Buenos Aires Elevated Highway Park

The city of Buenos Aires – capital of Argentina – shifted from enjoying an exceptional coastal condition in the early 20th century to nearly entirely blocking the city’s relationship with the Río de la Plata. The consolidation of Puerto Madero and Puerto Nueva, and the successive construction of ring roads, compounded an effect of disconnection and isolation, not only between the city and the river but also with certain neighborhoods that were cut off from the regular fabric of the city. This was the case of Villa 31, an informal settlement dating back some 85 years with 40,000 residents, crossed and divided by the Presidente Arturo Umberto Illia Highway and surrounded by logistics and railway infrastructures that serve the port. The road infrastructure, exclusively for vehicle use, generates a physical barrier that interferes with residents’ lives, hindering pedestrian mobility and exacerbating the Villa’s isolation from the city, despite the proximity of the emblematic Avenida 9 de Julio.

Villa 31 is also one of the most characteristic villas miseria or shanty towns in the country, despite the fact that some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods are located nearby. Years of residents’ appeals, studies and various intervention policies may finally be having an effect following on a long-standing desire to dignify the Villa, making it into a full-fledged neighborhood in the city. The improvement processes began with the Comprehensive Urbanization Plan and the location of government buildings in the surrounding areas. However, rerouting the highway to a new route, freeing up 115,810 m2 of public space, will allow for introducing infrastructures and facilities, recovering the internal and external connections through a green corridor more than 2 km long.

From a barrier to a green corridor that structures the neigbourhood

The construction of the Parque en Altura [elevated park] is outlined as an opportunity to generate a green space but also to remedy the lack of basic infrastructures, facilities and quality public space in the Villa, implementing strategies that favor social development, while also allowing the rest of the city to discover an area that is largely unknown to most of its inhabitants. At the same time, the Parque en Altura will bring about significant changes in connectivity, accessibility and mobility on different scales: the city scale and the neighborhood scale. At the city scale, freeing up the space occupied by the highway will outline two large longitudinal axes that will provide, in the first case, a connection between Villa 31 and Avenida 9 de Julio and, in the second case, a connection with the bus station. Both axes will be planned according to criteria to foster speed reduction, while guaranteeing pedestrian mobility, public transportation and the Ecobici service, which will promote the permeability of the neighborhood.

On the neighborhood scale, the highway is a physical and symbolic barrier that can only be crossed at calle 9 and the Playón, after nearly 870 metres of division and impenetrability. Drawing on this fact, the project aims to articulate eight cross-cutting axes to generate a qualitative increase in permeability. These eight axes will establish a series of varied public spaces: a group of pedestrian streets in coexistence with vehicle traffic and small squares/sports courts that serve as spaces for relating within a highly dense urban fabric.