Collective Memory and Resistance: Visual explorations in the Historic Centre and Films of Mexico City

Today, institutionalised discourses surrounding heritage have social and physical impacts, with the potential to lead to a break between inhabitants' collective memory of popular neighbourhoods, and their transforming territories. In this context, the action of dominant groups can lead, through oppression, manipulation or threat, to erasing inhabitantsâ memories and everyday artefacts. However, the place itself, the physical medium of identity and memory, both collective and individual, allows inhabitants to resist a series of violent changes which affect them permanently.

Hence, this thesis explores the interaction between collective memory, urban landscape, films and resistance; particularly how certain spaces and spatial practices considered as popular places of memory resist the city's transformations. The research was conducted in the Historic Centre of Mexico City (HCMC) and considers this famous perimeter as a good laboratory for analysing memory struggles. Directly related to this "concrete city", the research focusses on a body of films produced in Mexico City between 1919 and 1995 by Mexican cinema and reveals another city, the "cinematographic city".

Relying mainly on visual methods and qualitative analysis of films and interviews, I compare research results with other sources, notably from history and urbanism. This thesis considers that the films, while revealing a socially complex cinematographic city, are foremost a major expression of past popular culture, and that the participants' mental maps exposing the concrete city are present forms of social representations.

These cities result from the multi-temporal construction of the urban, within which the montage of landscapes varies with the passage of time and the meaning of each change opposes or overlaps the others (in their spatial dimensions and their social and political significance). The thesis thus identifies different types of landscapes inscribed in this palimpsest that constitutes the territory of the HCMC, and proves that, although the meanings evolve with time, none of them completely disappears; on the contrary, they always coexist.

Many places of memory exist: on the one hand, the spatial typologies attributed to popular groups, the "Profane Heritage", and on the other hand, spaces imposed by dominant power structures, the official history adopted by force by all the city's inhabitants.

These places differ as much in their specific sociability as they do in the physical elements and formal qualities transmitted to the inhabitants. Thus a concordance appears between the characterisation of the past and the present. Even after their complete or partial disappearance from the tangible world, popular places of memory retain their ability to resurface, concretely or cinematically.

Despite this, in the context of the most recent urban and architectural projects concerning the HCMC, all the places of memory, expecially those informally recognised by the population, are in danger of disappearing. This thesis shows that, faced with this programmed erasure, resistance is organised through a network of tactics that manifest in a silent way, hidden, as an essential part of everyday life. These tactics are spacialised in places of memory by means of particular devices which endure, allowing the poorest inhabitants to continue to create in the heart of the city and history the defence mechanisms of their memories - resistant memory, memory to resist.

Urban Scars: From invisible to visible – In Beijing and Mexico City

Florence Graezer Bideau, Lesslie Astrid Herrera Quiroz, Yves Pedrazzini

Memory is a process that works through the identification of social references within a spatial framework, without physical marks necessarily found in the tangible present. Nonetheless, these references subsist in representations from the past and continue to influence current urban realities. A city is an evolving structure containing different artifacts that relate directly to their importance to a given social group. Usually, but not exclusively, such places have strong historical and memorial significance and are recognized as heritage. Thus, as spaces evolve, inhabitants’ emotional bonds are sometimes at odds with the interactions of other actors. These dual interactions generate rivalries and controversies about uses and perceptions of the space. Traces left on the collective memory by violent urbanization processes can be identified by understanding the city through such intangible experiences. Using these principles—notably that forgetting is not equivalent to the destruction of a mnemonic device—we analyze the spatial and social experiences of controversial memories in two different cultural contexts; the Historic Center of Mexico City (Mexico) and the Gulou area of Beijing (China). The Mexican case study looks at a dominant discourse of urban heritage focused on tangible heritage conservation, which has often ignored the importance of local social memories. The Chinese case study scrutinizes the community’s memories in the context of rapid and radical transformation led by the local government’s urban policies and regulations.

