THE URBAN PLANNING IS POSSIBLE, STILL.

1. Evolution of the city.

2. Society and city.

3. Which city?

4. City of 21st century.

1. Evolution of the city.

The same existence and construction of the city, their restricted pretentious, demeanor, that the city was revealed -evidently- a fact elaborated by the men without the divine acquiescence. Constituting a challenge to the gods, as they suggested.
The city is a world constructed by the persons. Previously, to construct a city, it is necessary to have an idea generatrix and primitive. Radically, the city, it is also a product of the imagination.

As example: the Romans made a crossroads, to squeeze in the forum, there where the Decumanus and the Cardo were cut; the Spaniards in America made a post to locate himself, according to the law of Indies; here we did well a “cellera”, well a “sagrera”, for afterwards, although evolving wall them with topographic circles surrounding pseudo concentric the church, the Comú-batlia, palace, etc and the castle, like Morella, Montferrer, La Roca de les Alberes, etc..... time to come and more mature, an ordering grid in the style of Vila-real or Vilassar. Like fra Eiximinis he proposed to resemblance of Beijing.

Joseph Rykwert in their "The Idea of in town" makes us every an itinerary for the history of the foundations of the cities, -everything interrogative-him there, at the end of the book: If there is one invariable universal, because they are so of different some of the other ones?

2. Society and city.

The city is the most complex creation of the humanity. Possibly they are the human inventions of more lasted. And, with that and for this, the cities are also the product of the exchange, synchronic and diachronic. Long ago it was where there was the market, and it is not casual that, then, city, market and were trade synonymous. He remits you on the rest of European languages. When on the lands of West and also, he devours the sea do you go to square to which you relate itself? And the word "market place" in Reus and the Islands?

We live with people of alluvium come of different parts of the world. This is also useful us to relativizing the tribalism. We live with it, secularly, in several languages and cultures. The societies, in its set, create the myths of each.
In return, the national states come of the 19th century, and ideology from the former XVIII, they are already in process of irreversible dissolution.

The cities, on the contrary, are every turn more persistent and more future cert. anybody does not consider if Elx, Perpinyà or Manresa it will be or not of here three centuries. We give it for well safe. The city suns can not be devised from the intellectual speculation.

The city is the result of the interaction sustained between their nature-artificial environment and their people. It is the symbiosis between the physical structures and the social tissue that lives there.

What do they have majority? The people. The persons are those that make the public space. And, with this, we are heirs of Goethe, Shakespeare, Aristòtil, Cortázar, etc. All they have coincided to point it out.
Somebody suggested: a structure of a bridge is not anything. A bridge is a person who crosses it. Symbiosis between designed physical structure and associated social tissue. It is, therefore, the dialectics between the ideas and the desires. It is to combine that which it is necessary with that that that is beautiful (form) and old man (antique or patrimonial). And it is here where the civic one, component of participation, turns up.

Because the city is the battlefield of the complexity and of the democracy. The president A. Lincoln said ".... a man can mistake many times, a few men can mistake enough also..... but many men can never mistake many times and forever"

And here we meet some practices that we have kept on forgetting in the last decades: the dialog. The conversations and the disposition negotiating of the parts. Of the administrations as well as of the local associations, becoming drive belts of bureaucratized political parties.

We have the experience that when they put on concrete problems on the table, they solve in a more rational and effective way. From the abstraction and the partisan political confrontation- that is, from the interests and programs- there is not never suitable, and suitable solution, agreed on. Good and to the detriment of the people (society) and the physical city itself.

3. Which city ?

It is depressing and deguiding to see it the same constructions, stalls, maritime promenades and disposals urban, kitsch or no, in Benidorm, Cambrils, Calvià, Las Vegas and Miami. When we more globalize more soak the buoys and lights of reference for us civic.

Observing that some of the problems -according to scale and neighborhoods- are iterative in Lleida, Brno, São Paulo, Bogotá, Paris or London also it can help us or to help them. Avoiding points of view "meliquistes"; that is, advocating for other, of more global.

