Becoming indigneous to place
Reimagining Urban Futures through Ancestral Knowledge and Territorial Resilience in Chile
A. Poggione Garcia (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Irene Luque Martin – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
J. Subendran – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
R. Hädrich Silva – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
This research offers a critical reassessment of Chilean urbanism through the integration of territorial memory and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Indigenous peoples. From an interdisciplinary perspective that bridges urbanism, anthropology, history, and ecology, it explores how Indigenous communities have inhabited and understood the land for millennia, in contrast to the colonial, extractive, and technocratic logics that have dominated in recent centuries. The thesis argues that incorporating these perspectives is not a symbolic gesture, but a fundamental strategy for confronting climate change, building territorial resilience, and responding to natural disasters from a situated, contextual, and relational viewpoint.
Through the concept of radical spatial imagination, it proposes a methodological framework to envision and project more just and sustainable urban futures, rooted in reciprocity with nature. This proposal challenges the dominant narratives of modern urbanism and disaster management, promoting a paradigm shift: from viewing territory as a resource to understanding it as a living being.
Accordingly, planning, design, and public policy must evolve toward practices that recognize the land as an extension of collective identity, fostering a mode of inhabiting that is conscious, restorative, and deeply connected to ancestral territorial knowledge.