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Where were you?

From an excellent blog: http://rockchilelatinoamerica.blogspot.com/


And if you've been told that everything was wonderful, stupid, we all were going to take a cocktail Omnium with bangs enlaced and we used the stupid clothes that went out in the commercials. If you have been told that time was the highest grossing in aesthetic of the clothes that the girls were equal the pads Bolocco with Farrah Fawcett, the boys danced Jackson and Depeche Mode album in the neighborhood is not as high and were joined in throwing Apumanque blujines painted with snow. They looked again and again and we loved this movie gringa "Charlie's Angels." That we were all imbeciles, blonde and danzabamos to the beat of the boots. Do not create it asshole. Because there would be another Chile, eighties and beyond, where being trough was cool, where using Peruvian wool was dissident and decent, which smell like patchouli and lilac contraseña.Porque was that we had to counteract a famous gang miliquera TV. So welcome hippies wool and craft fairs where sounded Silvio, short, despacito.Bienvenida hindu clothing and long hair, rather long, waist, and I dreamed in my utopia ochentista.Y smoked pipes of the Andes hidden from cops and we felt that shit protesting Chilean others liked it so much. Also there was the rock. Prisoners Before it was always the rock, survived the dictatorship under the stones. Uproar over there or Quicksand and metal rabid zeppelin, replicating the album dissident Klimax, Alameda below. Although not arming the matucanero underground counterculture. Just a few beatnik poets reading their poetry in dark clubs. We lived there the little country banned all its seventy-year-old crying and emotion. And besides, the others were above Plaza Italia in derechotas parties Shifting. They do not pass anything, they were not with two hands poto pasting posters of Neruda. Bowling Nor because I got off the disgust the people had wool that was arming of bombs at a university with red eyes came in box. So was old pituquin now want to install your memory eighties eunuch without causa.Los fome below eighty began as flutes and guitars murmur of sad. There was nothing to celebrate in that scene of crimes and torture. There was nothing under the track-lit celebration of the show pinochetero of Don Francisco. Country was a bitter, gagged and shy, that I saw on the screen to stiff Maluenda its military victories in one show. The old hypocrite Maluenda, host of uniformed cueca. Today the same as shown in the film "Tony Manero" almost honored by the director of child remember. Yuck, vomit copihues was home by then. Where were you?, Sang The Jaivas, and today I ask the same directorcito. "Where were you." Not if you make a thousand movies dictatorship we forget that song. "Where estbas you." Something is not lived, Blond guys, and too late for explanations films. Memory is a snail in its shell closes inexcusable. It happened as it is, we here and you there, as if there was tyranny. Jarana always bubbling in Tom Collins, in the pub Casamila in Hollywood disco and all that shit jubilant. We were bitter and we got scared. Also we danced, we were flying, and sometimes we were happy but with pica. Mobilized angry. The wave record sounded on the radio and the song rocks nuevo.Llegaron eighties like a comet burning the battle, the first protest, the student mobilization to desentumir fear shit. There were also rock, rock and green were always urgent Macon. On TV, the gentlemen are dancing toward the rebels Scaramelli, Juan Antonio Labra, Andrea Tessa and other rotten hams might not remember. "Behind the Walls", guitar a Chascon and Violet breathed a cassette taxiing. Thus were the beginnings of a memorable decade for his political contortion. A decade that their anger at the premiere of armored dawn. Pedro Lemebel

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I like the skin of Cities: Manuel de Solà-Morales Contra

"how essential it is to give today's architecture to the city is the sense of belonging, citizenship would say in the classic Castilian."

published in El Pais, October 12, 2008. Marilin
Thanks!

Architect and father of the open sea Barcelona, \u200b\u200bManuel de Solà-Morales, the largest English urbanism theoretical questions the architecture of the big stars but commitment to the disorder of the new cities.

is the grandson, son and brother of architects, a saga in which the surname De Solà-Morales has appeared closely linked to the Barcelona architecture of the last century. His maternal grandfather was a famous Catalan modernist architect, Gaudí's right arm. His father, dean of the college of architects, and invited the likes of Alvar Aalto. His brother, Ignacio, rebuilt the Lyceum Theatre after the fire. And he opened Barcelona to the sea with the famous Moll of the whip.

Manuel de Solà-Morales, Jaime I of Urban Award 2008, is one of the most authoritative voices of English urbanism, to the extent that some of his colleagues consider him English developer the best of the past 40 years. There are projects endorsed by half of Europe: Oporto, Berlin, Rotterdam, Nantes, Antwerp and The Hague. It is a rare bird who still speak of ethics, and admits that the media success of the architecture of the big stars has become a "disease."

