The world-renowned architect Ricardo Bofill is visiting Santo Domingo. He has been taking a hard look at the city, and at some of the plans that are currently under scrutiny by the public. Hoy newspaper publishes an interview with Bofill. Some of the comments would cause a less famous person serious difficulty with nationalists, but his stature as an urban architect places him far above the madding crowd. Bofill has worked in China, Spain, Greece and other places, and he sees a Santo Domingo that many people look at but ignore.
Bofill said that Santo Domingo was better than he expected: “an historic city, pleasant rather than pretty, not as spectacular than others, like Cartagena in Colombia; (he) found it okay.” However, “it is not very clean, but still not too affected (by newer contructions), it still has the flavor of a city.” Bofill said that things are still at the point that if what the government is planning to do “is done with culture and sensitivity, things can go very well. If, however, it turns what he termed as ‘folkloric’, “the results will be a ‘pastiche’, a hodge-podge or a poor imitation.” Looking at the city center, the man considered to be a leading light of post-modern architecture considered it a little “shabby” but with a good structure, and “what does not exist is a logical order to the city, there is no zoning that gives one part of the city a certain weight, or a characteristic feature.” Bofill says that he found the avenue along the Caribbean Sea, the malecon, “in a neglected state, compared to what it could be”. Quite pointedly, the urban genius told reporters that it “was a shame that the tourists go elsewhere and Santo Domingo is just a source of employment”. Looking at the city as a whole, Bofill called the look, “chaotic” with tall buildings next to low structures and a gasoline station next to them: “an American city.” He said that the Americans do a lot of things well but one area in which they fail is the way they build their cities. For him, Santo Domingo is “a suburb of the United States, just a bit poorer”. In order to counteract this tendency, he called for streets, “not places for cars, but streets: Places to walk, to stroll, to have a flowing city.” The reporters did not miss a chance to ask about the Metro, the planned mega- project to equip Santo Domingo with a rapid transit system. While Bofill said that he hoped it would be built, he warned that it would “cost a fortune.” He said that while he knew that it was a politicians’ dream, the truth was that he was not sure. In his trips around the city he did not see so much congestion or any pressing need to build such a system. However, he pointed out that the great works of rebuilding or re-structuring a city can only be done when there is economic and political stability and confidence in the judicial system. And while the people are very nice, cities are not built with “niceness.” He ended his comments by saying that whatever is done in Santo Domingo from an architectural point of view, must take into consideration the position of the city, the climate and the way the people live.