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| Photography book :
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| https://alejandrocartagena.com/h/home/a-guide-to-infrastructure-and-corruption/
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| ===Epilogue===
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| Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities. There would be nothing problematic about this power if it weren’t exclusive. Those who build the city exercise a regulatory power over our mindset and our everyday experience. The rhythms that regulate our hours, "our place" in society and the type of roads we take on our daily commute are manifestations of this control.
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| Behind urban infrastructure are countless relationships of power as well as a certain repertoire of knowledge, speeches, fashion and images that tend to justify plunder or destruction. Therefore the overpass and throughway turn out to be the material outcome of coalitions between a wide range of ideas, beliefs and relationships, which constitute its true power: they represent the city on the continual path of progress.
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| This is how planners, partners and administrators end up making public spaces an ideological issue. Progress is no longer a visual representation but a political reality that influences what should or should not take up space in a city. This is an anarchical control - not anarchist - as its order depends on a battle with no rules, in which the winners are those who manage to impose their will and have sufficient strength to repel any resistance. Ultimately, this control wil implode because it systemically denies life and memory their rightful place.
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| Consequently, those who build the city are the fortunate winners in a cacophonic bidding war. The guidelines are dictated by construction companies that will raise the avenue in spite of public opposition. The end results are cities that are ideal for doing business but not for living.
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| The affected parties have no choice but to resign themselves to the inevitable or simply to move out. Progress is hard to dispute although it erases all reference to proper living; the products are dreg-cities, burrs stuck to the production line.
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| ===The Road You Take===
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| The panorama viewed form a vantage point is the ultimate expression of authoritarianism. The landscape of the metacity is compromised of staggered mounds of dust. This ugliness cannot be fathomed. It is viewed out of the corner of ones’s eyes but felt throghout one’s entire body. The city is a producer of realities. Sometimes the inhabitants manage to slip past the fence and dance on the worksite. However, arid spaces usually produce equally arid relationships. The city is a plain, opened up on the dissecting table. Few are the surgeon’s advisors. He makes a pretty penny eliminating ludic and fanciful relashionships, but his work is to insert spaces for work and consumerism. There is no place for living because no one takes it into consideration when adding to or eliminating from the space. There is no other path. This is the road you take.
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| ===The Dispossessed===
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| Light is the greatest plunder. The annoying neighbor has moved in just across the street. He hogs all the sunlight. He lays all memory to waste. The street as a place to play is but a memore that will be forgotten upon the death of the last witness. Then there will be no one asking if life was better before the neighbor settled in. The neighbor who doesn’t let you sleep, who fills our cracks with dust, and observes the neighbourhood from his monumental arrogance. I am the overpass, the appartement building, the 24/7 store. I have triumphed over the failed attempts of those before me. Weaknesses that deserved to disappear. Silence thrown finally into submission. Appropriation by dispossession would not be so peaceful without justification of the laws and the support of the security forces. All existing energies are thrown into this competition. Talent and hours are devoted to the construction of a new overpass. The animal that lives here is one of the dispossessed that cannot get out. Trapped in traffic, he has been stripped of everything but his place.
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| ===Where To Cross===
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| It would be foolhardy not to use the pedestrian bridge to cross the street. For those who have no car, exclusive passages have been built, fenced-in paths they cannot use to commit suicide. In order to cross safely, the person is pushed off the land, raised, and taken off the ground. This bogus right is a concession that is leased for advertising but, above all, as a period marker. This is where I governed. My compassion gave life to this original design. They will be known for their pedestrian bridges. The gaudiest futurism will challenge the aesthetics of corruption. The rat is of no consequence to the labyrinth. These impassable spaces are the only ones left to the people. Where everything is lost, there is at least an empty space to start a new culture. It is there that the human animal’s artistic expression can be displayed. One day, one of them will tear down the bridge. And fate, at last, will be moved elsewhere.
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| ===Structural Corruption===
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| Power does not last long without structure. This is why the metacity is a bizarre guide to the infrastructure of corruption. As economic inertias are imposed upon the people, the smug operators push and shove to capture the picture. They cut a ribbon in five parts and think it has all been worth it. The planners, partners and suppliers all applaud. None of the users or neighbors turn up at the oppenning lest they be detained. These selfies of progress are the images of democratic authoritarianism. The super highways, overpasses, and large expressways will explain the extinction of the society that traveled by car towards progress.
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| ===Also===
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| Creative destruction is the economics of a low-intensity war and the city is the new battlefield. Its martyred inhabitants are subjected to endless noise, invasion and dispossession. Their survival is threatened. They have grown used to running forward to reach their appointements on time without looking back.
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| When the urban infrastructure is erected like a reality game board with its framework of streets and its select monuments, it not only seems to be the only thing in existence but an inexorable presence.
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| For its builders, it is a world of concrete. Progress is a feeling of speed. Highways are the new monuments. The earth is left out. The produced space is not questioned but ather endured or used, transferred or inhabited, without generating any critical opinions. The product is produced. It is so obvious that it makes it hard to think of other uses for the same budget and space. The produced city tends to generate resignation because it erases any other thinkable or possible alternative from the collective imagination.
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| (…)
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| This is the catalogue city. Its space is the petty cash of the political powers that be. The bids are sold off; its body is offered to the highest bidder. The city is a global device accessible only to those societies that still pursue the illusion of progress. This is the metacity, the city that looks like all the rest, distinguishable only by its unique ugliness but as unsightly as any other.
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| You cannot see the loss here nor is it possible to react to the final plunder. All you can do is get used to seeing, day in day out, the wall that blocks out the sun and holds a gigantic bridge for vehicles to cross over. Destruction is the ultimate business. There will be nothing to see after that. What follows is endless repetiotion.
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| If urban infrastructures has such dire political influence, is it not essential for those in power to inform the public of the typer of relationships they intend to inscribe on the land? Shouldn’t the inhabitants have the chance to deliberate over the kinds of communities they would like, and then participate in the design of the infrastructures ? Couldn’t an elevated throughway overpass be discussed, considering the repercussions it can have on the experience of inhabiting such a place ?
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| This guide points to the absence of a fate called progress. Proper infrastructure for such a future does not yet existe. This disapointement should be the starting point to rethink cities from the inside out. Our social relationships with space should be prioritised, and only then, should we consider the role of infrastructure.
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