Rethinking the Territory of Concepción Chile

Abstract

This research aims to re-envision the city, understanding it as a living system where change creates growth and renewal, and where uncertainty is our new normal. The continuous struggle between cities and nature, forces human settlements to look for stability and safety, trying to control the dynamics and flows of underlying landscapes. In Chile, this tension is present in many urban settlements trying to deal with the natural dynamics. Chile, as a territory, is exposed to multiple dynamic natural forces such as the Pacific. With a coast line of 6.435 km, that is defined by the collision of two tectonic plates in constant movement, this regularly triggers a series of natural disasters that affect cities in different ways and degrees in the country. Concepción has been affected severely during the last two decades. Concepción is a coastal urban area that has grown into the flood plain of two river mouths and an ecological important tidal coastal wetland landscape. Although Concepción is built in a wet soil, city and water never meet; there is a dissociation where one is superimposed on the other. Furthermore, the whole system is increasingly at risk due to the urban pressure of the expanding city, resulting in degradation of ecosystems and natural infrastructure and with that exposing the coastal city to even more frequent and severe natural hazards. The key opportunity to face the existing challenges does not lie in the primacy of one system upon the other. Both, city and landscape need to interact in a more redefined way, looking for multifunctional structures and a new awareness of the importance of the presently disrupted landscape. What is a new resilient urban landscape backbone? The following research resulted in a void adaptive network based on design principles: 1.Value the natural system as the base infrastructure for the future city. 2. Use of voids (unplanned spaces) as an emergent, autonomous and self-organized network to create redundancy and multifunctional spaces for risk management. 3. Reformulate the city as a provider of nature: larger green spaces, landscape connectivity and protection of the ecological values of the existing nature. Applying these steps lead to a resilient spatial framework for the city of Concepción that can provide more stability and safety against natural disasters. The designed backbone was consequently tested in a few natural disaster scenarios and adapted where necessary. This approach can be applied in other cities with similar challenges.