Production & Editing by Eleni Gklinou & Ashwini Karanth
Audio: Marshall Allen & Eleni Gklinou
First in Line
A regional toolkit for linear re-centering
by Hannah Beall, Nicki Gitlin, Eleni Gklinou, Grace Salisbury Mills;
Water Urbanism Studio, Spring 2016, Columbia GSAPP
A regional toolkit, you say? But what are the tools!? How do you use them? And isn’t linear re-centering a paradox anyway?!
‘First in Line‘ provides a framework: the ‘first’ trigger of a regional linear urbanism that responds to the critical challenges facing the Mid-Paraíba Valley, Brazil.
Capitalizing on residual infrastructure, a regional network of programs and spaces is created through a ‘toolkit’ of flatbed modules.
This toolkit is local, tactile, and context-specific, yet forms an open-ended system that can trigger an array of socio-spatial, economic, and ecological possibilities at a regional scale.
Through the re-claiming of its forgotten infrastructure, the Mid-Paraíba may break free from the shackles of its industrial past, towards an alternative regional identity.
The Mid-Paraíba Valley in Brazil faces three complex and interrelated challenges: first, a state of post-industrial paralysis that is reinforced by
the struggle of once-fundamental industries, such as the steel plant of CSN in the city of Volta Redonda, to re-establish their role; second, the absurd political divisions which dis-incentivize collaboration and have produced an unsustainable process of urban dispersal; and third, the vast environmental devastation: especially including the connected issues of deforestation and water pollution.
A region of voids
After an unprecedented state-led industrialization, the valley found itself in a process of industrial urbanism: city and industry grew simultaneously, spatially, economically, culturally. However, a wave of privatizations in the 1990s marked a rupture in this symbiotic relationship, transforming it into a neutral one. CSN, the ‘mother’ of the region and the industry is now perceived as an unloving grandmother; in spite of holding a major stake, she maintains a somewhat indifferent position, narrating a not-so-original story of post-industrial challenges that quickly emerged, with vast amounts of vacant unproductive land prevailing in the Paraíba cities.
CSN, Brazil's second largest producer of steel, today owns 16 sq.km of land in Volta Redonda, that lies vacant and unproductive
The vacant linear right-of-way owned by CSN, travels through the entire Mid-Paraíba Valley.
Reoccurring conditions of overlapping infrastructure
CSN, Brazil's second largest producer of steel, today owns 16 sq.km of land in Volta Redonda, that lies vacant and unproductive
Yet, this vacancy extends well beyond individual urban centers, to a highly unique, regional asset: a vacant, linear right-of-way, owned by a company whose role in the region is begging for re-invention, and passing—by virtue of its industrial origins—through the entire region, crossing an endless variety of spaces and sites.
Can this potentially connective device be activated, both at a regional and local scale?
How could the region be re-centered around this linear piece of history?
A regional toolkit
Fortunately, the ingredients already exist: there are locally manufactured flatbeds, and a disused rail running along the right of way—an easy way to inhabit the line. More importantly, there is a diverse array of parties with a vested interest in building a regional network of programs and spaces: cultural venues, reforestry labs, micro-commerce hubs, educational facilities, public spaces, to name only a few. It all seems fairly simple. Starting small at first, a network of programmed flatbed modules, could transform the right of way into a regional metabolic corridor. At once local and regional, mobile yet context specific, the network of spaces, programs and needs created could offer endless possibilities for connections, catalyze new economies, foster new social dynamics and allow boundaries to be crossed.
Locally manufactured flatbed modules are programmed and used to inhabit the line
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