Icono 142017

Public Urban Transport, Mobility Patterns and Social Exclusion

Regina Witter

What are the social impacts of a new, less efficient public transport system in a city that is known for its inequality concerning access to daily activities and participation in urban life? More precisely, what are the implications of a re-regulated transport system, if the city has previously gone through a long period of deregulation? Are the changes limited to altered accessibility conditions, or are there further consequences for people's travel competencies, habits and mobility patterns? And what does that mean for the dissolution or manifestation of social inequality and risks of social exclusion? With a specific regard to these interests, this work specifically focuses on the case of Santiago de Chile. There the public transport policy passed from a period of complete de-regulation in the 1970s and 1980s to a period of re-regulation as of the 1990s. During the deregulation period, the services had been characterized by an uncoordinated oversupply of private busses that existed in parallel to the more expensive public metro. In order to suspend the stigmatization of bus-based transport as the 'mode for the poor', the sophisticated 'Transantiago' bus system was implemented in February 2007, which was modelled of the famous BRT system 'Transmilenio' in Bogotá. The Transantiago project included the total re-design of the network system and the private operating companies at one glance. It introduced new vehicles and infrastructures as well as an electronic ticketing system that combined the bus and metro systems in a tariff union. Unfortunately, the ambitious project failed, due to various political, technical and social reasons. Up until today, the acceptance and satisfaction of the inhabitants with Transantiago have been rather low. Being aware of the importance of the technical problems, this study concentrates on the social problems and the related impacts Transantiago has had on people's daily life. The research is done on the basis of three hypotheses that are strongly based on the concept of 'motility', i.e. the potential to be mobile, including the set of factors which enable spatial mobility (access, competencies and appropriation). The hypotheses are tested on the basis of a mixed approach that combines various qualitative methods with an 'ad-hoc' survey of 2000 households in five different areas of the metropolitan Santiago area. The survey results are analysed on the basis of various spatial and statistical procedures, including, among others, structural equation modelling. We first consider the relation between the differences related to mobility and the social differences during the period of deregulation and describe the major mobility patterns and habits developed during that time (hypothesis 1). Then we come to the Transantiago failures and the changes imposed on people's accessibility conditions, travel competencies, preferences and habits (hypothesis 2). Finally we also explore the impact the Transantiago system has had on people's daily life, more precisely on people's daily activities and the activity locations as well as the main travel modes used to reach these locations. Comparing people's current activity patterns and travel patterns with those of the deregulated transport period, we intend to reveal if Transantiago has aggravated or alleviated existing mobility inequalities and related risks of social exclusion (hypothesis 3). The results show that mobility patterns developed during the deregulated period have had a strong negative impact on people's ability to get used to and accept the sophisticated Transantiago system. Particularly people of low income, people of a lower education level, people without access to a private car and people who live in peripheral areas and don't have direct access to the metro were most heavily impacted. Sometimes, older people and women within these groups suffered more than younger adults and men. The initial difficulties have had a negative impact on the current evaluation and image of public transport, and on the other hand they have exacerbated already existing risks of social exclusion and segregation. Especially the more 'vulnerable' inhabitants have adapted their daily activity patterns and travel patterns. They travel less for job-related and leisure-related purposes; they prefer other modes to bus-based public transport and remain often closer to their place of residence than before the Transantiago implementation. Nonetheless, Transantiago has also had some positive impacts such as increased spatial mobility for inhabitants with direct access to the metro, low travel expenditures due to permanent operating subsidies as well as reduced environmental emissions and safety problems. After all, it is hardly possible to definitively determine if the current mobility-related and social inequalities are effectively a consequence of the Transantiago system. It is also unclear if these inequalities have today a more widespread impact than during the deregulated transport period. In general, throughout this study the important influence of income and social status on inhabitants' mobility conditions and travel behaviour is revealed. Alternative concepts related to residential preferences and urban lifestyles turn out to be less pertinent to the explanation of social differences in travel behaviour. This also means that transport policy aimed at equal mobility conditions can only give a contribution to social inclusion. Therefore, additional urban and social measures are needed. This work consists of six parts. Following the introduction (chapter 1), a broad theoretical framework is presented where the different topics of interest are discussed and examples of empirical studies are presented, with a focus on emerging economies (chapter 2): transport regulation and deregulation and recent trends in public transport policy and supply (2.1); the various spatial, social and individual determinants of travel behaviour and mobility patterns and the implications for transport research (2.2); mobility inequality as possible source of social exclusion, which calls for transport policy making with a focus on social equity (2.3). After having presented the research hypotheses and the methodology employed (chapter 3), the case study area of Santiago is introduced. In this context we describe the development from the deregulated transport period up until today with regard to four issues: the spatial and social structure of the city as well as the development of transport policy and people's mobility patterns (chapter 4). Each of the three hypotheses is analysed and evaluated on the basis of the own empiric works (chapter 5). The work concludes with a synthesis as well as some final remarks and implications for the development of transport policy in Santiago and other cities in emerging economies, where comprehensive transport changes are envisaged (chapter 6).

EPFL2012

Les étudiants, l'université de masse et la ville durable

Ismail Haddad

In a globalized space where mobility is growing, the capacities of attraction of the city are becoming increasingly decisive. Between the cities, through its attractive quality and attraction capacity, the university will become a decisive factor of location activity. The contribution of the capacity of city culture, development of meeting places is fantastic. Universities cannot live permanently on their side, next to the city. However, for too long, the city and the university in Tunisia have developed in ignorance of each other. Universities, since they have existed, admit with difficulties contingencies of civil societies. Governments are wary of students and teachers. This latent divorce materialized especially through the creation of campus, away from city centers in the functionality and the monotony of isolation. The urban university countdown is now universally condemned. Addressing universities as major facilities for both generating modern middle classes and meet the needs of these classes is probably a new perspective in the architectural and urban studies in Tunisia. Investigate the essence of the university and its space, understand, give it a face, it takes to trace the sources of the university, the genesis of the position in relation to our time, in any its specificity, to lay a few landmarks able to give an account for the complexity of its course. Why, how, by whom and under what conditions taking shape at a given time an edifice (the university) from a social vocation? What general needs and specific answers? In short, what is the territorial space that University now covers? In this sense, the systemic approach presents an additional interest because it proposes to connect into a single and same application dimensions of reality that are sometimes addressed separately by different disciplines and different actors, professional town planning, culture, life student or teaching. Indeed, we have chosen to begin this research by presenting a sample of general policies of academic development in an international perspective. In a second stage, we will continue research on the same theme, but by focusing it on Tunisia. In this context, we will consider the current inadequacy between the university and the changing needs of society. In the third part, we will study the spatial impact and synergy between the university and the economic environment. This theme is central to the debate on the complex interactions of urban dynamics and local development. We will conclude by reviewing the first two parts in the light of the results of the third. Furthermore, this research involved a provision of knowledge, which is able to provide solid foundations for working professionals in architecture and urban, social scientists, lawyers, economists and current officials in charge to define strategies and projects of agglomeration.