Planning Portfolio

VANESSA GARCÍA OTERO MSc. Integrated Urbanism & Sustainable Design MA. Territorial Analysis and Management Planner

PLANNING PORTFOLIO

COMMUNITY CENTERS FOR WAYUU COMMUNITIES. Guajira, Colombia. Participatory design and construction project in Ichien, Guajira.

Team: Vanessa García, Tatihana Gonzalez, Pedro Guerrero, Felipe Ochoa & Esperanza Parra The project is part of a bigger framework with the goal of designing and building community centers or “Enramadas” for three Wayuu indigenous communities of the Guajira desert. For this, the Team designed and applied a participatory methodology which included the community’s active participation jointly with us in all the stages of the project. My main tasks remained withing the context of the overall participatory strategy planning and implementation.

Ichien, one of the communities mentioned, is where this specific project section took place. Ichien’s center is build up of reforested pine and Trupillo, a local species, using plain unions between the wood elements in order to simplify the building process which had to be executed in short time and under precarious conditions.

Partnership, cohabitation and multicultural exchange were the key to the success of the project which was awarded the Seal of Social Inclusion by Colsubsidio as a finalist in their first Social Inclusion Biennal

Enramada Ichien. Evaluation meeting, June 2016

Participatory design, participatory construction.

RECOVERY OF MINING SITE IN TUNJUELO RIVER. Bogotá, Colombia.

Emphasis in Research and Urban Project. Universidad Nacional.

Emphasis Second Cycle Project.

Team: Vanessa García & Paula Rodriguez Tunjuelo river flows through the peripheral south neighborhoods of Bogotá and around it the mining industry has taken place for a long time, the consideration of what can it become without the industry in its banks drives this project. As a very populated area of the city it has a deficient transport service, unconnected with the rest of the city, plus this is a mountain sector which also needs various modes of transport. This is why the project considers in a first stage (team work) a mobility plan attached to a series of punctual projects that aim to recover the green areas in the river banks.

In a second stage (individual work) one of the strategic points was designed, in this case Sotavento Station, an intermodal transport station, and it surroundings. The station site as a public space generator and renovating degraded areas into parks and urban gardens areas.

Mobility plan Tunjuelo river surroundings - Sotavento station and surroundings General plan.

Sotavento Station’s perspectives

Site composition

TEATRO EL FRAILEJÓN - ECO CASA JUAN REY. Bogotá, Colombia.

Community artistic school. Eco-House Expansión Project.

Wood and Guadua Research Group Universidad Nacional.

Team: Vanessa García, Tatihana Gonzalez, Laura Gonzalez & Catalina Hernandez The EcoCasa is a cultural center which teaches popular arts to children and teenagers of Juan Rey, a neighborhood located in the periphery of Bogotá, with a population of low income and high criminal rates and in the immediacies of Entre Nubes natural national park. They currently work in a wood house with a vegetable garden, simple solar energy provision and plain rain water harvest. The Team worked with the children, teenagers and art teachers of the EcoCasa in order to develop a strategy and a preliminary design for their expansion project.

The goal was to be able to adapt and create new spaces to have a flexible theater and classrooms while keeping the garden and gardening activities a priority and developing a system for rain water harvesting that uses a bigger are of recollection and capable of suplying the garden and some house activities.

Of important consideration was the impplications of it in such a Subparamo ecosystem and high elevation condition.

Site location

Workshops with the EcoCasa community.

Garden

PLANNING A “GREEN STREET”. Stuttgart, Germany.

Kernerstraße - Kernerplatz - Schützenplatz.

Streetscapes - Course. IUSD. Universität Stuttgart.

Team: Vanessa García, Nevzeta Nanic, Kezang Dorji & Juan Ortegón In the nowadays climate change situation, the urban build environment has no other option than to transform. The way we build streets is, of course, an important part of it. This projects pretends to plan for the transformation of a local street into a green street.

Kernerstraße, in Stuttgart, is chosen for the greenery that is concentrated in traffic joints and adjacent Stäffele, while the street itself remains greenless. The constrast with the private green in its surrouindings is evident and its dominant residential use has the potential to engage residents. Additionally, the existence of CASA Schützenplatz project can add value and impulse to the development of the street into a Green Street.

