Atlantis magazine 28.4

ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

#28.4 June 2018

ACTION • REACTION

COMMITTEES 2018

FROM THE BOARD

ATLANTIS VOL # 28

We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students.

With the help of them we can organise excursions, lectures, workshops, drinks and events. The Polis board wants to thank all the people involved for their great efforts and positive input!

Dear Polis Members,

Our theme for the current volume was Action and Reaction. Having successfully discussed novel ideas and concepts in our previous volume - Dialogues - we set out to see how these ideas can be brought to the real world. When one discusses the realisation of an idea or concept, it is vital to contextualize it. Hence, in the past four issues of Atlantis we challenged ourselves to consider implementation in as many different contexts as possible. To give our readers a diverse and unbiased picture, we looked at the world through an impartial framework of time-zones. Each issue of Volume 28 was compartmentalized as a set of time-zones to cover a heterogeneous range of content. We also hope that this unusual lens will focus our eyes on parts of the world which we may normally not consider and help us uncover links between those places that only seem to share a common time.

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01.west.350) or by e-mail: contact@polistudelft.nl

URBAN AND LANDSCAPE WEEK ATLANTIS EDUCATION PR COMMITTEE BIG TRIP & SMALL TRIP

POLIS BOARD Anna Myllymäki - Chairman Sebastian Gschanes - Vice Chairman Ninad Sansare- Secretary Mark Slierings - Treasurer Adithya Athreya Rao - Public Relations Sindhuja Janakiraman - Atlantis

JOIN US Not yet a member of Polis? For only €12.50 a year as a student of TU Delft, €30 for individual professional membership, or €80 for organizations you can join our network!

You will receive our Atlantis Magazine (for free) four times a year, a monthly newsletter and access to all events organized by Polis.

E-mail contact@polistudelft.nl to find out more.

As the year comes to an end, the new Polis team is fervently working to meet our goals before we break for summer, especially for the events lined up for the next academic year. The Polis Board is proud to present the final Atlantis issue of Volume 28, ‘Action & Reaction’. It is yet another effort from our Atlantis committee, covering range of interesting topics. Simultaneously they are brainstorming ideas for the next volume following our theme, ‘Territo · realities’.

On the other hand, preparations for the Urban and Landscape Week 2018 is on full swing. The UL Week committee is tirelessly organizing the event with continued focus on exploring spatiality across all scales and territories. We have been receiving enthusiastic responses from practitioners, but we will have to wait a little longer to know the final list of speakers.

Continuing the momentum, the other committees through their relentless effort are improvising the interface between students and the faculty. In addition, our outreach is expanding by sharing students’ work and by attempting to connect with the local governments and institutes for collaboration.

Our committees are on the look out for new team members to join us on this exciting journey. For more information send us an email or feel free to join us for a quick chat or coffee at our Polis Office!

Warm Regards from the Polis Board 2018, Anna Myllymäki, Sebastian Gschanes, Adithya Athreya Rao, Mark Slierings, Ninad Sansare and Sindhuja Janakiraman

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We planned to cover a range of topics like planning in post-conflict or post-disaster zones, how innovations changed specific parts of the world, and design in the face of extreme growth or decline to name a few.

Interested in contributing? Email us at atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Editorial After a year with Volume 28, we conclude with an issue covering the Americas.

It is hard to cover this part of the world without mentioning one controversial president. Someone who has long advocated ‘America First’ or ‘Make America Great Again’, which has aided in the trend of various countries in saying ‘_ First’.

However, a little introspection will show that most of our political boundaries are only a few centuries old. Some regions have received their independence from their colonial countries only in the last century. Such policies generate a rippleeffect of nationalism that discourages countries to look beyond their borders and work together for the betterment of the planet. After all, administrative and political boundaries are an artificial construct. While this volume has looked at implementation of design and tackling urban issues in a country specific themes, we must also be able to step back to look at the larger picture. We urge our readers to be sensitive to the contexts but also to the ripple effects that some decisions may have in another part of the planet.

Therefore, the journey this issue aims to take its readers upon is one of a critique of the relationship between old and new practices and approaches, contextualized within the vast plurality of the American Continent and its sub-continents. From North to South, we look at housing policies, planning instruments, action-oriented approaches, infrastructural experiments, emerging technologies and living modalities, contemplating upon their inherited meaning as well as possible and potential future (re-)interpretations. We hope you will enjoy this last stop on our trip across the globe.

As we conclude this volume, we also would like to introduce the new team working on Atlantis. Sarantis Georgiou will take over moderating and creating content, Felipe Gonzalez will be oversee the graphic direction of the magazine and Sindhuja Janakiraman, representing the Board of Polis, will ensure that the cogs are well oiled and running. Together they have been working on building a new team with students from both landscape architecture and urbanism. We look forward to the next volume and all the new stories they will bring to your doorstep.

Editors-in-Chief Ijsbrand Heeringa (content) Selina Abraham (layout) Introducing Sarantis Georgiou, Chief Editor (content) Felipe Gonzalez, Chief Editor (layout) Sindhuja Janakiraman, Polis Board Representative

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Contents p.15

p.21

p.29

p.57

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00 Atlantis News by Sindhuja Janakiraman ............................................................................ 5 01 Half Built: collaboration frameworks in Latin American housing projects by Pablo

Muñoz Unceta ................................................................................................................................ 9 02 Confronting the impossible: re-imagining the existing city as a tech landscape

by Michael de Beer ......................................................................................................................... 13 03 Infrastructural strata: exploring the past and the present of Mexico City by

Emma Flores & Sarantis Georgiou ............................................................................................. 15 04 The road is not the way: considering the Open City, a laboratory of alternative

practice by Michael de Beer ......................................................................................................... 19

05 The opportunity in vacancy by Amanda Bryant ............................................................. 21 06 Between All-Inclusive and Ecotourism in the Dominican Coast by Alejandra

Moreno ............................................................................................................................................. 27 07 The reclamation of the Carioca Landscape by Juliana Ahmed ................................... 29 08 Tidal dunes by Michelle Siemerink ...................................................................................... 33

09 The City of Landmarks: a graduation project fieldtrip to NYC by Donald Boeing .. 35 10 Buenos Aires 2050: 2 strategies by Alexandra Farmazon, Gereon Rolvering &

Aikaterina Myserli ........................................................................................................................... 39 11 Like water breaking through: the San Leandro urban greenway in Oakland, CA

by Dorottya Békési ......................................................................................................................... 43

12 Beyond Social Participation by Diego Ortiz ..................................................................... 47 13 Constellation of Scars by Livia del Conte .......................................................................... 51

14 Sonic Space by Michael de Beer ......................................................................................... 53 15 Tactical Urbanism in Venezuela: a possible strategy to promote change in times

of crisis by Oriana De Lucia & Ricardo Avella ......................................................................... 57

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ATLANTIS 28.4

#Office: Automated Landscapes

#OFFICE, at Dutch Pavilion WORK, BODY, LEISURE. 16th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, FREESPACE.

Installation in the Dutch pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale #Office is an intervention inside the Rietveld Pavillion that serves as part of Work, Body, Leisure, the official Dutch representation at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Invited by the curator Marina Otero Verzier, Víctor Muñoz Sanz and Marten Kuijpers present an installation exploring the architecture of full automation in top productive sectors in the Netherlands.

More than forty years after Constant’s New Babylon, the architecture of full automation is currently being implemented across the country. From its main port in Rotterdam, to its productive hinterlands, the logic and relations that define the physical and social landscape of work and labour are being redefined by machines, data and interfaces.

"As robots and smart systems take over the toil, landscapes, working environments, the workers that populate them, and what they do, transform."

Traditional port crane operators are now replaced by office workers seated in control rooms that oversee 24/7 operations. The container terminal offices are an open field of flexible workstations, meeting rooms, and lockers, enclosed by a collection of concrete barricades, chain-link fencing, and CCTV cameras that prevent unauthorized access.

In the countryside, dairy and horticultural farmers oversee ever-growing automated operations through dashboards on desktop computers or smartphone apps. Cows and temporary workers become data, and their bodies are managed as abstract components 5

Original text by Marten Kuijpers

Senior researcher Het Nieuwe Instituut

Víctor Muñoz Sanz

Post-doctoral researcher Department of Urbanism of TU Delft

of a larger system, which can be accessed from anywhere by logging on the cloud. #Office represents one of these generic spaces of production and control where the architecture of Johan Huizinga’s homo ludens is being reenacted and reimagined.

Yet far from being the basis of a new creative way of life as envisioned by Constant, humans and non-humans become passive observers, and servers, of systems that seem to run the territory themselves.

NEWS Design Exhibition

Delft South-West

June 2018

Original text by

Preetika Balasubramanian MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Delft South West. This was the neighbourhood that the Urbanism students designed for in Quarter 2 of the Masters course. The project was done in collaboration with the Gementee Delft, which wanted to engage with students to trigger ideas for this challenging project.

The brief was to redesign and densify the neighbourhood to accommodate 5000 new houses along with spaces that stimulate social integration and culture, connectivity to the rest of the city. Additionally, the brief drew our attention to three barriers that fragmented the neighbourhood: the industrial Scheiovers area, the railway line, and the river Schie itself.

Over 60 students presented their designs at the end of the quarter, and the ideas ranged from building a creative knowledge hub, a student’s housing area, water based Urbanism, transportation node upgrade, multi-functional neighbourhoods, energy efficient housing, infrastructure design etc.

The Gementee then invited 12 students with most promising projects to exhibit their projects at the City Hall in Delft. This is part of the City Deal Knowledge Making, a collaboration between the municipality and The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Inholland University of Applied Sciences and TU Delft to involve students and lecturers more in the tasks of the city.

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The public exhibition at the City Hall was open for two weeks from March 23rd till April 6th, 2018. Alderman De Prez opened the exhibition, and Bob van der Nol from the Gementee introduced the design brief and the exhibited projects.

Preetika Balasubramanian, Msc2 student of Urbanism, was invited to give a small presentation of her project, ‘Tackling Junkspace’, at the exhibition. Tackling Junkspace was an experiment to densify Delft South West by juxtaposing the compact footprint of Delft’s city centre onto Delft South West. The design critically looked into the feasibility of the project and proposed a system of socio-economic drivers and urban rules to reinforce the feasibility of the project itself.

1. Exhibiting team 2. Preetika Balasubramanian presenting her project at the municipality of Delft 3. Exhibition panels

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ATLANTIS 28.4

CONFRONTING

INFORMALITY preserving communities and creating public goods in informal settlements symposium & ideas competition Original text by Asmeeta Das

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

1. Symposium lecture by Ignacio Cardona (Harvard GSD) 2. Exhibition of selected competition entries 3. Final jury session to select the winners of the competition

Upon crossing the 50% threshold, the human population can now officially be called Urban. With United Nation’s predicted increase of about 1.1 billion new urbanites by 2030, most cities will face an unprecedented developmental pressure in addition to their current struggle to provide basic living and working standards to their citizens. “Informal urbanisation is a form of city construction defined as the production of urbanization independent from formal frameworks and assistance.� (UN Habitat, 2014). These forms of the cities are home to informal economies and settlements which have a collective population of about 1.5 billion people.

The fast-growing economies of the Global South are at the forefront for this challenge and are yet to include these settlements in their planning framework. This generates a debate in the field of planning and design about the future of these selfbuilt settlements, presenting an immense opportunity for discussion and innovation in this area.

Located in one of the leading nations for planning and innovation, TU Delft

acknowledges its duty to get involved in this debate. It advocates the importance of spatial justice and rights under the larger umbrella of environmental justice.

Confronting Informality is an annual student-led event which aims to discuss tools to come up with sustainable, fair and innovative solutions that respect the livelihoods and wishes of the dwellers.

In its fourth year, to have this conversation on a global platform, the Department of Urbanism at the TU organised a studentled competition for students across the world. The competition asked participants from various disciplines to identify the public goods in an informal settlement of their choice and come up with strategies to retain those core values while upgrading the built environment and quality of life.

The competition was held over a period of two months and we successfully received 50 entries from 24 different countries. We were pleasantly surprised by the variety of ideas that we got from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. 20 finalists were selected, who were then judged by our experienced jury. Through the process we realised that, even if the conditions of

Global dynamics beyond boundaries

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June 2018

informal settlements over the world could be seen similar, the context determines many of the solutions, depending on the culture, geographical location, lifestyle and political and economic framework.

The introduction of stakeholders in the upgradation process made the projects tangible and highlighted the need to consider the socio-political, economic and environmental aspects of this issue.

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The competition was followed up by a Symposium on the 7th of June where our jury members - Ignacio Cardona (Harvard GSD), Nipesh Narayanan (University of Lausanne), Alonso Ayala Aleman (IHS), Ellen Geurts (IHS), Abigail Friendly (Utrecht University) and Sukanya Krishnamurthy (Eindhoven University of Technology), presented their work and opinions which sparked a larger discussion about the increasing need for inclusive development and design education.

The winner of the competition was a team from BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They took a multi-disciplinary approach to use Community Based Organisations as a media for development in Korail, one of Dhaka’s largest slums.

Original text by Iliyana Miteva

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

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Urban and Landscape Week 2018 aims at investigating the Floworld - human, material and economic flows that exceed national administrative limits obeying global dynamics that occur at different scales and geographic coordinates simultaneously.

By doing this, these processes influence different and opposed realities.

In a world that is decentralized by information, technology and global economy, urban planners and landscape architects must deal with scenarios of uncertainty and ambivalence, dealing with different perspectives in conflict.

Which are the processes beyond these flows redefining our infrastructures, landscapes and cities? How can we address these processes in order to create better cities and improve life quality of people?

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The aim of Urban and Landscape Week 2018 is to shed light on the challenges of this epoch as well as reflect and explore how design can contribute to sustainable future environments in a state of increased environmental and socio-political uncertainty. The week will be filled with provocative and exciting speakers and debates gathered in 2 panels focusing on “Globalization of material flows, interdependence and fragility”, “Human flows against the boundaries”, and a keynote lecture. The program will wrap up the topic in a challenging competition for students from different faculties and fields of expertise.

HALF BUILT

collaboration frameworks in Latin American housing policies Latin America is today the most heavily urbanized region in the world (UN Habitat, 2016). Centralization of services, economic and political crises, conflicts and violence, among other reasons, brought an exponential growth of migrations from the rural areas to the cities since the 1940s. People invested a lot of effort and resources to find a place in cities. Civil society organized itself to obtain services, such as housing or water. The public sector reacted in different ways to provide quality of life and housing conditions to the new urban dwellers. In the last decades, the weight has shifted to private companies to try to provide housing to a demanding market. Despite all the efforts, Latin American cities present today high levels of vulnerability in terms of dwelling and services. This is emphasized by high levels of social inequality, urban segregation and informality (Clichevsky, 2000, quoted in Vargas, 2010; see also Andreatta, 2007 for Brazil; Beytía, 2014 for Chile; Matos Mar, 2010 for Peru).

This article attempts to understand trends in housing and urban policies in Latin America. Three cases, representative of three different moments in recent history will be shown in order to analyze the collaboration of civil society, public and private sectors, in the construction of the Latin American city. The first project, PREVI- Lima (Peru, 1968-75) was developed in the late 1960s, when the public sector managed and implemented social housing programs. The other two examples were implemented after 1990s: Favela Bairro (1994 – 2005), in Rio de Janeiro, was a milestone in slum upgrading programs developed in Latin America. Quinta Monroy and Elemental housing-competition were developed in Chile around 2003 under a scheme of social housing subsidy policy.

Shift in Latin American housing policies Even though each country produced a different set of housing, urban and land policies, the roles and collaboration of the three sectors shifted trough time. Between the 1940s and 1980s the State was the main developer of social housing and, at least theoretically, its focus was on the urban poor. Despite this, in many cases, social housing programs tore apart people from

their social and economic networks, like proletarian parks in Brazil (Osborn, 2012), or caused the eviction of local population in informal neighborhoods, like urban policies in 1950s in Medellin (Medellin Municipality, 2015), or couldn’t deliver housing that was affordable enough for low income groups, like Neighborhood Units in Peru (Calderón, 2005). However, there were other cases, in which the immeasurable scale of the problem and the lack of economic and human resources made public housing programs count also on civil society, giving them an active role in the policy structure, like the site and service schemes implemented in Peru during the 1950s or the self-built and mutual assistance projects in Chile in 1956.

These approaches to the problem changed dramatically in the last decade of the 20th century. Influenced by the global economic trends of the 1990s and the pressure from international agencies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, governments were no longer directly in charge of housing developments. Policy on housing finance and shelter-related relief replaced public social housing programs. Governments enabled access to housing through subsidies and access to mortgage loans. Middle class housing was to be developed by the private sector, while housing for the lower income groups was, in the best case scenario, developed by civil society (UN Habitat, 2016). It is not a coincidence that in this same moment slum upgrading programs became a popular practice for local and national governments in Latin America.

Under the influence of the ideas of Hernando de Soto and the World Bank, ownership of land or dwelling became the main strategy to fight poverty (Maldonado, 2015). In some cases, this led to massive social housing programs in which private companies developed available land in new areas, in some cases increasing social and urban segregation (Sabatini & Brain, 2008). Policies like site and service schemes or self-managed urban communities lost importance. With the exception and specificity of slum upgrading programs, active participation of civil society within housing policies became more restricted.

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by

Pablo Muñoz Unceta

European Post-master in Urbanism (EMU) TU Delft

Sao Paulo (Brazil)

Mexico City (Mexico)

Lima (Peru)

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PREVI. Lima. Peru (1968 – 1975) Between 1957 and 1972, Lima’s population increased in 130,000 new inhabitants every year (Matos, 2010). The Peruvian government promoted in 1968 an international competition to develop solutions to the rapid informal urbanization that was taking place in the city and the country. In this competition, called "Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda" (PREVI), 26 teams developed proposals for a high density and low rise urbanization in the Peruvian context. Houses were incremental, prefabricated and massive production of

housing construction systems was planned to be used, while traffic segregation allowed the development of pedestrian and human-scale public spaces.

