Living at street level

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By Juan Palomar There is a risk, for new generations, of no longer knowing how best to live in the city. We owe a lot to television. People who live in normal neighborhoods waste a stratospheric amount of their time in front of screens: television, computer, telephone, other electronic gadgets. Because the root of urban coexistence is in the street. Living streets, busy and used for conversation, contemplation or to take some fresh air, are the essential urban element that connects and roots citizens. It is the means by which neighbors know and treat each other, by which children first learn about the world. But the streets, in addition to the unfair competition from screens and their gringo models, have other enemies that often turn them into unpleasant places, and even spaces to be avoided as quickly as possible. Insecurity is one of those factors.

But precisely staying away from the streets as much as possible is the main reason for the same insecurity. It is widely proven that the natural social surveillance of an environment radically inhibits crime and vandalism. Another factor is uncontrolled traffic, accompanied by noise and pollution: given this, it is perfectly C Level Contact List feasible for residents to organize and, together with the authorities, implement the necessary remedies to moderate these abuses and return habitability to the streets. But the main enemy of the streets is apathy, the apathy of those who cannot even manage to sweep the front of their properties or paint their houses, the self-absorption to which certain modern habits (such as television) lead.



And the lack of memory that has erased a way of being that managed to build, over the centuries, a friendly city. The model offered by the developments that in Guadalajara have come to be called “preserves” is, towards the outside, the antithesis of urban conviviality. They are children of an unenviable condition: fear. Fear of insecurity, fear of what is different, fear of the other. It is understandable, given the official difficulty to ensure everyone's peace of mind. However, the “preserve” represents something similar to the board that is torn from the ship to try, without further reflection, to save oneself. Without realizing that, much more supportively and intelligently, it is necessary to do what is necessary so that the entire ship – the entire city – is saved. If everyone rips a plank off the boat, the only certainty is collective shipwreck.