Contemporary Urban Space

During the XX century, cities were thought as a clear organizational scheme, with a simple and predictable order, capable to be designed and planned in such way that the life quality of its residents could be modified manipulating the physical shape of the city. The result was a tragic social engineering effort, fueled by a scientific method in the form of urban planning that have dominated western societies the last 60 years, and now, unfortunately, the developing world. Urban systems everywhere, are just way to complex to be reduced to what conventional science can focus on.

The Contemporary city is the amalgam of invisible fluxes and visible materializations of information that operate simultaneously in spaces of global nature as also in spaces of local nature. To recognize these forces, fluxes and potentials is the challenge of any contemporary urban design or planning.

In September 2008, at Dalian China, the 44th International Congress of Urbanists took place. The main subject was “Urban Growth Without Sprawl”, one of the fundamental problems of urbanism these days together with the indiscriminated territorial expansion and the occupation of natural reserved areas, which destroys important natural resources and the lack of long-term projects for population distribution.

We will mention 2 out of the 7 Mexican projects presented:

The project for the Development of Playa del Carmen, in Quintana Roo, takes as starting point the concepts of City and Region generating identity at different scales: neighborhoods, parks and dwellings with simple solutions and integrating low-cost innovative construction systems, using local materials and workers as also eco-technologies and integration of the infrastructures with public spaces. Makes also emphasis in pedestrian mobility, the different areas of the plan are not more than 5 minutes far from each other, the urban development enhancing social interaction.

The STRATEGIC PLAN FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT 2030 for Cancun (awarded with the EXCELLENCE IN URBAN PLANNING prize in the same congress) where It’s key aspects are the master plan for the Hotel Corridor as the integration of irregular housing to the territorial reserves for year 2030. Including the revitalization of downtown and its connection with the hotel corridor, also contemplates to improve the traffic infrastructure as public transport system and the integration of bicycle paths. On the environmental side it aims to protect the wells and the generation of lineal parks to communicate the city, once again the public space as city articulator.

This are just the beginnings of new futures, the development of new urban strategies will deliver better and more efficient urban areas, specially for those like us who live in a coastal setting with specific situations and agents that are not macro-scale settings like Mexico City or New York. Its convenient to mention the emergence of young new groups of study about Coastal Cities, academic institutions like the IaaC (Barcelona), the Intelligent Coast group (Spain) and the SUPERSUDACA collective (Latin America) are among the research groups in sustainable urban development for tourism-based areas.

In our own very area of Los Cabos the young CAPA collective (formed by 3 young offices of Los Cabos with international credentials) has been studying new alternatives for the sustainable development of our Baja territory, will be hearing more of them soon and hopefully in this column we will show you some of their work, if you wish to get more info or in contact with CAPA, drop them an e-mail to:  contacto@capalab.net

Most of this proposals are still theoretical, but they are a huge resource of ideas for what the future of the human settlements and territories can become. Urban strategies should always think ahead the administrative territorial capacities, it has become urgent to implement strategies for economical and social development, unfortunately, most of times there’s no effective political and legal frame for the management of the urban settlements and its resources (natural, economical, social, etc); Today’s territorial management should be based in collaborative and relational processes which wont compete but complement each other. The coordination of local governments, social participation, the view of a common project, and the efficient instrumentation is basic for the successful development of proposals.

The difference between socioeconomic layers in the area makes all of this even harder to manage, most of urban strategies and plans fails for the lack of proper management and not because of a wrong planning. A good planning without proper management becomes “plain good ideas”. And good management without good planning only generates wrong realities.

Mariano’s column was published in ESCAPES, issue 3, November 2008.