Building Invasion Movement

Over the summer I had read an article in the New York Times about the “building invasion movement” in Venezuela.  Its an interesting example of refounding through the pioneer efforts of squatters.

In the 1990s, wealthy horse breeder, David Brillembourg, built the Centro Financiero Confinanzas in the city of Caracas.  The 45-story skyscraper was intended to stand as a symbol of Venezuela’s “entrepreneurial mettle.”  Due to the banking crisis of 1994 the building was never completed.  The crisis also resulted in a housing shortage which forced squatters to move into empty buildings throughout the city, including the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, now nicknamed the Tower of David.

Today, over 2,500 squatters have made their homes within the Tower of David.  The building lacks basic amenities and in most areas even walls.  However, current inhabitants have created living spaces within the building’s skeleton and even improved living standards by rigging electricity and running water as high as the 27^th floor.  Despite the treacherous conditions, the squatters live rather safely.  They have organized themselves.  There is a building coordinator, sentries to guard the entrances, and no gangs. 

The Tower of David now symbolizes something different than before.  It currently stands as a reminder of the ruin faced by Caracas, “once one of Latin America’s most developed cities.”  What had been founded as a planned commercial building to exhibit the strength of the city had recently been refounded by displaced Venezuelans for unplanned, unintended purposes.  However, as one squatter relates, “There’s opportunity in this tower.” Many see the building’s new purpose as hopeful.

We read in Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Sharon Zukin’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places of the revitalization of formerly prosperous cities through squatters who acted as the “pioneer species” or “first succession” inhabitants in particular urban locations like SoHo and Brooklyn.  Taking into account that the Venezuelan government is currently at a stand-still in addressing the housing issue (they have made little effort to remove the squatters from the Tower of David, but they have also not aided those living within the building) and that many of the squatters have jobs within the city, I would be curious to see how this story plays out and if the squatters have any effect on the redevelopment of Caracas as had the squatting hipsters on the development of New York. 

Information from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/americas/01venezuela.html?pagewanted=all

Picture from http://rssbroadcast.com/?p=34967