The spirit of the competition was very much influenced by the ideas of John Turner on Lima’s barriadas or informal settlements, as well as by former policies of Peruvian Ministry of Housing, such as site-and-service developments (Kahatt, 2011). Participation of urban dwellers in the construction of their houses and neighborhoods was seen not only as a way to solve the lack of housing in a fast growing city as Lima, but

also as a way to promote social integration and local development. In PREVI, houses were delivered as basic which each family could finish and grow up to three stories.

Neighborhoods were organized in clusters, promoting social organization and cohesion.

Nevertheless, only a small part of the project was developed by the government and only 500 of the 1500 units were built. Even though the ideas behind the competition influenced some projects in Peru and abroad, the desired impact was never accomplished and urban and housing policies in Peru took a different turn in the following decades (Maldonado, 2015).

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Favela Bairro. Rio de Janeiro. Brazil (1994 – 2005) Favela Bairro was one of the most successful slum upgrading programs of the 1990s. It set a new route in Latin American urban policies regarding informal areas and the need for housing of large parts of the urban population, replacing social housing projects and programs for the urban poor in which the State was the main developer.

"Favela Bairro" became a case study for many local and national governments in the region and many slum upgrading programs were created in the following years: PROMEBA (Argentina, 1997), Proyectos Urbanos Integrales en Medellín (2003), Programa de Mejoramiento de Barrios (Perú, 2004), Barrios de Verdad (Bolivia, 2005), “Programa de Recuperación de Barrios Quiero Mi Barrio” (Chile, 2006), Barrio Mío (Perú, 2012), among others.

Favela Bairro had two phases: 19941997 and 2000-2005 and was funded by the Inter-American Development Bank along with Rio de Janeiro government.

Its main strategy was to bring better life conditions to people living in favelas through local scale specific interventions.

In words of Verena Andreatta (2007), “formal integration or, in other words, normalization of space, triggers social integration and allows its inhabitants to acquire full citizenship”1.

Regarding social participation, local neighbors played an important role in the construction of the projects in Favela Bairro. Community organization in favelas was very robust. It had allowed neighbors to create and manage their own services

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and housing before the Municipality arrived (Osborn, 2012). Even though many decisions were taken top-down, especially those regarding to founding, the program needed the knowledge and participation of social leaders. Pousos (Postos de Orientação Urbanística e Social2) were created as a physical infrastructure where engineers, architects and social workers would work with local population both during and after the construction of the works. Nevertheless, after a change in the local government few years after the implementation of the projects, most Pousos were dismantled Favela Bairro was also one of the first times in Latin America in which informal settlements were directly benefiting from an urban policy. Therefore, they were seen as part of the city and not something to get rid of. When the program started, around 1.5 million people lived in favelas in Rio. After the implementation of the first phase of the program, 169 favelas were upgraded and by the end of the second phase, 40% of the population in Rio’s favelas had been benefited by the program.

Quinta Monroy. Iquique. Chile (2003) While slum upgrading programs were implemented in informal areas, formal housing was developed through subsidies and mortgage loans. Since the military coup of Pinochet in 1973, Chile had adopted a market oriented housing system in which the State played a subsidiary role and the private sector developed houses according to what consumers wanted (Gilbert, 2002).

The Quinta Monroy project in Iquique, Chile (2003) was carried out under a public 11

housing subsidy scheme. Developed by Alejandro Aravena’s office, Elemental, the project included the construction of houses for 93 families, who lived in a central area of the northern city of Iquique. The budget was based on a housing subsidy of $7,500 per family. Houses had to be built on the same site the families lived.

Having such a tight budget, the main idea behind the project was using the subsidy in a more efficient way. As expressed by Aravena (2011), “social housing could become a social investment instead of a social expense”. The money was used to build “half ” of the house, instead of building a small house. The main concepts behind the project was hugely similar to PREVI: incremental construction and prefabrication. Participation in the construction of the “second half ” is more related to customization than to Turner’s ideas on social integration and selfrealization. The basic housing module, including all “difficult” parts of the house (structure and installations), was 36sqm and it could be enlarged up to 72sqm with an extra investment of $1,000. Five years after the houses were built, every house in the first Elemental project was valued at least 20,000$ (Aravena, 2011). As a result, the project not only provided houses, but also allowed the families to make the land they inhabited profitable.

After the success of Quinta Monroy, Alejandro Aravena, in coordination with the Ministry of Housing in Chile, the Rockefeller foundation, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Catholic University in Chile, launched the housing competition Elemental in 2003. The premises of the competition were the same used in the

atlantis housing project in Iquique, even though in many cases houses were built in undeveloped empty land. Seven architects developed 200 to 600 housing units each. The model was copied all over the country and some housing units were even developed in Monterrey, Mexico. Similar designs were implemented in very different geographic and urban conditions. In 2016, in an attempt to make it publicly accessible, Elemental made available the designs of four of these housing units as open source on their website3.

Final reflections It must be mentioned that even if these three cases are representative examples of three currents of Latin American urban policies through time, they are probably not enough to understand the complexity and variety of policies in the region. There are many other interesting examples. The FUCVAM4 in Uruguay has managed to provide 20,000 dwellings to families since 1968 through more than 500 housing cooperatives in which associates had an important role in decision making. Urban Integral Projects in Medellin and the housing development carried out in the Juan Bobo gorge to relocate vulnerable population in-place were other important examples regarding slum upgrading programs in Latin America in relation to local communities’ participation. Peruvian self-managed urban communities of Huaycán or Villa El Salvador deserve also a place in this line of research.

There are, nevertheless, some conclusions we can extract from the presented examples.

All three try to act as open systems. PREVI aimed at progressive self-construction of the houses and neighborhood, which developed a wide range of spatial possibilities. Both houses and public spaces

were indeed deeply transformed by their users through time, as García Huidobro et al (2008) display in their book “¡El tiempo construye! Time builds!”. Favela Bairro needed local neighbors’ knowledge of their own space in order to build and manage the interventions. Elemental allowed also progressive construction of the houses, specially related to their customization.

However, building half of a house doesn’t always mean the same. The shift from the all-powerful State to a market oriented system has also shifted the decision making process. Neither one nor the other system allowed for a totally open participation of civil society in the urban decisions.

Nevertheless, it seemed as if the range and importance of decisions that civil society is allowed to make has been gradually reduced through time. Efficiency on the use of public resources and urgent provision of housing seem to justify the fact that the most important decisions in many urban projects are taken under economic considerations, either by the public sector or private developers. Nevertheless, according to UN Habitat (2016), “the housing policies put in place over the last 20 years through the enabling approach have failed to promote adequate and affordable housing”.

Re-considering the range and types of possibilities for civil society participation and introducing different criteria in urban policy decision making may bring different outcomes to Latin American cities. Perhaps, it is time to revise the weight stakeholders have in this elaborate process. • Notes 1. Translation by the author 2. Urban and Social Orientation Posts 3. http://www.elementalchile.cl/projects/abc-ofincremental-housing/ 4. Uruguayan Federation of Mutual Assistance Cooperatives

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References Andreatta, V. (2005) “Favela-Bairro, un nuevo paradigma de urbanización para asentamientos informales”, Cuadernos Internacionales de Tecnología para el Desarrollo Humano, 2005, number 3.

Andreatta, V. (2007) Ciudades cuadradas, paraísos redondos.

Planes de ordenación y orígenes de la urbanística en Río de Janeiro, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, Barcelona.

Aravena, A. (2011) “Elemental. A do tank”, Architectural Design, Volume 81, Issue 3, 32-37.

Beytía, P. (2014) Segregación urbana: la «otra» desigualdad de Chile. Retrieved from https://blogs.iadb.org/ ciudadessostenibles/2014/09/14/la-otra-desigualdad-dechile/ Calderón, J. (2005). La ciudad ilegal, National University of San Marcos.

Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (2015) Medellín. Modelo de transformación urbana: Proyecto Urbano Integral (PUI) en la zona nororiental. Consolidación Habitacional en la quebrada Juan Bobo, Alcaldía de Medellín García Huidobro et al (2008) ¡El tiempo contruye! Time Builds!, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona Gilbert, A. (2002) “Power, Ideology and the Washington Consensus: The Development and Spread of Chilean Housing Policy”, Housing Studies, 17:2, 305-324 Kahatt, S. (2011) “PREVI-Lima’s time. Positioning Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda in Peru’s modern project”, Architectural Design, Volume 81, Issue 3, 22-25.

Matos, J. (2010) Estado desbordado y sociedad nacional emergente, Ricardo Palma University Research Center Maldonado, A.M. (2015) “Las barriadas de Lima como estímulo a la reflexión urbana sobre la vivienda. Revisitando a Turner y de Soto”, Revista de Estudios sobre Vivienda (WASI), 2 (3) Osborn, C. (2012) A history of favela upgrades. Retrieved from: http://www.rioonwatch.org/?p=5295 Sabatini, F. & Brain, I. (2008) “La segregación, los guetos y la integración social urbana: mitos y claves”, Revista Eure, Vol. XXXIV, N° 103, pp. 5-26 Turner, J. (1977) Housing by people: towards autonomy in building environments. New York: Pantheon Books UN Habitat (2016) Urbanization and Development.

Emerging Futures Vargas, I. et al. (2010) “Procesos de mejoramiento barrial participativo en asentamientos informales: propuestas de integración en la ciudad de Ibagué (Colombia)”, INVI, 68(25).

1. Urban growth in Latin American cities in the XX century: Sao Paulo (Brazil), Mexico City (Mexico) and Lima (Peru) source: drawn by the author (original sources: Herrera, 2015; Carrasco, 2008 and Matos, 2010) 2. Incremental house completed through time in PREVI (Lima) source: photograph by Iñaki Romero (2009) 3. Pedestrian street in PREVI (Lima) source: photograph by the author (2011) 4-5. New access road built in Campinho (Rio de Janeiro) under Favela Bairro source: Jorge Mario Jáuregui http://www. jauregui.arq.br/favelas_before_after.html 6. Incremental housing project in Villa Verde by Elemental (Constitución, Chile) source: Elemental Chile http://www. elementalchile.cl/projects/constitucion-i-villaverde/

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Confronting the impossible

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Re-imagining the existing city as a tech landscape by

Michael de Beer

Spatial Practitioner and editor

The New York Times recently posed the question, “Do people love tech companies so much that they would live inside them?”, in a critical review of Willow Village, coined “Zucktown”, Facebook’s 59-acre urban district in San Francisco, California. The article reflects on the privatized environments that litter urban history, questioning the success of these spaces and the values they ascribe to. However, a new kid on the block, Sidewalks Lab, a startup owned by Google’s parent company ALPHABET , repositions the inquiry away from the autonomous urban environment - to the role tech companies could play in reimagining the existing city and engaging those who live in them.

Emily Badger (2018), writing on various initiatives by tech companies to reimagine the cities in which we live introduces a critical point: our cities today are simply not fleet footed enough to respond to our rapidly developing urban environment and the diverse issues they face. Hesitant of those involved in spatial practice, Badger questions whether tech companies could not be more effective at imagining our future cities. Our cities need an overhaul – they are a mess! Far from those isolated cases such as Zucktown, reimagining our cities needs to address what makes a city a city, how they operate and how they engage people. It requires introspection into the role and values of spatial practice itself. It requires an overhaul of how cities develop and function rather than the utopian renders of the good life.

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Mateja Kovacic (2018) a visiting research fellow and member of the Urban Automation and Robotics project team at the University of Sheffield, reflects on the incorporation of robotics in our cities.

Dubai, Tokyo and Singapore have reframed the role of robotics in our cities, from science fiction into real-world applications.

Kovacic admits that there is still a lot of work to be done in understanding the role of these initiatives, their value and impact, however the greatest step forward is social acceptance. Technology is rapidly emerging and it is essential to understand how these various advances will impact the lives of people.

Besides a small avant-garde, spatial practitioners, those involved with the development, policies and management of our cities, remain skeptical. The outcry by urbanists last year responding to Elon Musk’s disdain for public transport is evidence of a deep rooted problem: spatial practitioner’s remain obstinate. The reasons vary, but are largely rooted in an illiteracy of the possibilities that tech can play in reimagining our cities. An archetype has emerged in that spatial practice, to the detriment of stakeholders and citizens alike, as practice remains reactive after the fact. Problems are addressed as they arise on a case-by-case basis without an understanding of the big picture or forecasting issues before they arise. The introduction of Uber, Airbnb and drone technologies into our cities worldwide is a testament to the inability of those

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involved to proactively engage technological innovations in our cities. The result, public outcry, marginalization, over regulation, and generally a poor fit.

Sidewalk Lab Sidewalks Lab is bridging the gap. A marriage of tech and urbanists, the company has announced a partnership with the City of Toronto that aims to reimagine and intervene in the Eastern Waterfront as both a test case and precedent for future cities. What sets it apart is that it fundamentally aims to address how tech could be involved in our cities and uniquely draws in spatial practice to give core guidance. Through urban principles focused on users, the company aims to draw on a data driven approach as a tool to redesign our cities.

Unlike most smart city initiatives, Sidewalks Lab is deconstructing how urban infrastructure and development is informed.

It aims to enable a holistic picture of the issues and pressures that areas face, while forming a test bed in which scenarios could be assessed. It confronts how spatial practitioners could be working more effectively and in an informed manner to engage city development. It also offers a proactive way to include new technological development in the design and development of our cities.

The vision for sidewalk Toronto is broad and encompassing. It advocates that through the new approach, the company will be able to develop an integrated city with new technologies that speak to human centered design: a city that will afford sustainability, affordability, mobility and economic opportunity to its residents. As a live project, the data driven approach not only helps to implement but maintain and respond. It offers a fleet footed approach that is constantly connected to what is happening on the ground. Although it is only a year into the project with the success of the initiative having yet to be seen, the project challenges standard practice methodologies and suggests how tech could reimagine the cities in which we live.

impossible, are now a couple of years away from practical implementation – spatial practitioners need to recognize the acceleration in technological development and its implementation. The problem we face is how could spatial practitioners apply technologies in a holistic and successful manner? It is essential that the disciplines move from a reactive to a proactive position. Concurrently a return to identifying core problems and understanding holistic effects ought to become central to practice. Enabling the implementation of technologies is critical.

Similarly, policies must proactively engage unknown technologies, creating frameworks for adoption and enable advancement- even if it entails rescinding existing laws.

Confronting the impossible

Sidewalks labs approach promises such a transition; however it is up to the discipline to reframe its role in the future of our cities.•

The recent events of Cambridge Analytica, utilizing data broker information to manipulate public interest remains a central concern to the individual. Undoubtedly major ethical issues have and still are arising. The efforts of Sidewalk Lab however, repositions the spatial practitioner as an active agent in technological innovations.

With Uber already testing flying vehicles and autonomous cars, the worldwide hyperloop initiatives and many new technologies that were thought to be

References Kovacic, Mateia (2018) Robot cities: three urban prototypes for future living. The Conversation.com Badger, Emily (2018) Tech envisions the ultimate start-up: An Entire City. New York Times Streitfeld, David (2018) Welcome to Zucktown. Where Everything is Just Zucky. New York Times

1. SuperJumbo by Rob Pybus, Badger, Emily (2018), "Tech envisions the ultimate start-up".

2. Sidewalk lab reimagineing construction. source: www.sidewalktoronto.ca 3. Digital Infrastructure in Toronto waterfront a vision for a means to reimagine the city by Sidewalks lab vision document. source: www.sidewalktoronto.ca

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Infrastructural Strata exploring the past and the present of Mexico City by

Emma Paola Flores MSc Urbanism student TUDelft &

Sarantis Georgiou MSc Urbanism student TUDelft

The disciplines and practices concerned with space (geography, urban planning and design, engineering) and their multiple definitions have traversed through a multitude of positions (more often than not highly contradictory) on the geographical conditions of urbanization, going from the predominance of nature to the predominance of culture through different combinations of the two extremes. Yet how often do we find ourselves reflecting on the nature of the contradiction between nature and culture? Does it mean pure opposition?

Is nature something meant to be controlled, dominated, exploited? Or is it something to be integrated within a set of needs, desires and patterns of living? And, on another note, does this set of needs, desires and patterns of living arise out of some sort of vacuum, or are they conditioned by the specificities of geography?

In light of emerging ecological imperatives, these questions are as important as ever.

Far from attempting to provide a definite answer, this article looks at a case where the interplay between all these approaches is highly evident: Mexico City. With this article, Atlantis Magazine for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture starts its foray into the realm of the ‘territory’, to be explored throughout the four issues of the upcoming Volume 29 under the title “TERRITO· realities”.

Part 1: The Origins Almost the entirety of what is now Mexico City was once a lake: Lake Texcoco.

Located in what is called the Valley of Mexico in modern-day central Mexico, Lake Texcoco was one of a system of five lakes spanning the Mexico Basin that included, apart from Lake Texcoco which was the largest, Lake Zumpango, Lake Xaltocan, Xochimilco and Lake Chalco (National Research Council Staff, 1995). Therefore, a look at the modernday landscape of Mexico City and it would seem far-fetched to imagine lakes and populations (that had no relation to Spanish) inhabiting their shores. Similarly, a stretch would be to visualize downtown Mexico City as an island full of canals (the “Venice of the New World” as the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez termed it). Yet it is true: underneath present-day Mexico City lies the, now drained, waterbed of an ancient lake and the ruins of a vast civilization, making Mexico City ‘a city on water’.

The national emblem of contemporary Mexico recounts the legend of the arrival of the Aztecs to Lake Texcoco and the subsequent founding of Tenochtitlan. An eagle perched on a cactus while devouring a serpent sent by god Huitzilopochtli was spotted on an island in Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs and they understood this to be their promised land (ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 2018)). Founded in 1324, the city would come to be the dominant city of the Aztec Empire, outclassing the other two major city-states (or alpapetl) of the region (Texcoco and Tlacopan).

