Community Aesthetics in Heliópolis

by Teresa García Alcaraz

Heliópolis is known as one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in São Paulo, with 120,000 people living in an area of less than one square mile. Legend has it that architect Ruy Ohtake once called it the ugliest part of the city, prompting members of the UNAS community organization to ask him to help make it beautiful.

Urban Agriculture in Caracas

by Teresa García Alcaraz


Green space in and around San Agustín. Source: Metro Cable San Agustín

San Agustín, a parish in Caracas, Venezuela, is known for open plots of land where the hillside is too steep for habitation. A group of activists led by artist Natalya Critchley and Rogue Architecture has been working there with school children on urban development projects. Based on a study of local terrain, they've started building garden plots for fresh produce to help reduce the burden of an extremely high cost of living.


Source: Natalya Critchley and Rogue Architecture

Using repurposed pipes from a broken McDonald's jungle gym, the group recently built a small allotment next to an elementary school in San Agustín. Colorful plastic tubes became planters and composting containers filled with biodegradable waste from around the playground. The project included urban agriculture workshops aimed at developing the skills needed to build and maintain the garden. Student groups took responsibility for tending each container.


Source: Natalya Critchley and Rogue Architecture

On Avenida Mexico in central Caracas, next to Bellas Artes Station, there is a quarter-hectare lot where chards, beets, lettuce and other products are grown without chemicals and sold at affordable prices. It is part of a government initiative called AgroVenezuela, which was set up to strengthen local agriculture and reduce poverty. It helps promote urban food production by converting "idle" spaces into productive gardens.


Urban agriculture in central Caracas. Source: Leo Ramírez

Other groups in Caracas grow produce without help from the government. In the Puerta Verde neighborhood, residents created a garden where retirees and volunteers care for flowers and vegetables. It started with the idea of planting herbs for home remedies and soon became a kind of community center. The group uses freely available resources like tires, gabions and plastic bottles to create architecture, including a natural irrigation system. They also help promote recycling and food sovereignty in the neighborhood.


A small orchard in Puerta Verde. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

In oil-rich Venezuela, gas is heralded as "cheaper than water" and agriculture makes up only 3.7 percent of G.D.P. Corresponding dependence on global food production is especially high in cities. As younger generations lose the skills to grow their own produce, the economic and ecological advantages of local agriculture are not easily reclaimed. Efforts in Caracas to develop these skills through education, policy and grassroots creativity can serve as inspiration in other parts of the world where food production is becoming a lost tradition.

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New Life for Empty Lots in Zaragoza

by Teresa García Alcaraz

"Esto no es un solar" (this is not a lot) is a participatory design project reanimating abandoned lots in Zaragoza, Spain. The municipal government started the project in 2009 to clean up the historic center and reduce unemployment. Lead architects Patrizia di Monte and Ignacio Grávalos Lacambra have focused on collaboration with neighborhood residents in generating and realizing ideas for each space.



The project has since expanded beyond the historic center to 28 sites throughout the city. Each repurposed lot has a number and is plotted on a map, linking it with the others. In all, they make up 42,000 square meters of space transformed into many different kinds of community gathering places.


Plot 1, an urban garden that includes benches and parking for bikes. Source: todo por la praxis

The lots have become playgrounds, parchís boards, gardens, small woods, volleyball pitches, pingpong sites, pétanque courts and resting places for the elderly. They are all free of charge and freely accessible to all.


Plot 5, a playground with a giant parchís board painted on the ground. Source: esto no es un solar

The name "this is not a lot" encourages people to imagine what can happen in each space, proposing new projects and creating places that they care about. Anyone can post comments and ideas on the program blog to communicate with others in the community. Over 50 organizations — including schools, neighborhood groups and cultural centers — have participated in the program.


Workers with T-shirts that create playful sentences. Source: esto no es un solar

While building and painting the sites, workers wear T-shirts that display a single word from the program name. Together the shirts form random sentences like "un solar no es un solar" (a lot is not a lot), "esto es" (this is) or "un solar no es esto" (a lot is not this). The work becomes a community event that encourages people to meet their neighbors and feel a sense of ownership over the site.

