CITY EMBASSY QUITO
FABRICA CIUDAD
29 AUG - 28 OCT 2016 TWO MONTHS OF PROGRAMMING TOWARDS HABITAT III
CITY EXPEDITION QUITO CITIZEN-RUN PUBLIC SPACE FUTURE CITIES PLACEMAKING AS A TOOL CO-CREATION IN PRACTICE HUMAN CITIES COALITION UN HABITAT URBAN LABS THE HUNGRY CITY HUMAN CITIES COALITION
CITY EMBASSY QUITO FABRICA CIUDAD CITY-MAKING IN QUITO, CHANGE STARTS IN THE HEART OF THE WORLD Quito - Ecuador’s capital, 2850 meters high up in the mighty Andes mountains - is perhaps not the first city that springs to mind when thinking of global urban challenges, innovation, and sustainable development. Yet, it was chosen as the host city for the Habitat III Conference in October 2016, UN-Habitat’s major congress on urbanisation which takes place only once every twenty years. The mission of Habitat III was the adoption of a New Urban Agenda: an action-oriented document which will set global standards of achievement in sustainable urban development. Rethinking the way we build, manage, and live in cities through drawing together cooperation with committed partners, relevant stakeholders, and urban actors at all levels of government as well as the private sector. In the words of Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, the third edition of Habitat meant to bring forward a paradigm shift in which urbanisation should be seen as a tool for development, rather than an accumulation of problems. As Habitat III’s mission of an agenda for better cities - emerging from the joint efforts of multiple stakeholders - immediately spoke to our imagination, Pakhuis de Zwijger was keen to go to Quito and asked JAM Visual Thinking to come along. And as is our style, we took a somewhat reversed approach to the New Urban Agenda than most of the institutions did. We started with the people that are rooted in the neighbourhoods and work daily to improve the livability of the city: City Makers. We established Fabrica Ciudad, a platform for City Makers in Quito, to meet their peers and establish international connections throughout the days of Habitat III. We partnered with the Human Cities Coalition, working on the showcase Ruta de la Experiencia, a
pedestrian friendly street with public space interventions like vertical gardens, street furniture of recycled material, bicycle parking, permeable green surfaces, and newly planted native trees - designed with the residents of the neighbourhood. Together we took off to Quito to meet and capture as many inspiring stories of pioneering City Makers as possible. Weeks ahead of Habitat III, we organised events in the monumental Centro Cultural Benjamín Carríon, our beautiful temporary City Embassy, to show the world - and the Quiteños - the innovative approaches to city-making that emerged from Habitat III’s host city and all around the world. Together with an ambitious group of Architecture and Urbanism students of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, we had interviews with City Makers, and visualised the stories one by one. And we learned a lot! Quito happened to be an excellent location to discuss the adoption and implementation of a New Urban Agenda, as the city faces many of the challenges exemplary to cities in the Global South. The last decades, the city is confronted with rapid growth as a result of rural to urban migration. The city however has difficulty with its outward expansion, because it is caught in between two mountain passes to its East and West, in the four kilometres narrow valley below the majestic volcano Pichincha. Expansion is therefore only possible towards the South and North - which transformed the city’s plan into a highly inaccessible and segregated seventy kilometres long corridor. Alternatively, people move to the suburban valleys behind the mountain passes, the suburban farmer’s villages of
Cumbaya and Tumbaco. These are now popular destinations for the middle classes, who are en masse fleeing the deteriorating inner city for the suburban dream of a house with a garden, enough space to park their multiple cars, and where Americanstyle shopping malls and drive-in fast food joints abound. And to be honest, life isn’t bad in ‘The Valley’, as hip restaurants, food trucks, and coworking spaces - such as Pata de Gallo in the creative La Tejedora district - pop up almost weekly now, turning it into an increasingly urban environment. The problem is, however, that the car-dependent residents of the valleys are further clogging the streets of Quito, since most of them commute to work in the city, and public transport is as good as non-existent. Meanwhile, the beautiful historical centre of Quito, one of the first two UNESCO heritage sites in the world, is depopulating. Due to the restrictions that come with the heritage status, the necessary restoration of the innercity is too costly, especially considering the current economic crisis the city is situated in since the global decrease of oil prices - one of the biggest drivers of the Ecuadorian economy. The result is an almost vacant historical centre, with the most beautiful colonial mansions used as storage room for retail on the ground floor, which makes this part of town better to be avoided after office hours. Public life in the streets is almost absent at night, which goes hand-in-hand with the car dependency, polycentrism, and low temperatures at night - due to the high altitude. Joan Clos’s words may particularly be true for the way Quito is governed at the moment, where urbanisation is mostly seen as a challenge to be addressed and regulated, rather than an opportunity for development - much like Northern European cities in the 1970s. Luckily, progressive City Makers think differently and take up initiatives to bring live back to the neighbourhoods they hold so dear. They definitely see opportunity in a crumbling 1930s villa in La Mariscal and insist on making the city more bicycle friendly, walkable or green by starting a community garden. Their concerns are in line with those of the government, aiming to revive the city and make it more inclusive to all, the different approaches are just seemingly conflicting at the moment. In a city that needs quite some work to be done, issues seem to arise around the question whether a do-it-yourself mentality