One would believe this geographical location to be a difficult one to occupy 15

(hostile even), but not the Mexicas (the original name the people used to refer to themselves): through an infrastructural system the intricacies and efficiency of which the whole world could be jealous of even now, the Aztecs managed to not only settle on this piece of land, but to create the conditions to allow it to grow and thrive. In fact, the prominence of Mexico Tenochtitlan was such that the Aztecs were amongst the first populations on Earth to delve into the art and science of land reclamation, building a series of artificial islands within Lake Texcoco to accommodate the growth of their flourishing metropolis (Mexico History, n.d.).

It is precisely these acts that conditioned the habitation of Tenochitlan and drove the Spanish to revel on its miracle upon seeing it for the first time. The first act of this incredible water management

atlantis able to produce food, a large system of settlements inside Lake Texcoco (on individual small islands) and around, was able to function as one ‘megalopolis’ both through the utilization of the dikes as causeways and through the construction of a system of canals for transport and drinking water channels. A part of the ‘great aqueduct’ of Chapultepec still exists today, giving testament to the Aztecs’ success in providing an uninterruptible water supply to Tenochtitlan. Running along the dikes-causeways and together with them, these aqueducts shaped the form of territorialization that spanned the area, as well as the urban form of Tenochtitlan: a metropolis of canals and canoes. Perhaps fated to reemerge once again from the depths of history, this innovative watermanagement urbanization that became the locus of the Aztecs fell prey to the Spanish and their dreams of unimaginable exploitation.

Part 2: The Throwback 2

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lies in the chinampas. A technique that originates with the inhabitants of the areas surrounding the southern two freshwater lakes, the chinampas were, essentially, raised soil beds for the growing and cultivation of crops. These ‘floating gardens’ were created by taking the nutrient-rich soil from the marshlands at the edges of the lakes and pilling it up in a rectangular fashion, while the areas that the soil was retrieved functioned as irrigation canals. While the chinampas proved to be an extremely fertile landscape, this remarkable solution was, however, threatened by the salty waters of the three northern saline lakes. Perhaps not surprisingly, the inhabitants found the solution in the construction of a dike (that also functioned as a causeway road), the Mexicaltzinco, to isolate the southern lake system from the north.

This system became the foundation stone for the building of Tenochitlan a bit further

up Lake Texcoco. In this case, however, the problem was not caused by salt water flowing from elsewhere: Lake Texcoco was already a saline one. The ingenuity of the waterworks performed by the Aztecs lies in the gradual desalination of their territory. This feat was made possible through the same mechanics: dikes and causeways. Large barriers of raised soil would isolate parts of south Lake Texcoco so as to capitalize on the flowing freshwater streams from the springs surrounding the lake from its west. With time, the quantity of freshwater within the newly-built dike system would dilute the saline water out, thus making it appropriate for the same chinampa system to be implemented.

Relying on subtle environmental conditions (water flows and elevations), the Aztecs were able to engineer solutions that would put to shame a lot of contemporary engineers (indeed the urbanization that the Spanish underwent on the territory after conquering Tenochtitlan is miles away from the ‘smoothness’ of the one the Aztecs employed) that rely solely on mechanical and external manipulation of geographical conditions. In the case of the Aztecs, unique conditions and circumstances were not to be entirely circumvented, but to live with and to be used to lead to agriculture and engineering innovations.

The second act of this spectacular feat of urbanization was a complete system of mobility and freshwater distribution for drinking purposes. Having secured water for crop cultivation, thus being 16

Recently, the Public Space Authority of Mexico City has finally recognised that issues as cycling flooding and water shortage are some of the most challenging vulnerabilities of this once-in-a -lake city (Holland, 2018). The unique geological characteristics of the basin where Mexico City is located and a rich and also shortsighted history of water management of course, have been the drivers of this feat.

The ancient civilization of the Aztecs was able to understand and work with the geological conditions of the Basin of Mexico. The magnificence of the ancient settlement with its network of canals and chinampas, was the reason why the Spanish called this prehispanic city the Venice of the New World. Being an island in the middle of one of the five ancient lakes, its dependency on the waterways for their infrastructure and food supplying was also, ironically, the reason of its fallout when the Spanish blocked these ways.

By the time of the Conquer, it was not only Tenochtitlan who was settled in the Basin but many more civilizations that paid tribute to the Aztecs. When one hears the name zócalo in Mexico City, one can be sure, an ancient town used to be located in the same spot as where the new Spanish-inherited plaza lies now. However, plaza lies now. However, due to Conquerors' city planning, most of the heritage of ancient times is gone, along with its waterways, and the remains are mainly colonial.

Inevitably, one of the other remains of the ancient times is the hydrogeology of the valley. Before the ancient civilizations would inhabit this area, the basin where

atlantis they settled did not even exist. Volcanic activity in the area led to the formation of the valley and with that the retention of the water that would before be flowing to the ocean (Burns, 2009). Organic matter and clay were deposited in the lowest layer of the ground allowing the water to stay in the surface. Just as in the Netherlands, when this layer does not have sufficient water, it has a tendency to become compacted and form cracks that show all the way up to the surface. Throughout time, infrastructural projects that by themselves are engineering masterpieces, have also led to the increasing subsidence of the valley.

The Offensive, Manipulative and Adaptive Manipulative stages of F. Hooimeijer's water management history study (Hooimeijer, 2011) can be identified easily in the context of Mexico as well. In 1607, the Huehuetoca tunnel started four centuries of water drainage with the aim of providing urban land instead of water bodies. Further on, two more tunnels and a deep-underground sewage system, which still function and are insufficient today, were built to carry out the black waters from the new sewered and drained city.

The rapid urbanization of the city after the Industrial Revolution arrived to Mexico also led to the piping of many of the natural waterways of the basin for sanitation reasons and to give more space for vehicle lanes. During the last century, in order to provide the citizens with clean water, groundwater has been extracted to be treated and distributed as well. So while surface, rain and blackwater was pumped out to the Basin of Tula and groundwater extracted for urban usage, clean water was being brought from the basin of Lerma basin and Cutzamala to be fed into the water table again (Burns, 2009).

Unfortunately, and actually quite logically, as a turnout of events, the incoming water barely made it to the underground but instead had to be used as provision for the increasing population.

With an expected population of 36 million inhabitants by 2030, Mexico City has already been preparing during the last years to bring water from other two nearby basins while hopeful architects, urban planners, ecology scientists and engineers have been working together in order to come up with strategies to diverge the water management measures to more sustainable and resilient

ones. The result: to bring back the legacy of the once-buried Mexico's pre-Hispanic civilizations.

The recent interest of the Public Space Authority of Mexico City in the water management of its city brings back the optimism that once was lost to some of these hopeful dreamers. The renowned Mexican architects Alberto Kalach and late Tedoro González de León, inspired by Dr. Nabor Carillo, envisioned the return of the Lakeside City, one ambitious, idealistic and yet well-grounded urban project back in the 90’s (Bose, 2016). Carillo was one of the pioneering Mexican engineers to attempt to save what was left of the Texcoco Lake much earlier in 1966. His attempts, which did not flourish much while he lived, got to sneak into the aforementioned architects’ project. However, being ambitious and idealistic in Mexico does not always go together with long-term planning and the need of big investment sums, especially if those sums are destined to neglected areas in the city. The most neglected areas in Mexico City correspond to those ones with the biggest risk of flooding, subsidence and droughts. In spite of the good will, good reasoning and good expectations

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of the project, the Lakeside City project hasn't been able to leave the paper pages yet. Authorities have become very much interested in the proposals that these hopeful dreamers and many more are bringing to the table. Even more, they have started to believe that combining water management with public spaces could be the way to get to having a more resilient city. In the frame of 100 Resilient Cities goals, the city of Mexico, through the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) has also reached out to Deltares to jointly produce a catalogue of watersensitive options that could be used in the public space (Deltares, 2018).

Parallelly, the project La Quebradora, presented by the same university, which just won the LafargeHolcim Awards (which is one of the most significant sustainable design competition all over the globe) of the present year, began its construction in 2017 (Redacción Obras, 2017). This means the investment of 250 million Mexican pesos of public funding in Iztapalapa (Hernández, 2017), by far one of the most disregarded neighborhoods in the city. Perhaps it is time for Kalach to recover his optimism now.

Could it be the beginning of the return to Mexico City’s ancient roots? •

D.C., USA: National Academies Press.

Raffestin, C. (2012). Space, Territory, and territoriality.

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 121-141.

Holland. (2018). Sponge city: De Urbanisten and Deltares develop adaptation approach for Mexico City. Retrieved on May 20, 2018 from Holland: https://www.dutchwatersector.com/ news-events/news/29613-sponge-city-de-urbanisten-anddeltares-develop-adaptation-approach-for-mexico.html Burns, E. (2009). Repensar la Cuenca: La Gestión de Ciclos de Agua en el Valle de México. Retrieved on May 16, 2019 from AGUA.org.mx: https://agua.org.mx/wp-content/ uploads/2009/05/Repensar-la-cuenca-La-gestion-de-ciclosdel-agua-en-el-Valle-de-Mexico.pdf Hooimeijer, F. (2011). The Tradition of Making Polder Cities.

TU Delft, p. 11-14 Redacción Obras. (2017). Parque Hídrico La Quebradora triunfa en los LafargeHolcim Awards. Retrieved on May 16, 2018 from ObrasWeb: http://obrasweb.mx/ arquitectura/2017/10/09/parque-hidrico-la-quebradoratriunfa-en-los-lafargeholcim-awards Hernández, L. (2017). Inicia construcción de parque hídrico en Iztapalapa. Retrieved on May 19, 2018 from Excelsior: http://www.excelsior.com.mx/ comunidad/2017/02/10/1145383 Bose, M. (2016). Meet the architect who wants to return Mexico City to its ancient lakes. Retrieved on May 19, 2018 fromThe Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/ cities/2015/nov/13/alberto-kalach-return-mexico-cityancient-lakes Deltares. (2018). Adaptation Approach for a Water-Sensitive Mexico City. Retrieved on May 19, 2019 from Deltares: https://www.deltares.nl/en/news/adaptation-approach-for-awater-sensitive-mexico-city/

1. Diagram of Lake Texcoco and the various settlements around (with orange the most prominent settlements). Source - Authors 2. Diagram of Tenochitlan (with orange the connections with the mainland, with blue the maritime and water channels, with black the dike isolating the island from the rest of the Lake Texcoco). source - Authors 3. Subdivided housing. Source - Author 4. Timeline of the extension urban sprawl and the reduction of the superficial water. source - Authors 5. La Quebradora project in Iztapalapa, one of the most neglected areas in terms of public space and urban infrastructure (by LA Network). Source - LA Network (2017).

Hidropuntura urbana para Iztapalapa en la Ciudad de México (Premio Oro). Retrieved on May 24, 2018 from LA NETWORK: http:// la.network/hidropuntura-urbana-iztapalapala-ciudad-mexico-premio-oro/

References Adams, R. E. (214). Natura Urbans, Natura Urbanata: ecological urbanism, circulation, and the immunization of nature. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 12-29.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. (2018, April 191). Mexico City. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA source: www.britannica.com Katsikis, N. (2014, April). On the Geographical Organization of World Urbanization. MONU(20).

Mexico History. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2018, from MexicoCity.Com, CITY GUIDES AND BOOKINGS: https://www.mexicocity.com/v/history/ Mundy, B. (2012, March 24). Water and the Aztec Landscape in the Valley of Mexico. Retrieved May 25, 2018, from Mexicoloro: http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/waterin-valley-of-mexico National Research Council Staff. (1995). Mexico City's Water Supply: Improving the Outlook for Sustainability. Washington,

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“The road is not the way” Considering the Open City, a laboratory of alternative practice

by

Michael de Beer

Spatial Practitioner and Editor

A mystical spirit shrouds the Open City. On the Pacific Coast, in a remote dune landscape, the experiment of several decades continues to draw global attention. Envisaged and built by the faculty of architecture of the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile, the project has no end. It is a laboratory that is iteratively challenging the core of architectural proposition –how, why and who does architecture form?

“The road is not the way” (Amereida,1967), the last line of the poem that saw the inception of the school, the Open City and an alternative pedagogy is perhaps the most poignant - an affirmation that calls for probing the unknown. It is this position which situates the Open City as theoretical experiment made physical, as a methodology which is constantly unfolding, as a collaborative exercise with no leader. In the words of Oscar Castro (2017), “because the unseen horizon is unknown the methodology is not projected and is speculative.”

The transformation of the school, by notable proponents such as Alberto Cruz, positions three underpinning practices that form a philosophy – the poetic act, the Ronda, and a way of life.

The poetic Act, in stark contrast to architectural practice world wide, in itself question the origin of architecture. In standard practice the profession relies on a brief, mechanisms of analysis, guidance of policies and the list goes on. It is not that the School rejects these mechanisms and tools but rather positions that an idea - an architecture – is born of our imagination. If this is true, then the poetic act is a means to explore the imaginative possibilities beyond what is known.

The result has been that embedded in the

Open City and the school are poets, integrated as being fundamental to the architectural process. This process is performed through a methodology of acts of which poetry is part of but not exclusively, as an act is a process of doing. Thus, the school engages in simple activities that draw out new possibilities and an alternative understanding of space. As an example, a group of people, intending to intervene in a space could each hold a piece of rope. The rules being that one could only walk 5 paces but if one would cross another rope one could walk 5 more – and a plan is born (or at least a logic of space that can give birth to something else).

The Ronda, inspired by a circle in which children play, speaks of the collective – the common act of man and the possibility to do something amongst many. Underpinning the act of the collective, Cruz speaks of the body of architecture as being an on-going collaborative pursuit. A temporal student population who come and go; and a more permanent residency of professors, poets, engineers, biologists and families inhabit the Open City. The Ronda’s manifestation in the Open City and the school has been that there is no authorship of ideas but a continuous appropriation. Those who reside in this space give form to it through a collaborative process of an evolving architecture. Ronda’s are either 19

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atlantis formal as a meeting or informal as a discussion over food. Highlighting the continuous evolution of thought and projects, such as the originally envisaged library being transformed into the house for the poet Morales halfway through its construction.

Architecture as a way of life - to live, work and study – is a third critical position.

The notion is that architecture emerges through daily practice and from ones frame of reference. Although the Open City holds various traditions that have evolved over the years, by no means is it a monastery, but rather a cultural islet that has self-manifested. It draws together the scientific tradition of observation and experimentation with art and life – enacting the methodology as a creative act.

From those annual events that involve the entire school, or the daily affairs such as celebrating a birthday to the development of colloquial hand gestures as an informal language that has been passed on through the generations of students, the Open City is the manifestation of way of life. It transcends the practice of studying and creating architecture and advocates for complete immersion.

The second element to this is that of the travesia, directly translated as crossing, it’s intent is to learn from others and broaden ones frame of reference. As a unique endeavour- the school sends students to work in a hands on manner in various situations across the continent. From the urban to the rural, the travesia is an exploration imbedded in learning from traditions and practices of South America as a continent (“the interior ocean”) –it is mechanism for self-exploration and examination.

not follies – but an insightful exploration of mans occupation of the world. There are no failures as the project is never complete. As Cruz aptly states, “failure creates the frame for creation”. Embedded in the work of this incalculable collective, there is another goal, one which seeks to find it’s own path instead of that advocated by the Global North – it seeks to rediscover the South America and in so doing reconstructing the traditions of practice. •

Searching for the continent

Oscar Castro, Tools of the unknown, tools of the architect conference, TUDelft 2017. http://amereida.cl/Amereida

The philosophy of the Amereida, the University and Open City, is ultimately a scientific one, fundamentally routed in observation and experimentation. Although the practices it involves itself in and advocates for undoubtedly raises the ire of some to be discarded as ‘alternative’, the Open City is a laboratory that is intended to challenge convention. The focus on the Act as a study and exploration of praxeology (the science of human action), has created unprecedented forms and spatial responses that litter the dune landscape. These are

References

1. Godofredo Lommi & Alberto Cruz with students during a poetic act, 1964 festivalarchitecttura.it 2. South Amerca mapping - the Amereida 3. TUDelft, Methods & Analysis Msc3 students construction in the Open City 4. The Act - Vtape.org 5.Top view of the guest house 6. Open City Inaugural Act. Ritoque, Región de Valparaíso, Chile, 1971.- ead.pucv.cl

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The Opportunity in Vacancy by

Amanda Bryant

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

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1. Vacancy Map: This map highlights vacant space located within the Central Business District of Downtown Louisville with a red infill.

This vacant space is almost exclusively parking lots.

Vacancy Map Inspiration: http://www.citycollaborative. org/#projectsrecent-1

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The city of Louisville, Kentucky offers an interesting case study as a midsize U.S. city that maintains urban characteristics that reflect other cities across the country. It maintains a strong urban grid, has a large wealth and racial disparity, an interstate that cuts through downtown and the waterfront, maintains not one but two ring roads, a variety of suburbs, and a pedestrian fatality rate that is higher than national average. At present Louisville is challenged: developers continue to install parking garages as customer assurance, it is difficult to generate an interest in investment, many areas have abandoned or boarded up buildings, and there is little street activity. Discussions with the municipality revealed that today there is double the amount of parking as the population, many areas with large groups of poverty, and the government is directly restricted to the interest of developers, even at the expense of the benefit of inhabitants. However, the city is attempting to make strides towards urban revitalization downtown.

This includes no longer mandating parking, introducing rapid bus transit, and has proposals of pedestrian focused projects. But, the city accepts the notion that cars will remain the dominant mode of transport, does not advocate for public space, and does not work to re-attract the suburban population to the city.

Introduction

The Cyclical Relationship

Today, the vast majority of North Americans use a car for nearly every activity, there are more cars than drivers in the U.S., and the number of families that own three or more cars has quadrupled since the 1970s. In the suburbs, homes are larger than ever before, while the number of people living in them is smaller then ever before. Today, the majority of the country lives at a density too low to support public mass transit. Urban sprawl continues to slowly devour the natural landscape. It is replaced with the same repetition of homes, town homes, department stores, shopping malls and big brand grocery stores. Cities are left with entire blocks that are parking lots and parking structures, interstates that cut through the middle of the city grid, and abandoned or vacant inner city neighborhoods. More importantly, there is a false perception that accessibility is directly connected to access to an automobile. Many North Americans today cannot comprehend what life is like without a car and as a result, many are hesitant to even consider giving up their car. The urban form of U.S. cities has suffered at the hands of automobile dependence, but because cities offer economic prosperity and stability, it is the critical starting point for countering the effects of automobile dependence.

