men reveal the pessimism of these people. To the question about what kind of rights people have one of them answers:

‘What rights? None. Only the right to go to work, to come back home and sleep in order to go to work the next morning. The poor man spends four hours in the traffic to get to work, two hours to go two to come back’.

They are very negative about the politics of Collor.
A very telling expression related to public space is the next one:

‘My salary is only enough for eating. It’s not even enough to go the amusement park to take Maria [his wife, JvB] to play on the Ferris wheel. If I spend in transportation to the park, then I won’t have money to go to work the day after. So I stay home, it’s better, I stay home…’

[This quote really shows the depressing consequences of poverty, these people are really excluded from the economically determined spaces. ‘You have to pay for the public life’ the architect Charles W. Moore in an article with the same name. JvB]

Another very good point Caldeira makes is about aestatics and appearance. The middle-classes often refer to the poor as being more lucky than they are because they are only in the realm of necessity and therefore they don’t have to care for their appearance. Caldeira sees this as one of the many prejudices the middle-class has about the poor. (I think she is totally right in that.) She refers to the dialogues at 2.9 about the fashion. [I think we can also stress this argument to the realm of architecture. To create a real city the public buildings should be more than just products of necessity; they need to become human artifices to speak in Arendtian terminology. Arendt writes: ‘Nowhere else does the sheer durability of the world of things appear in such purity and clarity, nowhere else therefore does this thing-world reveal itself so spectacularly as the non-mortal home for mortal beings.’]
When it comes to social distance there are several ways of creating borders: The most obvious one is to create a physical border, by making a fence. Another way is ‘derogatory conceptions’ [Dutch: geringschattende opvattingen, JvB] about the poor, for example to emphasize that they are not part of the consumer society.
The fact that the poor have television is often seen as wrong but the richer part of the society. They say they can better spent it on a refrigerator, something that is more neccecary but also a lot more expensive. However, in many cases the television is the only form of leisure the poor have, and it is their connection with the outside world.
[The following interview shows the vulnerability of democracy in Brazil:]

‘We used to think that the lack of freedom and the censorship [during the military regime, JvB] were bad. Today I think that the military regime should come back. For example the case of kidnapping. It’s absurd the lack of security that one feels. I’m nobody, I don’t have many assets [Dutch: heeft iets met geld te maken, JvB], but Iám afraid that suddenly some guy gets my son in order to ask a ransom of five million. I’m scared to death… Anyone may be kidnapped, because now kidnapping has become the fashion. Why? Because of impunity [Dutch: straffeloosheid, JvB]. We were talking about the military regime: when the Al-5 was introduced do you remember? [Al-5 whas the most repressive period of the military regime.] Bank robbery ended… It is impunity which makes us feel insecure.’

Kidnapping is the biggest fear people have in higher social classes.

Very interessting conception about the walls comes forward in an interview Caldeira did with three women from Morumbi. A fragment:

‘[Interviewer:] Why do you prefer to live in a house instead of in one of the condominiums?
O: Freedom. To me, freedom first of all, and then the contact of too many children that I would be unable to prevent [in order to] control the friendships of my children. (…) The famous fear of drugs. My sister-in-law lives in a condominium: all day long you have children from here, there, everywhere. You don’t know who the children belong to…
M: Because the houses are not enclosed, the house doesn’t have walls… Only the condominium’s wall, but the house has only the grass, and in a while it is already another house. American-style.
O: All open, and you don’t know the contact your child has. How are you going to keep them separate? You don’t have a wall, how are you going to say , “No, my son, you receive the friends at home that I think are better, I am going to select these friends”? (…) There are cases of a child robbing another child’s house in order to steal dollar to buy marijuana. I won’t name names, but there are cases… in a condominium.’

[What this interview makes clear is the walling of the houses do not only function as barriers to prevent people from the outside to enter your domain, but also to lock the children in. The wall makes it possible to control the friendships of your children. It is the housekeeper who decides what the best company is for the children. The most ironic thing about this is that person ‘O’ her argument to live in a house is because of freedom it offers. The expression ‘How are you going to keep them separate?’ also gives the impression that children need this kind of wall in order to protect them from the temptations in the outside world. The house has become a space of preventative rehab. JvB]

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p53-101.

