REVOLUCION DIGITALTransformaciones Políticas, Sociales y Culturales

Street: the ultimate urban public spaceAndrés Borthagaray

Institut pour la ville en mouvementConsejo de planeamiento estratégico, Buenos Aires

SEMINARIO NACIONAL DE PRESUPUESTO PUBLICO

Latin American population is almost 80% urban

LA has 4 cities over 10 M hab, 50 over 1M and 150 over 0,5M

Streets are estimated to represent between 25 and 30 % of urban surface

They are the privileged space of encounter, interaction, economic activity and social integration of the city

However, not enough attention is being paid to their design, management and governance

UN HABITAT WORLD URBAN FORUM 6th THE URBAN FUTURE

Oken exchan

Some pedestrian streets survived since colonial times, still vital with commerce. Sunlight is essential.

Some others, in car dominated cities, were established as welcome exceptions.Still, monofunctional streets as a rule sacrifice diversity. And sometimes they were offered as a compensation for less pedestrian space in other streets.

How to achieve best/balanced street performance remains an open question.

Peatonales

Livable pedestrian streets in Buenos Aires and Lima

Streets are the place for many vital urban functions, they structure cities

above ground they contain buildings, commerce, open views vehicle (all kind of vehicles, 4, 2 wheels) and pedestrian movement, articulate public and private space, (where windows and doors from private open) greenery, drainage underground they carry subway, utilities, pipelines.

UN HABITAT WORLD URBAN FORUM 6th THE URBAN FUTURE

Streets are the place for many vital urban functions:

Paseo de la Reforma, México City

MonumentalityA successful integration of vegetation

Población

Vital streets in popular neighborhoods: the most frequent example, sometimes ignored in social housing or urban planning

Paisajísticas

Everything sacrificed to car circulation

Funcionalistas

Everything sacrificed to car circulation (twice)

Avenida Jiménez, Bogotá, Colombia

A balanced integration of mass transit and landscaped public pedestrian space. The physical environment helped to recover social and economic activity.

BRT funcionalista

Curitiba, a pioneer in BRT , tied transportation to land use and density. Others took only the most visible part, regardless of different environments

Social improvement through street space redesign in a modest neighborhood (Patio Bonito, Bogotá).

A solution reached through a participative planning process

A parallelism: Narrow economic measurementGDP reductionism and human development/happinessNarrow street design conceptsTraffic engineering reductionism and urban performance of the streetHow to widen the criteria for designing, managing and governing the street?Buchanan put the concept in crisis, but it still remains rather dominantBRT is not one type fits all situations

The view from the bus: the legible city.

UN HABITAT WORLD URBAN FORUM 6th THE URBAN FUTURE

The view from the bus

By offering wider references to professionals of the built environment,decision makers and community leadersSchool books and professional guides too often mirror the narrow approach

New options are needed to frame a better debate for our urban future. That is our challenge.