At the same time, the program has run into problems with longterm maintenance and doesn't appear to be providing substantial employment. But if the municipal government is able to sustain adequate support, "this is not a lot" should continue to improve in aligning urban development with the wishes of local residents.

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Inventing a Verb for Urban Transformation

by Teresa García Alcaraz

El Raval, a neighborhood in Barcelona's central Ciutat Vella district, has a long history of immigration, deindustrialization and illicit activity. Political and economic marginalization increased social problems to crisis proportions in the 1980s, prompting the city council to begin a focused regeneration campaign. The northern section has seen longterm economic development and reduced crime, while these changes have yet to take hold in the southern section.



Fundació Tot Raval, a community organization in the heart of El Raval, was founded in 2001 to help coordinate the improvement efforts of local residents, nonprofits, businesses and city government. It has played an important role in El Raval's partial transformation, and is working to bring similar change to the entire neighborhood.



One of Fundació Tot Raval's ideas involved placing a large sign in the plaza outside the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), emblazoned with the invented verb "ravalejar." Its aim was to represent and build momentum behind positive change in the community. The plaza is frequented by people from both sections of El Raval, as well as visitors from around the world.

Wordplay is no proxy for addressing the intricacies of neighborhood improvement from different perspectives, but "ravalejar" beautifully captures the hard work that gave rise to its appearance in the plaza. The sign both commemorates and encourages this work, making use of public space to support the neighborhood's comprehensive turnaround. Since "turnaround" is often another word for gentrification, there is much to learn from El Raval's experience.

Credits: Photos of El Raval by Teresa García Alcaraz.

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Music for Youth Empowerment

by Teresa García Alcaraz


Palestinian youth participate in a DJing workshop. Source: Turntables in the Camps

Building upon the widespread influence of music, innovative programs around the world are empowering youth to work together, stay clear of danger, exercise creativity and improve their living conditions.



Turntables in the Camps introduces young people to DJing and electronic music in refugee camps. It started out as a series of workshops and now includes schools at Sabra/Shatila, Mar Elias and Burj Barajneh in Beirut; Nahr el-Bared near Tripoli; and Jabal el-Hussein in Amman. The schools are run by local NGOs and volunteers, with funding from the Danish Center for Culture and Development. The group is currently working on Turntable Labs for youth in Port-au-Prince, Cairo, Phnom Penh, Tunis and Benghazi, along with an online portal to facilitate communication between schools and with DJ communities worldwide.


Music in Me participants in Damascus. Source: Norman Lebrecht



Music in Me is a Netherlands-based organization that works on behalf of refugee children in the Middle East — mainly Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Palestinian territories. It "uses the power of music to improve tolerance and increase mutual respect between people in conflict zones," setting up a variety of youth projects and helping similar organizations in the region with fundraising.



The Simón Bolívar Music Foundation runs the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela. More commonly known as El Sistema, the program was founded by José Antonio Abreu in 1975 to help embed music into the education system and promote collective practice through symphony orchestras and choruses. It is now part of the Venezuelan Presidential Ministry of People's Power, with a focus on strengthening marginal communities. Six days a week, El Sistema students practice and perform with neighborhood youth orchestras called núcleos.


An El Sistema núcleo in Venezuela. Source: The Telegraph

More than 400,000 youth play in approximately 200 El Sistema orchestras throughout Venezuela, and more than a million have gone through the program. Alumnus Gustavo Dudamel was appointed director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 26 and recently performed at the Olympic Games in London. He continues to direct youth from El Sistema in the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.


Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in a concert to raise funds for recovery from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Music programs are providing valuable opportunities for youth in communities across the globe. While such programs are not a cure-all, their results have been promising. They help young people build the self-discipline and collaboration skills needed to meet life's most difficult challenges.

