Essai

Affective Urbanism

Building Urban Commons from Empty Buildings at Montevideo

Adriana Goñi Mazzitelli

Home to 1.3 million inhabitants, the city of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, sits in a natural harbour with one of the most important ports of the region. The growth of the city follows in the last fifty years the deregulation of the housing market, and neoliberal urban policies, which create two phenomena: on one hand the gentrification and the abandon of central areas by the population and on the other hand the informal land occupations and self-construction initiatives in peripheries. In the last ten years social movements...