panam 2050

PAN-AMERICAN CITIES The Grand Urbanism

Dr. Cristian Suau suauc@cardiff.ac.uk

PAN-AMERICAN CITIES: THE GRAND URBANISM Dr. Cristian Suau suauc@cardiff.ac.uk

The Americas is perhaps the best scenario of all kind of ideological, political and economic schizophrenia. It is also a dramatic urban laboratory to learn from. This unexpected urbanism is clearly expressed in mega-infrastructure such as the Panama Canal, California’s highways, etc. It is a territory governed by bigness, wildness and shantyness.

The Pan-American Highway1, so-called Panamericana in Spanish, is the longest system of roads on Earth with about 32,700 km. A titanic route with numerous geographical, environmental and urban contrasts, it has captured the imagination (and hostility) of visionary planners, engineers and environmentalists for many decades. It represents a systematic attempt of linking and organising cities and regions in the Americas, through the mobility of people, information and goods. The process of urbanisation updated various urban systems to adequate standards of production, consumption and exchange.

Nowadays Latin America is experiencing a new phase of modernisation towards a more urban based economy while remains still informal. Due to the rapid externalisation of production and services, capital’s flows, the acceleration of cycle of production and new transport and communication systems; the industrial activities have been dislocated and thus transformed cities in updated productive spaces. The ‘wild capitalism’, an advanced phase of the Chicago Boys’ school, and its success applied in cities in the South lies in updating its accessibility, meaning large and complex networks of transport and communication and qualified workforce. Its result has reoriented the urban dynamics and transformed the urban market –formal and informal- in a speculative game board of Metropolis polarising the social differences and displacing the poor people elsewhere. The results are vast obsolete areas, now vacant, which are situated mainly along the main transport arteries.

What are the shape and size of the Pan-American cities under the post neo-liberal empire? Are they compact, diffuse or hybrid? What is the percentage of formality or informality? Are they still polycentric or becoming linear cities? Is it a generic Pan-American city like the model of Las Vegas: A main strip road with urban fragments behind or aside?

Within the continuous integration and growth of Latin American economies, the role of PanAmerican Highway acquires an new strategic meaning again, no longer as a mere mono-functional road system, but as an urban and ecological passageway to integrate cities by revitalising and densifying rundown, vacant or low-dense areas according to the challenges of this new modernity phase.

The Pan-American corridor can be understood as a regional complex of interwoven infrastructures.

It reports upon the spatial dynamics of car-based transportation, speculative economic development, illicit urbanisation and dysfunctional ecologies along its frame. One of the direct impacts of constructing Panamericana (from Patagonia to Alaska) was the devastation of countless ecosystems. However some of these unique natural lands still remain intact, for instance in the Chilean Patagonia or in the border between Panama and Colombia so called the Darién Gap, a vast marshy jungle through which the Pan American Highway has yet to be completed. To continue to South America, vehicles must be ferried from Panama to La Guaira, Venezuela, or 1

The Pan-American Highway was proposed in 1923 at the Fifth International Conference of American States, meeting in Santiago, Chile. Two years later the Pan American Highway Congress was created as a permanent institution to foster the building of the road.

World War II brought increased interest in the United States for a highway south to the Panama Canal. Mexico completed its section of the Inter-American in 1950.

Buenaventura, Colombia. How can Pan-American cities reconcile a new impetus of economic growth with the preservation of its precious landscape and natural environments? Can we also densify hinterlands? As a glance, it seems that the key aim is to conciliate the current urban economies with preservation of biodiversity and a more diversified regional accessibility.

This study reflects critically about concepts and principles of metapolisation2 of informal urban territories along transnational corridors in the axis north-south of the Americas.

Figure 1. Unfolded mapamundi, which reveals the global impact of Pan-American Highway and its unstoppable expansion. This infrastructure communicates and drive the shape of several cities such as Mexico City, Lima and Santiago de Chile. Source: Suau 2

The metapolis is constituted as a polarized system of interconnected global metropolises thanks to the proliferation of high-speed means of transport. The consequences of this acceleration are profound: the appearance of the so-called ‘tunnel effect’ among nodes means the end of the phenomenon of transversality that throughout history has served as a basis for the ‘natural’ organization of the territory. ‘Metapolisation is double process of metropolisation and formation of new types of urban territories called metapolis’. Ascher, F. New Principles of Urbanism (2004), Madrid, Alianza Editorial, p.56

This study explores the potential of Panamericana as meta-corridor of an alternative urban development, more resilient and less vulnerable to speculative right-wind trends. Panam-cities is a perfect scenario to debate on the dilemma of East-West cities situated along the Pacific rim through alternative urban principles, visions and models of cities; and outline the morphological and environmental impacts of this ‘grand infrastructure’, in terms of process of unstoppable continental metapolisation. The dilemma is not East versus West cities but Pacific versus Atlantic cities.

This study utilises various taxonomies of densification and expansion of formal and informal urbanism and maps potential programmatic infills to bridge and reinforce the amalgamation of formal and informal urban economies. In terms of theoretical support this study will critically analyse the urban principles and potential applicability of linear cities by Arturo Soira (1894); the socio-model of compact city by Dantzig and Saaty (1973) and the new principles of urbanism (continuity, density, diversity and hybridity) by François Ascher (2004). The chosen cities are Mexico City, Lima and Santiago: They are already giant conurbations; spread and discontinuous; heterogeneous and multi-polarised.

Figure 2. Geometrical and scale comparison of Mexico City, Lima and Santiago and the effect of PanAmerican Highway in the evolution of each urban territory. Source: Suau

Bio Cristian Suau holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Master in Urban Design (Barcelona School of Architecture). He has an international professional and advanced research experience in environment; housing and urban design in Europe and also overseas, mainly in Latin America. He was senior architect/project leader in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam.

In addition, he has obtained several awards in international eco-design entry competitions such as Europan and others. His current research mainly covers the following fields: Experimental Design, Informal cities; Junk-frames; and Water & Sustainable Habitats. Dr. Suau has a solid foundation of design excellence; conceptualization; innovative and cross-disciplinary vision; and leadership in effective international teamwork environments. Since mid-2007 he teaches Architecture at the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), UK and also lead an NGO called RECICLARQ in Barcelona: www.reciclarq.org