Latin American urbanism and architecture show that another future is possible.

The world is changing: it's warming, becoming more complex, and facing multiple crises. According to Prof. Jürgen Scheffran, it is reaching many of the limits of the "expansionist world order" set in the colonial expansion of the 1500s. He says:

These include not only ecological limits to growth, but also economic, social, political and scientific-technical limits which result in growing marginal costs and risks for the current world order, leading to resistance and instability, multiple crises, catastrophes and conflict.

At another point in the spectrum, Omar Degan calls out the need for architecture schools to revise their work for the 21st century. He asks:

Why aren’t most of the faculty of architecture around the world focusing on climate change, urban resilience and community planning?

Why are the professionals of the future still getting trained like 40 years ago [emphasis added] while the challenges of our world are mutating and evolving?

I think that changing the focus of the profession is extremely important in order to mitigate our future challenges, we should adapt and transform as much as our environment does.

I fully agree with the problem statement but disagree with its blanket quality. Not all schools, teachers, or professors have taught for the rich few at the top. It is true that architecture is torn between the desire to please those who fund it and a desire to shape a future and sustainable society - at least since the Bauhaus, more than 100 years ago. But I am not here to talk about the Global North, but the South.

Latin American schools have spurred the architecture and urbanism vanguard in the last 60 years by developing solutions for our unequal societies. Our schools have done that by looking at our people's hard-earned lives, their solutions to complex and unfair social divides, and their struggle to shape the future, believing that "another world is possible". Masters such as Sergio Ferro, organizations such as Usina CTAH, and programs such as Elemental are powerful examples. I argue that Latin American cities have much to teach us. This is precisely the work that Justin McGuirk sets out to do with his book Radical Cities.

Here, in the most urbanised continent on the planet, extreme cities have bred extreme conditions, from vast housing estates to sprawling slums. But after decades of social and political failure, a new generation has revitalised architecture and urban design in order to address persistent poverty and inequality. Together, these activists, pragmatists and social idealists are performing bold experiments that the rest of the world may learn from.

Growing from this example, I would add a couple of pennies to the argument. I've been sharing TECHO | TETO 's work (and that of its Brazilian chapter, TETO Brasil ) for a while. They provide what they call "emergency housing", which are temporary solutions for immediate problems of homelessness and extreme deprivation. They work with what Mike Davis calls "the excess of humanity" (see Planet of Slums, another pearl from Verso Books ). What attracted me to Teto was not only what they do, but how. They implement their "relevamiento", which is a complete census of the community, by the community, and for the community through participatory GIS. After that, they set their goals with the community and define the intervention that's built with the help of volunteers, donors, and their staff.

But Degan is right. We need more discussion on how climate change will shape cities and how architecture and urbanism can contribute to mitigating it (that is, avoiding emissions) and adapting to its impacts, which are already hitting us now. One interesting take on the overlap between climate and cities is health. and a lot has been done in Latin America to make cities healthier. Two initiatives I have personal connections to come from the south of Brazil.

The Brazilian Conselho de Arquitetura e Urbanismo do Rio Grande do Sul - CAU/RS (a rough equivalent to the British RIBA) started a small pilot program in 2019 that has since gained national proportions. The slogan says much of it "No house without a toilet". The seminal idea pushed forward by my friend Tiago Holzmann da Silva is to make micro-interventions in peoples' self-built homes, building toilets with the technical support of a roster of local architects. This is a spin-off from the "Healthy Home, Better Life" ("Casa Saudável, Vida Melhor" in Portuguese) project, which seeks to connect architects and low-income families to improve habitability. Healthier homes are an essential step in climate adaptation for low-income families. Improved ventilation can do wonders during heat waves when they mitigate the harm (and might prevent fatalities) from heart and circulatory diseases.

To come back to education, my second example comes from the Universidade do Vale do Taquari - Univates , where I taught some years ago. My dear friend and colleague Guilherme Osterkamp leads their extension hub, called "Semeia" which is an experimental workspace where students, teachers, and young architects and urbanists work side-by-side on topical social issues. They dove deep into the "No House without a Toilet" program, implementing several collaborative projects in the region. The video below (in Portuguese) is a competent showcase of their work. It starts by asking how it is possible for families to socially isolate and wash their hands during the pandemic without a toilet or even a sink. Three architects, hired in a public selection, visited each family to define the interventions with the families, prepare the projects, and orient the construction work, done with public funds from the municipality and building material donations from local companies. The health metaphors are present all over: the white coat, providing health through adequate living spaces. These are fundamental improvements that impact even climate change adaptation - they provide essential infrastructure in the household; it does not get any more fundamental than that. Looking at the video, even if you don't speak a word of Portuguese, you can see the environment and how these architects were exposed to the real, and often though, living conditions of a large part of our population. This exposure may change the profession yet and definitely allows for reflection on the priorities for architecture and urbanism.

What this has to do with climate and the 21st century? Well, the point here is that adaptation may be a complex matter, but essential services, social inclusion, and combating inequality go a long way in preventing vulnerability. Mark Pelling and Matthias Garschagen argued for just that in this Nature comment.

Architecture and urbanism schools have often distanced themselves from the tough reality of the majority by catering to the ultra-rich - which is still the dream for many professionals (we need only see the Saudi "The Line"...). But there are, and have been for 50+ years, many who want to improve communities and expose students and professionals to the "real" issues of our cities. I hope that these two projects, from a small province in Brazil, help us see that change is more in our hands than we may think.

We can and should do more, but the way forward might be looking at the solutions the Global South has worked on for decades. If we can de-colonize architecture and planning learning, we'd go a long way to face the crises of the Anthropocene.