Infrastructure over infrastructure: healing an urban wound in Santiago
Luciano Basauri, Francisca Insulza
A new urban project to cover a portion of the open-cut highway that divides Santiago in two reveals both the urgent need to rethink the use of the space that infrastructure systems occupy and the enormous possibility that the recovery of state owned land implies in the reconfiguration of the city.
Infrastructure and development
Infrastructure networks have always been catalyzing devices in terms of urban speculation. In American (north and south) cities, the projection and development of transport infrastructure has largely set the course for the future expansion and development of urban tissue. More particularly in the case of Latin America, it is usually state investment into infrastructure that has marked a clear incentive to private development by adding value to land while, at the same time, acting as a zoning device that is able to delimit future settlement territories. This is, by no means, an exception in Santiago, where the exacerbated sprawl like growth in the last decades has been a direct result of decisions taken in the creation, boost and development of highway infrastructure.
A cut through Santiago
A clear example of the fore mentioned phenomenon is the late-sixties project for the North-South highway in Santiago. The segment of new infrastructure connected the already existing highways stemming from Santiago to the north and south (see image 1) . Although the city counted with a generous train network and clear east-west connections, the vehicular system did not rely on a continuous, and therefore efficient, north-south axis. The idea consisted in the creation of a connection that would, by default, decongest the cityfs avenues. It was also a clear reflection of the North American boom in highway infrastructure and underlying policies to cut back on collective and expensive train transport in favor of more privately maintained cars and trucks. The actual tracing or physical disposition of the highway combined the need for gthe most direct connectionhto the availability of disposable(state owned and devaluated) territory. It was crystallized in the realization of an open tunnel that, literally, cut the capital city in two. (see images 2)(see images 3)(see images 4)
De-articulation and identity
The completion of the North-South highway did, in fact, create a direct corridor that eased the flow of traffic through the city and is still today the mayor north-south connection in Santiago with a daily flow of approximately 150.000 cars a day. This density of traffic coupled with its sunken condition does not allow an easy articulation among the adjacent neighborhoods creating an enormous and non-permeable barrier, a linear no manfs land that crosses the whole city.(see image 5) In its favor may be said that by forceful isolation, the different neighborhoods of the historical city center, once divided by the highway, were able to maintain and reinforce their inherent characteristics. These areas developed inwards (see image 6) each one creating an identity that is clearly related to specific programmatic activities such as, for example, the civic center, economic center, gbohemianh area, university quarters etc. (see images7)(see images8) All of the above taken into account, it is clear that the negative consequences outweigh by far the positive ones. The basic fact is that the highway created an open wound that, up to now, has found no possibility to heal. The continuous and diverse intentions that have been made to connect both sides of the gap (by the creation of pedestrian passages and bridges containing program) and the initiatives to develop portions of the adjoining abandoned lots have consistently failed. This is due, in great part, to the fact that the properties next to the highway are private. Since any large and permanent type of investment is not rentable in the existing condition, the lots are left empty or with only temporary program(see images 9)(see images 10)(see images 11). Since the negative impact does not limit itself to the actual area of the highway but extends into the nearby surroundings the benefit that some neighborhoods saw in their preservation does not operate in the same manner in less consolidated areas. In these, the presence of the highway only manages to intensify deficient conditions such as segregation and poverty. Finally, together with a law created in 1979 that liberated the access for the transformation of suburban areas, the inner-city highway played an important role in one of the biggest territorial expansions of Santiago.(see image 12)
The healing process, a new initiative
At present, a new project for the North-South Axis plans to literally cover approximately 1.5 km of highway creating a long linear portion of new urban territory (a platform above the highway). Forming part of a larger operation for the Reconfiguration of the Civic Center and the improvement of the Urban Transport System of Santiago, it is a radical and clear solution to a long-standing problem and corresponds to a second turn in the process of rethinking the causes and effects of large infrastructure networks. The project is located in a segment of highway that divides the historical and civic center of Santiago. The new condition is intended mainly to solve issues of spatial segregation and continuity among areas that, apart from spatially consolidated, have seen a large escalation of population over the past ten years. The platform in this sense will extend the existing ground level of the city over the highway, recuperating the continuity that was lost. (See image 6) Although it is not the only area that needs to be taken into account, the recovery of a glost territoryhin a central location of the city is a basic element in a continuous and necessary process of renewal, reconfiguration and intensification of the center core areas of the city.
Opportunities
Along with the healing of the existing wound and improvement of quality of a large and important sector of the city, a series of other opportunities can be foreseen. At a time and in a place where state owned land is a rare thing, the covering of infrastructure creates a place for action that has the possibility to go beyond profit oriented market forces. The plan for the recovery, and indeed creation, of new urban ground, is a clear possibility to stimulate while still guiding private investment. The initiative deals once again with the issue of speculation; the issue not being however expansion and growth but rather reuse, recuperation and intensification. Within a city lost to private real estate and uncontrolled urbanism, state and city planners finally have a tool, and why not say a weapon, to generate more publicly oriented proposals. It is, in the end, the possibility to create infrastructure over infrastructure.
profile
Luciano Basauri
Luciano Basauri was born in Santiago, Chile in 1972. He studied architecture
in the Universidad Central of Santiago and then received his Master's degree
in Architecture at Berlage Institute. He has participated in a diverse range of exhibitions (Witte de Witt, NAI) and at the moment practices architecture in Amsterdam.
Francisca Insulza
Francisca Insulza was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1970 and studied architecture at the Universidad Central in Santiago, Chile.
She came to Holland in 1998 to join the masterfs program at Berlage Institute and after working in Italy for a year, is finishing her thesis on processes of compression and their use in triggering new urban relations.
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