Facing growth through permeability: 120 projects for Caracas

The accelerated growth that Caracas experienced during the twentieth century resulted in a superimposition of different urban patterns not always in proper dialogue between each other. The irregular political structure was supported by an increasingly powerful new economy which generated growth promoted by two opposite extremes. From above, the city was promoted by the public and private sector under the influence of ideological models claiming to have a sole and absolute response to the rapid urban development of the twentieth century. Real estate developments adopted the suburban “garden city” model for the elites, while state policies gave a touch of post-war modernity to this model, on the grounds of “social utopia”. The set of one-way urban policies instigated alternative responses by those who were excluded from the system, giving a final shape to urban needs in a spontaneous model of growth (also called informal) promoted from the bottom. This parallel growth never reached an effective dialogue and growth models became patterns of exclusion. As a result, the contemporary profile of Caracas lies on a fragmented urban structure, physically inaccessible, setting a segregated social configuration. This work proposes a strategy that promotes urban renewal from both directions. The “top-down” strategy seeks to respond to population growth through a proposal for densification of the existing city. In contrast to the model of territorial expansion of “Socialist Cities” promoted by the state, the strategy aims to increase urban density on top of the existing low densities caused by the suburban model, taking advantage of the existing transport infrastructure. In parallel, the “bottom-up” strategy pays attention to the specific location, giving importance to topics such as place identity, place diversity and place governance. The starting point is the “project of one street” with immediate impact on the local scale. However, the project responds to conditions that are common in different parts of the city giving rise to similar strategies that can be repeated to generate a combined impact with metropolitan relevance.European Postgraduate Masters in UrbanismUrbanismArchitectur