Automobile dependence and suburban sprawl have a cyclical compounding relationship. Cars require a large amount of space and infrastructure in order to be an effective means of transit. This prompts constructing the urban environment at a lower density, which generates suburban sprawl. The low-density development then requires a car for ease of access, which generates dependence. In this way automobile dependence and suburban sprawl build upon each other. This relationship has a series of primary spatial effects that include the separation of functions, large amounts of infrastructure and traffic, large amounts of parking and vacancy, a reduction of public space, branded architecture, and impacts on the natural environment. The spatial effects have an influence on the socioeconomic context of the city and suburb. Health is affected as automobile dependence reinforces a sedentary lifestyle, increases stress levels through vehicle operation, and risks death or injury through an accident.

Communities are affected as automobile dependence limits personal interaction, isolates groups of people, and removes activity from the street. Economics is affected as automobile dependence limits tax revenue per acre, requires expensive 22

supportive infrastructure, and is a financial burden to individual owners and families.

Definition Criteria But, automobile dependence is more severe than the mere use of a car. It instead, refers to the necessity of an automobile for accessibility within nearly all aspects of daily life. Todd Litman defines automobile dependence in terms of three criteria: 1) reduced transport alternatives, 2) automobile oriented land use patterns, and 3) high levels per capita automobile travel. These criteria together emphasize a need of automobile usage as a result of lack of any viable alternative rather than an automobile functioning as one of a variety of mobility choices. Using the criteria annotated by Litman, each of the three criteria of automobile dependence has a resulting indirect influence on the driver, passenger or pedestrian. Reduced transport alternatives results in isolation or low accessibility. High levels per capita automobile travel results in an excessive amount of time spent in a vehicle. And automobile oriented land use patterns results in uncomfortable or useless public space. By focusing on providing a variety of transit options inhabitants are able to make a choice of transit based on their destination and task. This breaks the cycle

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of dependence and sprawl, alleviates the resulting effects on inhabitants, and the resulting spatial and socioeconomic effects.

How to Break the Cycle

continue to commute from the suburb, the cycle of dependence and sprawl is never truly broken and inhabitants that do not live within the city do not have an incentive to support and advocate for change.

There are currently proposals for the Louisville to introduce a light rail system and remove the interstate that obstructs the waterfront, but the reality is that this is not the place to start. There is not a density high enough in the city to support mass transit, the surrounding everyday public space does not invite people to interact and stay within the city, there is a very low inhabitant interest, and a severe lack of funding. In order to effectively make this transition, first automobile dependence must be acknowledged as a problem by the municipality and addressed across city, district, and neighborhood scales. This requires a large-scale long-term strategy plan to alleviate the existing challenges of dependence, while simultaneously making the transition to other means and modes of transportation. At the same time this also means advocating and designing for public space and occupancy within the city at the neighborhood level. In order to get inhabitants to get out of their car, you must first design a public space that is attractive to pedestrians, cyclists and other public transit commuters. By creating public spaces that are inviting for inhabitants and void of the effects of automobile dependence, the perception can begin to change. In combination with this, it is critical to make the city a viable place to live and stay. If inhabitants

This design needs to be supported by removing the preferential treatment cars are currently given on city streets. This includes the high speed cars are allowed to travel, the amount of space allocated to cars, the amount of parking provided downtown, and the right of way cars have over pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit.

In combination with reprioritizing city streets, it is important to provide viable transit alternatives. For example, as car lanes are reduced, adequate bike lanes and sidewalks should be provided. Next, the functional use and building appearance of the street context needs to adapt to the different scale and transportation types.

This means placing a higher importance on the appearance of the faรงade, infilling parking lots, and activating frontages with mixed uses. With all of this in mind you can then begin to design at a density for public transit. This requires attracting current suburban inhabitants as well as new residents. This means it is important to understand the desires and challenges of the existing suburban context and consider this when creating design proposals. Some key examples of this are providing green space, ownership opportunities, a variety of living options, community stability and access to amenities and necessities. The goal of attracting suburban inhabitants puts the focus back on allocating for viable

2. 9th Street Criteria Analysis Exploded Axon: This axonometric drawing annotates the three criteria used to study the effects of automobile dependence. Criteria 1 reviews the transportation options, Criteria 2 reviews the function, and Criteria 3 reviews major public spaces and facade strength.

3. Key Events and Policies Time Line: This timeline briefly summarizes the key events and policies that influenced automobile dependence and the current context of U.S. Cities.

Sources - Time Line Images: (in order) -digital.library.louisville.edu/ -pinsdaddy.com -collectorsweekly.com/articles/murdermachines/ -lewisnvillegas.wordpress.com -lojic.maps.arcgis.com -ket.org/education/resources/living-storycivil-rights-movement-kentucky/ -eu.courier-journal.com/story/news/history/ river-city-retro/2014/10/30/celebratinghistory-downtown/18205947/

1930s - 40s: Modernism 1930s: Motordom Movement 1920s: High Density Industrial Cities

1956: Federal Highway Act

1960s: Civil Rights Movement 1934: Federal Housing Act

1930s: discriminatory Policies

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Criteria 1 Criteria CBD Neighborhood Base Map 2

Criteria 3

Conclusion

Legend Parking Lot Ohio River Above Ground Parking Structure Buildings Below ParkingGround Parking Structure Interstate Sidewalk Tree Canopy Interstate Direction Road Direction Street Interstate Route Pedestrian StreetShare Center Lines Bike Station Bus Stop

Legend Sidewalks Parks Public Space Strong Facade Average Facade Poor Facade No Facade

Legend New Connections Focus Area

Legend Week Days Office Civic Bank Education Weekend and Evenings Tourist Residential Constant (Minimal) Fine Arts Venue Food Commercial Services Vacant Mixed Use

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0 KM N 0 KM 0 mi0 mi

public spaces that are void of cars. This means designing pedestrian and cycling only streets, squares and parks. The critical challenge here is to make these changes without immediately interrupting traffic flow and ensuring inhabitants do not feel forced into giving up their cars.

The goal instead is to demonstrate the benefits of a variety of transit choices and allow inhabitants to make the choice for themselves.

Three Criteria Analysis and Design In order to generate a design that moves cities away from automobile dependence, analysis must be implemented that detects

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50 M 50 M

100 100 M M

200 200 M M

300 300 M M

164 164 ft ft

328 328 ft ft

656 656 ft ft

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the criteria that defines dependence.

Therefore the definition criteria are used to define layers of analysis that locate areas of opportunity within the existing context of a neighborhood. Criteria 1: reduced transport alternatives, becomes an analysis layer that observes transportation options, street type, infrastructure space, and connectivity. Criteria 2: automobile oriented land use patterns, becomes an analysis layer that observes functions of the area, districts and zoning, and time of activity. Criteria 3: high levels per capita automobile travel, becomes an analysis layer that observes major public spaces, parks, unique monuments, and pedestrian strength of the faรงade. This analysis can be

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Renovated Facades

Pedestrian and cycling Network

Store Frontage or terrace Residential Home Residential apt or condo Mixed Use

Commercial and retail

4. 9th Street Criteria Analysis Conclusion Map: This conclusion map combines the three criteria analysis and highlights the starting point for the design proposal as well as the possibilities for new connections.

Square or park Office

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applied on multiple scales. To contextualize the analysis, it was applied to the 9th St. neighborhood located within the Central Business District in Louisville. From these maps, you can then locate opportunities for urban design interventions within the existing context. At present, there are several vacant lots, parking structures, and underutilized facades. The proposal integrates the elements discussed previously through proposing a secondary street network only for pedestrians and cyclists. At the same time, this network subdivides the existing blocks into walkable proportions, existing facades are activated with new frontages, small public spaces are located along the new network and the new blocks are completed with a variety of housing options and supporting amenities.

Conclusion This design will begin to change the perceptions of car use, public space, and livability within the city; this is the beginning step towards reducing automobile dependence. The value and success in this design is rooted in the fact that the design does not immediately interrupt the existing traffic flow of the city while still introducing inhabitants to an urban environment that functions without the use of a car. The integrated public spaces are isolated from the larger streets allowing for a safe active public space that is inviting

and interesting to stay and prioritizes people over automobiles. This design also provides advantages to the developers and the municipality. The subdivision of the blocks makes for easier investment, the isolated pedestrian and cycling network provides inhabitants protection, the completed blocks allows for maximized tax revenue, ownership opportunities downtown ensures community stability, and reduced car usage improves the local air quality.

There is of course also some flexibility in this design and can be considered in the context of the entire district or city. The area of 9th St. doesn’t necessarily need to be the first neighborhood to be built, but can be implemented in other areas first if that is easier. In addition, the completion of multiple projects like this will begin to create a secondary pedestrian and cycling network that could connect entire districts.

With activity and inhabitants back within the city it is then possible to generate, support and follow through with larger scale urban interventions such as removing the interstate along the water and implementing proposals for public transit. • References Advanced Planning Department, L. K. 2016. MOVE Louisville. In: ADVANCED PLANNING DEPARTMENT, L. K. (ed.).

Advanced Planning Department, L. K. 2017. Opinions and Functions of Car Usage in Louisville. In: BRYANT, A. (ed.).

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5. 9th Street Design Proposal: This perspective annotates the key design elements in terms of program, public space and connectivity.

Chakrabrti, V. 2013. A Country of Cities, A Manifesto for an Urban America, New York, NY, Metropolis Books.

Duany, A., Plater-Zyberk, E. & Speck, J. 2000. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, New York, the United States of America, North Point Press.

Duany, A., Speck, J. & Lydon, M. 2010. The Smart Growth Manual, United States of America, McGraw Hill.

Group, S. 2012. Vision Louisville. In: ADVANCED PLANNING DEPARTMENT, L. K. (ed.).

Litman, T. 2002. The Costs of Automobile Dependency and the Benefits of Balanced Transportation [Online]. www.vtpi. org: Victoria Transport Policy Institute. [Accessed 21-10 2017].

Montgomery, C. 2013. Happy City, Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, New York, NY, Farrar, Stratus and Giroux.

Owen, D. 2009. Green Metropolis, Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, New York, NY, Riverhead books, Penguin Group.

Rusk, D. 1995. Cities Without Suburbs, Washington D.C., The United States of America, The Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Rusk, D. 1999. Inside Game Outside Game; Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America, Washington D.C., The United States, Brookings Institution Press.

Santos, A., Mcguckin, N., Nakamoto, H. Y., Gray, D. & Liss, S. 2011. Summary of Travel Trends: 2009 National Household Travel Survey. In: TRANSPORTATION, U. S. D. O. (ed.). Washington D.C., United States: Federal Highway Administration.

Squires, G. D. 2002. Urban Sprawl and the Uneven Development of Metropolitan America. In: SQUIRES, G. D. (ed.) Urban Sprawl. Washington D.C., The United States: Urban Istitute Press.

Macao

To El Seibo Arena Gorda

El Cortecito

Bávaro

Bávaro Lagoon Cabeza de Toro Eastern Touristic Boulevard

Mata Punta Lagoon

Punta Cana International Airport

Blanca

Between All-Inclusive And Ecotourism In The Dominican Coast

Punta Cana

by

Alejandra Aracelis Quezada Moreno

KEY Beach Lagoon Roads Highway All-Inclusive Strip Urban Districs Informal Settlements Wetlands/Mangroves

Juanillo

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Tourism in the Caribbean only represents 2,3% of the global tourism sector; yet for the region it is the main economic activity.

In the Caribbean, the Mexican coast and the Dominican Republic lead the allinclusive modality1, the latter having 85% of rooms of this type. The Dominican Republic, for instance, found in all-inclusive tourism an escape from the sugar cane crisis and the competitive prices of the textile industries offered by South East Asia; all indicative of tourism as the wiser bet for the Spanish-speaking half of the island Hispaniola2 (Supersudaca, 2012). According to WWTC (2018), this economic sector contributes, directly and indirectly, with to 17,2% of the Dominican GDP and creates 15,9% of the total employment.

Thus, undoubtedly the sector is an important force of the Dominican economy.

However, the vertical logic of the allinclusive typology (where mega-operators monopolise travel agents, air transport, excursions, hotels and rental car service) reduces local revenue: for every tourist staying on such type of accommodation, only 0,25 € cents stay in the Caribbean (Supersudaca, 2008) and in the Dominican case, local spending of tourists only reaches 53 €/tourist (Analytica, 2017).

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MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

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Strips of synthetic paradise Currently, Bávaro is the most popular destination for international tourists, yet the touristic development of Punta Cana-Bávaro-Macao has been informal since its origin and the lack of ordinance has enabled extreme forms of informal development. In the 70’s, the aesthetic qualities of virgin beaches, the low land value and lax regulations, enabled the development of all-inclusive hotels that later grew into resorts complexes. Now, they require vast land, logistics infrastructure and low wage labour without adhering to any regulations. Before the explosion of the industry, dunes, mangroves and wetlands populated the landscape but the desire of proximity to turquoise beaches and plane white sand surfaces motivated the flattening of the dunes, the cutting of mangroves and the draining of ponds.

These whereas replaced with built facilities and road infrastructure for mass tourism. It also stimulated the instalment of informal structures, real-estate projects and informal settlements of all workers that support the industry (Mejía, 2018).

These complexes are allocated along the coast and their positioning creates an “allinclusive strip” (Fig. 1). This layout excels

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under minimal ordinance and ignores ecological conditions such as wetlands to favour access to the beach. Moreover, the function of the strip only responds to the tourism industry. The territory then behaves as a resort suburbia, from the airport to the hotel and back to the airport, which inhibits local interaction with tourists and subsequently, local revenue.

This spatial rationale, which includes the absence of mobility infrastructure, limits the exploration capacity of visitors; tourists do not – also, advised not to – leave the facility unless chaperoned on a tour excursion. The all-inclusive habitat is standardised and “self-sufficient” in terms of program. Its spatial organisation strictly follows the resort typology, meaning low-density and inward configuration that only faces the beach, without contact with the rest of the territory, which reinforces socio-spatial fragmentation. Despite the disadvantages of this typology, most tourists only engage in alternative modes of tourism after experiencing the place from the safety of the resort (Supersudaca, 2012).

Coastal Crisis The absence of spatial planning mechanisms for tourism infrastructures and the weak enforcement of the existing

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norms3, the drying of lagoons, the destruction of dunes and coastal vegetation, the extraction of sand for construction and beach restoration are the main issues affecting the Dominican coast (MITURDPP, 2012).

The efforts of resort chains to create a paradisian destination have critical effects on the coastal environment. Many touristic spatial interventions occupy the 60 m buffer zone, which aggravates their impact, since they disrupt the vegetation and cause sand loss by runoff. The study of Gladys Rosado, who investigated climate change and anthropogenic influences on this littoral system, demonstrate the erosion on the beaches from Punta Cana to Uvero Alto: Bávaro has exhausted its absorption capacity. She argues these beaches are extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Irma and María (the strongest hurricanes in 2017) contributed with the further erosion of the coast (Fig. 3). In total, 208 meters were lost just from the measurement of 6 beaches.

Even now, with tangible examples of the coastal crisis, all-inclusive resorts insist on extenting white sand. Therefore, they are constantly flattening sand talus or inserting sand geotubes on water to reduce the effects of strong waves and prevent further erosion, even thoug, these tubes demand the subtraction of sand from nearby similar beaches (Mejia, 2018).

Instagram local tourism Blaming international tourism is appealing because it exempts from individual guilt; the Dominican coastal crisis is not only the result of all-inclusive tourism. Similarly, local touristic practices are responsible for this environmental degradation. In the last five years, encouraged by social-media, many local travel agents are creating local excursions for day or multiday camping trips. The excursions are supported by apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp (Fig. 2) as a means of subscription, communication and booking. These initiatives are at the forefront of Dominican ecotourism, since they promote alternatives to the nonaffordable and all-inclusive modalities, inform about environmental services

and share traditional efforts for nature protection while at the same time, forming connections with the rich biodiversity of the country and the island.

These trips go beyond the IG post.

Personally, as a participant of these excursions, I had the opportunity to visit uncommon destinations, gaining new awareness of the diverse natural assets and their socio-cultural potentialities. At the same time, I have observed the deficiencies of the emerging practice: new visitors are pressuring coastal ecosystems as well. Some of these groups follow basic and sometimes naive and irresponsible assumptions of behaviour in natural settings.

As a result of insufficient beach regulations for management and protection, most accessible beaches, without all-inclusive resorts, are also showing negative anthropogenic effects. For instance, dunes, coastal vegetation and wildlife nesting habitats are often destroyed due to the appropriation of sand surfaces as areas for transit and parking of motorised vehicles or 4x4 buggy excursions (MITUR-DPP, 2012).

Alternatives for Dominican Sun, Sand and Sea Tourism The survival of Dominican tourism depends on providing multiple options for visitors. Ecotourism is growing as the most popular alternative yet it does not exclude the coast. Fortunately, the diverse Dominican landscape proves the many societal, economic and environmental value of diversifying the practice. However, the country does not posses a planning instrument for ecotourism and given the potentialities, is critical to alert its urgency.

According to Orgaz Agüera (2014) this requires the definition of spatial norms for ecotourism (coast or mountain) that incorporate program and land use spatial frameworks in protected areas, behavioural norms and sanctions for stakeholders.

Ecotourism and all-inclusive mass tourism are interdependent, one provides the visitors and the other, if done properly, guaranties the continuation of the economic practice.

Diversifying also implies multifunctional strips. Just as urban hotels provide functions 28

1. Bávaro’s all-inclusive resort strip: Road and transport infrastructure built to accommodate tourism industry and mono-functional program in combination with spatial fragmentation perpetuates the logic of the strip.

