Identity within Diversity

Abstract

This project displays an explorative attempt at redefining the megablock planning concept. The Greater Bay Area (GBA), as the site of interest, is undergoing rapid metropolization, with a risk of resulting in the formation of indistinguishable, generic urban structures. The fast development and the migration process have defined a region with multiple identities and diverse groups of people living in it. The social and spatial implications of the metropolization process reflect a segregation between the actual planning system and the diverse people that live in this region. The proposal aims to transform the megablock, a traditional, structural form of planning that is a form of de-contextualized, top down planning based around an economic, private-driven market, into a planning tool that enables the cohabitation of multiple lifestyles that creates social networks of interaction, activates spaces of the existing context and relates them with new developments. Therefore, the redefining of the megablock intends to find how rapid urbanization and the enhancement of distinct local and external identities can go hand-in-hand in a multiplicity of urban contexts, creating a balance between quantity and quality and creating a process of place making that allows the enhancement and strengthening of the notion of identity in a local, urban and regional scale. The Megablock becomes a sustainable prototype for future urbanization and a morphological spatial structure that re-establish a spatial order and framework for the transitions and relations between diverse places and people.