Community-Based Strategy for Public Spaces
Barrilaco Ravine is a 30-hectares conservancy area governed by eight different authorities, ranging from the neighbors’ committee to local and federal organizations. Disagreement between the organizations left Barrilaco abandoned and by the year 2000. The crime rate became such that night-use was forbidden and day-use recommended for men and dog owners only. A Master Plan developed between neighbors and a|911 helped to align all the authorities and their budgets to collaborate in Barrilaco’s restoration. An implementation plan, designed by Sustrato, helped neighbors become active users and to advocate for the project. This process has allowed the community to collect over 640,000USD and to implement the project despite local disagreements and political changes. Through implementation, neighbors and authorities have created a constructive civic dynamic.
Multiple stakeholders bring multiple resources
The diversity of people and agencies involved in Barrilaco is now an asset. There is a growing list that stared with the following agencies: Ministry of Water (CONAGUA), Ministry of Environment (SEMARNAT and SEDEMA), Ministry of Housing (SEDUVI), Water System of Mexico City Government (CONAGUA), Public Projects of Mexico City Government, Community Participation Miguel Hidalgo, Urban Services of Miguel Hidalgo District, three different neighbor’s committees, Proyecto Vecinal Barranca de Barrilaco.
My Role: Project Manager at Sustrato, and a|911
Team: Sustrato, a|911, Alvarez, M., Laviada, B.
Client: Neighbors of Lomas de Chapultepec
Location: Mexico City (2011-2017)
Status: Built, continuous neighbours-led improvement
Collaborative Design for Neighborhood Improvement
El Peral Park occupies 150sqm of a former wasteland. The park is adjacent to an underserved neigborhood, Rinconada Santa María, where loitering and alcoholism are rampant. The neighborhood conditions allowed access to federal funds earmarked for marginal areas. The money was designated for placing a couple of steel umbrellas and a “green wall” in a vacant lot. However, this proposal didn’t fit people’s expectations. How could we build a space that excites locals but fits the government’s limitations? With a better-fitted program, 30,000 USD, and an unemployed population. The neighbors, a constructor, and I developed a project where the components were delegated. Some members of the community took on demolition and some construction themselves, some others completed finishings. After six months of collaborative work, the neighbors got to know each other and now take care of the space. To the date, they use this space for holding peer-to-peer workshops for learning how to cook, dance, build bicycles, and how to grow plants.
Buildings are flexible structures.
Neighbors took ownership of their space and keep reinventing it to fit their changing needs. They have used the structure for air-dance performances and inaugurated an art gallery on the fence. A local committee coordinates programming and activities between neighbors who were strangers before this project started.
My Role: Co-Founder & Co-Director at Sustrato.
Team: Sustrato, TAT Constructora, Comité Vecinal.
Client: Neighbors of Rinconada Santa María, Mexico City
Location: Rinconada Santa María, Mexico City (2016)
Status: Built
More Effective Public Transit for Connecting Downtown Mexico
Nevertheless, this project had to prove its advantages as a counter-proposal to a tourist tram. In-depth analysis proved that buses were a more feasible option –covering a larger and more demanded route, being flexible in the face of street closures and public services vehicles, reducing a comparable amount of carbon emissions, and integrating with the city mobility network.
The proposal was challenged by narrow streets with intense pedestrian activity and entrenched neighbors and business owners –who now value the benefits of sidewalk design and urban connectivity. In addition, money savings allow extending the BRT line to the International Airport.
My Role: Lead Designer and Project Manager at a|911
Client: Ministry of Transportation
Location: Mexico City, México (2010-2012)
Status: Built with an extension to the airport
Ravine Protection Policies for Fire-Risk Reduction
Every summer, elevated temperatures, high winds, and dry weather mix in the ravines of Valparaiso. This combination tends to originate destructive wildfires. In addition, due to the lack of available land, informal settlements develop around high-risk areas polluting the ravines and paving water streams.
Policy changes to historic preservation will allow higher density in safe areas and recognize the ravine ecosystem as a natural heritage that also requires preservation. Current urban dynamics understand that neighborhoods are organized by watershed. The new master plan will recognize watersheds’ social organization to foster environmental accountability by ravine and will integrate the natural topography by promoting new zoning that develops perpendicular to the sea, to integrate the organization by watershed.
Zoning most dialogue with urban dynamics
Mapping workshops with community members revealed that former city plans where ignoring the city’s dynamics. As a consequence, inhabitants were unable to adhere to such plans. The new Master Plan aims to integrate ongoing dynamics and a shared vision of the city.
My Role: Urban Planner & Designer
Team: PLACECO, Plancerro.