With an advantage: we are heirs of a deep thought from the Mediterranean city. Compact and continuous unlike the one coming from the Anglo-Saxon world of diffuse and extensive character. And a tradition coming from Eiximinis, the great projects haussmanian, Vienna ring, general theory of the housing development, which arrives for us until the Olympic Town.

Because From La Cerdanya it proposes that the sum of the width of the siga sidewalks the one same than the width of the roadway for where go the traffic?. Because the team of Rita Barberà is retrieving this concept in the last times?

The times in which it was intended to join the Big Way surpassed, street Sepúlveda, etc with the port of Barcelona and to transform the Avenues as a fast way, to the same as to join the Big ways until the port of Valencia for the bed of the Túria, we start to rethink from our coherence urban. That group of ministerial technocrats of the sixty of Big Valencia, etc they were hanging the one that had been the general concept of city.

In both cases the one that takes back the nonsense which they intended to perpetrate was the civic pressure.
Today the bed of the Túria is the urban space that articulates all the city -of west in east- and the Avenues shape some of the urban spaces more successful of all the world together with the Promenade of Grace.
How we have suggested either, the city is a space of the patrimony, of the inheritance. It is the space that contains the time, it has said somebody. In a basic way, if he is a holder and if it remains of its power. Not of the foreign one.

Badly, if we make it against the society and the inheritance, how it has happened with the option chosen in the case of The Cabanyal in the prolongation of the avenue of Blasco Ibáñez. Or, rightly, according to the solution adopted with the maintenance of the industrial urban plot of The New People in Barcelona.
The inheritance is this makes that each one siga each one and him of it difference of the rest. Therefore, the city is also the place of the difference. And here it is where it is the dialectics and the clash of interests. A space is more urban when more diversity of uses has and with this more meanings brimming. And for this, public happens. And it takes more meanings.

¿ What the Neighborhoods have in common of the Carme and the Gothic? Or the "Rambles" and the Big way of the Marquis of the Túria?

Since almost of new uninterruptible hours of daily activity. Retail trades, cinemas, shops of food, markets, and many bars, restaurants, etc Where the converse people and it exchanges information.
The information as a raw material of the current world. Possibly when the industrial processes emigrate towards other fields, then, and right now, this is the first industry that is left to us. That of the knowledge. And you excuse the histrionic "joke" but, the thing, goes towards here.

With the urban planning that we inherited of the 19th century the zonnig of Tony Garnier comes sheltered. The territorial distribution from zones depending on the several uses. This concept and practical door become a larva the segregation and the negation of the city as a synthesis of geography and social history
This conception is opposed to the Mediterranean city. Where in a more or less concealed way we keep on finding all the social layers and tucking in around the public space.

It points the matrix -Roman and Atenea- that has given birth to us offers this to us. In places more Saxon and of elitist colonial, as London, Lisbon, Madrid, Hamburg and a certain part from Barcelona the social segregation is high more than evident.

About this, and as a memento, we can remember two not too far exposures in the times that some evident concomitances had. One, in Valencia about that "The Mediterranean Gothic architecture" directed for Eduard Mira where began by drawing the conformation of the Valencian cities of Valencia, Xàtiva, Sagunt, Oriola, etc... How in seed of the Gothic cities comparing them with the rest of Europeans. And another, in Barcelona, in the CCCB directed for Garcia Espuche, about the one "The reconquest of Europe" that consisted to reconquering the cities of Europe. The big ones, the averages and the small ones. Reconquering or "to carry off Europe" again, it was to retrieve the civility and to give it back, somehow, in the island of Creta. The services, the transports of the trams, the creation of new centrality and their connection with the rest. The suture of the several parts that had remained spread and secreted to reincorporate them.

Counterexample: The paradoxical case of Brasilia, ordered by a conservative government and designed -ex novo- for the architects -confessed communists- O. Niemeyer and L. Costa that imagined a city stratified by layers social. Mummified representation and revived of the class struggle. Every her is a centime of far nucs the some of the other ones and connected by immense avenues. From the kernels of central government until the thirsts satellite towns self-constructed of the outlying district. And among them the neighbourhoods that sketch the economical and social degradation. Ghettos for rich people more next to the ministries and ghettos more proletarian like more there. In short a city not to live there.

