took these pictures the other day while I was having some beers up on the roof. It´s uglier than I had imagined. The first and second pictures are looking towards the city centre, but in between are all the barrios (neighbourhoods) uh, in between. It´s about a 25 min walk from my place to the centre. This would be fine except that the metro doesn´t work past 11pm at night here, in Valencia, in Spain. People don´t eat until at least 11pm here on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. Where are they supposed to go after they eat dinner? How are they supposed to get to dinner in the first place? There are cabs. A few, but most of them only operate during normal Spanish hours. Arriving at the bus station in the creepy part of town after 10pm? Good luck getting a cab. Or on the 11 O´clock express train from Barcelona? Yer fucked, think again. I get around most of this by riding my bike, and I like the little village I live in, but this is ridiculous. Get your act together Spain. Geez.
And another thing. Between where I live and downtown are five decades of disgrace. I mean this is fucking disgraceful! You can see what I´m talking about in the pictures, all those really ugly buildings they threw up on the fertile fields that used to lie between here (the village of Benimaclet) and the city. The worst thing is that the last two decades have been especially disgraceful, especially considering Franco´s been long gone for at least 20 years. You guys have to stop using that as an excuse. Are you telling me that town planners couldn´t see how they should have been building the city by looking at the older, far-nicer buildings? Or going somewhere else to find out what they were doing there? There is no residential architecture
here post 1950s, and as you get closer to present day the buildings just get worse. They seem to simply throw up the cheapest thing possible without giving any thought to design, use of space, materials, innovation, nada. Sometimes I think Spanish architects have a toolkit with like 5-7 models in it, they sell these models to construction companies, and these guys throw them up as fast and as cheaply as they can. Actually, someone does seem to be cluing-in though. I read the other day that they´re considering a law that would limit some of the out of control construction. I fucking hope so.
The bottom picture is facing (South?) towards the sea, which I inevitably think of as South but is actually probably not South. Maybe it´s more like East.
You can see smoke. That´s from fireworks. Valencia is the capital of fireworks. I have more to say about this. Below the smoke along the first line of the beach there are some new buildings.
And another thing. Between where I live and downtown are five decades of disgrace. I mean this is fucking disgraceful! You can see what I´m talking about in the pictures, all those really ugly buildings they threw up on the fertile fields that used to lie between here (the village of Benimaclet) and the city. The worst thing is that the last two decades have been especially disgraceful, especially considering Franco´s been long gone for at least 20 years. You guys have to stop using that as an excuse. Are you telling me that town planners couldn´t see how they should have been building the city by looking at the older, far-nicer buildings? Or going somewhere else to find out what they were doing there? There is no residential architecture
here post 1950s, and as you get closer to present day the buildings just get worse. They seem to simply throw up the cheapest thing possible without giving any thought to design, use of space, materials, innovation, nada. Sometimes I think Spanish architects have a toolkit with like 5-7 models in it, they sell these models to construction companies, and these guys throw them up as fast and as cheaply as they can. Actually, someone does seem to be cluing-in though. I read the other day that they´re considering a law that would limit some of the out of control construction. I fucking hope so.The bottom picture is facing (South?) towards the sea, which I inevitably think of as South but is actually probably not South. Maybe it´s more like East.
You can see smoke. That´s from fireworks. Valencia is the capital of fireworks. I have more to say about this. Below the smoke along the first line of the beach there are some new buildings.There are no less than 31 cranes in this picture, I counted. And what look to be at least 16 buildings in varying stages of construction, each and every one of them the same as the next. Up close they´re even
more creepy because of the tiny differences they´ve concocted to play with your head, like there´s a sculpture in the courtyard in one of them and then not in the next, and as you walk past at siesta, passing nobody because everybody is inside, you can´t help but ask yourself, why? Why couldn´t you have altered the height of one of these buildings, knocked down a wing on one end to let in a bit of sun and break the claustrophobic monotony of the perfectly equal entrances? Fuck.
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