Worship and reputed delicious, De Solà-Morales has, at 69 years, the casual look that characterizes many intellectuals from Barcelona, \u200b\u200bwith a touch sloppy in dress design. Talking refined education rested and not hide a bully and tenacious character. Not for nothing has a reputation as a tough opponent. Their study, a three-story former factory, is broad and sober materials. Quality and elegance seems to seal the house. On the top floor, a corner with books and paintings, has become the resting place of the architect, who was a disciple of Josep Lluis Sert at Harvard and Quaroni in Rome.

just spent two events in which architecture has had much to do, the Venice Biennale and the Expo in Zaragoza. In Venice, the dilemma has arisen: buildings or architecture. Its director, Bestky says that "buildings are the tombs of architecture, and architecture that seeks to build solutions" is false and is dead. " Is it an entertainment for architects or responds to something more serious? This position of the Venice Biennale o de su director, me parece un poco anticuada porque responde a esa idea de que la arquitectura puede reducirse a conceptos y, por tanto, su interés intelectual puede agotarla por entero, reducirse a ser inmaterial. Yo creo que la fuerza de la materia es muy importante en todo; una arquitectura sin corporeidad no es que no pueda existir, existe en los dibujos, en los papeles, en las ideas, en las teorías, pero porque hace referencia a una experiencia. Y es muy escasa la experiencia sin arquitectura construida, sin obra física. No digo que no sea posible, lo es para algunas personas que se dedican a la especulación intelectual; pero la arquitectura socialmente significativa, que es la que nos interesa, que sirva a la gran mayoría de las people can not be done alone or defend ideas. 30 years ago, another wave of this type and was saying the same thing in different words. It is true that architecture today is it extremely difficult to be against their own success. The successful marketing of the most famous architecture is an enemy. I do not know if it is a grave, but it certainly is a disease.

With regard to the Expo Zaragoza, do they have these great wastes architectural sense, many unique buildings post difficult content? The basic question of the Expo is your site because it is a great action on the ground and represents a major city event, and is serious wrong in this, is the danger. I think it was wrong Sevilla and Zaragoza is wrong because it has placed a gap between what the central city, the right of the Ebro, and some neighborhoods that are already very crowded on the other side. And instead of this massive city and make both sides of the river, as in all the cities that actually use the river-good case of London, Paris, Rome or Budapest, have introduced the idea of \u200b\u200bemptiness, very green, with some buildings. I think he missed an evolution of the city that would be very interesting.

What's happening with the current planning? Not long ago, you said that there is little and hidden. Where is he hiding? Ha ha! I do not see much difference between the present and the past, what happens is that the past is good, and the other, and we remember. Now I do not know whether this crisis will change the rhythms-the number of city being built is huge, and if not, look at the territory it has occupied Madrid. It has become one of the great cities of the world, and that goes beyond any political capacity to imagine how to intervene, and say not regular, which is a nasty word and perhaps unnecessary. Good planning is a matter of wanting it, almost, in some way, to desire, and now there, but it lacks the imagination of the future, there is no such will. And will there is no desire, no desire and no quality. There are architects

who say that urbanization has gone, everything is left to the market ... I hate being so negative. What interests us is getting better, take the positive elements and be able to process them, because if not, we are committed to the cynical position of "everything is a mess, but I give me those houses, that will." That is the position of many renowned architects who say "this city is impossible, I make my object and it is." As the city is no longer something that can be defined very precisely, by the many changes through which it passes, it seems that you can not want more than defend against it, traffic, pollution, congestion ... And yet, I think there are many more likely to make good city now than there were 50 or 100 years ago. There is one fact: a city is not built in five years, and we can not judge the results the same as judging a building, a novel or an opera. The most important thing for me is to understand, develop and modernize especially the culture of the city, we are able to understand on what is of interest. Maybe the cities today are not very pretty, but are much more interesting than they were historic cities.

In what sense are more interesting? Are more complex in their operation, have more variety of items, people are more capable. Each person, family, housing, office, airport, station or beach can hold a lot of life and different life. The city is a machine increasingly rich and diverse. Maybe even the aesthetics of a certain disorder, it begins to be interested. We changed the traditional aesthetic diversity of life, and that is very important, because the great strength of the city is still attracting people, and how much more the better. And its true inner beauty, wealth, life, are also its conflict because the conflict is part of the image of a much more modern. In the historical city seemed to be no conflicts, everything so neat, so green rides ... This energy, in which not everything is delicious but it is true, I think it's a beauty that have acquired or acquire our cities, as interesting as the formal order.

