Papers by Gabriela Tenorio
At Brazilian schools of architecture, little attention is given to issues concerning the role of ... more At Brazilian schools of architecture, little attention is given to issues concerning the role of design in promoting or damaging public life. An experience with undergraduate students at the University of Brasilia has attempted to develop their awareness for urbanity. The elective course Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of Public Spaces aimed at: emphasizing the need for diversity and human interaction; presenting the state of the art and the main authors in public life studies; showing successful places around the world; developing tools for studying public life and the physical features that interfere with it. The paper describes and discusses two main assignments proposed during the course: the Pedestrian Journal, in which students had to spend a week using only non-motorised and public transportation, and register their impressions; and the POE of a public place in Brasília. Using a method based on Jan Gehl’s and William Whyte’s techniques for studying public life; the Project for Public Spaces’ Placemaking principles and other studies, the students developed a public space evaluation in order to improve its public life performance by design recommendations. At the end, the future architects considered the course content to be meaningful, with positive effects on their education.
Community engagement, though it is becoming more and more indispensable in any planning process, ... more Community engagement, though it is becoming more and more indispensable in any planning process, must always be put into perspective. This paper aims at showing that most individuals have difficulties to think in a systemic, global way, while contributing to their cities' planning processes. In all
intervention scales, it is very hard to have inclusive community engagement without previous education on the global implications of their local desires. According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), an American organization that carries out work on public spaces on the basis of public participation, the community ''is anyone that has a stake in participating in a particular place''. It comprises residents, the owners of businesses, workers, members of institutions (such as schools or churches), official representatives and various groups with ties to the area. For this reason, interviews, discussion groups and meetings are useful activities to enable people directly involved in the questioned reality to show their feelings and become involved in the process of its creation, by expressing their needs and hopes. Education introduces a collective spirit to the field of decision-making, clarifies the role and nature of public realm and shows its value to the city and society. It should be stressed that places in a city do not belong to the residents around it: they belong to the city. The paper illustrates how community engagement can show intolerance and wishes of segregation with four case studies that have taken place in Brasília, Brazil, in recent years.
Brasilia is now building ''Setor Noroeste'' (a new borough northwest of the city center) which ha... more Brasilia is now building ''Setor Noroeste'' (a new borough northwest of the city center) which has been advertised as ''the first green neighborhood of Brazil'', and aims at receiving the LEED-ND certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Neighborhood Development). According to the 1987 expansion plan for Brasilia, it was supposed to have economical buildings, in order to supply popular demand, and superblocks, to meet the needs of the middle class, both being articulated by small, dense and mixed-use neighborhood centers. The current design of the neighborhood, however, has left out the economical buildings, and has allocated it to 40 thousand upper class inhabitants, in a density of 48 inhab/ha. The design of the neighborhood, the necessary actions for its certification (which, according to construction companies, brings up the price of the housing units) and the high prices of the land – established by the government's own real state agency – have resulted in a final price for square meter of 4,500 USD. Considering that in Brasilia 89 thousand families (out of the total 105 homeless) earn up to 570 USD a month (data from 2007), it is thus clear that the new neighborhood was never intended to minimize the housing deficit of the city. Studies show that, Setor Noroeste reinforces the undesirable socio-environmental occupancy pattern of the city: urban sprawl, higher density further away from the city center and socio-spatial segregation. The present paper questions the title of Green Neighborhood being attributed to Setor Noroeste. Nevertheless, the situation also represents an excellent opportunity to reconsider the characteristics of a truly sustainable neighborhood. Once Setor Noroeste has been implemented in sections, and therefore has not yet occupied its total area, this paper exploits possibilities of minimizing its upper class ghetto characteristics, complementing its design so as to contribute to social diversity and a more sustainable Brasilia.
