San Jose Costa Rica

I don’t experience San Jose, Costa Rica the same way every time. Sometimes i’m there physically, walking through the city, sitting in traffic, watching how people use space. Other times, i experience it from afar; thinking about it while living in other cities, comparing it to places like Miami or Ithaca. That distance actually makes me notice more. San Jose becomes less familiar and more legible as a system: how its organized, where it breaks down, and what ideas shape the way its planned.

What stands out most is the constant tension between what the city is and what its supposed to be. You see it in informal housing next to major roads, in public spaces that exist but aren’t really used, and in infrastructure that feels half-finished or disconnected from everyday life. These conditions are often talked about as cultural problems. People say the city is disorganized because people don’t care enough, don’t behave properly, or don’t know how to maintain public space. That explanation always felt too easy to me.

Reading Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City helped me understand why. The reading talks about how British colonial planners imagined Lahore, not just as a physical city, but as a moral and cultural problem that needs fixing. The author uses the idea of “Spatial Imagination,” which connects to Charles Taylor’s concept of the “Social Imaginary.” As the text explains, “Taylor defines the “Social Imaginary” as the way large groups of people — perhaps even societies — imagine their social existence, how they fit with together with others.” (29). In other words, how people picture a city shapes how they design it, govern it, and judge the people loving in it.

In colonial Lahore, British planners imagined the city through a very specific lens: clean vs dirty, orderly vs chaotic, modern vs backward. This imagination justified strict control, segregation, and intervention. What struck me was how familiar this way of thinking still feels. Even today, cities in the Global South are often described using similar language, just updated. Instead of “uncivilized,” people say “informal.” Instead of “native habits,” they say “lack of civil culture.”

The reading goves a clear example of this mindset. British commentators blamed the physical condition of Lahore on the people themselves, not on planning or infrastructure. As the text notes, “British commentators writing in the late nineteenth century attributed the filth and decrepitude in the city itself to cultural predisposition… concluding that “the habits of the natives are such that, unless they are closely watched they, cover the whole neighbouring surface with filth.”(48-49). That quote feels extreme, but the logic behind it hasn’t disappeared.

I see that same logic applied to San Jose, when informal settlements are discussed, they’re often treated as evidence of disorder or irresponsibility rather than as responses to housing shortages and economic inequality. When public space isn’t maintained, the blame is placed on the people using it, not on the systems meant to support it. The city is imagined as failing because its residents are imagined as the problem.

My engagement with San Jose is shaped by noticing these patterns. I pay attention to where investment goes and where it doesn’t. I notice how some neighborhoods are seen as valuable and others as disposable. I notice how planning decisions often prioritize image over lived experience. Like colonial Lahore, San Jose is shaped by an idea of what a “proper city” should look like and that idea doesn’t always come from the people who actually live there.