But citizens have less and less voice in those cities. The mayors do and, above all, undo, what they want. One hundred years ago had zero opinion, another thing is that now there are opinions and not heard, but at least there are opinions and is important. It is very easy to say that the fault is in charge, and it sure is true, but there really big and complicated faults.

architects also have them right? And both, and both! It is very easy to talk to the mayor or the speculator, but where are the ideas, where the proposals? Can not be simple, because skate ...

Brick Is the crisis is going to count for something? Let us hope so, because if it will not serve either for this ...

hard you defend a concept in the city, the "material civility." What is the etiquette? There are configurations of matter, a corner, a garage ramp, the margin of a way ..., elements of the city, which are its material. A new district, a polygon is a substance, a component of the city, but may be smaller items, a walk, phone booths, how a building meets a gap ... Remedying this good or bad is a matter of the city are things that have good manners, sense of city, if resolved in a way that improvement. It is true that the city is the streets, but much more. For example, a glass building located in a particular place can be a beautiful object but totally anti-urban, and anti-urban in its material, it is automatically understood as others, aggressive. For example, a major traffic junction: what is the difference between congestion and animation? We say this is a very lively, and it's nice, but when we say, is very congested, it is bad. And that lies in the material, the accumulation of things overabundant. I'm not saying that the city is only matter, but it is very important. The work of the architect, urban planner or engineer is to realize that urban condition, and it is important to think and succeed in this. We must demand quality issues, not just great concept.

Your projects are great works, as whip Moll of Barcelona or other major European ports. How do you approach this civility? As a starting point, one must understand the character has to have a place, and that is closely linked to their subject, if I hurry, to your skin. I say that I am interested in the skin of the cities, and this may seem frivolous. Of course, an architect who only looks at the outward appearance! But the city has its laws, and end, or beginning, as in humans, these laws have to do with the skin, which is a structure itself. The skin of the city, which is what we see, what we play, walk or move and through which we understand the rest, and not vice versa, is essential. When I approach a project, think: how will walk this site, how it will play, 'cause the feel is very important in the city, our first item of touch are the feet walking. And that sense of how to make contact is what leads me to give much importance to the matter. And not only in the case of stone, concrete or glass, the materiality is whether it is cost or flat, open or closed, stairs or ramp, far or near.

You mentioned the corners. He says he is very interested as a crossroads of architecture, public uses, cultures ... Is there a new concept in modern cities corner? The corner that interests us today is probably just a metaphor for the classic corner. The corner is an intersection in the narrower sense. For example, today a gas station in the output of a town where people will buy when they close the shops, youths gather, sell books, it is a corner which is in a place of intersection. The corner building as an architectural example of an uncomfortable situation, which was built there, is another matter. But it has finished drawing a virtue of necessity. Maybe the underground stations, the famous exchangers are our current corner. And if we converted into a public space worthy, draft a corner and would be very interesting, and recognizable to people as a central point of the city. In Buenos Aires, the gas stations in the city are fantastic at night, are like nightclubs.

What do you think of the iconic buildings that now make the biggest stars of architecture? Fantastic, spectacular, sweeping architecture. I think that is devastating especially to the media. And some architects that may attract this type of activity or focus of their profession, but many others do not. It is a difficulty, because the architecture has become a thing capable of being advertised, contain a message of prestige, novelty or surprise, which nullifies the work quite good architects, they sometimes make great architecture, but sometimes they do not understand what they have done. Tell me now is to build a city in Mongolia which is ordered to 60 architects from around the world each building seems absurd. And that, unfortunately, is happening.

architects have always been great, but never seemed to many divas like now ... I think it's a problem of distribution of information, because what counts is a certain public image for the developer or politician who commissioned it, which is achieved through striking an object, and that's a disgrace to the architecture. In that sense it is to build the coffin, says Betsky. But it remains to be seen at the end of all this, the impact it will have. Before it was only big cities have acted well, but now are also the medium and small, everyone wants a landmark building, and any sense of civility disappears.

