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Carmona Gabriela Ochoa. Architect
the Autonomous University of Coahuila, Master in Architectural Design from the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León. Doctoral student in City Planning and Sustainability at the University of Guadalajara. Introduction
The urban population has increased dramatically. It is considered that since May 2008, 50% of the world's population is urban. Particularly called my attention that in Mexico there are states like Nuevo Leon, where 94% of the population lives in cities.
Technological advances and especially in the medical field, have contributed to that since 1800 the population has increased considerably. Viviescas Fernando explains, regarding the acceleration of population growth, the following:
"two thousand years ago the human population was 250 million, by 1600 the figure had already reached 500 million human beings between 1800 and 1850, thousand million, but by 1930 this figure had doubled, meaning that in thirty years and grew another billion spent only fourteen years to reach four billion human beings, 1974. "
In modern times, changes in cities are manifested very quickly, technological advances have contributed significantly" And if citizens are the creators of it, sometimes only as mere observers figured generated transformation.
Noting the city.
In our country, participation is almost nil. We are all so immersed in our own business, trying to survive, everything is going so fast, there is no time to criticize, challenge, or simply participate in each of the decisions made on our cities. Decisions made by institutions, by anonymous people, who often are out of reality, so that as people, we just try to adapt quickly to such changes.
see or hear in the media, sometimes without understanding, "that public institutions are declaring and classifying our cities, this city is now the city of knowledge, the other will be or is the main tourist city, it will be the capital of culture, to name a few adjectives. And so, by decree, they become something they were not, that the qualifications or specialist, not realizing that issues the qualification of the social, environmental, infrastructure social and physical required to comply with such a role assigned.
The common citizen only sees the appearance of new buildings-architecture-shooting, in a short time to change the city's image, notes the construction of transnational chain stores taking over vast lands and leave no choice but to live outside them, upon leaving the house or wake up every morning, meet with the magnificent view of the huge warehouses and service areas these stores because they become the protagonists of the city. Such property
appropriate the main avenues without asking permission, architecture that is approved by corporate counsel not know the location, culture, people, the city. Staff does not take into account functionality, relationship to the environment or aesthetics, as their primary concern is and will always make the brand identity.
Naomi Klein (2002) in his book No Logo tells us how the rise of neo-liberal market economies has led to changes that affect the formation of the city. It shows how trademarks have taken the contemporary landscape, introducing a dictatorship of the image, understandable from the more recent history, where the increased value of the non-material companies, ie your logo, your brand image and as corporations, the value of real assets, ie infrastructure, personnel or technology, has moved away considerably, making the intangible assets are more valuable than tangible.
The urban dweller only realize that their city is different, that is changing in size to grow and may have heard the word urban area or metropolitan, definitions that do not know what they mean, but he knows what it is to these words . Conurbation known about when the tours are getting longer, when the services are not sufficient, or if, when excluded from certain neighborhoods and can only see their roofs and guardhouse.
What will happen to the city when the metropolitan world to another and another and another world? When the huge megacities form, "will realize that belongs to them or just try to survive in them?
it be better to isolate the strategy in our small urban space in which we live? Will the future cities long stretches of isolated entities? Will you be taking into account the creation of small but livable urban centers, or do we just replace these centers of socialization and community shopping centers?. Cities
postmodernity
will be difficult in the new century cities have their own identity. The ancient cities and historical sites which generally represents who we are and who we are, will remain as museums will be happy to visit for at least live, if only for a few moments, the lifestyle of our ancestors, that past where you could walk by places where one could see slowly the aesthetics of architecture and could feel the closeness of the neighbor. Where there were no boundaries, everything went more slowly, it was essential to have a car for every family member and the time was not spent on transportation, but in coexistence, in living. In this regard, Narvaez (2001) in an analysis performed on the center of the city of Monterrey explains how the occupation has been declining housing:
"The density of housing occupation has changed markedly over time ... .. in 1990 while residing in the first frame of the city about 50 inhabitants per hectare in 1995 lived about 35 people per hectare .... "
We can also see a major technical problem in major cities and the lack of dialogue between people , planners and governments. Both Dr. Ignacio Kunz as Prof.. Lorena Zarate agree that there of this enormous emptiness, which is reflected in the city through the inequality of society. That is, the exclusion / segregation of the main actors of this reality.
In Latin American cities the poor are poorer and the rich are richer. Currently about 1 200 million people live on less than a dollar a day, that is, a sixth of the world's population lives in absolute poverty. The people fighting for different ways to organize and to combat the problems faced every day, making it through NGOs, cooperatives, urban observatories, social movements, among other agents, so achieve well-being seeking to reach a city.
The State, in turn, creates various programs to help fight poverty, but has found that in most cases, these programs emphasize the problem rather than solve it. The beneficiaries of these projects are again of the rich because they have greater access to them either for knowledge, mobility or approach to the sponsor. The institutions represented by developers and planners, have only superb solutions, completely away from reality and approaches based mainly on the commercialism of the territory, without conscience and, often, with no responsibility.
The paradox of communication alone.
