Thoughts on Asunción, Paraguay

Summary

Almost two years ago I recorded a podcast with Tomás Mandl on his book Modern Paraguay: Uncovering South America's Best Kept Secret. If you have been following me since then you might already know that Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister moved to Paraguay with her husband to start a new German Colony to advance Nazi ambitions of Aryan supremacy. Perhaps, you already know that Alfredo Stroessner, the military dictator of Paraguay for 35 years (the longest Western Hemisphere Cold War dictator apart from Fidel Castro), gave Paraguayan citizenship to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi war criminal (“Angel of Death” in Auschwitz) and refused to extradite him. Yet, on my first visit to Asunción last week none of that was on my mind. What was striking was the total absence of any aesthetic coherence of the city. In a previous post, I talked about what I consider the spectrum of the Deepness of cities. In my view, cities can be economically developed but lack depth. Another mental model I use for my proxy of development when traveling is what I call aesthetic Coherence. Trying to explain a mental model is always a bit fuzzy, but I mean something like this: How well-planned does the urban design of the city feel?How similar are the building designs in specific neighborhoods?How well-marked and maintained are roads and pedestrian walkways? How closely do street signs follow a specific design language? In my mental model, a city like Madrid or St. Petersburg has high Coherence. But a city like Phnom Penh (Cambodia) or Kochi (India) has low Coherence. If you walk around Phnom Penh or drive through Kochi, you will see a demure 1-story concrete building painted white next to an aggressively neon-lit 3-story building in brick and concrete with 4 different colors. Both were on a road without properly maintained pavement. This is a fairly common scene in developing countries in Asia. I am sure you have seen skyscrapers in Manila next to slums. What this means is that private individuals can ...