The pedagogical thinking of urban-architecture demands to be exercised, vehicular circulation in cities is set out as a demand to be solved scientifically. The renewal of the service infrastructure demands an effective solution, approached in a particularized way. Training centers for basic activities are demanding to be established, for or as a means of acceptance for being let into the cities, or a calling card for applying for employment. In 2010 an exposition is planned in Shanghai under the theme: Better City, Better Life, but we still do not understand the making of a better city.
In Hangzhou work is underway to house one million more citizens.
Today countries without sufficient production need to set themselves an economic strategy that allows them to reach the efficient production they demand, and the most evident of the possibilities lies or resides in controlling the use of their city urban fabrics, allowing only what can be acquired to be built, while at the same time holding an open competition toward the search for the ideal design.
We need to face the future of cities, to avoid the current road congestion, to avoid the cost-raising dispersion of the today of cities, to avoid the lack of vegetal green in the city area. The structuring of the city urban fabric demands a scientific view, because in the traditional way, seen as typology, it generates the chaos that today we measure as economic recession.
The specific city demands that its image be boosted as a seat guaranteeing the investment placed in it. Today the city building, faced with the threat of earthquakes, which are announced for a cycle of 850 years ahead, demands a footing in an urban fabric planned for the presence of the automobile, something still absent in cities, where the initial parceling was later subdivided by reason of economic level or the migrations toward the cities and settlers without fortune. Today’s urban approach demands the integration of the urban fabric, making superblocks out of neighborhoods as a way of achieving the transportation routes demanded by population density or by the type of building robust against earthquakes, along with the achievement of the greatest building density in the area of these superblocks.
In the DR, we must understand that we cannot sustain the number of provinces nor of towns in them, as well as that we must also plan the global production of our limited territory. Another approach not yet understood is construction density, and it will have to be in keeping with the width of roads and their connections for effective vehicular flow and economy.
City urban fabrics and the bad design upon them generate for us, to this day, the known universal misery. The proceeds of the citizenry’s work are spent going back and forth to and from the workplace laid out in heterogeneity of land use, and it comes to be the subject of urban-architectural correction that the universal habitat demands.
In Paris there are already neighborhood zones in which 15 floors of or for housing and 60 floors in office towers are permitted, but they still do not decree prohibiting the staircase, as it already demands to be, and replaced by the 1:8 ramp. An advance comes to be the requirement of a terrace with or for vegetation in each dwelling of those towers, which demand to be able to be located throughout the whole area of the city specialized for housing of the well-to-do or of assistants in specific specialized zones, with 4 vehicles parked per dwelling in the well-to-do zone and one in the zone of assistants’ housing, besides these assistants with effective collective transportation also extended to the well-to-do zone. The suitable building density to be decreed, established, demands a design exercise to be shown and discussed, for the achievement of the volume to be designed. Ideally the building demands to be complemented with assisting services and a complementary club area, as well as with a volume able to be differentiated and assimilated to every variant demandable from the particular family and cultural level, for which we propose a volume divisible with movable partitions fixed to the floor and to the ceiling with millimetric gaps flush with the floor, flush with the ceiling, to guarantee ventilating with suitable correctness, as well as noise-absorbing arrangements, for the achievement of specific and distinctive variants and finishes from the common circulation corridor and a generous terrace, as well as established possibilities for infrastructure connections and runs in each volume or unit.
Thus we put an end to the limitations offered until today by traditional apartments, which we must accept as badly designed, to be corrected by way of public visits for every project to be built, to be exhibited so as to be criticized as an obligation set by the city for all its resident professionals. It is time to exercise duties on a par with idealized and dormant rights.
The specific territory of the province of Santiago is not competitive as an industrial zone.
Santiago is a city of commercial and professional services, and toward that stage of achievement it must develop its future urban fabric, concentrated and equipped for a series of annual events, backed by the special care of everything laid out, or to be laid out, upon an efficient and evident urban fabric to be adopted and developed, as we propose.
The lesson of the current financial crisis, seen as recession, obliges us to stipulate guarantee and scientificity for every investment or project, pouring all of the community’s knowledge into every attempt at advance, establishing a public forum for the recording and dissemination of initiatives.
Production is the subject to be gathered—established—understood, by the citizenry and its capable leaders. Today there is the error of asking the neighborhood associations when these, as majorities, are the ones in need of assisting action and opinion.
The knowledgeable and sound aristocracy must guide the democracy that does not yet reach it in the concretization of effects or concepts. Only with the truth will we triumph.
