Apartment towers spreading across Santo Domingo are cutting off the natural breezes that once cooled residential neighborhoods, Mariela Mejía, editor-in-chief of Diario Libre, argues in a column.
( DANIA ACEVEDO/DIARIO LIBRE )
Writing from her balcony, Mejía describes how wind flows directly through her window, cooling her apartment in summer and forcing her to shut the windows against the chill of the Caribbean winter. She says her most persistent fear is that a real estate developer will buy her neighbor's house and raise a tower that blocks the breeze she depends on and cuts off the daily sunlight.
Mango and plantain trees in the neighbor's patio, she writes, are the last trace of a rural feeling at the heart of the city. She already sees other towers from her balcony, which she describes as products of an accelerating urban growth that is gradually stripping neighborhoods of natural ventilation.
Walking through her neighborhood, she says she noticed a single-story house squeezed between two apartment towers, a sight that brought to mind the animated film Up, in which an elderly man struggles to remain in the home he shared with his late wife as urban development closes in around it.
Mejía argues that losing natural ventilation leaves residents caught between rising temperatures and swelling electricity bills as air-conditioning use increases. She also warns that converting old houses with large patios into towers removes the urban tree cover that captures rainwater and helps cool the city.
She closes by asking what kind of city is being built, and describes the breeze as now hidden behind concrete towers.