2. Screenshots of Instagram posts advertising ecotourism day tours and camping excursion trips.

3. Comparison of water levels in 2009 and 2017 in Bávaro.

for visitors and inhabitants, reimagining the strips as linear ecosystems for the natural, the touristic and the urban, could ensure resilient built environments on the Dominican coast: diminish spatial fragmentation, bolster alternative tourism modalities and navigate the changing dynamics of the littoral system. • Notes 1. The verticalisation of the all-inclusive tourism typology entails foreign mega operators who monopolise vacation tour packages. Travel agencies, airlines, car rental, excursions, hotel chains and cruises are arranged by these agencies granting dimishing the agency of local tourism operators (Supersudaca, 2012).

2. Hispaniola is an insular territory in the Caribbean occupied

by Haiti [27.750km2] and Dominican Republic [48.310 km2].

3. Dominican Republic occupies the spot 109/136 in “Enforcement of environmental regulations”, according to WEC (2017).

References Orgaz Agüera,F. (2014). Análisis Del Ecoturismo En República Dominicana: Desarrollo Sostenible. El Caso Del Monumento Natural Saltos De La Damajagua (Doctoral dissertation, Universidad de Sevilla). Retrieved from: https:// idus.us.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11441/56829/2014orga zanali.pdf ?sequence=1 Analytica (2017). Turismo dominicano, un mar de oportunidades. Retrieved from: https://issuu.com/ popularenlinea/docs/estudio_sobre_el_sector_hbr_-_asona Mejía, M. (2018). Tourist Paradise Losing Battle Against Coastal Erosion And Hotel Development Frenzy. Retrieved from: http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2018/04/punta-canatourist-paradise-loosing-battle-against-coastal-erosion-and-hoteldevelopment-frenzy/ Ministerio de Turismo – Departamento de Planificación y Proyectos (2015). Análisis, clasifcación y propuestas de gestión geoambiental de las playas de República Dominicana. Retrieved from: Supersudaca (2012). Turismos Caribe. https://issuu.com/ supersudaca/docs/supersudaca_suct_4issuu Supersudaca (2008). Al Caribe! Retrieved from: https:// es.slideshare.net/supersudaca/al-caribe-ppt-beta-presentation World Economic Forum (2017). The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017. Retrieved from: http://www3. weforum.org/docs/WEF_TTCR_2017_web_0401.pdf World Travel & Tourism Council (2018). The economic impact of travel and tourism. Retrieved from: https://www. wttc.org/-/media/files/reports/economic-impact-research/ regions-2018/world2018.pdf

The Reclamation of the

Carioca Landscape by

Juliana A. O. Ahmed

Architect and Urban Designer

Despite being the consolidated image of Rio de Janeiro, the coast is only a thin line that at times penetrates the wide geography of the State, where most of the population lives. Less than 34% of the inhabitants have sewage treatment, and the larger portion of clean beaches are located in the South and West areas, making the access geographically ponderous for inhabitants of other areas of the city. Following this line, the logistic infrastructure - far from being exemplary - seeks to fill this gap.

In 2013, after the increase in robberies on the Southern zone beaches - the richest area of the city - there was an escalation in police repression in the transportation

facilities connecting them to the Northern area, making access even more difficult.

The police act, then, as a regulator entity, filtering who can follow to the final destination by retaining others who, by their judgement, cannot. The idea of the public space as a democratic space is then demystified, making explicit that there is differentiation between those who can and those who cannot be there and revealing that being on the beach as a political act.

"To attack the body is to attack the right itself, since the right is precisely what is exercised by the body on the street.

Although the bodies on the street are vocalizing their opposition to the legitimacy of the state, they are also, by virtue of occupying that space, repeating that occupation of space, and persisting in that occupation of space, posing the challenge in corporeal terms, which means that when the body “speaks” politically, it is not only in vocal or written language."1

The body then, prevented from acting, looks for a place to make itself present.

Spaces such as the Guanabara Bay, a polluted water system in the central area of the city, become a subversion of the beach space, a place where there is a freedom to act without repression. Abandoned in its state, but free for appropriation, it becomes the perfect scenery for the reclamation of the carioca landscape. The Bay itself has an area of approximately 380km2 and is historical because it is the birthplace of the city of Rio de Janeiro, however it is in a state of complete degradation. It is inevitable not to mention the Olympic commitments, that were set to generate a public space "improvement". The Bay should have been decontaminated by 2016 and Praça Mauá, which is located at its banks in the city centre, endured a nostalgic restoration, to the image of XX century’s Rio de Janeiro when ‘Via Perimetral’ a former transport infrastructure that

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"...it is not that bodily action and gesture have to be translated into language, but that both action and gesture signify and speak, as action and claim, and that the one is not finally extricable from the other. (‌) It is, in fact, the right to have rights, not as natural law or metaphysical stipulation, but as the persistence of the body against those forces that seek to monopolize legitimacy." 5 BUTLER, Judith

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atlantis suppressed the square - imploded, with a vague certainty at the time that "In this new urban context, the square somehow regains its protagonist nature once it has returned to the focus of the area’s process of transformation"2. João Masao Kamita, in his article “A nova Praça Mauá – o Rio do espetáculo” questions the role of the architect affirming that the professional was excluded from the Rio de Janeiro’s process of transformation, but that "the architect's discontent is twofold: he is absent from processes he has always claimed to be the foundation of his discipline - the project of the city - and he has difficulty in accepting that he no longer has control over such processes, that are at the mercy of the technicians and politicians now. The crisis is not only in the professional field of architecture, the crisis is mainly the agency of the architect as subject. Unlike public administrators, private agents, politicians, and engineers, who are definitely protagonists (or at worst villains) of the

city's narrative, architectural designers are mere adjuncts, they are at the edge of irrelevance"3. From this point of view it can be said that few are the ones who have a say about the construction of the city. "It is not surprising that the Mauá Square project is devoid of any architectural or urban value, since it is the symbolic materialization of the political and non-democratic project of the new port of Rio de Janeiro, which shares the same qualities."4. The architect sees himself as inert and excluded from the public space like the minorities prevented from making themselves present. The Guanabara Bay constitutes a forgotten, ignored frame of the city, and therefore its intersection with the Porto Maravilha – the result of a consortial urban operation that aimed to revitalize of the Port region in Rio de Janeiro in 2009 - and Praça Mauá makes it the perfect place for the body to claim its place, a collision between the destitution of saying and neglect. And it is the place where a group of young people were

playing and jumping in the contaminated waters with the ‘Museum of Tomorrow’ in the background, while they were being contemplated by audience disconcerted by the spectacle. “The persistence of the body calls that legitimacy into question and does so precisely through a performativity of the body that crosses through language without ever quite being reduced to language"5. In other words, "it is not that bodily action and gesture have to be translated into language, but that both action and gesture signify and speak, as action and claim, and that the one is not finally extricable from the other. Where the legitimacy of the state is brought into question precisely by that way of appearing in public, the body itself exercises a right that is no right; (…)

It is, in fact, the right to have rights, not as natural law or metaphysical stipulation, but as the persistence of the body against those forces that seek to monopolize legitimacy.

A persistence that requires the mobilization of space, and that cannot happen without

atlantis a set of material supports mobilized and mobilizing.”6 The body, therefore, though its action, claims its place. It draws attention not by its aggressiveness, but by the shock of constituting an act of resistance, by subverting a degraded space in a place of leisure, even if unintentionally. Taking the protagonist role off from the Square, the museums and the "architecture", the action “is both bodycentric and mobile, space is projected from the whole body (and not just the eye or the intellect); as well as being an engagement with the architecture, it does not ever assume that architecture is the dominant projector of space, but rather treats it as one projector of space that can be interpolated with another moving projection of space from the body”7 and, in this case, the constructions configure the background of the action, of the space projected by the body, which in its action assumes the power that was withdrawn from

the hands of the architects. The individual makes itself space through his interaction with others, through his exhibitionism and his movements.

Another remarkable shot was taken at Copacabana Beach, in the midst of ‘Reveillon’, by photographer Lucas Landau.

A black kid, watching the fireworks at the most famous New Year’s spectacle in the world. "They have not traveled the 17 kilometers that separate their house from the sand to enjoy the party dressed in white. The 35-year-old mother is a street vendor and that night she went out to sell key rings among the 2.5 million people celebrating New Year's Eve by the beach.

At the beginning of the fireworks, the little one separated from his mother and went to take a dip when he then became absorbed in watching the spectacle of lights in the sea.”8 There was a great deal of discussion about the image, which brought forth speculations on whether the poor and

frightened boy was ignored by the white mass, the stigmatization of black children in Brazil, among others. But that is exactly the point, the fact that the boy was present, spot in a public place, and that this moment generated a discussion. His presence set himself as some sort of resistance, a landmark in a theoretically public place, a space that should be democratic. It is the body claiming the landscape once again.

May the architects and their everlasting authorship discussion take this as an example. •

References 1, 5, 6. BUTLER, Judith. Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street. Sep. 2011. Retrieved from www.eipcp.net 2, 3. KAMITA, João Masao. A nova Praça Mauá. O Rio do espetáculo. Arquitextos, São Paulo, ano 16, n. 187.02, Vitruvius, december 2015. Retrieved from www.vitruvius.com.br 4. KOZLOWSKI, Gabriel. O que restava então à arquitetura e ao urbanismo?. Arquitextos, São Paulo, ano 16, n. 190.07, Vitruvius, march 2016. Retrieved from www.vitruvius.com.br 7. BORDEN, I. (1998) Body Architecture, in: J. Hill (Ed.) Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User, pp.

206. London: Routledge.

8. MARTÍN, Maria. A história por trás do menino negro de Copacabana, El País. January 2018. Retrieved from www.brasil.elpais.com

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1. "Boys jumping in Guanabara Bay becomes a trend in the city's centre" photographer Rafael Moraes. Retrieved from https://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/so-deonda-na-praca-maua-pular-na-baia-deguanabara-vira-febre-entre-os-meninos-docentro-18224894.html 2. "Praça Mauá becomes a meeting point" photographer Rafael Moraes. Retrieved from https://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/so-deonda-na-praca-maua-pular-na-baia-deguanabara-vira-febre-entre-os-meninos-docentro-18224894.html 3. "A boy watches the fireworks at New Year's Eve in Copacabana" photographer Lucas Landau. Retrieved from https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2018/01/02/ politica/1514924485_498274.html

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TIDAL DUNES On a silent busride back while I was receding from one of the most memorable experience I ever had. by

The Open City, Chile.

Michelle Siemerink MSc Architecture TU Delft

.......................n a land where the shape of the landscape was a g ift from the ocean, a shared life exists A life wherein they all agree Where poetry flows along with the wind as where architecture tries to catch it It feels like a privilege to be a part of this, if it was only for three days I do understand now, as it was hard to imagine how it would be like The ocean shifted in different colors during my staying and as the moon fulfilled itself from the other side I fulfill this experience with a different perspective, one I didn’t have before My feet habituate the cold water as I hear my thoughts My footprints create a circle, I only notice when I turn my head towards the ground Must be a great feeling, being left alone in this untouched peace of nature knowing that your place in the Ronda is preserved White waves erase them from the black sand A tear seals my closed eyes, but the catering waves open them and remind me that I should go back It’s hard to say goodbye to this moment, but a small voice within me tells me that this isn’t the last time I will be here, makes my return

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The City of Landmarks

A graduation project fieldtrip to NYC 35

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by

Donald Boeing

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Personally, I have always seen New York City as one of the most intriguing metropolises on earth. Despite not having visited the place for almost 25 years, still most of the city’s landmarks were not unkown to me. Perhaps this is the reason behind New York’s magnetic effect on people with an interest in architecture and urbanism; all landmarks seems to be world famous. The Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Central Station... I think you get my point.

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When I was brainstorming on topics for my MSc Urbanism graduation project in September 2017, the world had to face one of the most destructive. The enormous chaos caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma motivated me to dive into the topic of flood risks and storm surges. This, together with my interest in New York City, resulted in a research on the threats of flood risks and storm surges, caused by hurricanes, in this particular city. However, although New York wasn’t struck by Harvey nor Irma, it had to deal with the exact same problems in 2012

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when hurricane Sandy disabled the entire city for weeks. How to spend my graduation year better than working on a very relevant topic in one of my favorite cities?

After discussing the graduation plan and selecting the most suitable mentors, it was time to start thinking about the best part of the project, the fieldtrip! To visit New York with a clear focus, I decided to plan my visit right after the P2 presentation. The P2 represents the second out of five presentation moments after which the graduation students get an official assessment and a go/no go.

This allowed me to develop my strategy and research goal properly before the visit, but still left for new approaches and additional input that I may discover on site. This only left me with one problem: I would be visiting the city in January and New York in January is, well… cold this time of the year. Since photography is one of my favorite hobbies, I realized I would be spending countless hours outside to capture all the grandeur the city has to offer.

For this reason, I decided not to underestimate the cold and wrapped myself up in an extra insulated winter jacket, thermo pants and snow proof shoes before I stepped into the Icelandair plane. First stop: Reykjavik.

Having a stopover in Iceland was a good way to prepare for New York’s cold. Once I had took off again after struggling to find the boarding area in the middle of a raging blizzard, I was treated with a four-hour long sunset, as the plane made its way to the west, chasing the setting sun.

Since New York City is known for its high housing prices anywhere in the world, staying in an AirBNB in Brooklyn seemed the most economically viable option. My accommodation was located right next to the metro system, which turned out to be a great advantage. Staying close to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, I had the luxury of being able to hop-on on almost every metro line of the NYC transit system within minutes. After buying a metro card and charge it with a week unlimited plan for $32, I was all set to explore the city on a budget. Handicapped by a proper jetlag and a lot of wet snow, I decided to take it easy the first day and just walked along the Brooklyn waterfront.

During my first days in New York, I had several meetings planned with local experts.

On the second morning, I took the G train to the fastest developing part of New York: Long Island City. Edgar Westerhof, working as the director of Flood risk & Resiliency at Arcadis US, told me several fascinating stories about the American planning system. Whereas the Dutch water management strategy is known for its stable disaster prevention system, the Americans are very good at responding after the disaster took place. Evacuation plans, first responder protocols and flood risk insurances are more likely to be up to date then the average dike (if existent). On top of that, the major part of the urban infrastructure stems back from the Robert Moses era (reference).

This means it has been functioning for about seventy to eighty years and is highly in need for large scale maintenance and replacement.

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Hearing experts talk about the state of New York’s infrastructure in this way made me realize the city will face tremendous challenges in the near future. I had always thought that given the economic importance of Manhattan the city would take its vulnerable position on the Atlantic Ocean more serious.

Realizing there would be no better way to see the city in its larger context, I booked a helicopter flight to be able to take aerial photographs. After having the safety briefing at the heliport in New Jersey and being helped into a harness we made our way to the helicopter. I couldn’t wait to fly over Manhattan as the over casted weather had changed into perfect conditions for photographs. The fact that the helicopter didn’t have a door and I was strapped on a harness allowed me to lean out as far as I wanted, which was an incredible experience.

Soaring over the towers of Manhattan’s financial district made me completely oblivious to the freezing temperature and extreme wind the helicopter rotors created.

After seeing New York from this great vantage point, it was time to experience it from a local perspective and interview inhabitants of the project site. The research of my project is related to the neighbourhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. As an old industrial harbour area, the neighbourhood has many historical characteristics, but is very isolated from the rest of the city. The inhabitants shared their experiences about how they lost their small businesses and personal belongings during

atlantis hurricane Sandy. These experiences were impressive to hear and, at the same time, it was strange to see how much the inhabitants had ‘forgotten’ what happened. The question what measurements they had taken to prevent themselves from being flooded again was, by most of them, answered by shrugging their shoulders and saying “I just hope it won’t”.

Being able to visit New York and to dive in the local community, as well as talking with experts and practitioners, gave me valuable insights for my project. Understanding the differences between the Netherlands and the United States in terms of policies and planning methods has also been essential for the context of my research. To combine this with exploring the city on my own and visit the famous landmarks was simply amazing. Few cities in the world have impressed me as much as New York City did. The scale of virtually all buildings, the contrast between hyper modernistic and historic architecture and the friendliness of random people. Reviewing the pictures and experiences, I think I managed to make the absolute most out of my three week visit. Indeed, I still deem New York City to be the most intriguing metropolis on earth!

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1. View from the Top of the Rock during a great sunset. source: Author 2. The Guggenheim Museum with classic NYC taxi. source: Author 3. Leftover poles from deteriorated pier at the Brooklyn Bridge park. source: Author 4. Panorama of Lower Manhattan taken from the helicopter. source: Author 5. View from the Top of the Rock during a great sunset. source: Author 6. The Flatiron building on Broadway. source: Author 7. Framing the Empire State Building. source: Author 8. South tip of Manhattan with the Staten Island ferry. source: Author 9. Threatening sky over the Brooklyn Bridge. source: Author

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BUENOS AIRES 2050/2 Strategies

AN AOD* STRATEGY

Part 1

*ACCESSIBILITY-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT

Chaperoning the transition of Buenos Aires towards a prosperous global city through a multi-scalar accessibility strategy, uniting interest of both the key global actors and the local population.

by

Alexandra Farmazon MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Gereon Rolvering

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft 1. Buenos Aires: nodes 2. Marginalisation of the urban poor 3. Buenos Aires 2050 concept 4. Puerto de la Plata 2050 -design detail 5. Design scenario for Puerto Nuevo

Introduction Buenos Aires is, and has always been a truly global city. As the main port for large parts of the Spanish colonies in Latin America, international trade has been a cornerstone for the development of Buenos Aires. At the same time, migration patterns in the Latin American context have shifted from trans-Atlantic to regional and continental movements, putting increased pressure on urban economies. Unfortunately, these dynamics have been the catalyst for issues of social injustice and marginalisation within the city: Since the second half of the twentieth century informal settlements, known as villas de emergencia, have

started to grow at the fringes of the formal city. At the other end of the social ladder, high-end gated communities are now commonplace throughout the city.

