URBAN MICRO DENSIFICATION AS SUSTAINABLE STRATEGY ON CITY RENEWAL AND RESPONSE TO NEW DOMESTIC SPACE IN THE XXI CENTURY

SARA BOCCOLINI

Madrid

Congreso; New Urban Languages; 2014

New Urban Languages

This research studies the micro densification phenomenon potential as a strategy to promote urban renewal process on underdeveloped neighborhoods, and upgrade its potential as a sustainable and efficient response to urban neweal processes and new demands of domestic space. In recent years, Argentinean urbanistic researchers have treated the urban development focusing on the process that have greater impact in the city, such as high density models that replace traditional neighborhoods, or the process of urban sprawl. However, one aspect of urban renewal has been pushed aside, because of its scale, its fragmentary nature, and also because it is structured by isolated and low impact interventions. It is the micro densification phenomenon. This process of micro densification is evident in residential areas such as the traditional middle class neighborhoods near the city core (that can be found in most Latin American cities as much as in Córdoba); despite their privileged position within the urban structure (in means of infrastructure, services and enviromental quality) these neighborhoods do not attract the real state investments because of regulatory constraints and land use policies. Nevertheless, the tension between social demands and economic interests as well as land regulations is solved in an informal and emergent way, resulting in urban renewal trough micro densification. It increases the number of funtional units per lot (which is illegal) but at the same time proposes new domestic spaces that are extremely flexible and accurate to respond to the actual demand in the area. Besides, it its both respectful and compatible with the existing ´neighborhood image´, urban fabric, and scale. At last, it also allows to include new uses and services in a traditional residential only neighborhood, complementing and upgrading the urban structure in a social and environmental sustainable way. This research will address the analysis of the phenomenon of micro densification from a rhizome type approach: in this way could demonstrate the "emergent" dynamics of the phenomenon, interacting with the most obvious " top/down " dynamics of planning and development , and resolving the tension within the system through a bottom/up process. The phenomenon is in a peripheral position within the system, and a rhizome type analysis will ease the understanding of its complex dynamics, and its role as part of the urban system. Moreover, it is an aim of this research to know how the development of this phenomenon can be continued through a redefinition of it. This is necessary because once studied/delimited/defined the process, it leaves its original nature and it is transformed, as one cannot study a system without interfering with it somehow. Then, the research will define which lines of meaning should be reinforced and which ones should be abolished or at least weakened, or even if it is necessary to generate new connections that enhance the phenomenon´s qualities defined as desirable, in order to enable the efficient and sustainable development of the urban system. The phenomenon, detected through its ability to irritate the system (in its informal status), would become assimilated to the system; a spare element that might have the role of prosthetic graft at first, and finally become n an inherent part of the city as a system.