Hearts of the Neighborhood
The project "Consultancy for the development of a territorial intervention model based on equity triangles and neighborhood hearts" or simply "Neighborhood Hearts" identified sectors that require specific measures to improve the quality of residential living through the advancement of networks that connect the city and exchange urban services.
Category
Area
Territorial
Intelligence
Urban Design
Regional Scale Metropolitan
Client
Year(s)
Regional Government Santiago Metropolitan
2018-2019
Through an alliance with the Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago, the Center of Territorial Intelligence of the University of Adolfo Ibáñez, City Corporations, the Urban Foundation, and MCR + JAG, we sought to implement “Hearts of the Neighborhood” within the Metropolitan region of Santiago. “Hearts of the Neighborhood”' strives to better the quality of city living, by strengthening the networks that bridge the city and urban services.
The project’s overall objective was to identify areas of the city with a severe lack of accessibility to services and urban goods, whether public or private, with the hopes of bettering people’s accessibility to these goods and services. In turn, reducing the existing gaps of inequity within the Metropolitan Region of Santiago.
During the first stage of this project, a territorial analysis was run to identify certain urban sectors with significant deficiencies of accessibility to urban goods. According to the Index of Territorial Welfare Development by the Center of Territorial Intelligence at the University of Adolfo Ibáñez for the City Corporation, the identification of priority areas within urban spaces is based on the spatial grouping of territorial well-being, while the identification of priority areas within rural spaces were determined through a set of defined variables, recorded information, and a methodology that was defined to identify a deficiency of accessibility to services and goods.
The second step of the project was to determine the territories that suffered severely from a lack of accessibility to services. Territories were identified due to their distinct characteristics, including the sociodemographics of the vicinity. Additionally, there was a technical regulatory and urban analysis that ranked suitable land for compatibility with the construction of the “Hearts of the Neighborhood”. More than 2,000 plots of public land were studied due to their size and conditions; from this process, nine potential lands were recognized as optimal locations, which were then conveyed to the Metropolitan Regional Government of Santiago. Subsequently, the government selected the land plots.
Additionally, we developed a series of citizen participation interventions, where people could influence the programs that the "Hearts of the Neighborhood" would provide. Interventions were held in public spaces and facilitated by technical-professional teams from the municipalities of Pedro Aguirre Cerda and Padre Hurtado. These teams, along with age-focus groups, refined the list of desired programs for the "Hearts of the Neighborhood" located in Pedro Aguirre Cerda and Padre Hurtado. The planimetry was further developed at the primary level of architecture, landscaping, and technical specification and specialties.
