wal as mechanism of control separation, and constuston ofthe pubic afte py have been tured down and the public has been managed and magined barriers are re-signified walls in contexts of intensified production “The history of the modern city is frequently told as the history of the opening and obsolescence ‘of the walls that encircled and guarded medieval cities. Countless pages have been written by ‘the founders of the social sciences, most notoriously Weber and Marx, to loud the bourgeo's city, open to the circulation of capital but also of peoples, @ city governed by its own free cit: zens. Modern Western democracies, especially, have made a point of celebrating openness and Of treating walls with moral and politcal outrage. Iconic of this attitude is the speech of John F Kennedy in 1963 in front of the Berlin Wall: that wall came to represent for him and for the ‘Western democracies ofthe Cold War not only the negation of freedom but also of the mod em city and of modem democracy. Modernist planning and architecture have also dispensed ‘with walls and substituted them with large open spaces and transparency, reversing the pre- ide that iramedithe publ with contiguous cordor streets made into walls (ofthe public and its control was so generalized in modern (of segregation made due without them, The American ut has been consolidated by less material mechanisms of Jad practices of realestate financing, from the rad b-prime loans in Fat, even the South Aftcan systerr force its segregations. Instead, it relied on laws, on pan by distance, open areas, freeways, different systers of ment eromant span # be Tos Si homes bres onde gat as am ‘Stir Bon pr a arto fe ‘menive tte pow en dee eh Bo etre "nF Rey 20963 Bs eet | Fedo bos may fetes ‘on ocr ot pct Bat we Poe ‘er hodto po wal po kp a peop ‘Dever them fom eo us|] Whi ew ‘Tine met obveus ove emote of the foes ofthe Commun gate =f of the mont to e-em statin 1 fort yur Mr fo oto fee (Soyo pope who be ord ager "Frietom wre on wen on mon fed of er fee 1 Alf on Sere ey may bee cr of Ben Zod Dever oe man oe pe be wor hn om Bra" Joh F Rec 26 I Wes Bot * See Janes HOLSTON ~ The Most Unversyreae Caps 98 oad" tt ct te eentaten betes | ‘ete eer See ct cn oonseductive) is that of an enclosed, fortife which one can use various faciities and advertisements present the image of ila City and its deteriorated environment and t peers, These worlds set apart are advertised 2 to the city, which is represented as a deter: and noise, but more importantly co condominiums, and lage assemblages of correspond to the ideal version of the “new concept the other less complete forms are always measure ‘The existence of security and survelance as crucial estate advertisement clearly indicates that the whole para the city today not only for security, control, and segregatios is teasons. Allthe elements associated with security become part of a new code of distinction that | call the “aesthetics of security." This code, bea encapsulates elements of security ina discourse lf status, In contemporary Sao Paulo, fences and bars become elements of decoration a ithe expression of personality and invention. They have to be sophisticated nat only to prote Fesidents from crime, but aso to express their socal status and guarantee differentiation. Wall suspicion, and display of wealth generate a landscape of social inequality that can easily scribed as outrageous. Alphavile walls run for klometers. Up fortresses. They disappear behind high-security facades in which the only “covered by bullet-proof glass indicate the presence of private guar class-detached houses become nings in the walls,