The land of Santiago, scarce and poor for the appeal it has as a center of a tradition of undertakings since the Restoration of the Republic, demands that we be alert about its direction and orientation. The basis of its potential demands to be a strategic architectural urban fabric and what is permitted upon its specialized zones, so as to then come to bear upon what is thought from them, thus oriented. Municipal government will be effective when it is analyzed and guided by the conscious and efficient citizenry. Today it does not reach that conceptual stage, it only celebrates as effectiveness the traditional and stagnating, impoverishing democratic approach that can be summed up in unproductive investments, which the universal state of things demands be questioned and resolved. The misery of the universe denounces that the current way of proceeding is incorrect, that cities come to be the generators of human misery, as concentrating centers of waste of time and money on account of investments and obstacles not understood as traditional harmful inconveniences.
The city in the current mode, seen internationally, is not guaranteeing the investments in it, cities end up impoverishing everyone, and this is reason enough for their “strategic actors” to understand and yield to accepting the approach that the plan, layout, or urban fabric is the generating foundation of the desired suitable whole, that no other is the strategic path.
That urban fabric, not achieved by the CIAM congresses, set out since 1933 in the Athens Charter as something to seek to resolve, came to be resolved by us, after achieving a mode or how for the process of architectural design, later understood to be the solution of the universal city urban fabric, to be zoned and specialized, merging neighborhood areas as superblocks that will allow generating the roads with enough lanes for city flow, by reason of an association of urban land per M2 of area for the achievement, without any detriment on the part of the owners and the city councils, of the global infrastructures that the cities of the universe demand.
On Thursday, October 1, 2009, the newspaper “Clave” says “the zoning of DN. SD. RD.
pits residents against the capital’s council members.” The zoning of sectors demands to be the key to the demanding and necessary solution of the cities of up to today, in order to eradicate the fundamental one among their ills, which is none other than the approach of heterogeneity of urban city land use.
Something to be thought through by urban planners and not by neighborhood associations not understanding that the city must be seen as a center of investment and of care for those values and not as property subjected to private whim, even in this case the zoning is not for use but rather for the harmful height limit of the building to be permitted by whim or as a function of the incapacity of the infrastructure of the specific zone or area.
The height of the building will derive from the area of the siting lot and not, or never again, from another reason, or put from another approach: from the parking quota decreed for the user or owner in that siting zone by reason or function of the access roads with the N lanes to be provided for them as part of the global service infrastructure guaranteeing the investment in that zone of the city specialized in use functions.
Thus no more conflicts and those whom it does not suit will look for the where to live what suits no one is the detached single-family house in the specific city territory, since the economy of the city is key to the global development of the country, and it must be understood moreover that the city demands to be developed at the scale of the automobile machine and not in the backward way in which it wants to keep itself, generating global misery for us.
Once the city knows how to organize itself, everyone will benefit: owners, construction companies, urban authorities, government, and floating population. So, Santo Domingo or any other city, neither councilors nor owners, save for the exception to every rule, are the ones called to give a suitable solution to this international urban subject, and it is the reason for the headline…. “to a consensus that looks difficult” and that we have resolved for the specific polygon and the whole DN. SD, RD., about which we say to its “strategic actors”: we see it badly framed and thus without an effective suitable solution.
The density, height will derive from the area of the site of each project and must have a minimum limit and a concrete orientation for the global organization to prevail in Santo Domingo, such as northern night winds and southern daytime winds able to be captured by all from every building.
Density, height and structure and other provisions must not be approved separately, since they are in themselves the valid design guaranteeing the investment to be permitted, which, if it does not turn out correct, threatens the global citizenry and the State Government of the Country.
Basic services will be paid for as part of the superblock project, there is no other possible means or reason, and the how of the materializing achievement is to decree deferment and acceleration of neighborhoods where all builders have the right to participate and the projects are presented at public hearings.
The 10 consolidated polygons can be summarized and regulated as 10 neighborhoods and not 36 traditional neighborhoods as a function of the location of green areas or sanitary facilities, suitably locatable as a function of elevations or limiting cost. The BNV has the study of what can be bought, which is to say the guideline of what must be designed, in order to manage to sell it fully. Our country does not allow the squandering of continuing to think in density categories, low, medium, high, nor subdivisions, moderate, regular, intense, we must reason in terms of investing without waste, since in the interior of their dwelling they will be able to give the finish they intend and can afford within its volume, the city dwelling. The detached single-family house will go to the seaside or mountain tourist zone, but the prospective city made today for the suitable tomorrow demands economic life for its participants and its state government. The exercise to be done for the how of NS-oriented construction in Santo Domingo demands the optimal solution of structure and evacuation and visual protection without overcrowding or noise, served by a 1:8 ramp, and escape tubes. The staircase does not fit in the era of the automobile, which we must accept we are in.