This development consequently leads to a vicious circle of segregation without an apparent solution, being clearly visible in the transformation of Buenos Aires’ urban transit system. For the past decades, the focus of infrastructure investments has been on roads and highways, feeding the city’s ever-more sprawling tissue - highlighting the contemporary relationship between access to public transport and prosperity.

However, both the informal settlements as well as global hubs such as the airports and recent business developments like Puerto Madero lack access and integration within the public urban mobility system.

Context This discrepancy is evident throughout all scales, from the aforementioned airport to the project site in the neighbourhood of Retiro. A site, at the heart of the city, where port, railway and many other infrastructural networks converge without forming an equilibrated whole. Thus, an integrated strategy for the public mobility system of Buenos Aires building on the principles 39

of transit oriented development holds the potential to not only increase accessibility in terms of transport, but also in terms of access to social life, personal security and, perhaps most importantly, economic participation. Consequently, the proposal will therefore establish a set of ideas and principles for an integrated development strategy system, revolving around the notion of accessibility as a public good, chaperoning the development of Buenos Aires towards a prosperous global city for all porteños.

Dynamics of accessibility It is important to understand the dynamics of accessibility, as it varies on different scales. The global accessibility is different to local accessibility. For instance, the global accessibility is about the capacity of a region and its population to access the global market and culture, whereas on local scale it’s about the accessibility of the local community to immerse in the culture and economic capacity of a place. Some of the vital driver or activators of these can be categorised as nodes, these could be different in economic, social and cultural functions. These nodes are then connected on various scale through systems, these

atlantis systems could be infrastructural and clusters of new facilities. Hence, we recognise these diverse systems and nodes the intervention within these ecosystems is different to, resulting in a more diverse network metropolis.

As for the current situation, these nodes are not using their potential to fullest extent, if they are not connected with efficient network. Thereby we will generate new centralities and reinforcing the existing ones.

Such as develop the tourism port for the city port to attract more passenger to come to Buenos Aires for traveling by cruise ships so that connect the city port to global node system. And the new metro bus line and metro line will well extent to AEP airport, which guarantee the airport as a global node closely links to urban and local node system. As for the metro and metro bus station as local nodes. New centralities will be activated while the development of these new drivers.

Puerto Nuevo 2050 Puerto Nuevo in 2050 is no longer an utterly inaccessible area torn apart both internally and from its context by infrastructure but rather a true part of the city.The inefficient port has compacted and given way to a new part of the city providing accessibility as a public good creating bustling environments facilitating positive interactions between the global and local, the rich and the poor both

within its confines as in the greater city and region. These interactions, achieved and safeguarded, by new systems and policy take place in the new and transformed spaces making up the Retiro Area, spaces that take many different forms.

In the south there is Retiro Station, now part of a railway network spanning the entire metropolitan region, where the everyday comings and goings of Porteños take place in a market-like environment.

To the north of that a new Subte line connecting Puerto Madero’s business acumen, the UBA’s brains with the entire South-American continent through Aeroparque Jorge Newbery.

Among all this is Villa 31, no longer an impoverished enclave but now an empowered community interacting on respective terms with the city’s social, cultural and economic life. To the south the railway that has for decades separated Villa and city has been buried and made way for a more porous urban fabric negotiating the dialogue between the formal grid and the organic Villa. To the north many years of Fernando Castro’s endeavours have paid off and Villa 31 has become a consolidated community. At it’s heart is no longer an elevated highway but a ground level metrobus corridor not only uniting the Villeros with the city but also uniting the city as a whole by integrating its fragmented metrobus network. This speaks for Puerto Nuevo 2050 as a whole, not only accessible in itself but facilitating an accessible city and region as well, for all who dwell there.

AEP

To the R and New

Port of Buenos Aires Terminales Rio de la Plata

To Ca

Port of La Plata

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Part 2

DELTAIC EDGE*

*A STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR METROPOLISATION PROCESSES WITHIN BUENOS AIRES TO ENABLE THE CITY’S EMBRACE OF ITS DELTAIC CONTEXT

by

Aikaterina Myserli

MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

Introduction A reading of the metropolitan conditions of Buenos Aires suggests that tensions exist between the natural, urban and economic forces acting upon the city and that the juxtaposition of these forces has resulted in social and infrastructural fissures within the urban fabric. One symptom of these fissures is the ambiguous relationship this port city has with its ever expanding river frontage and the negation of hydrological and delta processes within the metropolitan area.

The other key characteristic of Buenos Aires is the distinct role that transport and logistics infrastructure plays in regards to social exclusion and community cohesion.

In this regard, the proposal suggests an alternative metropolitan approach to these natural and infrastructural processes that might re-acquaint Buenos Aires with its deltaic context and posit a positive role for transport and logistics infrastructure that maximises urban connectivity, social inclusion and provides the Porteños with a renewed city/river interface.

Context analysis There is no doubt that throughout history, deltaic systems have always functioned as buffer zones as well as regulators of ecological processes. However, research has shown that many of them are nowadays endangered by a rapid urbanisation – and a consequent increasing industrialisationand by high impact changes on their geo-morphology, resulting mostly from mobility infrastructures. Buenos Aires, being part of the lower Paraná delta system, one of the biggest deltaic systems on the planet, demonstrates quite a few of the aforementioned characteristics. Although the steady growth of the lower Paraná delta system has been the dominant effigy in the history of the delta, it seems that mass urbanisation is currently causing considerable changes to its landscape, which 41

often includes exclusive and destructive urban interpretations of the deltaic islands. At the same time, contemporary metropolisation processes and delta dynamics are not always in correlation with each other leading to ongoing territorial fragmentation of the city/river edge and phenomena of extreme contrasts and social polarisation between formal and informal conditions.

Towards a new strategic framework In general, the urbanised development of Buenos Aires, its patterns of social inclusion or exclusion and the physical expansion of the city’s edge to the river are clearly driven by three broad forces or themes. a.The role infrastructure plays in the city as connective corridor or barrier to movement. b.The mercurial nature, form and use of the growing strip of land between the historic city edge and the Rio de la Plata. c.The delta processes that make themselves most felt along this water edge and within the low lying areas that typically house the city’s poor and disenfranchised.

Overall, there are clear focus areas for transport and social infrastructure leading to a clear distinction between these areas

atlantis and less connected and enfranchised areas close by. This segregation often plays out along the border between city core and the river. For this reason, the project investigates a possible transition towards an inclusive and accessible urban water edge for Buenos Aires that strengthens the city’s relationship with the river and reintroduces deltaic processes into the urban condition.

Within this context, the city/river edge is used as a field to layer these interventions, enhance the adaptive capacity of the city and create a comprehensive zone for recreation, ecological habitats and new urban developments.

A new deltaic edge At the core of this proposal lies the strategic and structured appropriation of sedimentary processes to promote a system of new islands uniting the metropolitan edge with the foot of the Parana Delta.

This gradual accretion of ecological habitat, bioremediation and flood defence islands on the water is mirrored by strategic development of new transport and social nodes within the city. On the metropolitan scale the selected overarching principles are to bring the deltaic condition back into the urban fabric both in terms of a physical edge condition, a reunion with the natural processes that are at work in the delta and as a thematic design driver for new centralities, added nodes and public spaces within the urban fabric. At the scale

of the site (Puerto Nuevo), key existing and proposed buildings determine the scale and shape of the new urban form and set the foundations for future urbanisation of the area. The catalysts for this could be new event spaces, a new temporary or permanent market, new community sporting facilities, temporary artist or artisan workspaces, new parks and green corridors. Final key point is the focus on the consolidation of the port, which is supported by existing government plans and reveals the potentiality of giving the rest of the area back to the city core.

1. Buenos Aires: edge evolution 2. Metropolitan framework 3. Buenos Aires 2050 4. Meso scale: Design by 2050 5. Design scenario for Puerto Nuevo Source - Author.

Final remarks As the project aims at ‘‘synthesising’’ solutions for urban cohesion between space, economy and environment, it answers the main question on how to achieve an inclusive and accessible urban waterfront.

The proposed strategy, adaptive timeframe and large scale projects in combination with local interventions offer a starting point for - and give concrete directions towards - a vision of a future hybrid boundary condition. In the end, the idea of artificial deltaic islands -emerging from the pre-existing harbor docks- merges with the ecological richness of the lower Paraná delta dynamics and produces a new edge; a new infra-landscape.

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Dorottya Békési

MSc Landscape Architecture student Szent Istvan University Intern at the Institute for Sustainable Policy Studies and Action, Merritt College, Oakland, CA

"Trees don't grow to the sky” – the old saying goes. By now, more and more people realize that there is no such thing as limitless growth in a limited system. This is especially true for the world’s cities and metropolises. Currently, more than half of our global population is concentrated in cities or in urban areas, and this number is exponentially rising. Today’s societies must find a way to make cities, our largest human artifacts, livable and sustainable…

On sustainability we mean ecological, social and economic sustainability, however, we should point out an important detail when it comes to planning and design. If the “users”, the residents, the community won’t find their ‘happiness’ in our creation, then it’s nothing more than an art for art's sake."

LIKE WATER BREAKING THROUGH The San Leandro Urban Greenway in Oakland, CA Picturing the place I was wandering around in North California, looking for a small river, a creek. This creek starts in the mountains as a stream, then runs through residential areas like San Leandro and Oakland, finally ends up in the San Leandro-, later in the San Francisco Bay. While I was walking on the street I saw illegal dumping and garbage everywhere: shabby chairs, tables even sofas were outside. However, people were sitting on this furniture, listening to music loudly, chattering and squabbling, creating a lively atmosphere.

East Oakland – stretches between Lake Merritt in the northwest and San Leandro in the southwest – is the easternmost part of the city: a multicultural, diverse

area inhabited mostly by Latino and African American residents. However, the neighbourhood is rather characterized by low-income population with several social issues, such as high rates of crime and violent activities, lack of safety. This part of Oakland has a hidden, fenced and forgotten watershed the San Leandro Creek.

The San Leandro Creek

known for having been the site of the first recorded rainbow trout hatchery in the world. The appearance of the trout indicates clean water which made the creek an original source of drinking water for Oakland in the earlier times.

Currently this place is considered to an enclosed area in Oakland, that residents have no access to. Many of them have never been here, don’t even know about its existence and its real value. It’s an actual functioning connection between settlements and the Bay, a safe shaded trail, an opportunity to break away from the stressful city.

This stream is a year-round stream in Alameda County, that runs through the Upper San Leandro Reservoir, Lake Chabot and finally flows into the San Leandro Bay at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline Park (fig. 1).

Formerly this creek was home to the indigenous Ohlone people who fished and foraged along the riverbank. Also

The project The aim of the project is to revitalize this forgotten watershed and open a

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new path, a greenway between the San Leandro Bay and Oakland. To change this place for the people who live here the involvement of the local community is a key factor. The biggest challenge is “How related professions (landscape architects, urban designers, engineers) and students successfully collaborated with community leaders to strategize a bottom-up designbuild approach?” This project makes an effort in East Oakland to support greening that emanates from the neighborhood culture and place ecology. The technical experts and students from the Merritt Community College have been working with resident leaders - largely African and Latino communities - over the last 8 years to define project starting documentation and planning process from a community health perspective; a desire to clean up the neighborhood and gain access to the isolated creek. During our work we organized community conversations and an informal “charrette” to gain a better understanding of what this watershed means for the people who live next or close to it, what are their visions, ideas or even fears when they think about the trickling creek in their backyard.

Community charrettes Bunch of prepared note boards, sticky notes, pens and food were waiting for the residents on an early fall morning in East Oakland (fig. 2). We showed creek maps,

photos of the watershed and explained them how the San Leandro Creek and its neighborhood work together, what will be the impact of the new functions, how can we create a liveable and sustainable environment? Through these conversations we got a better picture how this creek has been fenced off, why it attracts illegal dumping, criminal and violent activities. Locals shared happier stories as well, like fishing down at the creek, exploring the Creekside, using and collecting its vegetation (fig. 3). Some of the residents – illegally though – use the closed maintenance road along the watershed with their bicycles to get to San Leandro from Oakland every week. This information makes it clear that a small part of the community has already realized and used the advantages of the creek.

During community workshops, we had the chance to show the residents the creek and its environment, to talk about its positive effects that would contribute not only to ecological, but also physical and spiritual wellbeing. The watershed can be a perfect place for the emergence of environmentally conscious forms of transport such as cycling, running and walking, while creating community gardens, leisure parks or cultural venues could bring the creek back to life again.

Unfortunately, the initial enquiry has shifted to doubts and fears. “The new open 44

spaces will be the perfect scene for drug deals and violent activities.” “How will I protect my kids if the neighborhood will be more dangerous than before?” “They will destroy the facilities of these parks.” “I don’t want anyone with a gun close to my backyard!”. The vision of a new greenway, better living and health conditions and the promise of security arrangements weren’t convincing enough for everybody.

The real breakthrough was made by visiting the stream (several people have never been to this creek because of its inaccessibility or bad reputation). The place that only moments earlier was resoundingly dismissed now looked different in person. Fallen leaves made an orange carpet on the ground, water birds flew above the creek, the water surface reflected the graffiti murals from the constructed channel wall. The residents were enchanted by the environment of the San Leandro Creek.

They have recognized the beauty of the watershed and the opportunities of safe solutions. Connections that can open new roads to neighboring settlements providing a more secure approach to their children than walking on the highway to school. Community spaces (parks) for families and outdoor classrooms for the nearby Madison school may thrill this part of East Oakland.

atlantis Design details The rehabilitation of the San Leandro Creek could play an important role in coping with a current global issue that affects this area as well: climate change and sea level rise. There are 8 watercourses in Oakland which are connected to San Francisco Bay and could operate as a buffer and save ground areas from critical flooding. In order to carry out successful watercourse rehabilitation projects, thus achieve the objective of creating a sustainable, resilient buffer zone, the conversion of San Leandro Creek has been chosen to be the pioneer. The project applies biophilic design that can retrofit the city structure for climate resilience and sustainability while improving the health of local residents. Also, on regional level it connects to the San Francisco Bay trail and opens a new one to Chabot Lake and park.

The greenway establishes a new “green” transportation line from the Chabot lake to the Bay marshlands. This project will let people enjoy the shelter of trees on a hot day, kids to go to school in a safe environment, families to hold picnics, joggers to enjoy the nice view when they run. Locals can go on a bicycle ride from one settlement to another, while residents can experience nature and the fruit of their community work.

After the introduction of the overall project in a larger and smaller scale, now

we will zoom in a little bit and understand how this design segments look at the moment, what qualities they have.

From Lake Chabot the creek runs through two settlements, San Leandro and Oakland. For the sake of simplicity, the stream has been divided into eight segments. Our team worked on the 2nd-4th segments in Oakland, from the Hegenberger Road to the James Madison Middle School. This is an approximately 1.3 miles (~1.6 km) long stretch with various particularly negative, problematic functions (fig. 4).

The 2nd segment is located between the Hegenberger Road and the 98th Avenue.

Nearby functions are largely parking lots – that connects to neighboring Oakland International Airport – illegal industrial activities and on the southeast corner a small Starbucks café, dinery and petrol station can be found. This segment of the creek has the most natural banks and stepped slopes that give the opportunity for the people to get in physical connection with the water.

Between the 98th Avenue and a freight railroad stretches the 3rd segment. The functions show duality in this section, while the northern part is a residential area, the southern side have industrial and economic activity. Along the creek a 9 ft (~3 m) concrete wall cut people off the water. Despite the negative barrier effects

these walls create a perfect canvas for the local residents to cultivate their art. The maintenance road is only accessible on the southern bank.

From the freight railroad to the James Madison Middle School the section of the San Leandro Creek changes again, the maintenance road moves to the northern side of the watershed. The 4th segment of the stream is semi-channelized and gives back the chance to touch and experience the water , however in a more constructed form than in the 2nd segment.

When it comes to functions, this section has the most balanced land uses, besides the residential areas the only connection worth mentioning is the Madison School’s backyard and the San Leandro Creek’s visual and physical connection.

The project includes the planting of 325 new and native trees like coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), valley oak (Quercus lobata), fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii), california buckeye (Aesculus californica), white alder (Alnus rhombifolia), northern california black walnut (Juglans hindsii). A new shared route is implemented in the design: one side for pedestrians with benches, drinking fountains, information boards and the other side is for cyclists with the required infrastructure like pumps and small bicycle fixation points.

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As mentioned before the creek design itself is not only about a greener transportation: we’ve designed six new functions on this 1.3-mile (~1.6 km) segment, that would organically complement each other and would have a beneficial effect on the current land use. In the 2nd segment, the illegal industrial activity would be replaced by a community farm and park (fig. 5), meanwhile the Starbucks café adds a new terrace that opens a new entrance to the greenway. In the 3rd segment, we’ve designed a community garden on the – only – free green parcel for the residents of Empire Road and its neighborhood.

On the border of the 3rd and 4th segment, thanks to the surface relief and the infrastructural facilities we had more freedom to design the place. We have seen the opportunity of creating a small park with grilling and sport/leisure facilities.

Additionally, we designed a small new path, sitting stairs along the stream and a terrace (fig. 6). With the cooperation of the James Madison Middle School – in the 4th segment – we will create an outdoor classroom for students that can improve their experiential based learning.

Most significantly, the project will be a community design-build effort that prioritizes the employment

and involvement of local residents.

Enhancement of the multicultural values of the neighbourhood will be a key principle during the project: supporting local muralists, community gardens, local businesses to represent the people who live here.

Results so far Through the work of technical experts, students and community leaders, the team successfully applied and submitted a proposal of the project to the California Natural Resources Agency’s Urban Greening Grant program in October, 2017. Last November funding from the State of California was awarded for the first phase of the San Leandro Creek Urban Greenway Project.

Conclusion The San Leandro Urban Greenway will “slow down” and bring closer a motordriven society to nature. Overall, the project may change the designers' attitude towards community. To make people feel the encompassing environment their own – and to take care of it – as designers we must hear their visions, ideas and needs to combine these with professional knowledge 46

in all disciplines. The future biophilic, resilient and adaptive cities need to be more responsive to needs of their users.