Client: Municipality of Valparaíso
Location: Valparaiso, Chile (2017)
Status: Approved by the Municipal Council and the Ministry of Housing
Landscape Design to Reduce Crime and Flood-Risk
The Master Plan is one of the 150 commitments included in “We all are Juárez” crime-reduction strategy led by the federal government in Ciudad Juarez. At that moment, Juarez was the deadliest city on Earth.
Ciudad Juarez is a desert city located on the US-Mexico border. In this strategic position, both legal and illegal industries benefit from international trading and cheap labor. Since the end of the Bracero Program in 1964, migrant workers have been developing informal housing in flood-risk areas, located far from urban utilities, transit, education, and health facilities. Continuous floods resulted in vacant lots where organized crime cuartels.
Research revealed the potential of repurposing vacant spaces for multiple uses: stormwater management, capacity building activities in the short run, and economic opportunities in the long run. A green corridor with commercial activity will run in-between two abandoned water retention basins that will be consolidated as seasonal public spaces –playgrounds, sports facilities, a skate park and horticulture terraces will be available at different levels of flood– a community workshop and progressive housing will be built on a flood-safe perimeter.
My Role: Project Manager & Urban Designer at a|911.
Team: a|911
Client: Ministry for Social Development (SEDESOL)
Location: Ciudad Juárez, México (2011)
Status: Project
Awards: Bronze Holcim Awards Latin America 2011.
Making Reconstruction Plans More Efficient at the Local Level
In September 2017, two severe earthquakes hit Mexico, killing hundreds of people and destroying thousands of structures. As a consequence, 18,851 settlements were declared disaster areas (DOF. 2017); 96 percent of those settlements are small rural villages of less than 2,500 inhabitants. Because they tend to be very poor, the Mexican federal government intervened to assist affected families. This thesis studies how national reconstruction plans can be made more efficient at the local level.
Research showed that reconstruction was being led by external agents that fail to understand rural needs, consequently imposing urban housing solutions on a rural setting, thereby creating financial, structural and health risks. For instance, building indoor kitchens for families that cook with firewood, toilets for villages without sewage, separating big families (and their combined incomes) into multiple two-bedroom houses, and relocating farmers far from their land. However, volunteering students were being able to translate urban-based solutions to rural-specific needs. At the conclusion of the project, I proposed the creation of a University Network for Rural Risk Reduction, so as to decentralize the technical capacity, currently concentrated in Mexican cities, while integrating local knowledge regarding rural-specific needs. This Network could prepare professionals able to work in some of the 159,821 rural villages of Mexico, which house the least unattended populations and represent 97.74% of Mexican settlements (INEGI. 2010).
My Role: Researcher as a graduate student (Master Thesis, 2018).
Advisor: Lorena Bello Gomez
Readers: James Wescoat, Garnette Cadogan.
Integrated Mobility System with Low-CO2 Alternatives
This proposal was a response to the deep transportation issues in the metropolitan region of Acapulco. Maribus tackles the mobility problems the area is experiencing in an integrated way by contributing to the tourism industry, creating new economic activities, and linking zones and geographies of Acapulco that remained isolated. All this would be achieved by creating a maritime transportation system without equal in Mexico. The proposal contemplates the intermodal integration of this project with the rest of the existing infrastructure. Maribus – Acabici will offer the opportunity to decrease the travel time and it will improve the conditions of the immediate urban context. The main benefit would be the decrease door-to-door travel time, and in the adaption of natural conditions of the bay to improve the transportation infrastructure. The goal is to decrease the amount of vehicles in the bay area and the need for further investment in infrastructure. Acabici would diminish the user expenditure in transfer stations. The system would promote the image of the city as a center for tourism.
My Role: Project Manager & Urban Designer at a|911
Team: arquitectura 911, ITDP.
Client: Ministry of Urban Development of the State of Guerrero
Location: Acapulco Bay, Mexico (2010-2012)
Status: Project
International Exhibition on Future of Urban Mobility
In the future, urban mobility will prioritize people over vehicles. Urban life in Tacubaya will stop happening in the left-overs of urbanization but at the center of urban design. By 2030, Tacubaya will be connected to the rest of the city, and mobility policies will encourage high-density and mixed-use development. In addition, pedestrian overpasses and tunnels will be extinct so pedestrian crossing will happen at ground level. The proposal develops three concepts:
Tacubaya multimodal transport center, a public building that concentrates and organizes public transit while opening upper levels for retail and culture.
Civic plaza and people-friendly streets, the design prioritizes pedestrian activities such as walking, visiting the public market, or Tacubaya’s central square.
Infill development projects, improvement of public infrastructure, and policies for efficient use of unoccupied land and parking lots.
My role: Project Manager & Urban Designer at a|911
Team: a|911, Ana Álvarez.
Client: Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)
Location: Tacubaya, Mexico City, México (2011)
Status: Project for International Exhibition
