The last few days in Chile have been filled with tons of culture. I’m the type of person to ask tons of questions if I am curious about something. When we went to Valparaiso I was constantly asking questions about what life is like there. Sergio told one story that stuck with me, when we had stopped at a high point to look around the city he told us that he saw a man building the house that was next to us about a year ago. And that’s amazed me because I find it so culturally different that people are able to build their own house rather out of need or want. I also wondered how people described where they live if the city is constantly changing and was never planned in the first place. I imagine people would have to say something like “it’s the Orange house down the street from the church and to the left of the t-shirt shop”. This kind of development is similar to Santiago as people spread out further from the city. This causes wealthier and poorer neighborhoods to intermix. But then you get whole other cities like Maipu. Where Shelby, Asya, and I traveled to today. We went to see one of the most beautiful churches I had ever seen. We had to wait for the tower to open but when we were finally able to go up it was a spectacular view. And we had a spectacular guide. This older man told us all about the Santuario Nacional and the city of Maipu. One of the most interesting things he told us was about the form of the basilica. He said the church represents the patron saint of Chile, the virgin Carmen. The colonnade represents her arms embracing the children coming in, the draping ceiling was for her long robe, and the observation deck was for her eyes that could look over all of Chile: the Andes in the east, the Pacific Ocean in the west, the Atacama desert in the north, and the glaciers and Patagonia in the south. This description made me love the church more than I already did. The stained glass was like something I had never seen before as well. All in all the hour long train ride to the outskirts of the city was worth it.
Sarina, that was a cool way to tie together understanding Valparaiso and Santiago! I find I am still struggling to reconcile them into similar cities; nearly everything about them seems inverted in my mind. I didn’t get the chance to see Santiago’s outskirts as much as you did, so thank you for your insights. I didn’t know that the city got more and more unplanned as you extended outward.
What do you think inspires more- or less-planned development in Chilean cities? I wondered that while we were in Valparaiso: why would they put together that city in such an ad hoc way, when the center of Santiago shows the nation’s European sensibilities for strong-armed city planning. I wonder if the different patches of planned and unplanned areas are historical records of times of rapid expansion, that the city grew most organically when officials couldn’t catch up to the speed of development to control it into a grid. That would mean that Valparaiso is an interesting story of a hilly boomtown by the sea, where people settled before anyone in an office was ready to host them. I think the result is far more beautiful that way.
I mentioned to you on the trip that I find it ironic as a planner that all my favorite cities: Boston, Rio, Valparaiso, were mostly unplanned. As an architect, what do think about buildings on the opposite ends of that design spectrum?