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Percussion Class in San Agustín

by Teresa García Alcaraz

San Agustín Radio, also known as Radio Perola, is a community station where people meet, listen, cry, learn, share jokes and hold discussions. It is a second home for many residents of San Agustín, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Caracas, Venezuela.


Chipi, one of the cofounders of Radio Perola in San Agustín. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

Radio Perola was founded 12 years ago by Milagros "La Negra" and Jimmy "Chipi" Fariñas in a small building on a boulevard in San Agustín. The founders do not pay rent, so they can be considered squatters. Their dream is the good of their community.


The boulevard where Radio Perola is located. Source: Fernando Campos

The station occupies approximately 20 square meters, with only a plastic table, a few other pieces of donated furniture, a television, a microphone, a receiver and a few speakers. Next to the building there is a square bordered by a school and a Catholic church. Neighbors sit outside and listen to Radio Perola through speakers placed along the boulevard — the only place where the station has coverage.


Radio Perola's broadcasting equipment. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

Chipi recently invited percussionist Gerardo Rosales to give a public workshop and concert aimed at bringing people together to resist violence in the community. The idea was well received, and people of all ages gathered in the boulevard on the day of the event.


A workshop with Gerardo Rosales on the boulevard. Source: Fernando Campos

Rosales taught children how to play songs by Tito Puente and Manny Oquendo, two legends of Salsa and Latin Jazz. He told them about his childhood dream of becoming a musician, which inspired him to take lessons in conga, timbales and bongos. "If you have a dream, go for it!" he proclaimed. "You have to study hard. If you do, your dreams can come true." He mentioned a local school led by Pedrito García, son of a legendary Cuban conga player who lived in San Agustín.

Initiatives like this deserve recognition. People like La Negra and Chipi — who put their time and effort into community radio without receiving any income — need to be rewarded. Their dream came true, at least for a day, as violence on the boulevard gave way to live music.

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Mapping and Naming Informal Pathways

by Teresa García Alcaraz

Teolinda Bolívar, a professor of architecture and urbanism at the University of Venezuela, has been working in the neighborhoods of Caracas for over 40 years. In addition to her research, she organizes seminars on communicating daily life in the city.


The Petare slum in Caracas, Venezuela. Source: 20 Minutos

Artist Gladys Meneses worked with Bolívar in the Julián Blanco section of Petare, one of the largest slums in South America. They came up with the idea of collaborating with local residents in naming the streets and helping to make street signs. To name a place is to certify its existence; knowing that your home has an address that can be mapped provides a sense of rootedness. Most residents of Patare have no official address.

The initial street signs were too fragile and eventually broke. Bolívar did not give up, proposing the project to her students, who agreed to participate. In small groups, they went up the hill to Julián Blanco and started mapping the neighborhood and helping to name the streets, alleyways and stairs. The names came from local residents, based on stories behind each location.


Sr. Antonio, a resident of Julián Blanco, installing a street sign. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

Julián Blanco residents would no longer have to say, for example, that they lived in the yellow house next to the stairs just before the place where Pablo’s grocery shop is, and after the blue metal door where Luís used to repair motorbikes.

The students analyzed the neighborhood and chose sites where the street signs could be placed. They asked permission from residents, prepared the panels and painted them with local children.


A street sign made by students and painted by local children. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

The project was also an interesting case for anthropologists, as the community naming process offered an opportunity to learn about the history of an informal settlement that has existed for over 40 years.

Despite the fact that some maps of Caracas keep showing Julián Blanco as a big grey void (sometimes named "marginal area"), in time the mapping and naming process could help legitimize the place where so many people have established roots.

Teresa García Alcaraz is an architect with a focus on community planning in informal settlements. She is a member of L.P.U., and author of Archithoughts.

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Architects and Planners as Mediators in Housing Relocation

by Teresa García Alcaraz


Residents of the barrio "Los Altos la Cruz" and a group of architects and urbanists working on a project in Caracas, Venezuela. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

For years, architects and urban planners have worked on ideas to reduce poverty. These ideas are presented to a client — usually a local authority — with the power to realize and regulate the project. Many designers try to interpret the needs of millions of poor people while working from wealthy areas. Their ideas turn into fabulous designs that convert parts of the uncontrollable city into momentary illusions of control. But what happens to the people who have to live in the buildings they design?