In the following data there is the error imposed by the parceling that generates the current urban fabric.
From the list of densities set out, 1360 inhabitants and 40 levels in height is the goal that will make possible the roads demanded for the speeding-up of traffic guaranteeing the investment in SD. RD. and its corresponding balancing green for recreation.
That urban fabric, even densely populated, causes the current misery throughout the universe.
There is another urban error in establishing high density for the avenues of the DN defined as commercial, without widening of lanes, roads, greens, pedestrians, motorcycles, bicycles. It is a national economic crime to speak of 2 levels in any sector of Global Santo Domingo.
The air must not be blocked and hence, NS orientation of buildings.
Every design must be demanding to be self-ventilated: the climate demands it so.
So, not to speak of density but rather of rectification of the obsolete urban fabric of the DN SD RD. and its demanded, objectifiable requirements within its enveloping 93 Km2.
Historical thinking and acting keep us in poverty, evolution requires of us a divergent and innovating thinking, it comes to be the essential precept for coexistence in cities, the efficiency of the city urban fabric is reflected in burden or well-being for the citizens’ functions and economies.
Humanity owes to Le Corbusier having elucidated the demands of the city, and must blame the routine and harmful tradition for the misery that envelops us as a human conglomerate.
The Athens Charter since 1933 sets out the subject for us, the dissolution of the CIAM congresses in 1959 enshrines the neglect of urban authority, urban-architectural professionals demonstrate the unmastery of the craft, until in the 1960s Ch. Alexander raises the ethical need to seek the way to establish a method-process for the full achievement of architectural design, which he does not achieve, and which continues to be sought and not elucidated by the Portsmouth symposium, reviewed by Juan Pablo Bonta, an Argentine, from whom we learned of it.
Cuqui Batista says she has that method of architectural design and then, understanding that the fundamental thing was the urban fabric, reasons that it is required to be zoned, specialized, since the heterogeneity of urban land use was the cause of that demonstrated conceptual global misery, lived throughout the universe, reiterated as economic recession since 2008 in North America, where the citizenry loses the detached single-family house bought via FHA, because their wage is not enough to pay for the house. The bad urban fabric makes life more expensive throughout the universe, squandering effort, preventing the satisfaction of living in society, and only as a correctly organized society will it find that optimal and unknown urban fabric mode.
In the urban-architectural world few work at or master their work, and this incapacity translates into universal misery even though in each country there are officials assigned to the fight against poverty, kept up by the celebrated tradition of the N State Secretariats of the Governments whose task it is to watch over these demands or duties, and if we take this approach of traditional occurrences and join it to the mode how, of common events, and apply it to the result of the meeting of Thursday, October 1, 2009, minutes N0 4. Expansion – urban concentration, where 22 attendees heard the results of minutes N0 3, reviewing the facts and lamenting the limitations in favor of the strategy to be sought to channel the solution, we see that although it was accepted that names do not appear but rather opinions, the procedural practice did not manage to note down opinions of solution but rather lamentations and impediments regarding the ideal acting to manage to establish the strategy being sought, which must be none other than the most suitable, economical, and homogeneous.
Expansion demands to be vertical and thus zoned for a land use without heterogeneity, and thus zoned to achieve the public space for roads guaranteeing the traffic flow resulting from that density, and the territorial ordering of the city for green, commerce, work, housing of the well-to-do, housing of assistants, and global service institutions, giving a solution of infrastructures by projected zones to be executed, setting out the resulting road network.
Strategically, to speak of architectural heritage is to waste time, until now there is no guaranteeing design process, and those existing attempts must only be preserved in a museum and not impeding the ideal development.
Until today the expansive disorder does not translate into dynamism and can be considered a deficient structure not guaranteeing its investment cost. The lack of planning of the work possible to be developed in Santiago does not let us foresee its population growth, and it is the reason to foresee its expansion from the crossing of the E-W and N-S axes and to decide the possible zones to be accelerated to build in each of the zones of the projected new scientific urban fabric.
Foresee accepting “invasions” toward the city in the zone of assistant housing in a directed, controlled way, assisted by services of toilets, showers, kitchens, to be built in or with non-permanent materials, as a humane solution so as not to slumify.
The city of Santiago, between its north and south beltways, as an area to watch over as a commitment of all its citizens, will be able to grow in that ringed area a large part of the vegetables to be consumed in it, on land off-limits in the seismic fault area or vacant and deferred. Thus the expansion and density from the E-W and N-S axes and the total peripheral strategic economic deferment to be arranged.
