Cities are home to 56% of the population, 75% of energy consumption and 82% of the world economy. They are one of the three global players alongside the state and private transnational corporations. Despite this, the city has never been so severely destroyed. Urbicide, the central theme of a recently published book, attempts to explain this process.
It is a concept composed of two words with Latin roots: urbs, synonymous with city, and cidio, with death; that is, death of the city. However, this is not a natural death, but a serious crime committed intentionally and treacherously. It is a liturgical murder carried out in an orderly and explicit manner by certain public and private actors. However, it is not the death of all cities, nor is it the end of the city; but of some cities, certain essential components and dynamics. It is a matter of destruction that does not lead to its disappearance, as some authors believe.
Urbicide is not death from natural causes, but a serious crime committed intentionally and treacherously. It is a liturgical murder carried out in an orderly and explicit manner by identified public and private actors.
Medicine, which studies life and its vicissitudes, identifies the pathologies of the body (diagnosis) in order to prevent, cure and reduce death. Urbicide is similar: it sees the city’s problems in order to fix them and thus prevent them from dying. It’s a hopeful look that shows that the harmful must be reconsidered for city building to prevail.
Urbicide implies a change in the way of understanding the city, starting from the negative interpretation: less in the way it is produced and more in the way it is destroyed, less from the memory and more from oblivion. It is about highlighting the destruction that occurs in the production of the city and in the resulting form of its understanding. It aims to explain what is lost, what is destroyed, and most importantly, why this is happening. That is, it is about understanding the structural causes of their deterioration, in order to understand them, confront them, counteract them and develop alternative proposals.
It is a theoretical approach that integrates the negative forms of the city to contribute to its development. In other words, a critique of urban development models that reinforce inequality, fragmentation, exclusion, de-urbanization and suburbanization in order to restore a sense of a good place to live happily.
Urban urbicide occurs ubiquitously, massively, selectively, sectorally or partially in the following typology:
The historical urbicide, conceived in the law of negation of negation, based on the fact that the new negates the old. There is always a phase of the death of a city giving way to the birth of a new city. For example, the fall of the classical city led to the emergence of the modern city, and from that came the cosmopolitan city; or the walled city that gave way to the industrial city.
Urbicide is ubiquitous, massive, selective, sectoral or partial in cities
Natural ubiicide that arises from the fact that the city is an artificial space created by humanity with its social norms, while the environment in which it is inscribed does so on the basis of natural laws. In this relationship, an ecosystem is configured that, when the balance is disturbed, as occurs in climate change, returns there with devastating effects (fires, droughts). In addition, there are hurricanes (New Orleans), earthquakes (Port-au-Prince), volcanic eruptions (Antigua Guatemala), and so on.
Anthropic urbicide resulting from pathologies introduced by the market and public policies. But also through the effects of wars (Sarajevo, Aleppo), violence (Medellín, Ciudad Juárez); Terrorist attacks (New York, Lima), market (Santiago, Guayaquil), inequalities (São Paulo, Buenos Aires), tourism (Venice, Cusco), motoring (Detroit, Bogotá), urban extractivism (Caracas, Monterrey), monument preservation (Quito, Salvador de Bahía).
Symbolic urbicide that arises from the meaning of the imaginary and representative around, for example, place names. During the Spanish conquest, when the cities were founded, the names of the saints were put first and the original names after them (San Francisco de Quito, Santa Rosa de Lima). Also in Russia with St. Petersburg, which after historical moments returned via Petrograd, Leningrad, and then to St. Petersburg. The same applies to urban nomenclature, which moves from custom to commemoration to impose an official history (dates), languages (Spanish in Barcelona) or exclusion (women, ethnic groups). Also imaginaries like fear becoming urban principle to close neighborhoods, shrink public space and limit community life.
There are cases of symbolic cities. For example Quito, which was recognized by Unesco as the first World Heritage City. In 2000, the city’s population was 76,000, today it is only 32,000, with a decline rate of 2.5% per year. He withdraws from society, shortens his time and loses his space. Or Detroit, the city of the automobile, falls due to the logic of assembly-based production.
Urbicide identifies the problems of city destruction to better understand the importance of urban development through the quality of life of its citizens.
Fernando Carrion Mena He is an academic at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Ecuador
You can follow PLANETA FUTURO on TwitterFacebook and Instagram and subscribe to our “Newsletter” here.