Local authorities talk about the urban economy and believe that the more investment in social housing, the better for the urban poor. But the reality is that the majority of projects do not respond effectively to people's needs.


Ciudad Caribia, a housing resettlement plan in Venezuela. Source: Luis Hernández

Ciudad Caribia is a new model city being built in Venezuela. The plan includes thousands of new homes as well as communal buildings, parks and access roads. Authorities plan to resettle shanty-dwellers into this formal "slum free" development.

Over 800 families were resettled to a new and isolated development in Campo Grande, Brasil. Although living conditions improved, there remains a lack of public recreational space and other amenities in the area.

Local authorities try to find land in the periphery with value commensurate with the income of future residents. There is not enough attention to the social diversity, internal community systems or social networks of the people who are resettled. Thus, it isn't surprising that these processes normally fail.


Community leaders of different barrios in Caracas presenting their ideas about a future masterplan that will affect their area. Architects and government representatives listened to their proposals and discussed their solutions. Source: Teresa García Alcaraz

Resettlements face problems with communication and cooperation. Authorities find that residents will not collaborate. But is participation actually feasible for them?

Architects and planners can act as mediators, rather than technicians. Although many professionals refrain from criticizing local authorities, it is essential for designers to demand practical mechanisms for resident participation in housing plans.

Teresa García Alcaraz is an architect with a focus on community planning in informal settlements. She is a member of L.P.U., and author of Archithoughts.

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Reviving a Plaza Through Collaborative Play

by Teresa García Alcaraz

Macarao is a district along the periphery of Caracas, home to over 50,000 people within roughly 10 square kilometers. Dramatic problems are visible there, including prostitution, violence, poverty and inadequate healthcare. Housing is highly vulnerable to natural disaster.


Two brothers sit on a rooftop observing the city below.

At the same time, the streets of Macarao are galleries of ingenuity — residents constantly invent their surroundings. Approaching the steep stairways and unstable shelters, it is surprising to see how quickly a grocery store is built, a small shack is expanded to accommodate a new family, a nursery is added to a community center, or a meeting place takes shape in an unclaimed space. Gathering places are highly valued in the scarcity of space for social life to unfold.


A woman lowers food in a basket to her neighbor.

In the historic center of Macarao, the population of children and teenagers is particularly high. They play games and hang out in a square beside a church from the colonial era. Plaza Bolívar, as it is called, has traditionally been a hub for social interaction.


Plaza Bolívar in the historic section of Macarao.

Lack of maintenance and infrastructure has taken a toll on Plaza Bolívar. Community leaders decided to take action in collaboration with Liga de la Partida Urbana (L.P.U.), or League of the Urban Game, an activist collective that helps revive and reconfigure public space through a process rooted in inclusive play.


Children playing in the plaza.

L.P.U. proposed a quick and inexpensive intervention that would bring people together with a shared purpose. They planned to create lines and geometric shapes on the ground that would transform the space visually and socially, sparking dialogue among diverse participants. The proposal was presented for community review and approved. Two weeks later, the group distributed paint, brushes and tape to local children, who decided to design a panel for playing the traditional Venezuelan game fusilao. The children set up their own rules, deciding where to draw, how big the panel would have to be, and which colors would look best.



Other members of the community joined in as well, and the activity became a means of rediscovering the plaza through creative social interaction. The plaza became an immediate and changeable space that everyone could share. The intervention allowed architects, sociologists and artists to engage with the neighborhood in a spirit of collaborative play, sparking use of the plaza in surprising ways.



When the paint dried, the children began playing fusilao on their new panel.

Teresa García Alcaraz is an architect with a focus on community planning in informal settlements. She is a member of L.P.U., and author of Archithoughts.

Credits: Photos by Teresa García Alcaraz.