What is essential is to give today's architecture to the city? The sense of belonging, citizenship would say in the classic Castilian. When you go to a good walk or park in Madrid or another city, in part, the feeling you; understand that many people have done and what forms part of that city. The change from the subjective to the collective, that is what makes the city, which is the opposite of the field. In the city we live with the full sense that we share, and that in good architecture is essential. At the end there is no distance between urban planning and architecture, who seek the same.

said not long ago in the journal 'Architecture', that cities such as Vitoria and Logroño seem very good, very well resolved, but not excited at all. Why? Excited because I have poor growth, urban architecture are dull cities. There is a question of passion, desire, that everything human is very important, and if that does not spread ... It is good to go by car the houses there, but to create excitement with the city is more than that. And the excitement of diversity is what more we can give our society today, rather than order. Nor stand more than three days in St. Petersburg, because I've already seen. But you go to Manhattan and not get tired, energy, change ... diversity is highly organized.

Does good urban design has to convey emotion above all else? I think you can, and indeed it does.
cities
What excites you, apart from Cadiz, the city he likes best in the world? Cadiz is very exceptional for its size, the balance that is in the midst of a certain disorder strength, for that outrageously beautiful location between the open sea and the port, light ... I do not know, Cadiz is a silver cup, but is much more. And I really like, but do not want to sound snobbish, Sidney, a totally modern city, made in the twentieth century, which operates very well their relationship with the bay, with water, but has placed a lot of contemporary architecture inteligenci and Chicago, and Rotterdam, and Ferrara ...

are all water-related cities or the sea, very present in their work. That relationship does it have to do with their tastes or a professional typecasting from Moll de la Fusta? I guess both. I like ports, I think they are especially urban places. On the one hand, is a very strong construction, much of engineering, subject to laws operating efficiency and very demanding, and that as at the port of Rotterdam than in Bermeo, but at the same time have that sense that citizen there we will stop all contact and the sea. But in the end what I find most important ports, apart from seeing the sea, ships and the bustle, is that since they understand the city, but do not look, and it gives a great interest. I think the ports are very nice.

How was it for Barcelona, \u200b\u200bBarcelona opening experience at sea? It was a very intense experience, a whole challenge. At first it was the feeling of fighting for an impossible ideal, had to knock down sheds, railway tracks, assuming powers of the port authority and defer to the City, modify the traffic from an architectural idea, and was the first time that this did. All this cost, but in doing so, the difficulty was the enjoyment. And what followed the opening of the beaches, is the best thing has been done as a change in Barcelona.

A project like this, change the habits and life of a city, I guess that is the dream of any developer. And how! But they are projects of many people, and if no such complicity, does not work. When there is a broad feeling from the mayor is useless because no mayor, no town planning, to public opinion, and some professional consensus, things work out. That was possible in the eighties and certainly not repeatable. Good planning can not be done every year. A city project or a large chunk of the city, can only be done from time to time, fortunately, otherwise we would always be upside down ... It is very important to note that quality urban design, which makes things a certain importance and contains ideas, desires, emotions, is not for every day.

already would have liked his uncle, Nicolas Rubio i Tudurí, for the Republic to make his dream project de Iberia, una capital federal tipo Brasilia. Sí, sí, algo hay de esto... Y no está mal que sean así las cosas. Vivimos de proyectos que de vez en cuando realizamos y otros no. Yo he trabajado durante años en el puerto de Trieste, y las condiciones eran estupendas... Pues no ha salido. No había la energía o el consenso suficiente para cambiar las cosas.

¿Qué piensa de las numerosas críticas que se hacen ahora a Barcelona? El escritor Vila-Matas decía hace poco que la ciudad se ha convertido en un parque temático para el turismo, llena de porquería y orines; que se ha destrozado su tejido urbano. Creo que estamos en una fase más pasiva, y efectivamente la invasión turística, que continues to be also a consequence of those first performances, is changing a lot of atmosphere and ambience of much of the city, not just the old and historic. Tourism is a very alienating, and their presence modifies the transport, trade, entertainment, and people sometimes feel like outcasts. I think Barcelona is ten years looking for a new way to modernize not just arrived, but is not making more of the same, because these were things that were very clear and were undertaken with enthusiasm and conviction so strong that it was a guarantee of success. Now there are surely those goals.

You have converted submarine base German Saint Nazaire (France), trailing a terrible historical memory, a major cultural and civic center. "It was worth it back? I think it is worth it. The castles also recovered, and what was an element of domination over the population becomes and is absorbed as a collective recovery. The first thing I proposed on this enormous mass of the submarine base was drilled to a sense of constraint could be traversed through it visually and see the harbor, water, and set up a large ramp that people can step on, you feel who's boss : people going up there. There is something impressive there, those massive walls of concrete, these roof beams filled a very large architectural expression ... And what we needed was reappropriated and he lost that gloomy and negative side, he became just the opposite. And people are very happy, though at first it was not, because that huge submarine base cost the town of Saint Nazaire (Nantes) to be bombed and razed by the Allies in World War II. So there were people who wanted to demolish it, but it was so expensive that you could not think about it. Now is a great place where people come through the port, has cinemas, a hypermarket, a small museum of history of navigation, and it really has become a living room which is part of city life without trivializing the memory. On the contrary. I believe that respect for the past is re-appropriated, not be denied.

