According to Vanity Fair, “the Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.” Inspired by the Proust Questionnaire, we have put together a set of 32 questions designed to reveal the true nature of 4CITIES alumni. Or to at least give us some insight into what they are up to and what makes them, as students of “the urban”, tick.
1. What is your name?
Viviana Itzel Herrera Silva.
2. Which 4CITIES cohort were you a part of?
Cohort 12 (2019-2021).
3. Where and when were you born?
Mexico City, 1992.
4. Where did you grow up?
Mexico City.
5. What did you study before 4CITIES?
Communication sciences.
6. Why did you join 4CITIES?
To socialise urban studies.
7. What is your fondest memory from 4CITIES?
Hard to choose: I guess having the best birthday party of my life, all of us dancing to a bonfire.
8. What was the most important thing you learned from 4CITIES?
Cities are also about emotional human relations.
9. What (if anything) have you studied since 4CITIES?
Gender and decolonial approaches.
10. Where do you live now?
Barcelona.
11. Where else would you like to live?
Lucerne (with Inés <3).
12. Which city have you never visited but would most like to?
Dublin.
13. Where is your favorite non-urban place to be?
The beach in Tamarit.
14. What kind of work are you currently doing?
International cooperation.
15. What other work have you done since graduating?
A lot of writing and knowledge management consultancies.
16. What job would you most like to attempt?
A job that matches my personal agenda, striving for a more caring world and a more conciliatory working model.
17. What urban-related job does not exist but should?
International governance shrink.
18. What about cities do you enjoy the most?
The possibility to meet strangers who become familiar.
19. What about cities do you enjoy the least?
Fear of otherness.
20. What about cities do you find most interesting?
Human expression.
21. What about cities do you think is over-emphasized or over-hyped?
Aesthetics.
22. What about cities do you think is under-appreciated?
Mutual support and people’s ability to produce their own spaces.
23. Why do you think urban studies is important?
To transform the capitalistic mode of living.
24. What is one myth about cities that you would like to bust?
That nothing ever changes for the better.
25. If you could time travel, what city and year would you visit?
Tenochtitlán (Mexico City) before colonisation.
26. What is your favorite imaginary city (from books, movies, etc.)?
The caring city.
27. What would you like real cities to learn or take from this imaginary city?
The power of community and reconnecting with our natural ecosystems.
28. What books, authors, or films would you recommend to someone who wants to better understand “the urban”?
Flora Tristan’s London Journal, Leslie Kern’s Feminist City, Iris Marion Young’s Politics of Difference, my own BA thesis, superwien’s Future Public Spaces.
29. What changes would make cities more livable?
Providing more spaces for people to have a say.
30. What are the most important changes cities must make in response to the sustainability crisis?
Transforming the mobility and food systems.
31. If you could change one thing about your city, what would it be?
Making people aware of their power of agency to transform their own realities for the better.
32. What question have I not asked that you would like to ask other 4CITIES alumni?
How did you find out about 4CITIES?
You can find Viviana on LinkedIn.