Acknowledgments This paper is dedicated to the neighbors of Deep East Oakland and the many classes of Merritt College, the students and Dr. David C. Ralston – my supervisor – who have contributed to this project over the last eight-years. •

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."

Henry Ford 1. Location of the San Leandro Urban Greenway project. Source - Author 2. Community charrette. Source - Author 3. Community charrette. Source - Author 4. Design segments Nr. 2-4. Source - Author 5. Impression of 2nd segment. Source Author 6. Impression of the area between segment 3 and 4. Source - Author

atlantis

BEYOND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION

an experience of Participatory Design in a context of social vulnerability: the case of “I love my Neighborhood” program in Barrio el Parral, Peñalolen, Chile

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Diego Moya Ortiz MSc Urbanism student TUDelft

*This article corresponds to the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the vision of the public Institutions involved in the Program.

1. The Context of the Program Citizen participation has become a recurrent issue in the government agendas as a legitimate claim within democracies.

In the urban field, Latin America has not been an exception. For almost 2 decades, countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Chile and Brazil have reinforced the implementation of social urban programs at a neighborhood scale. In the case of Chile, reduction of social housing deficit towards the end of the 90’s, opened the opportunity to address issues related with the public space. Within this context, the Neighborhood Recovery Program “Quiero mi Barrio” was created in 2006 (“I love my Neighborhood – ILMN”) under the mandate of the Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

PEÑALOLÉN

Currently, the Program has been implemented in more than 500 neighborhoods trough the country.

However, the program has changed its mode of implementation progressively.

Indeed, today the program is defined by a regional competition process in which all the interested Municipalities can apply.

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2. The Program The main innovation of the ILMN is its participatory character, based on a participatory process during the implementation of the program. By doing that, the focus of the intervention seeks to reduce those factors that contribute to the deterioration of neighborhoods, influencing the social, material and symbolic features of each area (Aguirre et. al. 2008). In its structure, the program includes several stakeholders: - The Neighborhood Development Council (NDC): corresponds to a social and democratic organization that represents the interests of the various resident actors, promotes and leads reflection and participation of inhabitants - The Secretary of Housing and Urbanism (SHU): responsible for implementing the program together with the Municipality, seeks to coordinate the levels of participation of the neighbors from the central government - Municipalities: key role for program management, they lead the Neighborhood Team in the execution of works and articulation of Neighborhood Recovery Integral Project (NRIP) - Neighborhood Team (NT): multidisciplinary professional group, which implements the program in every neighborhood (teams are settled in the community for the duration of the program) - Technical Committee (TC): created at different levels (community, regional and national), they represent instances of program progress review.

The structure of the Program considers three different phases: - The shared diagnosis and Neighborhood Recovery Integral Project (NRIP) (6 months): it corresponds to a participative diagnosis which is carried out by the Community, the NT and the Municipality

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(the completion of this stage includes the creation of a NDC and the signing of the neighborhood contract) - The Implementation (24 months): it is related to the process of participative design of the Projects of NRIP, its validation in the TCs and the process of building these Projects - Evaluation (3 months): corresponds to a systematized evaluation of results (it is carried out jointly by the NDC and the municipality, to identify and systematize lessons by developing a Future Agenda).

3. The case of El Parral in Lo Hermida Villa el Parral is one of the 22 neighborhoods of the Zone Lo Hermida, in the Commune of Peñalolén. Lo Hermida is an urban area that originally was a land seizure carried out by a series of rural migrant families in the 50’s. During the 60’s, through the so-called “operación sitio” (“site operation”), the government assigned each family with a little site to build a basic social housing unit under self-construction.

Since Lo Hermida was historically an important cohesive community, after the coup in 1973, the area was highly and constantly repressed by the State. The urbanization process together with a strong social control by the State, diminished the community capacity that it had constituted in the previous period.

The sector of El Parral was founded in 1984, with a population of 2.806 inhabitants divided into 607 homes. The Neighborhood was historically delayed by public investments in relation to other Neighborhoods in Lo Hermida. Because of this, the area experienced a progressive level of precariousness of its public space together with another environmental and social problems.

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4. Social Participation Social Participation always entails conflict, because it involves tensions between different political powers, interests and worldviews (Miessen, 2010). This is important because of three main reasons.

Firstly, because beyond every decision in the urban arena there are interests at stake.

In this regard, working in local scales is a challenge for Institutions because that entails relinquishing some decision-making power to minorities which have not always been considered.

Secondly, because of the role of Designers.

In this kind of processes, they cannot perform like isolated and independent Designers. On the contrary, they must act mainly as facilitators and negotiators in the micro-political arena. Flexibility, tolerance and ethical demand are mandatory skills.

On the other hand, as many decisions are being taken at the same level, the urban practice deals with the interest of different stakeholders.

Thirdly, because participation also entails accepting the conditions of socio-cultural contexts, beyond hierarchies. In the next paragraphs I will elaborate on these aspects in relation to the case.

5. The experience Intervention in Villa El Parral started in 2013. The first obstacle that we faced as a Neighborhood Team was social distrust.

Since El Parral had been “delayed” by the Public care and investment for decades there was an important level of distrust towards the Institutional narrative. A big part of the Community felt abandoned by the State and the Municipality. At the same time, social organizations had disintegrated during the last decades, as a part of a

atlantis general process of social demobilization in the Country (Kaltwasser, 2017).

The arrival of the Program was seen as an enormous opportunity for the Neighbors.

At the beginning, this collective feeling, generated great expectations within the Community due to the several needs of the people there.

During the diagnosis, these aspects were relevant to determine the level of participation of the Community.

The social organization that accompanied the process and composed finally the NDC was the original Neighborhood Council.

At the beginning of the implementation, this Council was the only functional organization in the Neighborhood.

Although this was a group of no more than 15 people, along the process it resulted in a strong team even when they had to deal with several conflicts. In this regard, one of the main challenges for our team and the Municipality, was keeping a constant commitment with the project, stressing the positive meaning of the program for the Community.

Moreover, among the different participants of the NDC there were also interests with different perspectives about the intervention. Therefore, in all the processes it was necessary to cross-reference the different interests with the technical details trying to look for the best alternatives for all the designs.

In addition, with the complexity of the process with the NDC two other facts are important to define. The first one is related with political organizations that had influence over the neighborhood.

One of these organizations had taken part of the area corresponding to the social head office, property of the State. Since the interest of this group was to maintain

a geopolitical position within Lo Hermida, achieving the recovery of this space was a long process, tense and it entailed lots of negotiation.

The second one, is related with the presence of drug dealers. Although, drug microtrafficking was a threat for the normal life in the neighborhood, it was normalized.

Drug dealers were conceived as one more social actor, with clear interests and territorial presence. Consensus and even agreements in some coexistence norms are also generated between neighbors and traffickers to keep some common spaces safe. In any case, drug traffic impacts the public space, either by forms of appropriation or violence. In this sense, one of the actions that we took was to try to create some dialogue norms with this group, avoiding situations of retaliation against the rest of the neighbors.

For the phase of design of the Projects, we used a consultative design method. Ideation sessions were held with the neighbors where the interests of each group were defined.

The process included a session of ideas, a presentation of the draft design (which could be refuted or validated) and a final approval session. This method was used for the 4 Projects that were finally executed in the neighborhood: Plaza Parral Norte, Plaza Parral Sur, El Parral Community Center and Felipe Antonio Square. This process was productive for us both from the communicative and pedagogical perspective. Since the neighbors did not have major references of public space, it was necessary to transmit new concepts and visions. The technical language here did not work. Therefore, using references was always necessary. In this way, the neighbors could imagine possibilities that they had not known before.

Finally, phase of execution of the works was another issue. One of the key aspects to

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gain confidence and give credibility of the process are conditioned at the beginning of the construction works of the projects. To begin this stage, it was necessary to have most of the projects validated in different instances and administrative levels. This demanded a great level of institutional coordination.

The beginning of the first construction was a key point for the whole process since it demonstrated the work done by the NDC and the neighborhood team towards the whole community. By doing this, the organization gained more confidence, empowerment and assumed a more protagonist role.

However, for our team, this new stage also brought new difficulties. The beginning of the works also involved the management of and dealing with all the inconveniences that can occur in a big project. Some neighbors had suspicion about the different interest behind the Projects. In order to face these issues, for us, the Municipality and the NDC, adopting a transparent attitude was the key, speaking and explaining every decision or action taken in the process.

Finally, after inaugurating the Works, the NDC was exponentially empowered as a social organization, validated in relation to the Community and with a renewed and strengthened relationship with the Municipality. Nowadays all the Works are finished and are use. In 2016, El Parral was the first of 45 neighborhoods that culminated the process successfully.

6. Final Reflection In this brief article I have tried to summarize a process of working within a community in a framework of participatory design. I have talked about those aspects related with my specific professional experience. From my perspective, it is in

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atlantis this immersion working where non-formal learnings are generated, and some technical conventions can be refuted.

1. Map showing the location of Peñaloén within the metropolitan area of Santiago and its main arteries. Source - Author 2. Example of the condition of the location before the implementation of the programme.

Source - Author 3. Example of the condition of the location before the implementation of the programme.

Source - Author 4. Still from the Participatory process. Source - Author 5. Example of the condition of the location after the implementation of the programme.

Source - Author 6. Example of the condition of the location after the implementation of the programme.

Source - Author 7. Map showing the location of Barrio el Paral within Peñaloén and its ther neighborhoods.

Source - Author

At the same time, it is also relevant to say that the involvement in this type of project is very demanding at a professional level and involves a high level of commitment.

On the other hand, successful in participation process depends widely on the level of social organization of each Community. This is relevant in a global cultural moment in which there is a trend of individualism and social atomization.

In this sense, these conditions must be considered as a cultural factor in any social program.

Finally, it is important to highlight that participation is a situated practice and there are not general recipes for it. •

References 1. http://quieromibarrio.cl/ . Quiero mi Barrio.

2. Aguirre, D; Bustos, C; Morales, N; Vio, A. (2009).

Programa de Recuperación de Barrios: Una experiencia de urbanismo ciudadana, Revista de Trabajo Social Perspectivas, 20, 163-181.

3. Miessen Markus, 2010. The Nightmare of Participation.

Sternberg Press, 2010.

4. Rovira Cristobal, 2007. Chile: transición pactada y débil autodeterminación colectiva de la sociedad, Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, 69, 343-372.

5. Villarroel Ríos, 2014. Analysis of citizen participation in I Love My Neighborhood Program.

6. Zapata, Isabel; Arias, Gonzalo, 2008. Impactos urbanos del programa regeneración de barrios, algunas orientaciones claves para la gestión futura.

7. Robles Robles, Oviedo Saavedra, 2014. Quiero mi barrio ¿un nuevo paradigma de recuperación urbana y social?: análisis de las interpretaciones subyacentes de los encargados respecto del diseño y resultados del programa

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A CONSTELLATION OF SCARS by

Livia del Conte

MSc Architecture student TU Delft

The project was developed during the studio "In Cities", led by the chair of Complex Projects. Together with 9 students from TU Delft we spend two months in Chicago, United States of America, to conduct a field research.

There, the richness in the architectural typologies still represents a complex unfolding of events that affected the district and its inhabitants, thus the starting point of the research happened to be a historical one.

The aim was to unravel the dynamics structuring the peculiarity of this urban reality through a shared lens addressing the concept of ownership.

Between the 1890’s and the 1920’s, Bronzeville was the symbol of the wealthy black working-class, due to the settlement of migrating African Americans. In the 1950’s , private investors were interested in the area and used the urban renewal program, aimed to revitalize decaying sectors of inner cities, to engage in financial speculation. They were creating room for their own projects by means of clearing the land of existing houses and displacing existing residents. This resulted in a housing crisis that the Chicago Housing Authority

In a nation such as the USA, where the idea of land property has been crucial in the configuration of its society, how does the relation between owners and properties affect the city of Chicago physically and socially? The area that I chose to investigate within the city was the neighborhood of Bronzeville, located on the South side.

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was called in to solve. The municipal corporation decided to concentrate all the required social housing in the neighborhood of Bronzeville in order to maintain the segregation of black society within the same area. Following the implementation of these social projects the area became prone to extreme plight and violence.

In 2000 the state of these conditions led to the demolition of the decaying social housing projects. From that moment on a new wave of interest in the area arose between investors, however inhabitants of Bronzeville were skeptical and fearful of the implications and outcomes from future development within their district.

The historical research, together with the interviews that were conducted on site

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aided in offering insight into what “future development� could actually mean for the neighborhood of Bronzeville and why it represented a fear for the residents. On the one hand it represented an architectural threat, due to the massive demolitions that happened in the past, and on the other, a social one, due to possible displacement.

Having been associated with several organizations actively involved in the revitalization of the area, it became clear that a socially sustainable development was also preferred by the community: one that aimed to add value to the neighborhood and could be shared within the community.

These elements, the past and present initiatives, underpinned the core of the project, to a statement: that in order to ensure that new developments will not be a

threat, Bronzeville should intervene in those places that have been abandoned for a long time and represents the lack of care that the government had mostly shown towards the area and its inhabitants. These elements that constitute a heritage of physical scars, if repurposed could produce a constellation of places - catalysts for new vitality.

The repurposing process itself should be geared to fostering engaged participation, shared ownership and eventually turn the strong ethnic based character of the community into a place based one.

the end a discarded landmark, a church designed by Adler and Sullivan that had been destroyed by a fire.

These were presented in the series of four drawings shown here, where the choice of the drawing method was meant to highlight the small scale of the chosen elements in contrast with the much larger one of the neighborhood where they are embedded and that they were intended to impact. •

Among the physical scars present within the area, four were chosen: a building signed for demolition as it was abandoned, a foreclosed one, another vacant and in

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1. Vacant 3659 S. Michigan Ave. source: Author 2. Demolition 3740 s Lake Park Ave. source: Author 3. Discarded Landmark 3311 S Indiana Avesource: Author

SONIC SPACE

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“The most essential auditory experience created by architecture is tranquillity. Architecture presents the drama of construction silenced into matter, space, and light. Ultimately, architecture is the art of petrified silence.”

by

Michael de Beer

Spatial Practitioner and editor

Juhani Pallasmaa, architect

Pallasmaa (2017) positions that the history of sound being incorporated into design thinking has a long lineage with many prehistoric structures theorised to be designed for harmonic qualities. Yet, the shift to visualizing architecture has come to an age where it dominates the city – where vision gives order through form and proportion. The dominant contemporary narrative no longer judges architecture by experiential qualities, Pallasmaa’s tranquillity, but rather by means of the render and photograph. The dominance of the visualization of our built environment however negates experience, as sensation and action fall by the way side. Affect has become increasingly recognized as being critical to experience and far more impactful than the image. As technology has advanced, the realm of affect and phenomenology has increasingly become a science – tested, understood and replicable. In advocating for a return to experiential thinking and designing, we need to reflect on those principles that form our experiences. In understanding sound and form, its influence on forming environments and ourselves, the graduation thesis, Sonic City, puts forward five underpinning principles in order to give guidance to sonic space and concludes by positioning the notion of presences as an act that we continuously engage in.

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1. One of Dhaka’s (polluted) water storage lakes 2. Adaptive pathway element: indicating the amount of open rain water storage that should be available in the urban areas depending on the climate change scenario.

3. A strategy examples for improving the water storage capacity in high and middle density urban areas.

atlantis Stemming from field research in the vibrant cultural capital city of Valparaíso, Chile, the research was inspired by the dynamic audio landscapes that continuously bombarded the citizen. One moment bus horns are screeching, informal retailers are shouting, Despacito blares from a store front nearby and then, suddenly, silence offered by a narrow turn into a lush alleyway climbing the hill. The contrast in the sonic landscape is striking – constantly stimulating the senses. It was this experience that sparked a fascination with sound and the city – returning to an understanding that space is fundamentally affective.

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PRINCIPLES Sound = sonic element

Soundscapes are Affective

In the complex sonic environments that we inhabit, one is constantly bombarded by an array of sounds. Analysing them as waves and troughs highlights the overlap and seemingly unidentifiable jumble of noise that meets our ears. Recording studios go to great length in isolating sound, designed to minimise reverberation and exclude and separate various sounds. Yet – astonishingly – we can discern varied sounds in a complex sonic environment.

We can have in-depth conversations in the most unsuitable situations. This is due to the brain’s unique ability for pattern recognition. Sounds are discernible and in this sense have a strong link to those elements that they are associated with: sonic elements.

Blesser (2009) draws a clear distinction in defining aural landscapes as a phenomenon of experience - that sound is able to be measured and quantified. Yet it is the intangible ability of sound to AFFECT us, which is critical for architecture.

It’s affective quality not only influences how one feels, but also how one acts in response. It reverberates through us physically, directly engaging the body and influencing how one physically feels.

It also stimulates memory, drawing on past experiences as well as engages our sense of being, stimulating emotional and cognitive responses. Collectively, these attributes of sound position soundscapes as highly experiential and in turn impactful environments.

Soundscapes situate & orientate

Sound as an Act

Soundscapes exist beyond the visual realm. They are composed of varied sonic elements that form an environment, a spatial composition. These ensembles are composed of how sounds interact with an environment and intuitively offer an understanding of dimension, materiality and space. As Pallasmaa (2017) describes, the ability of sound to orientate and situate, he highlights how in the dark the dripping of water carves out a void in our imagination – sound gives form. Yet soundscapes also place one in the world – in our socio- cultural landscape. Sound as a composition constructs a sense of place – it not only positions one in space, but also gives an understanding of what that space is. It allows one to form a nuanced awareness that is unattainable through sight.