Sometime said that the current architecture will be very little ... Yes, but what remains of the Rome of the Caesars?, As a monument, and it's great because if not, why beat up! I do not see that it is a drama. This is not to say there are not many things are not right and we should be interested in them out better match. My experience is that when you input a city, you see a number of eyesores, disaster, sites that have been loaded, but the third time and do not see it and you start dwelling on other things, and understand people live there and I want because there are many readings.

That means the greatest aberrations of just taking a time when we live with them ... Male, aberrations!, But we should not take the ugly things, on the contrary. I think we must act, and instead of giving awards for architecture, would have to tear them down, it would be to spoof, and each year the worst building in Madrid or Barcelona, \u200b\u200bto the ground, just one, and not worth much money. I think we must be ruthless with ugly, so wrong, so evil.

is a professor at universities such as Harvard, Cambridge and Paris. The interests of the students are the same as in Spain? I think they are different than negative. The interest of the overall architecture is not what most motivates, is the line of personal development, and is different in each case, each school has its tics. Students see professional models of the stars and wonder: if I'm not going to be one of them, why study? Not a good time, and it is worrying, but why people considering a career? You

, three generations of architects, it was clear ... I knew that with that comment I got into a scrub!

What keeps asking you to architecture? More of the same intellectual and practical challenge, because projects I do are usually large and harder to fight. Last long, and is an endurance race, a fight on points, never win by KO ... Enthusiasm and energy also ask because it's a hard job.

says there are few existing buildings that will excite. Tell me one. The new Copenhagen metro.

When Were Women Allowed To Drive In America

transport, proximity

This article, released by the author, was published in the magazine's number Archipelago 18-19, Winter 1994, whose theme folder was entitled: "Trains, trams and bicycles. Back to walk," and in the book "Against the car - on freedom of movement," Editorial Virus, 1996, ISBN 84-8845520-8. It relies on certain ideas contained in the report "Towards ecological conversion of transport in Spain," written by Antonio Estevan Estevan and Sanz Alfonso Alduán, published as Working Paper of the Research Center for Peace in Madrid in June 1994.

Antonio Estevan Estevan

Over the last twenty years has been imposing the evidence that transport is the real "hard core" of the ecological crisis. The transport sector is primarily responsible for the greenhouse effect, the most serious problems of air pollution, marine pollution, urbanization, soil, noise, degradation rural and urban landscape, etc. No other human activity whose influence on the present environment the combination of gravity and multitude of conditions that characterizes the transport.

Actually, it is logically so, because transportation is the arena in which the disposition of the primordial battle of mankind with nature. "Dominate" nature means, above all, to move through it with a freedom and ease growing. "Civilizing" nature means it accessible and safe for humans, cross it and open it in order to catalog their various components as "natural resources" and to transfer or manipulate until they become economic assets capable of exchange or accumulation.



Two strangers and incompatible: Transport and Nature

A sociocultural system is a building that is built on a foundation of transport. Since the dawn of time, the accumulation or the most basic barter have been, first, paths transport actions. It only makes sense to accumulate or trocar that is not easy in the short term, which is not accessible to any hand, which by its very scarcity worth transporting from somewhere. From these gestures embryonic socialization, any socio-cultural structure that occur in history has to be represented, firstly, through a political and cultural map, which is not only a territorial demarcation indicating that, within the grounds stated, are manifested with particular intensity in certain relations of trade, communication, command and other forms of connection between human beings and between and their environment, invariably resting on the horizontal transport.

In this complex network of horizontal relations that constitute human culture has its true origin of the conflict between the Transport and Nature, as Nature is mainly organized in vertical structures and next, the human species is divided into horizontal structures and distant that rely on some form of Transportation, and show a tendency to seem overwhelming to be extended to more and more distance and become more and more intense.

Indeed, in terrestrial nature, the horizontal displacement of live or materials associated with them is a relatively unique. On the mainland, biological cycles, so the majority rest on the activity of the plant kingdom, material that circulates almost exclusively vertical direction: it transports nutrients from the soil to plant tissues and drops back to the soil when the leaves or plants die.

