As especificidades do contexto latino-americano: Santiago do Chile

Abstract

The cities of the New World have one characteristic in common: that they pass from first youth to decrepitude with no intermediary stage.1 The universe of entropy that characterises contemporary Latin American cities and the problems (inequality, violence, exploitation, social and environmental degradation) associated with the sustainability of their large dimensions are, indeed, undifferentiated aspects of urban realities of our global economy. This work aims to generally understand the processes of transformation and permanence of these cities, which began as a colonial project, with a disciplined model, and that are nowadays known for their chaotic and precarious informal settlements. The morphological systems are explored, but also the social, political and cultural processes that are the origin of their form. These methods are then used to study a more particular context - the city of Santiago de Chile. Santiago stands out due to its geographical and seismic conditions, the political revolutions that influenced the way of making city, but also the civic oriented actions performed by architects. In situations of scarce resources one can find sustainable and creative solutions to subsist in an context of urban crisis.