4. City of the 21st century.

The city is in a basic way AN URBAN SPACE. It is there where we manifest the social cohesion. We manifest the demands, the desires, where it is received communion communitariant. It is where it is manifested that we form a social body. From the diversity. And it is the scene of the conflict and of the social conquest.

We want the bed of the Túria and blow up it green, The parties of Gràcia and Benimaclet that manifest their condition of town not wantedly annexed. It is Sants and Extramurs (the garden of the Botanist) that they block the interlock of both irate skyscrapers of place and of civic reference at the expense of green zone. They suggested, and suggest, the checkrooms of the multiples “Salvem”.

If there is a question that has spoiled the participation and the civic collaboration, where we might concentrate everything, it is in the lack of dialog. On the one hand, the prepotency of the Administrations that have selfconceded themselves the plenipotentiary right to decide above the citizenship, and of another, the immaturity of the social movements that have been used as a thrown weapon - but disarmed- it would not be case that changed the situation of the non governing ones against the rulers, according to every moment.

Making so our and human use, among us, of that, in general: Let's SPEAK. LET'S TALK ABOUT SOME, LET'S TALK.

Two next ideas that help:
A) The Catalonia-city, embryonic, arrival from the Association and the Noucentism. Logic because it came from the Regional Governments and their assembling. Fooled with the slice of the tap of money of the box.
And B) one more modern elaborated by the sociologist-town planner Eduard Mira. It is from the seventies 'that he collaborates in the writing of the General Plan of Eivissa, that him acts of basis and idea to elaborate an innovative and conceptual conception on considering the region of that Sea like a city. Where the centrality is the municipal kernels themselves. The streets that appeal among green and fields are the connections such as if in Berlin, Karlsruhe, etc found there. Everybody collaborating to organize the region civically.

Everything connecting them and threshing the territory in short: the natural region, jurisdiction, etc as a unit of civilization and of citizenship.

Counted out and discussed: the country as a net of nets. And this agrees with the current debate of the urbanology. It seems already that we know "how to construct about the constructed one" even in Valencia, which is already to suggest!

But we do not know how to construct on the city that is disperse or that we are making. The madness to declare oneself all the ground developable of the hand of the rest of liberalization in the period of the sr. Rato goes brutal being and a nonsense. Read assets is not necessary Ricardo, Marx, Smith, etc to know that asset is an accumulated work. And to urbanize costs money. And we can not permit the crazy urban planning of the '60 that suns it drives to the burst, to|in the lack of order. Finger in the more deeply anarchic meaning.

Because of that it is necessary to use the infrastructures in the more effectively possible way. These not always have correspondence with aggression in the territory. If we know like being profitable them and discussing them. Many will think that we do not correspond standing on earth. But let's think of it: there is not alternative. And this is not to renounce to anything. It is always necessary to give in of the parts to agreements to arrive. The alternative is "mute and in the cage" and you take out the roadrollers and diggers.

Because, think, that to nobody it does not interest that the spread rest city. And that, in the rowed one, it is untenable: neither in services nor in infrastructures. And it generates kernels of rebelliousness.

We have some unquestionable assets: the bosses of region and medium cities: Ontinyent, Alcoi, Manresa, Alacant, Terrassa, Sabadell, Olot, Lleida, Elx, Villena, Llíria, Castelló, Calvià, Maó, Ciutadella, Girona, etc The trickiness that bears the hinterland of the country. But without the assets either there is not, country.

Let's come back there: How not to make city everything retrieving and not rinsing the "capita diminutio ciuita" from many secreted neighborhoods and not driven away from any centrality?
Otherwise: like returning the centrality of the neighbourhoods of the Crist d'Aldaia, of the Light of in Valencia, of st. Andreu, The mine etc in Barcelona?
I believe that it is possible: Monumentalizing the periphery, creating connections and new centrality, visualizing them mutually. Using of the great infrastructures in an obligatory quota in favour of the public space. Creating a system of suitable public transport.

