DENSIFICATION of a LOW-RISE CITY Santiago De Chile Is

DENSIFICATION OF A LOW-RISE CITY Santiago de Chile is densifying fast and providing better access to the city services and opportunities for the low- and middle-income citizens. But, at the same time, there are many side- effects that this densification process is generating: residual spaces left between towers, decreased value of surrounding low-rise dwellings, collapsing urban infrastructure, increased security concerns inside dense high-rise buildings, and quickly densified residential neighborhoods that skipped directly from a lack of local retail to having mega shopping centers as their main public space. Leaving all in the hands of private real estate developers, with a very loose land use law and without requiring much urban infrastructure improvement, has led to ugly and unsustainable development of the city. A big issue that incentivizes this poor quality development is that Santiago de Chile does not have a popular elected government for the city as a whole. As Santiago is the capital of the country and hosts 40% of the Chilean population, the cause probably remains in the enormous political power that a Mayor of Santiago might have and the tension that might occur between the Mayor of Santiago and the President of Chile. This issue is the main factor for Santiago’s lack of an overarching comprehensive urban plan to manage densification. Urban development in Santiago is regulated mainly by each Municipality separately. Santiago is a city that gathers 32 Municipalities; each one of these neighborhoods has different political authorities (with different interests). The quality of public spaces in Santiago is strongly characterized by the monetary resources of its neighbors.. The “Plan Regulador” is the zoning plan that every Municipality has for its own territory. This Plan acts together with the “Ordenanza Municipal”, the code that explains the allowance for every zoning area inside the Plan. The Plan Regulador and the Ordenanza Municipal are above the “Ordenanza General de Urbanismo y Construccion”, the general code that rules construction and urban development in the whole country. Every Municipality designs and modifies its “Plan Regulador”, driven by political interests and the monetary resources that the local government might achieve when real estate interests are focused within its boundaries. Usually, local governments of low-income districts don’t want to rigidify their urban regulations because they earn revenues when development occurs inside their territories. In the last essay, I presented the diminishing effects of densification in Santiago. But as Edward Glasser states, “If the future is going to be greener, then it must be more urban. Dense cities offer a means of living that involve less driving and smaller homes to heat and cool”1. Dense cities are good in many aspects, specially in Santiago’s case, in which densification is driven by middle-income housing development, better connected to public transportation systems and to the 1 Glasser, Edward. The Triumph of the City. How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2011). city center. In this paper I am going to present a successful example of densification in Santiago regulated by a well-designed “Plan Regulador” and driven by the real estate development market. After that, and wondering what to do with the space in-between buildings, I am going to present ‘Nueva Las Condes’ a height rise building development in Santiago were the in-between was absolutely intended for public use. Thinking in what would happen if Santiago converts all its residual spaces into Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) I am going to analyze two critiques to 1961 NYC Zoning regulation well known for its density bonus, tool oriented to produce POPS as a public good by market driven real estate development. Also, I am going to review the vision of Vishaan Chakrabarti, Columbia GSAPP professor that embraces the idea of hyperdense cities. At the end I am going to analyze: what kind of city should Santiago aim to be? And how these ideas, considering their failures and successes, may be applicable to middle-income neighborhoods in Santiago de Chile that are currently in the development spotlight. German Bannen and ‘La ciudad de Providencia’ Providencia is one of the wealthiest municipalities in Santiago, and a centrally located neighborhood. In 1977 it was reached by the Metro Line 1, and a few years previous to the arrival of the metro, the neighborhood started a process of development and densification that makes Providencia today one of the denser neighborhoods in Santiago. Providencia’s mix between density and high quality of life is due to the labor of its resident and planner, Mr. German Bannen. Germán Bannen conceives the instrument of territorial planning as an urban and architectural work itself, capable of gradually transforming the space of the city through the progressive fulfillment of its ordinance. It