Utopian Industrial City Becomes Model For Urban Disarray

"Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela — When a group of urban planners from Harvard and M.I.T. arrived here in the early 1960s to design an industrial city almost entirely from scratch, they envisioned a “Pittsburgh of the tropics” that could anchor industrialization and population growth in southeastern Venezuela.

That vision of a city for 250,000 people materialized into a place known for its relative prosperity. But as the population grew — it is now estimated at one million — and some of the competition for land and jobs grew violent, Ciudad Guayana has become emblematic of a new kind of urban disarray. Its problems are attracting scrutiny as President Hugo Chávez embarks on a phase of utopian city building."

"“Today, we share the same problems as the rest of Venezuela,” said Leopoldo Villalobos, a prominent historian who lives here and who has tracked the city’s evolution."