Re-Inhabiting the Edge City:
The San Juan Case Study
Introduction The San Juan Edge City
Growth and Historical Context
San Juan’s Metropolitan Area According to the US. Census Data
San Juan Metropolitan Area According to Urban Growth
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan Old San Juan Condado
Isla Verde
Santurce Levittown
Sagrado Corazón
Cataño
Hato Rey
Ave. De Diego
Río Piedras
Bayamón Centro Médico
Guaynabo
65 Infantería
Cupey Caimito
The Municipality of
San Juan
Municipality of San Juan
Census Data 1990
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Total Population of 437, 745, within a total area of 49 square miles 9,000 persons per square mile 32.1 Median Age 13.5% 65 years and Older 224,046 Total Employees 84.5% Employed, 15.5% Unemployed 50,419 # of students in public schools in grades Kinder through 12 36,491 # of students in private schools in grades Kinder through 12 247 Total # of Public and Private Schools 1,975 Total # of students graduating from High School 19 total # of Universities $6,383 per capital income $12,332 median income per family 44.8% of families under poverty line (threshold of $12, 674 (4)) Average size of family in San Juan is 3.38 (the lowest in Puerto Rico)
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Old San Juan
Old San Juan
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan El Condado
Isla Verde
El Condado & Isla Verde
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan Santurce
Sagrado Corazรณn
Santurce & Sagrado Corazรณn
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Hato Rey
Hato Rey
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
De Diego
Centro Medico
Centro MĂŠdico & De Diego Avenue
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
RÃo Piedras
RÃo Piedras
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Cupey
Caimito
Cupey & Caimito
Introduction San Juan’s Suburban Edge
Physical Characteristics and new Opportunities
The Municipality of
San Juan
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Avenida De Diego
c. 1930
c. 1950
c. 1970
c. 1997
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Centro Medico
c. 1930
c. 1950
c. 1970
c. 1997
The Metropolitan Area of San Juan
Cupey
Caimito
Characteristics of the Landscape and Topography
The Edge City
So How are We Going to Accommodate New Growth?
As of the latter half of the 1990’s, we reached a moment in history of the growth of the suburban edge of San Juan in which development has literary hit a wall. The topography of the periphery of the city is very accidental. There are too many steep areas, too many natural structures and ecosystems that cannot be destroyed. As a result new economic and environmental forces are limiting the outward growth of the Edge City. A new focus in development opportunities needs to emerge. Where should development happened within San Juan, a city in which over 80% of the land is developed, and there is still market needs forcing and empowering new development to occur? What should we do? Where can we go?
The Residual Space
“It has been proposed that the emergence of the residuum as a vital economic, cultural and political site will occur, not as a singular act, but as the reciprocal effect of closure� - Albert Pope
The use of the Residual Space Location of new development within the last decade.
The Paseos Case Study – New Typologies
Before
c. 1998
After
c. 1995 c. 1997 c. 1999
Why Not This?
Activate a Dormant Layer, The RÃo Piedras
A New Green Corridor for the City of San Juan
A shift from viewing cities from formal terms to looking at them in dynamic ways. “The final thing planned is not mere area of land, but movement or activity.” - Benton McKaye
“Terra Incognita” • It was the site constructed through the subtraction of dominant development patterns. • The ‘new exploration’ of this terra incognita was to discover a more ‘efficient framework’ that lay below the ‘surfaces’. These networks were determined by existing conditions in the land but they will also begin to provide a framework for the acquisition of additional urban or recreational land.
Improvements in Mass Transit Added Bus Routes
Improvements in Mass Transit A New Light-Rail System
Ferry Boat System
“By linking open spaces … we can achieve a whole that is better than the sum of the parts.” “The prototype might be characterized as linear networks or partitions that incorporated both transportation and utility programs as well as instructed for cultivating land and translating between land, community, and industry.” “These sites potentially support a kind of parallelism that through connection, strengthens all of the associated networks, and they might be understood as switch sites for some kind of different exchange among carriers.” “The number of networks that have developed separately however, in the fights for dominance between water, rail highway, and air have laid the groundwork for potential intelligence within the networks.”
- Keller Easterling
Borrowing an Idea,
The Linear Park
Linear Park el Bosque Lineal Allows for pedestrian and bicycle movement around the suburban edge.
Those sites that lie between the networks as potential switches are extremely powerful, since joining one complex but singular network to another increases their combined intelligence many fold.�
El Bosque Lineal (represented in blue and green), Automobile Infrastructure (represented in red), and Pedestrian and Bicycle Movement Confines (represented by the black circles and defined by there 1/2 mile radius and 1 mile radius, respectively).
El Bosque Lineal (represented in blue and green), Pedestrian Confines (represented in tan) and Bicycle Confines (represented in light green) designated in 1/2 mile radius and 1 mile radius circles, respectively.
El Bosque Lineal Neighborhood Strategy
The New Establish Green Corridor
The Edge Condition
General components of the New Establish Green Corridor: the Piedras River (represented in blue), the natural reservoir and adjacent open spaces (represented in green), and the urban pedestrian and bikeway path (represented in red).
Connecting the Cul-de-Sac to the green corridor. Separation of the Automobile Scale Infrastructure and the Pedestrian Scale New Development serving as barrier between
Intermodal Connectivity Points
Potential intermodal site where the exchange between transportation networks suggest a more efficient, complete, and intelligent transportation network.
New Amenity Attracting Development
El Bosque Lineal attracting new development (represented in yellow) to its edges.
SUMMARY
El Bosque Lineal (represented in blue and green), Pedestrian Confines (represented in tan) and Bicycle Confines (represented in light green) designated in 1/2 mile radius and 1 mile radius circles, respectively.
The urban pedestrian and bikeway path network organization is similar to the automobile infrastructure. The network is composed of: 1) a main arterial, which follows the lay of the land, and 2) many different arterial branches, which go out and connect with other development organizations and new amenities to be developed. These new amenities need to be organize within the establish confines of pedestrian and bicycle movement. At the same time this organization needs to be repeated at other established confines along the corridor of the Bosque Lineal. It could be argued that these organizations could start establishing neighborhoods, at the same time provide location for possible sites to incorporate specific programmatic needs essential to the neighborhood unit.
Landscape and Infrastructure Organizing location and programmatic intensity
Landscape and Infrastructure Organizing Programmatic Land-Uses
Pedestrian Scale