To listen and to make a sound is both an act. Underappreciated, these acts are fundamental to how we navigate the world and this has been informed from a long lineage of cultural influences. To walk softly in a library or scream at the top of one's voice in a protest, to change the way one talks in a crowded elevator. These actions seem natural - unconscious – however, they are closely linked to behaviour in social and environmental circumstances. We readily adjust the tone and level of our voice or the manner in which we listen according to the situation. Ganchrow (2017) highlights how we do not simply listen, but actively listen by making gestures and sounds that denote the act. During an a cappella performance in a small space or a church, this is pronounced as one is aware of one's own presence – holding in the sneeze to the end of the performance. The extreme situation, however is true of the everyday

Conversation nearby Laughter

Dog bark Ball punt T:1

Music from a live band Ball punt

Conversation nearby

T:2

Laughter

Ball punt

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Children Shouting and playing football

Shouting Wind Shouting

T:3

Dog bark

Indistinct chatter Ball punt

T:4

Indistinct chatter

Music from a live band T:5

Dog bark

Indistinct chatter Whistle

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The sound of dogs and birds become audible

T:8 Barking

T:7 Clanking metal Barking T:6 Barking

Transition where the sound of the hills becomes clear

Hooting

Hooting

Soundscapes as spaces of appearance

Hooting

Sound of the Hills

T:5

Alarms of the harbour become audible

Position of site

T:4

Hooting Hooting T:3

Cars drive past T:2

Cars drive past T:1

Police Sirens

Sotomayor Square

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As an act, presence is underpinned by a relationship through which sound is a medium. To listen and to make a sound is a means to engage this medium and draw attention to presence. Presence as an act, is composed of two counter acts. The first is focused on oneself as being (the Act of Sonic Intermission) which is opposed to the second that is external and orientated to being present in the world (the act of Sonic Intervention).

Sonic Intermission

building height line Hooting

The space of appearance as the public body, a temporal definition of seeing public space as a verb rather than a noun, draws forward the interaction of sound in the landscape of the city. Sound as an act, drawing forward the notion of presence, highlights how individuals create the public through their interaction with it. Examples in Valparaíso are: the beginning of the student protest where the hills and city both filled with the sound of clanging metal as citizens throughout the city supported the demonstration; or the end of the America’s cup where blaring horns and shouting resonated through the city as the city becomes an amphitheatre for celebration.

Sound expands the public realm into the home as it permeates walls and one's private domain. It is the everyday where sound as an act is seen as a constant mediation of society. In the words of historian Peralto (2009), “Valparaiso is place of harmonic disorder”, where chaos remains in careful balance.

THE SONIC ACT

Sound of the City

Transition where the sound of the city and harbour become audible as the balloon clears the building

as one navigates one's own interaction with collective sounds and society. The notion of presences is linked to the act as to make a sound is to alter the soundscape and denote one's existence. In this sense sound as an act is closely linked to behaviour and presence.

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Pallasmaa (2017) advocates that forming tranquillity is one of the objectives of architecture. The notion positions quietness as being an act that draws attention to being. Expanding on this, Granchow (2017) defines quietness not as the lack of sound, but rather the lack of response (Granchow, 2017). The position situates the auditor in a reflexive environment, where presence is orientated on oneself. Importantly, quietness is situated not as a space devoid of sound, but rather emphasises the act as simultaneously being separated from the world unable to intervene in it and being witness to it in a state where it does not respond to the auditor.

The act manifests in daily life in numerous ways and is orientated toward the notion

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Sound of the body in space

Confidential / Known / Nich e

Soft

Known / Closed

Scale of Influence

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Making sound to a known person or audience

To make noise

making sound without responce

Forum Anonymous / Open Making sound to the public

City Sonic interventions that influences the listener and site

Public / City / Anonymous

Space o f Appearanc e

Listening to the city

To somebody making noice

ste ni ng

Intimacy

Sonic Respite

Sonic interventions that influences the City and other identified sites in the city

Loud

Intermission of intermission as being an intentional break as a moment of respite. Going to the church, sitting and watching over the city or walking along the promenade and even the bombardment of the electro dance floor when dancing by oneself are all such moments of intermission. Here the research positions the interaction with sound as being not quiet, in the strict definition of the word, but rather sound that one cannot intervene in and rather only be affected by.

The position seems counter intuitive, yet the notion of tranquillity as Pallasmaa (2017) positions is to draw emphasis on being and thus it is rather a tranquillity of the mind and self, in a state of meditative reflection.

Sonic Intervention The act is one of intentionally intervening in the sonic landscape. The definition is broad and encompasses a wide range of interventions, from performance artists, installations, protests and even less noticeable interventions such as altering the ambience of space. Those engaging in the act are positioned as composers due to the notion of sound being part of the space of appearance – the public realm. These acts intend to affect and alter group behaviour.

The sonic intervention is thus closely linked

Inter vention

to the commons, as it becomes a collective act whereby the composer is in constant dialogue with those who are interacting with the sonic alteration. Opposed to the act of intermission, intervention calls for response.

To make a sound is to draw attention to one's presence while to actively listen is to recognise that presence. Sonic intervention is thus a relationship. Sound's ability to exceed the normative notions of the public realm situates the act as not being defined by public or private boundaries, but rather is seen as a common – a space of sonic mediation. Any sonic act, including silence, is in itself an act when seen to be deliberately and part of the collective.

This positions the commons as being a navigation of various sonic instances and actors. Appropriation through sound is widely accepted in Valparaiso, as various composers of space exist.

Final remark The article draws forward various understandings of sound and how architecture could be informed by it.

In taking one step further, the research positions a normative diagram that 56

synthesises the notion of the act and its relation to the public sphere, in offering a tool for designers thinking of working with sound. The Y axis represents spheres of the commons from intimate to public, while the X axis represents the act- presence. In positioning this tool, I hope that it may give guidance to further exploration in understanding how experience informs the world in which we inhabit. •

References Kovacic, Mateia (2018) Robot cities: three urban prototypes for future living. The Conversation.com Badger, Emily (2018) Tech envisions the ultimate start-up: An Entire City. New York Times Streitfeld, David (2018) Welcome to Zucktown. Where Everything is Just Zucky. New York Times

1. Men listening to the city of Valparaiso sketch by Author 2. Valparaiso Cultural park sketch by Author 3. Sound of cultural park 4. Vertical sound of the city measured by balloon 5. Working with sound - programmatic experiential diagram approach by Author

Tactical Urbanism in Venezuela: a possible strategy to promote change in times of crisis by

Oriana De Lucia

Architect and Co-funder of Territorio h.u.b. &

Ricardo Avella

European Post-master in Urbanism (EMU) TU Delft

History has shown that environmental, political, economic and social crises can become catalysts that trigger major processes of transformation in cities around the globe (sometimes even bringing structural change). They can lead a given society to devise flexible and innovative strategies to transform their built environments, despite the constraints that could be preventing the public and private sectors of doing their jobs for any reasons.

But if we understand that people and processes are critical components of the urban realm (as important as the buildings, blocks and streets that materialize its structure), then it is naive to think that cities are bound to paralyze in times of crisis and depression. Softer and ephemeral forms of urbanism can take place when ‘harder’ solutions are not viable.

The city of Christchurch, in New Zealand, had a very small stock of green open spaces for recreation not so long ago. This changed after several earthquakes devastated the city between 2010 and 2011. In spite of the distress that this meant for the city, a group of activists saw an opportunity to bring change by implementing temporary or transitional uses in vacant post-earthquake sites [Fig.2]. Those actions created awareness regarding the need for more

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atlantis public spaces, and the city had to take that into consideration when the reconstruction began. Something of the sort happened in the Netherlands after WWII, when Aldo Van Eyck (then working in the Department of Public Works), transformed leftover and bombed sites into public playgrounds. With the broad support of the citizenship, more than 700 recreational grounds were built between 1947 and 1978, creating a system of playgrounds and improving the quality of life with very small-scale (and apparently harmless) interventions [Fig.3]. Antanas Mockus, a former mayor of Bogotá, also provides an ample repertoire of pedagogic and playful strategies that managed to change the mindset and the behavior of people in one of the violent countries of the 1990’s1.

Many other examples could be listed, but what most of them have in common is that they built-up visions and civic values in times of hardship, preparing the ground for a different future. In this sense, the notion of Tactical Urbanism (Lydon, 2012; Lydon & Garcia, 2015) could become a useful tool for planners, activists and policy-makers that seek to improve their cities when they have little means to do so2. The term, coined by Mike Lydon and the "Streets Plan Collaborative" in 2011, is often used to describe small-scale, temporary interventions that improve local neighborhoods. These strategies enable

planners and activists to elaborate quick and low-cost spatial strategies of transition from the bottom-up (but also from the top-down and from the sides), catalyzing long-term transformations and bringing change in an incremental manner. Crises bring uncertainty and instability, but they also create the fertile ground for innovation.

As Holling states when talking about adaptive cycles in social-ecological systems, “it is these times of greatest threat that offer the greatest opportunity, because many constraints have been removed” (Holling, 2001) The Venezuelan crisis and the rise of bottom-up initiatives Today, Venezuela is experiencing frightening shortages of food and medicines, rampant murder rates, massive migratory flows and the highest inflation in the world. In the middle of this humanitarian crisis, the political and economic situation is only making things more difficult –to the point of paralyzing almost all forms of economic activity and development. Thousands of businesses have closed, millions of families have left the country, and Venezuelan cities today seem more like an inventory of abandoned and derelict spaces [Fig. 1]. Beyond the obvious problems, the current crisis has also created a window of opportunity for those who wish to rethink the city and propose new visions

for the future. It shouldn’t be a surprise that within the context of the crisis previously described, many bottom-up initiatives and Tactical Urbanism ventures are taking place in Venezuela.

In Caracas, groups of enthusiasts interested in the preservation of architectural heritage are organizing tours during the weekends, raising awareness around valuable buildings while fostering the construction of local identities. This is something remarkable in Venezuela, where heritage has generally had little value and where the past has been destroyed over time3. Several foundations and NGO’s are also working with communities in informal settlements and providing them with new tools to reimagine their environments. One of those organizations is working with children, mapping derelict areas to transform them into public spaces4. Another one is working on the reduction of violence by promoting the concept of ‘collective efficacy’, constructing new narratives with inspiring stories and reshaping the perception of insecurity. By mapping ‘hot spots’ and strengthening the organizational capacities of the community, "Caracas Mi Convive" is gradually building an informal social control of space in the slums of Caracas5.

Other initiatives, such as "Incursiones", prefer to focus on spatial strategies that promote civic values with creative means6.

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"Never let a good crisis go to waste" Winston Churchill 3

By building ephemeral playgrounds they challenge established behaviors, especially regarding the issue of fear and distrust among citizens –a sensitive topic in Caracas, the second most violent city of the World according to the Citizen's Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCSPJP)7. And last but not least, we need to mention that last year, a national competition of ideas built upon the principles of Tactical Urbanism was even held in Caracas8. CCScity450, the foundation that organized the competition, invited architects and designers to submit ephemeral proposals that re-imagined the city and the way people engaged with its public spaces. Ten areas were selected along the valley of Caracas, and 70 proposals were finally submitted by 52 groups [Fig.4]. New initiatives emerged from this competition (Caracas Vinculada and Territorio h.u.b. to name a few)9, and they all seek to rethink the city and its dynamics with temporary strategies.

Tactical urbanism as a way to buildup values for the long-term.

Seen together, all these enterprises give an idea of a fertile environment in which creativity and innovation are being accumulated, and where people are testing alternative solutions while preparing for the re-organization phase of the adaptive cycle.

We believe that in the middle of this crisis, there is an opportunity to rethink the future of Caracas. As mentioned above, the city is filled with vacant lots and empty buildings as a result of the economic breakdown; but those are precisely the spaces that can be

used to experiment with new possibilities.

By making temporary interventions in derelict or underused urban spaces, we can transform them into assets that can help people to imagine possible futures, even if only for a while. Depending on the scope and time frame of the intervention, these strategies have a great potential: they can build-up visions and values, they can give a new identity to a depressed area, or they can even be used to test radical ideas when uncertainty is high. Since most of those wastescapes are privately owned, these ephemeral projects are also an ideal way to rehearse alternative forms of governance in a country that is used to the conventional top-down structures of government control.

By fostering alliances between the public and private sector, but particularly between those two and civil society, we could start to naturalize something that today is uncommon.

But what kind of interventions are we talking about? And what impacts could they have beyond the short-term joy they bring while operational? We believe that some of those vacant lots could be transformed into temporary public spaces, but also into community gardens or playgrounds for example. In a city with less than 1m² of public spaces per inhabitant, these temporary uses could radically improve the quality of life if utilized while waiting for a more enabling context. But they will also make people aware of their importance once the city wakes up from this crisis, empowering them to fight for more public spaces in case they are not considered in future developments. We could also think 59

that other lots and empty buildings could be reprogrammed with new uses in order to bring life back to streets and neighborhoods that have fallen into decay [Fig.5, Fig.6].

In a country used to zoning and land-use planning, the idea of mixing uses is frowned upon by many, even in areas with high accessibility within the central valley. These strategies can help to gradually change this by bringing more “eyes upon the street” in insecure neighborhoods, reactivating the area with previously unimagined uses.

Some could argue that it is unethical to design and implement tactical urbanism projects when there is so much suffering around. Why would people care about public spaces, walkable streets, or playful games, when food and medicines is what is needed to survive? It is a fair question, but even though many may consider these initiatives out-of-place in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, there is an important point that is being overlooked. They are building-up values, changing mindsets and creating awareness over issues that otherwise would be left unattended. Sooner or later, crises come to an end and systems are re-organized. The question is: what kind of development will be embraced once the reconstruction of the country begins? For whom will it be? Should we expect business as usual or will everything be left to decide by the free-market, after two decades of suffering under the rule of a totalitarian left-wing regime? All these scenarios are possible in a highly radicalized society, and we wonder who will be responsible for shaping visions and the delivery of public goods.

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When people are used to low livability standards, small things can make a difference. And even though that is better than nothing, it keeps the inhabitants of a depressed city from thinking big. How can people demand a robust and healthy system of green open spaces, if they don’t believe that is possible? How can people fight for a more walkable city if they don’t know that they can have it? When bringing these topics in public participation processes, it is common to hear: “forget about it, you cannot walk in this city. Caracas is not Buenos Aires”. Many believe that change is not possible. So more important than the improvements they can bring to a particular environment, these temporary occupations create a sense of possibility that can have a profound impact on the long-term. Tactical Urbanism strategies can play an important role in creating awareness, in shaping a vision for the future with qualities that the present lacks. It is a tool for building civic values with creative and innovative means, using ephemeral and low-cost initiatives that can be implemented even in times of hardship. Crises can trigger processes of transformation, and we should think of them as tipping points that enable the restructuring of a system, as a fertile ground for experiments that may create new opportunities for the creation of public goods. If our assumptions have some validity, then we shouldn’t let this crisis go to waste. •

Notes

References

1. Antanas Mockus became famous for creating an army of clowns in Bogotá during his time in office. Their task was to embarrass and mock those who dared to cross the street when it was not their turn. The result was an exponential decrease of traffic deaths, a safer city, and the construction of civic values among citizens. http://statecrime.org/state-crime-research/ the-cop-in-your-head-or-the-clown-in-the-street-antanas-mockusand-the-theatre-of-civic-culture/ 2. Mike Lydon, along with The Next Generation of New Urbanists and The Street Plans Collaborative, produced this first open-source guide on Tactical Urbanism. It can be downloaded for free (http://tacticalurbanismguide.com/guides/). In 2015, a full-length book was published by Island Press.

3. CCS en 365, Una Sampablera por Caracas and Soy tu Guía Venezuela are only a few of many inspiring initiatives that are creating awareness around the urban and architectural heritage of Caracas 4. Fundación Trazando Espacios Públicos: http:// trazandoespacios.org/en/ 5. Caracas Mi Convive: http://miconvive.com/ 6. Incursiones: http://www.incursiones-ve.com/ 7. CCSPJP: http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx/ biblioteca/prensa/category/6-prensa 8. CCScity450 launched the competition to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Caracas: http://www.ccscity450.com.ve/ concursos/ 9. The team that won the ‘Caracas Ciudad Verde’ and ‘Caracas Ciudad Hospitalaria’ sites today is best known as a collective called Caracas Vinculada (Instagram: @ccs_vinculada). And the team of professionals that won the ‘Ciudad Rio’ location (of which the authors of this essay are a part of), later on became part of a research and design collective named Territorio h.u.b.

(Instagram: @territorio.hub).

Wesener, A. (2015). Temporary urbanism and urban sustainability after a natural disaster. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 8, 406–22.

Holling, C.S. (2001). Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological, and social systems. Ecosystems, 4(5), 390-405.

Lydon, M., & Garcia, A. (2015). Tactical Urbanism: Shortterm action for long-term change. Washington, DC: Island Press.

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1. Rebeca Pérez Gerónimo (2015). Un breve desahogo sobre nostalgias por venir / A brief alleviation of nostalgias to come. The consequences of the economic crisis and the Venezuelan diaspora are difficult to spatialize, but artists have been much more effective in conveying the sense of emptiness and desolation that can be felt in the streets of Caracas nowadays. source: courtesy of the artist.

2. The Pallet Pavilion. One of the many projects inscribed in the Gap Filler initiative that took place after the earthquakes that stroke the city of Christchurch, in New Zealand, between 2010 and 2011. source: https://gapfiller.org.nz/project/palletpavilion/ 3-4. Composite image of the winning submission for the ‘Ciudad Río’ site. source: courtesy of Territorio h.u.b.

Colophon ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture

Cover Felipe Gonzalez & Leonardo Cannizzo

Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 28, Number 4, June 2018

Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft Office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093

graphic sourced from FreePik.com & NASA Earth Observatory

Chief Editors Felipe Gonzalez, Sarantis Georgiou Public relations Melinda Marjan

www.polistudelft.nl atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Board Representative Sindhuja Janakiraman

Atlantis appears four times a year.

Number of copies: 450

Editorial Team Aikaterina Myserli, Alexandra Farmazon, Dora Hegyi, Emma Flores, Ijsbrand Heeringa, Karishma Asarpota, Laura Lijdsman, Leonardo Cannizzo, Melinda Marjan, Michael de Beer, Selina Abraham

This issue has been made with great care; authors and redaction hold no liability for incorrect/ incomplete information. All images are the property of their respective owners. We have tried as hard as we can to honour their copyrights.

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ISSN 1387-3679 61

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