Here we will find possibly that the environmentalists -class half professionals, etc - they advocate because of that, while who he goes to the periphery in the factory the there what, of the car.

Conclusion: attempting to go from dense kernels to dense kernels.
Valencia is the negative and terrifying counterexample. Going of Manises in Burjassot that are almost next-him it is necessary to go down to Valencia.

In stroll of this a series of phenomena that dilute the city have turned up: the shopping centers that "kidnap" you temporarily with even commercial, recreational, etc and of difficult accessibility with "law of admission" that is, with "law of expulsion". That they are a cancer in the periphery that attempts to entertain a false civility. To the one rowed another ghetto come down. And also in the peripheries of new implantation of blocks without community equipment that lives interior etc in an own island, with the sport services, of recreation, confined in the island of houses. Where those of the same class meet the own ones, without relationship with the requirement.

Case paradigmatic is the avenue of Valencian Corts that so many turns we have complained to be a failed urbanistic operation. Dull-witted: It is necessary one New Mestalla the double of big, but placed more near the by-pass, then the València CF, it is a mythical referent of this part of the country. Unlike the violent groups like the Yomus that blow up half for exhaling about the napes of the adversary players. Citizenship is also education, correction and respect.

For finishing, as collection, we borrow a series of criteria of the book of Josep Oliva i Casas "THE CONFUSION OF THE URBAN PLANNING" to make city:
1. The projects is necessary that it has been polyvalent. That resolve several problems at the same time. That not has been strictly functionalistic. Independently that has been of acupuncture, surgery, or macros.
2. Watching with the scale and going down in a retail way in certain cases.
3. We design the emptiness in urban planning. Not the plenum. We run away from the urban planning of the scale models that suns see it the massif. The public urban space is the emptiness, not the plenum.
4. Integrating several things and inputs, using the several governments and administrations of proximity, into it.
5. Connectivity of the public space. Stitching the parts of city. Entertaining big avenues and ways that they stitch simultaneously, as, the examples: Camps Elisis-Défense, "Rambles", G.V of the Marqués of the Túria, Avenue of France, etc.
6. Creating simultaneously a lot of equipment and a lot of housing mixed: multiplicity of uses.
7. Creating and designing peripheral spaces with strong symbolic burden: the current interest is in the intermediate spaces.
8. Talking with the past. Transforming it and making it grow to sustain it.
9. Making city is in many cases it is to go against the market. But not always. p.e. the Diagonal island. Leaving that the do market what can not make the administration of proximity. Taking back it and advising which types of activity they are more suitable.
10. Being quite attentive to the design and to the form. Outlining the scale to the what one is worked.
11. Avoiding the atomization of the contents: We do not have right to the housing, nor to the quality of life, nor to the transport public nor to the private, neither to the schools, nor to the education, nor to the libraries, neither in the parks, nor in the gardens, neither to the patrimony, nor to the culture, the beauty nests, nor to the health, either to the trade, or to the entertainment, etc we HAVE the right TO EVERYTHING, TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME AND SYNTHETIC.
12. Giving back sixties and seventies landed of hand of the metropolis to the invasion of technocrats of the years. Making city is also to redesign the rules of the democratic set. We think of the Swiss confederation. Where more definitive power has the major than the head of turn of the same Confederation where nobody is concerned with it that it is from for being rotator. We think because they go to referendum almost to everything there and here every four years alone. The democracy with criteria and guided by the beginning of subsidiariness. That can to manage the one of low than him do the administrative organization of above.
¿ because is voted in the same way in Valencia that in some small village?
Saving the democratic general conditions, of universal suffrage, it is very illogical, and irrational, not? And as last, to simplify the formality: if every agreed on is already between citizenship and governments of proximity and the civil servant of turn of the metropolis appears us to annoy. How it happens to him in our majors: Alduy in Perpinyà, in Barberà in the last times, etc with independence of whom be "there". How to solve it without foreign interferences?

WE ARE A NET OF CIVIC AND SOCIAL NETS IN TRAFFIC TO THE REALITY.