Infrastructures of hope. Urban design for new mobilities in Latin American cities
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
The paper discusses the contribution of urban design to the infrastructural mobility projects involved in the regeneration of informal areas. Some Latin American examples show how these interventions have helped to shape new images of these cities. The paper investigates thus how urban design can contribute to successful interventions for mobility and discusses the peculiarities of interventions in informal areas. In many settings in fact interventions on mobility and on public spaces are strongly related and oriented by common socio-political aims: we may define them as infrastructures of hope, trying to design new mobilities and opportunities for deprived areas. Thanks to their effectiveness and originality, these interventions are now recognized examples, becoming almost part of a mainstream new approach to the issues of urban regeneration and mobility in urban fabrics, as well represented by cities like Medellin, Bogotà or Rio de Janeiro.
These interventions deal with different issues and fields of contemporary urban design, and in particular raise three relevant questions concerning urban design and its relationship with mobility and urban design. The first point is the nature of contemporary interventions for mobility. Within mobile societies, the infrastructures of mobility are no more simple monofunctional artifacts which allow movement from A to B, but become the support for manifold practices (Sheller and Urry 2006). Urban design can thus differently contribute to manifold practices and uses. The second point considers the fact that interventions in the field of mobility, even with the tools of urban design, can be related to the achievement of wider socio-political aims, considering them as a crucial feature towards a full citizenship for all (Del Rio 2012).
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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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