This predominance of vertical transport in terrestrial life is no coincidence. As is known, the large amount solar energy reaching the Earth, plants are able to fix only a small part in the form of plant biomass, using reactions that are carried out at room temperature, and therefore with limited income, almost critical. The most efficient way to collect the materials needed to produce biomass (water, minerals) is the capillary pumped from the ground to the aerial parts of plants, where photosynthesis takes place, or capture them directly from the air, as with carbon. The capillary rise does not require energy input from the plant only produces an almost imperceptible cooling of the sap, which is soon balanced by heat environment. Thus, all the solar energy captured by plants can be applied to supply the photosynthetic reactions. The plants are, overwhelmingly fixed laboratories to produce biomass by optimizing to the limits its immediate availability of materials and energy.

To use the hard-energy stored by plants, animals that feed on them have to turn it into a new process that develops with relatively low yields. Much of the limited energy thus obtained is consumed in the production of muscular work, ie the movement that allows them to go to reach their food, and other functions to ensure vital, so that only a small fraction is available for biomass accumulation in animal.

This explains the huge gap existing biomass - on land - in the animal kingdom and plant kingdom: the creatures that move horizontally - animals - almost irrelevant represent a fraction of the terrestrial biomass (less a ten-thousandth), and so very strict saving energy expenditure in muscular work, generally avoiding unnecessary movements or free. Land living Nature is essentially fixed. Consists of innumerable fixed elementary units - plants - are organized together so they leave a smaller biological - in relative terms - for life within them of being endowed with ability to move.

Throughout time, humans have occupied the biological space limited, first driving the same to other animals and then widened to the cost of altering the structure of natural ecosystems. However, traditional cultures, especially those that have evolved related to their own bases of ecological sustainability and confined in them, have been using to move only to the extent necessary to meet their needs, using it in general terms cautious and subject to the rules somehow economy's natural movement. However, in relation to the movement, as in many other aspects of modern industrial societies have been organized entirely back to the basic principles of nature. Rather than being applied to improve trade, relations and close production cycles, reducing to a minimum the movement of materials over long distances, economic systems and lifestyles prevailing in developed countries increasingly rely in the conduct of trade and horizontal displacements of large masses of people and goods over long distances, to meet any need or desire, it is trivial or irrelevant.

But since natural terrestrial ecosystems have been largely self-organization based on vertical and close cycles described above, are poorly adapted to withstand intense horizontal movements within it. The primary structures of natural ecosystems (surface soil, plant communities, ecological interfaces, etc..) Have a very fragile against massive horizontal displacement generates a mass transport system of an industrial, as that has been built in Over the last two centuries in societies under development. Consequently, the transport is that "their way" through some ecosystems natural land that is not "designed" to support it, and in its progress it divided and impoverished ecosystems, and replacing portions of the same by increasing inert spaces definitely lost for Nature and life.

But these local or regional effects of transport are far from alone in support of nature as a result of this activity. Generalization of motor transport requires the use of vast quantities of materials and energy, the extraction, processing and consumption produces large masses of solid, liquid and gaseous, so foreign to nature as is the concept of horizontal movement mass.

the global ecosystem, which is able to absorb and recycle moderate amounts of this waste is soon overwhelmed their ability to self when transportation - like many other human activities - among its members introduces massive amounts of waste in small periods of time. For example, the massive release of CO2 and various gaseous pollutants alters the composition of the atmosphere, the dispersion of oil in the sea modifies the marine biological cycles, and millions of tons of solid waste from scrap vehicles accumulate landfills or spread on the territory, poisoned and degrading. Thus, the global ecosystem is deteriorating in many different aspects in an exponential process that seems to evolve slowly at first, but after a certain threshold is rapidly approaching breakdown situations.



Nature versus freight transport

This essential contradiction between the transport and Nature does the concept of "carrying capacity" of natural ecosystems in relation to transport, which is the true starting point vision of transport from an ecological perspective. If mass transit is in itself an element foreign to the natural ecosystem, the "carrying capacity" or total amount of transport that it can assimilate without exceeding a certain threshold of damage, will necessarily be limited.

Therefore, in abstract and general terms, the unlimited growth of the transport is not compatible with the ecological balance. The introduction of technology and improvement of transport organization may raise, to some extent, the transport capacity of a given ecosystem (or global ecosystem) to a level of deterioration that is designated as socially "acceptable." But technological and organizational improvements are affected by the law of diminishing returns, as is any other physical phenomenon, from increasing relativistic speed in the realm of the very large to the expansion of knowledge or certainty in the quantum realm of the very small. In the limit of every imaginable perfection for a transportation system will always remain the mass transport object moving at a certain speed, and natural ecosystems will not be transparent material in front of that movement within it.

