Uploaded on 2015-11-27 by ricardoavella

*"Last year Venezuela was branded the most dangerous country in Latin America. A 2010 UN report places it among the top four most murderous countries in the world. While the government has refused to release its own statistics for years, a recent report by an NGO, the Venezuelan Observatory on Violence, estimates that 24,000 people were murdered in 2013 alone, a 14% rise on 2012, with nine out of 10 homicides going unsolved".* >>>>>> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/12/violent-crime-makes-venezuela-dangerous Here are some other links, just to prove that I'm not exaggerating: 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-50-most-violent-cities-in-the-world-2015-1 2. [http://prodavinci.com/blogs/las-muertes-por-violencia-en-venezuela-comparadas-con-el-mundo-por-anabella-abadi-m-numeralia/][1] 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Venezuela 4. http://www.gallup.com/poll/175082/latin-america-scores-lowest-security.aspx Unfortunately, insecurity and fear have reshaped the city. Caracas is a city made of walls, bars and electrical fences. Made of walls that enclose our houses, bars that surround both the private and public buildings where we live, where we work everyday. We have gotten used to not seeing the city. Caracas has some beautiful architecture, but it is hidden behind those 10 feet walls. This, in my opinion, is understandable. Life is our most valuable asset, and you cannot judge someone if they build a wall when they believe that will keep them safe. But time has proven that the solution has become the problem. Try to picture this situation: two burglars climb the wall that surrounds your house. Things get violent, they take out their guns and threaten to kill you, etc. They leave soon after... Your neighboors couldn't see anything. No one, beacuse of those walls that enclose you, could see the guys in your house and call the police. Ironically, the wall that was supposed to protect you, was also the one that hid the thieves... Here I share with you a picture of the neighborhood where I work, taken by a drone. You can see a residential only part of the city, surrounded by walls, without the shops, the studios or the restaurants that you can usually find in a mixed-use neighborhood. You can also see that, of course, the streets are empty and alone. This is a dangerous part of Caracas. I've been robbed in these streets, and I hear of robs at least twice a week. ![https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486384489329589.jpg][2] San Rafael de La Florida, Caracas ![https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486386636312241.jpg][3] San Rafael de La Florida, Caracas ![https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486386852288016.jpg][4] San Rafael de La Florida, Caracas Can we assume that Caracas could be safer, if those walls didn't exist? We could be protected by hundreds of eyes, the very eyes of our neighbors, instead of believeng that walls and electrical fences can do the job better than them. Jane Jacobs first chapter in *Death and Life of Great American Cities* speaks openly about this matter. If I was mayor of Caracas, I would demolish those walls, I would tear up the bars that sorround us, take down all the electrical fences in the city. People in Caracas also believe that mixed-use neighborhoods are more dangerous, because they invite strangers into the streets. When discusing zoning changes with neighbors, I always tell them that it's quite the opposite. More people equals less insecurity. I would like to see dense, mixed-use neighborhoods, that invite more and more people 24 hours, 7 days a week. But we have to tear down some myths about insecurity first. My **Citizen Design Science** project would be about that, abouth the **architecture of fear**. I would like to involve everybody in the city and try to demolish together the myths around the problem of insecurity. I would like to know how many of them have been robbed, kidnapped. I would like to know when, at what time, where. I would like to know if somebody was around when this happened, or if the street was empty and alone. I would like to know if the walls helped in some way, if the neighbors knew anything at all during the time they were being struck by violence. I would like numbers, statistics, based on the direct experience of the citizens. I would compare the criminality indexes of those residential streets built up by walls, with those of other mixed-use neighborhoods that aren't enclosed with walls or fences. Maybe, I hope, I could enlight them by comparing diffrerenet neighborhoods inside the same city. I would like to demolish the myths of the architecture of fear. [1]: http://prodavinci.com/blogs/las-muertes-por-violencia-en-venezuela-comparadas-con-el-mundo-por-anabella-abadi-m-numeralia/ [2]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486384489329589.jpg [3]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486386636312241.jpg [4]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14486386852288016.jpg