promotes, project by project, the fabric of a new form of relationship between public space and private space, as a single open and continuous green space, which develops between the private property and the street. (...) It encourages the public use of privately owned spaces, blurring the border between both domains, and through the creation of new passages and squares that allow the "estar yendo", the possibility of stopping in the path of everyday journeys.2 -Rocío Hidalgo & Magdalena Vicuña. The architect and winner of the National prize of Urbanism, German Bannen, has his main oeuvre in “La ciudad de Providencia”3 (The city of Providencia). German Bannen began working in the Department of Urbanism of Providencia in 1963, where he became Urban Consultant in 1965, a 2 HIDALGO, Rocío and VICUÑA, Magdalena. “Premio nacional de Urbanismo”. Santiago, Chile. 2014. Ministerio Nacional de Vivienda y Urbanismo. Gobierno de Chile. Pp. 70-88. 3 “The city of Providencia”. Is a concept that has been assigned to the results of German Bannen Plan for its development. A neighborhood that has a strong identity and, like a holistic city, is able to provide for every need to its neighbors. position that he holds until today. In this capacity, he was able to develop his two master works: The New Avenue Providencia which began in 1975, a parallel extension of the main axis of the neighborhood that has became a neuralgic point of Santiago and the Plan Regulador of Providencia, which also began in 1975, plan that has given the pedestrian and green qualities that characterizes the neighborhood. There are three main ideas for the development of Providencia that German Bannen was able to incorporate in the “Ordenanza Local” as land use laws, before the densification boom arrived to the neighborhood: The first one generated a network of pedestrian connections within the blocks, some of them in the shape of commercial galleries acting as privately owned public spaces, others in the shape of little plazas or public paths between the buildings. The last ones are spaces that were donated to the municipality by developers in exchange for higher building allowance. (Image 1) The second one worked to make Providencia a “green” neighborhood. This was a challenge given the fact that Providencia was an already fully urbanized neighborhood. It was achieved by incentivizing tree planting in the streets, the incorporation of open front gardens and planters in the low level of newly-developed buildings. At the same time, German Bannen promoted developing an interconnected system of parks within the neighborhood, in which the Mapocho riverside park plays a significant role. The third one developed new metro stations to serve the neighborhood. Metro stations were conceived by Bannen as key public gathering spaces. He encouraged the development of underground commercial galleries around them, connecting these galleries to the pedestrian path network at the street level. (Image 2) Today, Providencia is consolidated as a green and high quality of living neighborhood, and yet is also one of the denser and busier districts among Santiago. Favored by its location and public transportation, Providencia is a mix between a residential, commercial and office district. After 40 years of Bannen’s “Plan Regulador” and of the arrival of the metro, it is a neighborhood that keeps attracting new neighbors especially among young people that value its connectivity, mix of uses and green environment that ‘La ciudad de Providencia’ provides. Nueva Las Condes Nueva Las Condes is a new business center that was developed in the 2000s after the Municipality of Las Condes sold the terrain to a real state development company. The terrain is located near the axis Providencia-Apoquindo, is next to a 22 hectares park (Parque Araucano) and it was reached by the extension of Metro Line 1 in 2009. These factors raised the sector's surplus value and aroused interest in real estate developers. Due to private interests and after a master plan developed by the private consultant office URBE for the Municipality. The 170 hectares area that used to be a military low-rise social housing, were developed with a 28% of office towers, 55% of high rise housing buildings (for high income dwellers) and 17% of green area. The master plan proposed the new buildings to be stand-alone towers. The business area was intended to be an area with full open public space at the street level. This open space included green areas provided by the buildings and a network of privately owned public spaces as plazas and commerce connected by pedestrian paths in-between the buildings. It initially included a stronger landscape connection with the immediate park, Parque Araucano, but the master plan was not completely implemented. Today Nueva Las Condes has become a business center in which some of the most powerful private companies in Latin America raise their corporative towers with a nice view to the park.

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