Walls of Ar - Brazilian Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2018 [English]

The breakdown of the Brazilian public space can be explained by a series of factors. Among them is the fact that in many subdivisions the entrepreneur is not required to build sidewalks or bicycle paths, but only the road system. The lands destined for squares and schools are left abandoned, favouring the formation of slums or their transformation into garbage dumps.

In addition, several municipalities accept the parcelling of the land in the form of condominiums and not as subdivisions, thereby giving up the right to gain any public land in exchange. Although built by the local authority itself, many housing estates for the low-income population reserve insufficient public space for communal sites and amenities.

Zoning regulations push buildings away from the sidewalks by demanding setbacks on the front and sides of buildings, and by tolerating the construction of walls and electric fences that destroy the urban landscape and make the public space less safe.

In informal settlements, there are no public lands, but alleyways, many of which are too narrow for car traffic. Although this impairs access to public services— health, safety, and garbage collection, which depend on ambulances, patrol cars, and trucks—these pedestrianonly accesses have in many cases produced pleasing and communal public spaces. The growth of violence, however, has emptied these spaces, which have now become controlled by criminal organizations.

The pedestrian is the main victim of this process, since many areas of the city do not even have sidewalks, and those that exist have their conservation left to the owners of the contiguous lots without any standardization, guidance, support, or inspection. The condition of some sidewalks is so precarious that pedestrians, especially those with disabilities or reduced mobility, are left to use the road system intended for cars.

Even when the sidewalks are satisfactory, the absence of stores open to the street, due to strict zoning regulations, and retail confinement in large shopping centres and hypermarkets, makes the pedestrian experience monotonous, uncomfortable and often dangerous.

It is not surprising, in this context, that the streets are progressively taken by marginalized segments and that the walls come to serve as screens for unauthorized pixo.

THE ROLE OF URBAN LAW Although Brazilian law is imperfect and defective in many respects, it provides enough elements to contain this perverse process of urbanization.