City of Walls: Summary Chapter 1. TALKING OF CRIME AND ORDERING THE WORLD

Caldeira explains that in São Paulo the talking about crime and violence started to change the urban landscape and the public space. This kind of talking has a simplistic characteristics, ‘relying on the creation of clear-cut oppositional categories, the most important of which are good and evil.’ She explains that the experience of violence can change your entire vision about society and the city, the fear is something that can stay the rest of your life. The world becomes divided in a ‘before’ and a ‘after’ the crime where the ‘before’ is strongly romantisised and the ‘after’ is ‘life like hell’.
‘Crime offers a language for expressing the feeling related to changes in the neighborhood, the city an Brazilian society.’
The thinking in categories and stereotypes is in many cases simply not correct. However, the people use it in order to symbolically reorder the world they live in. People don’t understand anymore the situations they have to deal with, and because of that they use simplifications of criminals such as ‘nordestino’, ‘people from cortiços’ or ‘favela’s’. Maybe this ‘talk of crime’ ‘generates order, it is no a democratic, tolerant egalitarian order but its exact opposite. Democracy is about openness and the indeterminacy of boundaries, not about enclosures, rigid boundaries or dichotomies. In the field of crime, barriers are embedded not only in the discourses but also, materially, in the city’s walls, in the residences of people from all social classes, and in technologies of security. Prejudices and derogations not only are verbal but also reproduce themselves in rituals of suspicion and investigation at the entrances of public and private buildings.’ The building of walls in São Paulo has the strongest connection toward the process of democratization after the military dictatorship.
‘From the 1940s to the end of the 1970s … Brazil became a modern country through a paradoxical combination of rapid capitalist development, increased inequality, and lack of political freedom and respect for citizenship rights. São Paulo epitomizes [Dutch: belichamen, JvB] these paradoxes. … São Paulo has become a symbol of a poor but modern industrial consumer society, heterogeneous and deeply unequal.
The drop in fertility rates, that already started in the 1970s effected also the growth of the population in the city. Growth rates dropped from 4.5% in 1940s, 3.8% in 1970s, 2.0% in 1980s, between 1991-1996 0.4%. [We can say that SP is a consolidating metropolis in matters of growth.] One of the possible explanations for this is the accessibility to mass media that exposes the ‘model of a modern middle-class family with a working wife and a few children’.
[For interesting data about the distribution of wealth see p47,48.]
Caldeira merciless breaks the image of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy’ into pieces: ‘the income of people of color is only around 65 percent of that of the white population’, ’68 percent of the urban households below the indigent line had either a black or a prado head of household, while black or prado households represent only 41% of all urban households’.
‘The increase in violence, the failure of the institiutions of order (especially the police and the justice system), the privatization of security and justice, and the continuous walling and segregation of cities’ shows that the process of democratization after the end of military dictatorship is ambiguous in its outcome. One the one hand there are free elections, freedom of expression, end of media censorship, ect, but on the other hand violence had increased. ‘This increase in crime and violence is associated with the failure of the justice system, the privatization of justice, police abuses, the walling of the cities, and the deconstruction of public spaces. Caldeira is convinced that it is violence and the talk of violence ‘counteracts democratic tendencies and helps sustain one of the most unequal societies in the world’.

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p19-52.

City of Walls: Summary Introduction. ANTHROPOLOGY WITH AN ACCENT

Het omniversum van angst en criminaliteit had basaal gezien twee manieren van discriminatie tot gevolg: de privatisering van veiligheid en de ‘seclusion’ van sommige sociale groepen in gefortifiseerde enclaves. Beide processen veranderde het idee van de publieke ruimte en van het publiek.
Over de enclaves: ‘the new model of segregation separates social groups with an explicitness that transforms the quality of public space. … The new urban environment that enforces and values inequalities and separations is an undemocratic and nonmodern public space.’
Het onderzoek van Caldeira strekt zich uit van 1988 tot 2000. Ze deed onderzoek naar drie verschillende gebieden in de stad:
1. Poor working-class periphery, created through ‘autoconstruction’. Most of her research was conducted in Jardim das Camélias, in the eastern part of São Miguel Paulista.
2. Lower-middle-class neighborhood close to downtown: Moόca, an deindustrialised area with a lot of cortiços.
3. upper-middle-class neighborhoods: Morumbi and Alto de Pinheiros. Closed condominiums.

Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p1-16.

The transformation of Public Space according to Jean Baudrillard

In the book The Anti-Aesthetic: Essay's on Postmodern Cultures Jean Baudrillard wrote the text The Ecstacy of Communication. What interest me professionally about this essay are the things he writes about in relation to 'public space':

“… body, landscape, time all progressively disappear as scenes. And the same for public space: the theater of the social and theater of politics are both reduced more and more to a large soft body with many heads. Advertising in its new version – with is no longer a more or less baroque, utopian or ecstatic scenario of objects and consumption, but the effect of an omnipresent visibility of enterprises, brands, social interlocutor and the social virtues of communication – advertising in its new dimension invades everything, as public space (the street, monument, market, scene) disappears. It realizes, or, if one prefers, it materializes in all its obscenity; it monopolizes public life in its exhibition. No longer limited to its traditional language, advertising organizes the architecture and realization of superobjects like Beaubourg and the Forum des Halles, and of future projects (e.g., Parc de la Villette) which are monuments (or anti-monuments) to advertising, not because they will be geared to consumption but because they are immediately proposed as an anticipated demonstration of the operation of culture, commodities, mass movement and social flux. It is our only architecture today: great screens on which are reflected atoms, particles, molecules in motion. Not a public scene or true public space but gigantic spaces of circulation, ventilation and ephemeral connections.”

Baudrillard describes here the consequences of the focus on commodities and advertising in the public space. Public space is no longer a stage for social and political life, as it was in history, but it has become a space of circulation, shopping and billboards and neon.

Believe and Action: Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau: What We Do when We Believe, in: On Signs

"Recent studies in belief actually restore its relationships to a doing. Doubtless in a ling, especially Mediteranean tradition, the believed object has been isolated from the collective and individual steps that it brought together in contracts. Cut of from the act that posited it, regarded as a "mental occurance", belief received the comprehensively negative definition corresponding to what one does not know or see, in other words, of being the other of knowledge or sight. It whas labelled with such an identity by an epistemology that judged knowledge according to the truth value with which an utterance can be affected and which distributed this truth according to its two possible sources, memory or proof. In another, especially Anglo-Saxon tradition - one linked to the philosophical rigour of an "individualism"that distinguishes the act from its object - belief appears as the positive formality of an act of uttering related to a (willing) to do of the subject and to a contract entered into between social and/or symbolic partners. It thus refers to an acting.

... one could adopt the thesis that a belief devoid [verstoken, JvB] of practical implications is not a belief. With the bluntness characteristic of the style of his later years Pierre Janet rightly said: 'Fur us, belief is nothing more than a promise of action: to believe is to act; to say that we believe in something is to say: we shall do something.'"