The citizens try to understand how to live within this increasingly complex. Full complexity of material, concrete, asphalt, glass, steel, full of people: women, men, children, elders, full of atmosphere: trees, parks, animals, water, pollution, trash and also full of technology: cars, Subway, phones, TV or internet. Without realizing it we are in the era of communications and high technology era, we are living in an age which is reported to be fundamental, so necessary at times it is impossible to disconnect either the internet, television or mobile.
each passing day the number of cell phone users and more mobile. We note that in 2008, in states such as Baja California Sur, Mexico City or Querétaro, among others, has exceeded the number of users per 100 inhabitants, ie people sometimes have more than one active cell in your name .
In an article published on August 19, 2009 in an editorial in The Economist on mobile telephony in Mexico, states that by June 2010 will reach to 743 mobile phones per 1,000 inhabitants, and that according to information indicator of the Information Society (ISI) developed by the consultant Everis in Latin America, the total mobile phones in the region will reach the 815 computers per 1,000 people.
"This level, he adds, is 12.4% higher than in June 2008 and more than twice as many as there were in the same month of 2005. Services in Information Technology and Communications (ICT) Internet domains in Mexico grew 18% to reach seven per 1,000 population. He adds that during the last quarter in Mexico there was an expansion of the number of computers with an increase of 13.9% and even lower than that of other countries arrives to 200 units per 1,000 people. "
Virtualization.
is clear how the man has been virtualized. The virtual world is more real than we could imagine, every day there are more institutions offering bachelor's, master's and doctoral distance learning centers where the teacher is no longer necessary and has been replaced by software that interacts with the individual student through his computer. Children who are completely disconnected from the real world and can spend hours playing or competing in the other world that offer video games, television or the internet. Young or adult network immersed in leading a second life in portals to alternate worlds such as Second Life offers site (http / /: www.secondlife.com) or perhaps, companies that offer their services without personal contact.
Everything is available on the network; goods and services of all kinds can be bought or sold on this new virtual world. The man's increasingly need to interact with another human being. Even you can see how every day more people work from home, without having to travel elsewhere to do their jobs, because their services can be delivered from your laptop and in the comfort of your home.
Pierre Levy, Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, among others, relate to the fact that the virtual has permeated contemporary life to be a new space of existence that would oppose not real, but the present, creating a world power would have an undeniable influence on the material world and transform it well, as human beings were in existence at that level of reality. Paul Virilio
assumed that this is the beginning of an implosion of the real space, which would present as a loss of meaning of reality, a trivialization of the reality experience as a care get rid of things, with the waste continuing environmental environment, with buildings of a shorter growing obsolescence.
Levy supposed "Virtuality establishing a new relationship between the use of the coordinates of space and time, overcomes the spatial and configure an environment in which information and communication accessible show hitherto unknown perspectives at least in terms of volume and potential. Virtual reality allows the generation of interactive environments to separate the need to share the space-time, in this case providing new contexts of exchange and communication. "
citizen of the metropolis seeks in the virtual world that technology offers, as well as seeking to reach a city seeks to identify, support and solidarity of a community.
Zygmunt Bauman (2003) broadly describes what the word community: (...) First, the community is a "warm, cozy and comfortable place (...) inside a community, we can relax, we insurance, there is no danger ... "
virtual communities that until now are people who have interests, habits, thoughts, likes, problems, diseases, and / or passions in common, individuals they identify with a group of people from all over the world. The venue is the network, virtual space that is available at all times, where communication is open and sometimes only the limited language. Have even been cases where important relationships between people are formed or broken by information that exists in the network itself.
David Birchall and Laurence Lyoons in one of his "Creating Tomorrow's organization" (1995) described these virtual communities as a web of relationships, the imagined as a set of firms, specialized units or individuals and is coordinated by the market that occurs in the network or by membership to an organization.
mention also that the network can observe two basic components: the technological infrastructure and the social aspect. The first allows the transfer of information and the second, the way people interact and the way in it.
Conclusion
The appropriation of technology as a new model of life, urban models unconcerned about the identity, sustainability and aesthetics and the environment, have caused citizens to adopt or invent new ways life, new ways of using these sites or spaces, trying to adapt as quickly as possible to the dramatic changes in contemporary urban experience.
is true, the virtual world is a new world and easily. The areas of interaction between people are changing public spaces such as plazas, markets, cinema, which were the usual places of assembly are being replaced by private spaces which can be accessed through the internet. The dwellings are changing, filled with technology: video games, computers or television. Public spaces are changing cities, changing to this new view of life.
The architecture is standardized, the houses are made by thousands and without personality. It sets back the design for the economy and speed. Are common on most medium-sized cities, the emergence of colonies or closed residential spaces, where the privileged social class does isolated from the outside. There is no need to leave the urban area because it has everything you need about: schools, shopping centers, services, labor, golf clubs, sports and recreation, and fails to distinguish the geographical and temporal context that seeks to perform this work, the emergence of an increasingly stressed polarization of the population of large cities.
What effect will the extension of these new technologies and practices in future developments? What in the individual and society?
Images: 1.2 and 3, free circulation on the Internet. From 4 onwards authoring students of the Faculty of Architecture Xalapa, Universidad Veracruzana.
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