In the provincial territory, a total deferment will guarantee the controlled and productive forest to generate timber and agriculture.
The control of infrastructure services will be the ideal strategy.
The projects to be approved must go to public hearings.
The connecting bridges, once located, can be managed to be built according to measurable, understandable economic demands and conveniences.
Schools will go toward the institutional zone, thus circulating to or from them, in our conceptual urban fabric, avoids the jamming of traditional vehicular traffic generated by the heterogeneity of urban land use. The conceptual advance regarding what is suitable for the ordering of the city comes to be zoning by specializing and concentrating, and gradually removing from the literature of the reports every term of doubt such as consensus-building over the steps to follow. Thus no more dilemmas. In specialized zones without heterogeneity of land use there will be no dilemmas as to the use of enveloping space 90600000 M2 for 657155 inhabitants are 137.86 M2 per inhabitant, 0.013 hectares per inhabitant without design control or efficient services for their satisfactions or guarantee of the investment in the city, a datum that demands foreseeing another city urban fabric, which we must be committed to achieving.
To the 60 ha contributed by the ravines, plus the 75 ha of the green of the Yaque River and 40 ha of the park at the former airport (some 492.5 ha in total in the city), we foresee adding, for the quarter zone specialized for housing of the well-to-do, a “central park” of some 276 ha between the 27 de febrero and Juan Pablo Duarte avenues, and taking from 7.49 M2, to be increased with future areas planned in the institutions quarter and in that of housing for the assisting or working population, 4.19 M2 more of green per inhabitant, and still other green areas by reason of the development of zones now deferred.
From our strategic view of scientific urban ordering we foresee clubs on rooftops, housing towers and services on the lower floors of these towers, as well as 4 vehicle parking places in towers for leaders and one vehicle parking place in a tower for an assistant. The Santiago of today, without guarantees of infrastructure services, will manage to stabilize itself, to speed itself up, with our project of a scientific architectural urban fabric, thus guaranteeing the investment and the satisfaction of objectifying it and living it. The achievement is thus made possible by generating a joint-stock company from the M2 of lots and streets of the neighborhoods to be converted into superblocks, a company guaranteed by the global solution it offers to the problems of up to today. This lack of a solution approach was what did not arise in the face of the demand of the needs of the 33 cities analyzed in the Athens Charter, which dissolved the congresses of modern architecture (CIAM) in 1959.
The “invasions” are regulated in the zone of housing for assistants in non-permanent materials, thus no more harm to the global city area, thus the conceptual global invasion will disappear, and no more cases like the current one in “Pueblo Nuevo” where meat is salted and dried on a wire line on the sidewalks at the height of the pedestrian’s head.
The commercial area along the EW axis and the NS axis in the city will give an effective solution for full functioning without road jams, and in them parking must be done driving forward, and the basic circulation roads will not be interfered with, since it will have enveloping frontage roads for the superblock neighborhoods, and pedestrian paths and areas for those commercial “invaders,” and streamlining grade-separated crossings for efficient traffic, which demands prior design, since it is not achieved with the current traditional routine city fabric.
Areas vulnerable to flooding are declared deferred and will pass to green-area use and will be paid for over the nearest building. The historic center falls within the commercial area and demands particularized regulation of sanitation without slumification, with control of the use of new construction materials or uncontrolled annexes, for which it demands committing the neighborhood associations not to violate what is to be established, controlled, as an image of the past thus desired in the zone.
The city urban fabric comes to be the fundamental strategic actor guaranteeing the global well-being of the conglomerated citizenry, in favor of the search-achievement of the civilizing entity into which the specific city must constitute itself for the satisfaction of the resident and floating habitat that bears upon it and sustains it as the full medium of daily activities.
Today the city demands specialization, Santiago RD demands to be conceived, directed as a city of services, for which it requires a sure, scientific, statutory approach guaranteeing all the investment to bear upon its urban fabric.
It will say on its own what will emerge from it as a generative, corrective entity in the achievement of the correct interaction of global interests. A scientific fabric will only affect the traditional endemic misery of which we must rid ourselves, we understand that this is the how of the ideal mode to pursue and achieve for a city that is a seat of objectifiable satisfactions and guarantees.
It is our strategic view after 66 years of searching in a world without established processes, where we, the initiated, must exchange the certainties we already master and thus all nourish ourselves from the generality of observations accumulated by the most persistent, informed, or practicing elucidators. Let us cross-reference this information, let us ask ourselves all our questions, let us advance toward a stage of satisfactions living a new efficient urban fabric.