However, the essential incompatibility between transport and the ecological balance in this vision does not end "static" load capacity. By introducing the concept of speed, this inconsistency is accentuated, because the deterioration of natural ecosystems increases with speed to which movements are made through them. In fact, the laws of nature state that, at equal other physical conditions Quie characterize a phenomenon of movement, the energy required to move a mobile speed increases necessarily. The increased speed of transport can only be achieved with higher energy intake, and also of the various materials used in vehicle construction or infrastructure, and waste generated throughout the process. Technological development can be improved upon the physical framework in which transport occurs (friction reduction, optimization vehicles or containers, improved efficiency of energy transformations, etc.), but within each physical frame and technology, the speed increase will require higher energy and material consumption. And of course, over time technological improvements associated with increased speed will provide only diminishing returns on these inputs.

In sum, the transport capacity of any ecosystem, for a given maximum level of deterioration, has absolute limits, which are narrowed by increasing the speed of transport. If you increase the transport burden indefinitely or the average speed thereof, or both, through a given ecosystem, it records a deterioration growing indefinitely. Technological and organizational improvements achieved only at best, slow or moderate this process, but not stop, let alone invest.

This is, in short, the vision of the transport problem which belongs to the so-called "deep ecology", which envisages the maintenance of ecological balance as a core value in itself, also putting it in first place among the human interest the long and very long term. Although the use of this form of reasoning may seem - and probably is - barely operational to meet the management of the immediate problems of transport, certainly provides a useful general framework for understanding significant global transport of environmental conflict. First, because it provides a sound basis for questioning the conventional view of transportation as an economic good whose production is desirable to increase indefinitely, ie, as an expression of wealth and social welfare.

Second, it explains very reasonably comprehensive historical process have been the relationships between transport and the environment from the beginning of the industrial revolution. Environmental degradation due to transport has not stopped growing since then, and no development technology or the invention of new modes of transport were able to stop this deterioration, but in any case accentuate, to enable the continuous increase of the transportation load and speed. The last decades of this century, which has been spreading environmental awareness and have increased technological capabilities, are precisely those that have experienced severe environmental deterioration due to shipment.

And finally, because, as applied to restricted local environments, explains the appearance of local situations of manifest breach of environmental balance largely due to transport. In the preceding pages has focused attention on limited transport capacity of natural ecosystems and the global ecosystem, in which this phenomenon is manifested with great clarity and force illustrative. But the process is played so conceptually the same, albeit on a smaller territorial scale in urban ecosystems or regional ecosystems characterized by dense human occupation.



The eternal debate of mobility and accessibility

The starting point for progress towards an "ecological society" in the field of transport is the clarification of the meaning of the concepts of "mobility" and "accessibility" generic objectives of transport activity. Long, the confusion surrounding these concepts is weighing like a millstone on the adaptability of transport activities to their own ecological environment.

In the terminology of transport, "mobility" is a quantitative parameter or variable simply measures the amount of displacement of people or goods made in a particular system or socio-economic field. Can be expressed in individual terms (for example, the average number of trips or miles traveled per person), or in the aggregate (eg, total miles traveled by residents of a country).

"Accessibility", by Rather, it is a notion or qualitative variable that indicates the ease with which members of a community can bridge the gap that separates them from the places where they can find ways to meet their needs or desires.

There are two conflicting ways of pursuing the improvement of accessibility. The first identifies accessibility with ease of movement: a place is much more "accessible" the more efficient transport system that lets you navigate to it. This approach, which is typical of the conventional view of transport, leading to continuously strengthen infrastructure, vehicles and the entire transport system, which facilitates the increased mobility power and thus, production of transport.

The second identifies accessibility, primarily with proximity: a need or desire are much more accessible - at the spatial or geographic - the smaller and more autonomous can be the displacement to be carried out to meet them. In this approach, which is the ecological vision is for the transport, mobility and the resulting "production" of transportation are no longer positive values \u200b\u200bin themselves, to become listed as a tribute to nature and society itself must face to meet the needs and desires of people. Against



vice transport virtue of proximity

naturally, this argument leads to locate the "creation of proximity or closeness" as a central objective of any transport policy greening, which aims to reduce car mobility and, therefore, the transport burden on the environment while maintaining or improving accessibility while.