is desirable, or if this would further evoke the development of an informal or parallel society - much seen in cities in Latin America. Therefore, the response of the government is often to fall back on controlling mechanisms, rather than a collaborative stance. Although the New Urban Agenda is an ambitious step in the right direction, as a formulation of common goals for better cities worldwide, it is non-binding and so far fails to provide an action perspective on how exactly to execute multi-level governance, and in particular how to include civil society and City Makers into the policymaking process. And from what we’ve seen in Quito and cities throughout Europe, those happen to be the first to disappear off the table when things become difficult or matters too politically sensitive. However, we believe that a successful implementation of the New Urban Agenda depends to a large extend on its efforts to create a certain level playing field for public, private and civic stakeholders to be at one table. With Fabrica Ciudad, we hoped to have sparked the incentive to do so! Want to read more about our project in Quito? citiesintransition.eu/quito fb.com/fabricaciudad habitat3.org Read more about the Quito City Makers: albordearq.com fablabs.io/bacterialab fb.com/eljapiawer fb.com/opuslamariscal patadegallo.org
FABRICA CIUDAD
STUDENT PROGRAMME
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MAKERS IN THE CITY OF QUITO
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INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR HOUSING WORLDWIDE
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CITY EXPEDITION QUITO
OPeraciรณn Urbana Sostenible - OPUS La Mariscal What started as a Business Improvement District in the entertainment district of La Mariscal to retrieve the security, has grown into a laboratory for the selfgovernance of the neighbourhood. The initiative started when a group of concerned citizens got together to collectively invade an abandoned house that was held hostage by criminals for more than a decade. The invasion transformed the house into the first community policing station in the country. Community-action so far included the revival of another abandoned property into a Casa del Barrio and art gallery, a communityrun vegetable garden with an educational programme for school kids, the planting of more than 200 native trees, the installation of the first drinking water tap in the country, and the launch of a communityapp for direct democracy. The initiative is meant to complement the work of the government, by reframing responsibilities on the local level.
CITY MAKERS QUITO: OPUS LA MARISCAL
Diego Guayasamin & Sergio Alvarez Diego Guayasamin and Sergio Alvarez, two 29 and 30-year-old architects, merged their two companies to create a place where anyone can produce their own unique projects in order to make a better society and place to live. Bacteria Lab is the first digital fabrication laboratory in Ecuador, founded in 2010 to revolutionise the concept of construction and design in Ecuador. All operations are directed by Diego and Sergio, who are pioneers in digital research and production in the country. ‘We think architecture and design aren’t just about places to live, it’s something that gives us memories and sensitive experiences. Combining sustainable materials and systems could make our living great’, says Diego. They incorporated FabLab principles and themes in their company, such as the democratic use of technology for social good, product prototyping, architectural design, machinery development, and open source development of technology for social use. All of Bacteria Lab’s projects are produced by an interdisciplinary co-working team of professionals that want to make a real change and open doors for everyone who shows initiative. ‘The team goal is to share our knowledge to people passionate to change the world’, says Diego, ‘so citizens can start believing that great things can be done here in Ecuador.’
CITY MAKERS QUITO: BACTERIA LAB
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PLACEMAKING AS A TOOL FOR CITY MAKERS
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CO-CREATION IN PRACTICE, AN INTERREGIONAL DEBATE
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WATER RESILIENCE FOR CITIES
CITY MAKERS QUITO
Ruta de la Experiencia The Ruta de la Experiencia transformed Jorge Washington street into a more livable, green and secure street for the city of Quito. It has been fabricated by the Human Cities Coalition, the Dutch public-private partnership of organizations from business, government, NGOs and academia, founded by AkzoNobel, and committed to make cities and human settlements more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. In the run-up to Habitat III the Human Cities Coalition created the Ruta de la Experiencia to showcase how interventions can improve the lives of local citizens. Developed together with the Quito municipality and its inhabitants – and based on a “bottom-up” needs assessment, the project was selected by UN-Habitat as one of 42 projects to be highlighted in the Habitat III Village, together with Fabrica Ciudad.
RUTA DE LA EXPERIENCIA
El Japi-Awer Japi-Awer (‘Happy Hour’) was created in Quito in 2015 by a multidisciplinary group of environmental professionals. Their monthly free public events promote environmental awareness and sustainable urban systems through open, accessible, and inclusive discussions and by applying interactive methods - such as drawing, writing and playing. The meetings take place at neutral and informal spaces like coffee shops, bars, co-working places, and municipality offices and carry on typical Quiteñan traditions such as a café de la tarde, where family and friends meet after work for coffee. They have held several Café del Barrio in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, to promote local sustainable development. Neighbours, community members, and children meet and create collaborative solutions regarding issues like garbage management and recycling, livable communities, alternative mobility, sustainable entrepreneurship, and urban agriculture. El Japi-Awer is our City Embassy in Quito and will keep Fabrica Ciudad ongoing.
CITY MAKERS QUITO: EL JAPI-AWER
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UN HABITAT URBAN LABS
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THE HUNGRY CITY
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COMMENTS ON A GLOBAL URBAN CONVERGENCE
SEE YOU IN 2036 AT HABITAT IV
© 2016 City Embassy Quito / Fabrica Ciudad is een initiatief van Pakhuis de Zwijger in samenwerking met het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, Human Cities Coalition en JAM Visual Thinking.
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