Tiago Saraiva

The Urban Scale of Science and the Enlargement of Madrid (1851-1936)

During the Enlightenment, Madrid’s scientific institutions, such as the Botanical Garden or the Natural History Museum, served the demands of court ornamentation as well as colonial efficiency. They were landmarks of new urbanism and new science. In the 19th century engineers and hygienists shifted their focus from empire to city. The relevance of their know-how was now certified by their capacity to solve the city’s problems. They had to bring water, design urban expansion and fight epidemics. Once again the sites from which these new actors reformed the city were heterotopias, symbols of the promised metropolis: new monuments both by their architecture and their noble function as scientific institutions. All these local concerns were to be set aside by a new scientific community emerging in Madrid in the first decade of the 20th century. A group of physicists, chemists and biologists in search of international recognition formed a new scientific campus on the outskirts of the city. The rationalism of their buildings was the best symbol of the new scientific culture of precision. The change of architecture also meant a change of culture. Our aim is to recover a lost sense of the city by placing ourselves at the beginning of the process of urban production. We hope that such a focus will reveal the fundamental role of scientific activity in the definition of urban spaces.

Alterações climáticas, sociais e políticas em Portugal: processos de governança num litoral em risco

The Portuguese coast is one of the most threatened by coastal erosion in Europe, a phenomenon that will be intensified by climate change, due to sea level rise and changes in the wave system in the Atlantic coast. Along with this physical fragility, the coast has witnessed an accelerated urban and tourist pressure, which increased in Portugal since the 60s. This phenomenon creates social fragility, which in turn links with a political fragility resulting from the states inability to deal with coastal management in a consistent way. The main response to coastal problems has been investing in heavy defence structures strongly supported by EU funds. However, this type of investment is increasingly compromised due to the economic downturn and the prospective reduction of European funds. Based on three case studies - in the North, Centre and South of Portugal - we will address the current social condition of risk perception in three unstable areas of the Portuguese coast, where urban centres with a strong touristic motivation were installed: Vagueira, Costa da Caparica and Quarteira. Despite having in common recent growth dynamics, these areas show different occupation processes and different levels of coastal erosion. The paper addresses these three places from the point of view of its administrative condition and the effects of public policies for coastal planning. Furthermore we propose a reflexion about the need for new institutional models of governance and sustainable coastal management.

Inventing the Technological Nation: The Example of Portugal (1851–1898)

Although modernization theories of nationalism have stressed the instrumental role of technology in the forging of nations they have neglected how technology itself became a fundamental element of a new shared national culture. Taking the case of the city of Lisbon during the second half of the 19th century this paper aims to suggest that technological artifacts, like steam engines, ports or buildings, assumed the nature of national icons ready to be consumed by urban masses. It also stresses the significance of mass events celebrating the capital city reforms and improvements in a society with high levels of illiteracy. The Portuguese example thus expands its relevance beyond the local context for it is expected that it may offer new hints on how to think about technology in countries depicted in the historiography exclusively by its backwardness.

The history of cybernetics in McOndo

In 1996, Alberto Fuguet and Sergio Gómez edited in Chile the literary anthology McOndo bringing together a dozen Latin American writers united in their common distaste of realismo mágico (magic realism). Tired of the moral obligation of paying their respects to Latin American alleged exceptionalism, this set of authors, highly influenced by Anglo-Saxon cultural manners, rejected the literary canon established by the boom of magic realism in the late 1960s embodied in the sacred figures of Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and, of course, Gabriel García Marquez. McOndo was the new generation alternative to the magical territory of Macondo created by García Marquez in his world famous One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) in which the entire history of the continent was condensed in a kind of Latin America theme park where fantasy and the real were indistinguishable, and where the only accepted logic was the absence of logic. By contrast, in McOndo the very same concept of a Latin American literature was put into question and one had trouble in distinguishing Chilean, Argentinean, Columbian, or Peruvian authors from their North American, European, or even Asian counterparts: