{"product_id":"a-promising-past-remodeling-fictions-in-parque-central-caracas-9780822948537","title":"A Promising Past: Remodeling Fictions in Parque Central, Caracas","description":"Vicente Lecuna examines an array of fictions surrounding Parque Central, a high-rise development conceived and built by the Venezuelan government as a key component of a modernization and urban renewal project. He classifies these fictions into two types: modeling and remodeling. Modeling fictions reflect an inaugural, festive, utopian nature and herald a better future that would abolish the chaotic urban past and allow a new middle class to thrive under modern, clean, orderly, and republican conditions. By contrast, remodeling fictions recast the complex as dark, sinister, contaminated, dangerous, and dirty. Lecuna argues that the Venezuelan state was behind the modeling fictions, while the later remodeling fictions emerged from an empty space that opened during the 1980s, a period that followed oil industry collapse, rising foreign debt, currency devaluation, and mass population exodus. The state gradually abandoned its functions, thereby introducing a long period of stagnation, unemployment, deregulation, and the rise of an informal economy, setting the stage for authoritarian takeover.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Vicente Lecuna\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Pittsburgh Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/10\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSeries:\u003c\/b\u003e Illuminations\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.95lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.80h x 6.20w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780822948537","brand":"University of Pittsburgh Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44365818232969,"sku":"9780822948537","price":60.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_d980e74b-992a-4560-bc6e-2f8b958418a7.jpg?v=1751346339","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/a-promising-past-remodeling-fictions-in-parque-central-caracas-9780822948537","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}