Looking Across the Street Understanding Segregation and Marginalization in a District of Lima Through the Use and Treatment of Public Space
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DEGREE PROJECT IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT, SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2018 Looking across the street Understanding segregation and marginalization in a district of Lima through the use and treatment of public space DAVID RICARDO DE LA CRUZ VEGA KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT TRITA TRITA-ABE-MBT-18453 www.kth.se Abstract The district of Barranco is the smallest in the city of Lima, Peru, and is marked by the inequality in the socio-economic level of its inhabitants and a differentiated capacity in their access to public spaces. The present study seeks to explore, through an analysis of the public space and its characteristics, the causes, conditions and structural dynamics of inequality that produce and reproduce segregation and marginalization in the district of Barranco. For this research, interviews, participant observation, cartographic analysis and literature review have been employed. Theoretically, the concepts of public space, gentrification and spatial justice are used in order to examine the power relationships that are manifested and reproduced in the constant recreation of public space. The preliminary results show that the relationship of segregation in the district is based on the indifference and the active role of the municipal governments in promoting the stratification of the district through a zoning delimitation that spatially excludes the less favored, and differentiated policies over the public space in function of that zoning. These processes accentuate the social and historical division of the inhabitants of the district, which makes it even more difficult the appropriation of public space by the less favored sector. Keywords: public space; segregation; marginalization; Barranco; gentrification; spatial justice, inequality. 1 Acknowledgments I would like to thank to my supervisor Jenny Lindblad, for her patience and guidance along the way, always so helpful. Also, I would like to thank to the program coordinator Peter Brokking, for his permanent support and advice; and to the whole staff of KTH university, for their professionalism. To the Swedish Institute, for believing in me and granting me with a scholarship. They gave me this unique opportunity in my life that I will never forget. I am deeply grateful. Thanks to my mother Carmen, my grandmothers Julia and Rosa, my sisters Carmen and Andrea, my partner Maite, my uncles Germán and Camilo, to Argos, and to my lifelong and my closest friends. Thanks to all of you for your love and your unconditional support. Finally, I want to dedicate this effort and this latent emotion to my grandpa, Evaristo, who is always with me. 2 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... 2 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 4 1.1. Why a research on Barranco? ............................................................................................ 5 1.2. Aim and objectives .......................................................................................................... 5 2. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 8 3. Theoretical framework ......................................................................................................... 10 3.1. Public space ................................................................................................................. 10 3.2. Gentrification ............................................................................................................... 13 3.3. Spatial justice ................................................................................................................ 16 4. The historical construction of the urban fabric of Barranco ........................................................ 19 4.1. Origins and historical development of Barranco ................................................................. 19 4.2. The urbanization processes in Barranco ............................................................................ 22 5. Zoning, segregation and marginalization through the public space in Barranco .............................. 27 5.1. Zoning and distribution and quality of the public space in Barranco ...................................... 27 5.1.1. Zone A .................................................................................................................. 32 5.1.2. Zone C .................................................................................................................. 36 5.1.3. Public transport network and socio-spatial delimitations ................................................ 38 5.2. Gentrification and privatization in Barranco ...................................................................... 43 6. Conclusions and final reflections ........................................................................................... 47 6.1. Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 47 6.2. Final reflections ............................................................................................................ 48 References ............................................................................................................................ 50 Appendix .............................................................................................................................. 52 List of interviews ................................................................................................................ 52 3 1. Introduction “Barranco is a bit like Peru. Although it is small, you have the social extremes with very rich people with apartments facing the sea that may have cost a million dollars, and people who live on the other side in alleys where sometimes there is only one bathroom for everyone; access to very varied education, with people going to the most expensive schools in Lima and people going to the most modest.” (Javier Alvarado, Barranco’s old inhabitant) I was born in Barranco, a rather small district in front of the sea, facing the Pacific Ocean in the shores of Lima, Peru. Most of my house, as many others in Barranco, was made of old quincha1 and adobe; which made a comfortable house, but scary during earthquakes and tremors, very common in that part of South America. In the 90’s, during the day, the ice cream tricycle sellers blew their horn with all their force to make the kids in the neighborhood run fast to the streets to catch them; during the night we played football in our own street “post to post”. It was hard, because the football goals are the one-meter imaginary line between the public lighting pole and the wall; so, in order to score you had to send the ball over the sidewalk and never over the knee height. And even though it has been always dangerous (because you have to stop the ball at any moment when a car appears), I am happy to know that the actual kids of some parts of Barranco still do it in that way, just because it made us feel at home. When my parents wanted to take me and my two younger sisters for a walk, however, we never did it around our house. Even though we stayed in Barranco, one of the smallest districts in Lima, we used to go to the west part of it, towards the beach and the cliffs over it (from which Barranco takes its name). These experiences were always for me a motive to joyful because in these parts the parks were huge, bigger and greener than in any other part of the city, it was all clean, the big houses and new buildings were beautiful, there were trash cans in the streets, tennis and football pitches inside the private clubs; and there was a lot of people from all the city, and even foreigners. My parents didn’t have higher education, their parents didn’t finish high school; and, in my case, all my education was public. So, as part of the working class in Peru, they hardly ever had extra free time to take us, I and my sisters, more than 2 blocks away from home when they finally got to it in the nights. Therefore, the walks to the nice part of the district -and consequently the family- walks as a whole- were only occasionally, even though that part was at a walking distance. Why I never truly felt as a part of the same district and its political delimitations? Why all the other amenities were so close but felt so far from me? Was this situation fair? Did it mean that because 1 From the quechua or runa simi: qincha, 'wall, fence, corral, enclosure' material made of mood to construct one to two floors buildings. Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Normalización de la Vivienda (1989). Quincha prefabricada, utilización y construcción. Lima: ININVI. 4 we had little economic income, we deserved not only to have a access to bad public education, bad food, bad bars, bad restaurants, bad medical attention, bad treatment of people with more money; but also, to have access to a public space that excluded us and marginalized us as citizens and as people? Why, if public space was a right that we should all enjoy equally, “ours” was markedly worse than “that of the others” that were so close? 1.1. Why