“Like a text full of post-its, the contemporary city is temporarily full of behaviours that leave no trace –as post-it leave no traces on books–, that appear and disappear regularly, that have ways of communicating and of attracting but are increasingly difficult to ignore.” Giovanni La Varra Post-it city. The last public space in the contemporary city Lima has put so many post-its for so long over its text, that now it is a book made of post-its and not text. They can’t be unstuck and it is impossible to read the underlying text. The Post-it was invented 40 years ago (Spencer Silver, 1968). 80% of the urbanised area of Lima is no more than 40 years old, and more than 80% of its population are immigrants. It cannot be the same entity if 80% is new. While a Post-it cannot write a plot, the infinite proliferation and superposition of Post-its produces a new narrative … we are in Lima 3.0

Lima 3.0 is the most recent stratum of the urban palimpsest known as Lima. It shares the same name and geographic space as the previous versions, but it is another city.

While Lima 1.0 was the ‘city of the kings’ to conquer from the Incas, founded by Pizarro in 1535, 10 kilometres from the Pacific, Lima 2.0 was the ‘garden city’ version that in the early 20th century ‘urbanised’ the area between its seaside resorts that were the product of modernity that fantasised about orderliness and the omnipotence of planning. Lima 3.0 is the product from this failure, the metropolitan space built from millions of fragments that overwhelm Lima 2.0 in the early 1960s. Lima 3.0 was not built by virtue, but by defect. First Lima 3.0 is inhabited, then it is set up.

The Post-it spaces in Lima 3.0 (the “chicha” culture) are the standard, not the accident. The formal is the anecdote. The exception is the rule, minimum efficiency, maximum flexibility. Welcome to the 21st century ...