Work field and a survey with residents in the immediacies of the street was conducted in order to know their perceptions and expectations in a greening scenario. Strategies for the greening plan considered the survey results and the curent configuration and function of the street and its segments identified in workfield.

We Asked the Residents....

50% found the street lacks greenery.

Types of greenery they want to see in the street: 50% More trees 30% Green Strips 30% More green Facades The majority is not ready to change parking places for green spaces.

Kernerstraße A Werastraße to Schützenplatz: Higher level of vehicular traffic, parking areas low intervention.

Implentation of trees with flowerbeds.

B Schützenplatz to Kernerplatz: Parking areas medium intervention.

Implentation of trees with flowerbeds plus flexible uses spaces in one of the two parking strips.

C Kernerplatz to Neckartor: Parking areas high intervention.

Implentation of trees with flowerbeds plus flexible uses spaces in both parking strips.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SOUTHERN URBANISM. Development theories.

Seminar - Course. IUSD. Universität Stuttgart.

Urban developement theories have been long produced and analyzed in a hegemonic way, claiming to be globally aplicable. Nevertheless, they have always been more specific to the so called Global North.

These are then, of course, uncaipable of containing constitutive indeterminancy of cities in the so called Global South. This hegemonic approach leaves, then, an enormous gap on how to actually re-think cities in their conexts and conditions of growing preassures such as high inequalities, abjecrt poverty and reckless urbanization.

This seminar was then an scenario to visualize development theories from the southern lense. As well, it was journey to redescover development theories produced in the Global South and how they intend to tackle its challenges, invisible and forgotten by globalizing and dominant theories.

The seminar ran through 4 main core topics and juxtaposed case studies. The core topics were: Southern Urbanism, Informality, Resilience & Governance, and Housing. For each of them inidividual reviews were produced based on diverse authors and from a critical and contrasting point of view.

The goal was to reflect on how to pursue a real sustainable global development, current dominant positions have as well to be look closely and carefuly. Are they really aiming to a development for all? Are they actually considering all the growing urban issues at a global scale? What if we consider the South, rather than the North, as generator of development theories?

Reviews included in Seminar publication

Publication. Seminar booklet SS 2020.

Produced Reviews :

Southern Urbanism

Informality

Resilience & Governance

Housing

Southern urban theories: What for and for whom?

Contradictions: policy responses to informality

Do we transform or replace Urban Resilience?

Neoliberalism effects on Social Housing: The Colombian Case

How to align international & local issues and relationship between local governments and informality?

What is actually meant by Urban Resilience and why is it so malleable?

To what extent to pursue it or not?

Housing thought as an asset. How is the profit oriented problem missing the real demands of the city?

contrasting views.

Which contexts should they be based on and respond to?

AGROWCULTURE. Neighborhood Scale Active Transportation for AgrIculture & Goods Mobility. Stuttgart, Germany.

Transportation Planning - Course. IUSD. Ain Shams University.

Team: Vanessa García, Usie Fauzia Anniza & Aarti Dhingra The Agrowculture project is a network of open spaces which are collectively gardened, run by a steering committee, and volunteers and gardeners from the Auf der Prag neighbourhood, the future Rosenstein quartier and surroundings. The project’s main goal is implementing Community Garden as a tool for Cohabitation for social integration and ecological awareness. As a result, the project stands on two pillars: the environmental pillar, with a focus in ecological awareness; and the social pillar, where social integration is the focus.

Why is it needed to thikng of transportation? The community garden activities and interventions can contribute to active transportation. The proposed transportation plan aims to make the Agrowculture project integrated with a sustainable, neighbourhood scale active transportation strategy which supports the gardening needs. To do so, neighborhood scale active transportation mode choices related to community garden activities needs was explored. this included a literature review, a quantitative survey with multi criteria ranking, a qualitative survey with field observation, and GIS analysis

Goods active mobility review.

GIS Analysis, street assessment.

Street assessment, survey.