The quest for a city that emits fewer portions of greenhouse gases is not just a matter of improv... more The quest for a city that emits fewer portions of greenhouse gases is not just a matter of improving what we have already got in terms of public transportation policy: it is a matter of changing paradigms. Aiming on technical and energetic efficiency of the public transportation vehicles (by renewing and integrating the fleet); on favoring traffic fluidity (by building viaducts, bridges, bypasses); on offering more alternatives on the same direction (by creating lanes and building parallel roads) is not only a narrow vision of the problem, but a fragile basis for political decisions, that ignores all the contemporary debate on the role of private/public mobility in the city. This paper discusses the Urban Mobility Plan for Brasília, Brasil – called, by the local government, Brasília Integrada (Integrated Brasilia). Brasília is a sparse metropolis with 2,5 million inhabitants, where distances between home and work are big, and the expansion trends, instead of reverting this panorama, are only making it worse. The Urban Mobility Plan was created in 2007 and intends “to improve equity and quality of life for the population”. It expects a (not specified) reduction in the amount of toxic gases emitted to the atmosphere and explains that this will be achieved by the actions that will increase traffic fluidity and decrease traffic overcrowding. Nothing is mentioned about what to do with the extraordinary and rising number of private vehicles in the city (a million in May, 2007), that will feel even more free to circulate with all those convenient solutions. Having in mind that any omission related to the private vehicle fleet is an action that favors it, and, thus, will be environmentally dangerous and non inclusive, this paper will then analyze the Plan’s goals and its implications, as well as the conclusions of its Strategic Environmental Evaluation Report.
One of the main issues concerning the preservation of Brasilia as a World Cultural Her-itage Site... more One of the main issues concerning the preservation of Brasilia as a World Cultural Her-itage Site is the absence or, to say the least, the ambiguity of the parameters that preside over the city’s monitoring policies. The results are arbitrary and unpredictable decisions related to each and every urbanistic episode. There is a paradox: 1) measures which imply damaging cityscape are approved because they are not perceived as such by the preservation agencies; 2) measures which would benefit the city’s configuration and its appropriation by the people are prohibited because they are seen as damaging the site. Therefore: more is approved and more is prohibited than it should, simultaneously. Moreover, in both cases (permissions and restrictions) an elitist ideology is revealed, one which benefits the city’s appropriation by the upper income layers. Measures grant more space for the individual car even in the most central areas (e.g. North Commercial Sector); there happens an aggressive repression against informal commerce in public spaces and more popular land uses in buildings, in important avenues. It is the case with: informal traders in the Road Platform; the TV Tower weekly fair; the appearance of cheap hostels in the W-3 South Avenue. Brasilia’s preservation policies do not take into account recent trends in similar policies around the globe, which give a place of pride to cultural importance as a central aim concerning heritage preservation. Policies ignore the strengthening of urbanity as a crucial objective related to city’s form by means of the valorization of public space; the opinion of the more popular social actors involved is disregarded: they do not succeed in countering official outlooks towards the city and in managing the implementation of alternative solutions which would benefit not only themselves but the city at large.
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Papers by Gabriela Tenorio
intervention scales, it is very hard to have inclusive community engagement without previous education on the global implications of their local desires. According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), an American organization that carries out work on public spaces on the basis of public participation, the community ''is anyone that has a stake in participating in a particular place''. It comprises residents, the owners of businesses, workers, members of institutions (such as schools or churches), official representatives and various groups with ties to the area. For this reason, interviews, discussion groups and meetings are useful activities to enable people directly involved in the questioned reality to show their feelings and become involved in the process of its creation, by expressing their needs and hopes. Education introduces a collective spirit to the field of decision-making, clarifies the role and nature of public realm and shows its value to the city and society. It should be stressed that places in a city do not belong to the residents around it: they belong to the city. The paper illustrates how community engagement can show intolerance and wishes of segregation with four case studies that have taken place in Brasília, Brazil, in recent years.
intervention scales, it is very hard to have inclusive community engagement without previous education on the global implications of their local desires. According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), an American organization that carries out work on public spaces on the basis of public participation, the community ''is anyone that has a stake in participating in a particular place''. It comprises residents, the owners of businesses, workers, members of institutions (such as schools or churches), official representatives and various groups with ties to the area. For this reason, interviews, discussion groups and meetings are useful activities to enable people directly involved in the questioned reality to show their feelings and become involved in the process of its creation, by expressing their needs and hopes. Education introduces a collective spirit to the field of decision-making, clarifies the role and nature of public realm and shows its value to the city and society. It should be stressed that places in a city do not belong to the residents around it: they belong to the city. The paper illustrates how community engagement can show intolerance and wishes of segregation with four case studies that have taken place in Brasília, Brazil, in recent years.