The concept of "creation of local" goes far beyond the obvious implications of the term on the location of various human activities on the territory. It is a concept too, and especially applicable to the organization of production and consumption, forms of Arabian meet needs and individual desires and, in general, the overall socioeconomic organization. A society and a sustainable economy are those that emulate the principles of nature and adapt to them instead of violent. Therefore particularly value near, used carefully everything that is available in your immediate surroundings and distant reserve movements of people and goods to meet relevant needs and desires that can not be satisfied through the use of future resources. Any contribution in these directions is an effective "creation of proximity."

proximity creation at all levels personal, social and economic strategy is the only substance capable of bringing about a process of continuous approximation to full environmental compatibility of transportation. The creation of proximity is not simply a new set of land use planning techniques, though these techniques are certainly necessary and urgent development and implementation. It is above all an organization's overall conception of human relations, and also a guiding principle of individual behavior, applicable to all areas of life. The creation of proximity has obviously important economic implications. Requires progress toward self-centered economic systems, well adapted to their ecological conditions, specializing in the efficient satisfaction of needs from local resources, refined in obtaining and making good use of the goods more massive and more dependent on transport, water, energy, food, construction materials ... It also requires other ways of using objects and to establish priorities among them, assessing and draining its durability, appreciating the proximity of the origin of things, and their degree of attachment to the culture. Also has important social implications. Revaluation behaviors and networks of mutual support and solidarity immediately. Facilitates the direct exchange of goods and services and solving multiple needs within the various circles to extending personal relationships. Involves the acceptance of multiple social and environmental responsibilities shared locally. Question the validity and even the long-term viability of large vertically centralized social structures and disjointed in the horizontal plane in its various expressions regional (metropolitan), production (large corporations) or bureaucratic.

These social and economic implications are obvious political translations. Require substantial revisions of the institutional structures of the territorial distribution of political power, grades autonomy and sovereignty attributable to each social group. Negate much if not all, of the trends prevailing reorganization of political power, systematically moving higher levels of that power to international organizations and institutional structures of territorial ranking. Refute the idea of \u200b\u200bthe inevitability of economic globalization processes and policies that are being imposed in the current historical cycle: no unsustainable in the long-term process has been or may be inevitable in history but the notion of "global economy" that currently presented as the next stage in the inexorable evolution of capitalism is a real antiparadigma ecological and therefore inherently unsustainable: it is "creating distance, continuously, in the exercise of any activity.

The pervasiveness of transport as more or less direct support of all human relationships and the Promethean nature of his conflict with nature, have the power to bring out the main physical infeasibility mode of production and Western social organization. When reasoning about the conflict is taken to its logical conclusion and compared the necessary conclusions of this speech with the realities observed in the field of transport, it becomes apparent inability to find real solutions and final borders without leaving the established system.

The proximity concept of creating an escape route provides safe and practicable to this apparent dilemma, and not without appeal if properly interpreted. Does not contain any personal or social isolation, let alone historical reversal - an impossible concept - or stagnation, decline or technical, economic or cultural. Rather, the construction company capable of full adaptation to their own physical substrate and maximum enjoyment of the near, of new forms of interconnection with the far less satisfactory and consistent, and to reconcile both systems achievements indefinitely stable and continuous improvement in material and moral commitment is a much harder and requires much more effort and human intelligence to fight in the battle of competitiveness for a place of honor in the global capitalist economy, to roll with it to the ecological abyss.

In its difficulty and its necessity is precisely its appeal, since they are not other attributes of utopia. But this is - how could it be otherwise? - A utopia quite close, with many ingredients known, some undiscovered and, of course, many invented. There were many elements to create proximity (economic, technical, social, cultural, political) in our own traditional societies, before they were swept away by that turbulent wave of development. Not a few of them are still relevant and it is still possible to recover, restore and adapt to the current time with the ability and the tranquility provided by the loss of innocence, they must have some advantage.

But there are still many more who have been spared in many societies of the kind that experts call "underdeveloped" because they have been unfolding in balance for many centuries or even millennia, before the development of the others were converted to them in "underdeveloped" and all untenable. The societies yes we applied the development will soon need those insights to the organization of the near, and many others that can only survive in a context of proximity, such as conservation of biodiversity.

And probably many more ways of creating closeness will have to be laboriously invented to solve problems and difficulties are the product of the development application, and whose solution, if it exists, nobody knows yet. The reorganization of economies and the developed world to cut the unsustainable process of globalization have unleashed themselves, and to establish instead the systematic creation proximity and closeness, is almost about to start a debate that promises to be one of the liveliest and most complex of many that has attracted the environmentalism.