In this engaging book, Felipe Correa studies – through five relevant
case studies – the regional impact of the industry of resource extraction in
Latin America.
Introduction
Shaping Resource Extraction
Chapter 1 _ A Regional Capital: Belo Horizonte
Chapter 2 _ A Mining Town Constellation: María Elena
Chapter 3 _ Petrol Encampments: Judibana and El Tablazo
Chapter 4 _ A New Industrial Frontier: Ciudad Guayana
Chapter 5 _ Pioneering Modernity: Vila Piloto
Epilogue
The Legacy of Resource Extraction Urbanism and the Future of the
South American Hinterland
Correa shows how the modernist plan of Belo Horizonte was used as a device for reorganizing the
productive hinterland of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He points to the role played by
topography in the siting of major public buildings and civic open spaces, and
addresses the importance of a constructed nature in the overall organization of
the plan. He also recognizes that “it was only with the investment in rail
infrastructure that the city gained geographic relevance in the region”, as the
rail infrastructure facilitated the export of massive quantities of iron ore.
Nitrate extraction sites in the Atacama Desert
In the second chapter, the author studies the spatial requirements of nitrate extraction, processing, and export, which have defined a network of interdependent settlements in the Atacama Desert. “A private nitrate-extraction town was strategically located between a western port city that served as the nitrate gateway to the world and an Andean oasis that served as a source of food and water for the industrial town”. These oficinas salitrales – see María Elena – have drastically altered the pampa.
In the
mid-1950s, American oil companies in Venezuela built new company towns following partially
implemented plans by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). They were conceived initially as
citadels and later as integrated communities. The author presents drawings and
photographs of Judibana, La
Salina, and El Tablazo. “These full-service enclaves, organized primarily
as buildings dispersed in the landscape, embodied a new lifestyle that
exercised a significant social and cultural change in the region”.
Ciudad Guayana was designed at the Joint Center for Urban
Studies, a multidisciplinary venture by Harvard University and MIT funded by
the Ford Foundation to study postwar urbanization. It was the opportunity to
test the notion of “growth pole” by giving a spatial dimension to an abstract
economic model. It was conceived as a linear city that tied clearly zoned nodes
with a continuous mobility infrastructure. “Ciudad Guayana was part of a much
larger Cold War agenda that involved a growing interest, among non-governmental
organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the US
government, in advancing development through urbanization in many parts of
Latin America”.
In the final chapter, Correa studies the cities built to house the temporary
worker that built the chain of dams and hydroelectric power plants along the
Paraná River basin in Brazil. VilaPiloto, Ilha Solteira, and Porto Primavera were the
opportunity to conceive a new form of urban development. “What was
traditionally a riparian environment with cities sprinkled along its
edges is now transformed into a "metapolized" landscape that is
neither urban nor rural in traditional terms […]”
Notes and bibliography are also of great interest.
