URBANISM (2)

Author: NUÑEZ CERDA FRANCISCO JAVIER.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: AULA PI CALLEJA, ETSAB.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, EDIFICI A Campus SUD.

Summary: This thesis aims to explain the variations in price of urban land for the urbanization of the Great Idea, Chile, in time, considering quarterly periods for the Decade 1992-2002 and in space, for the different geographic areas that compose it. The geographical space of this thesis is the urbanization of the Grand Design, located south of the country in the region Bíobío of the Republic of Chile, formed for the purposes of this thesis, for the Communes of Concepcion, Talcahuano, San Pedro de la Paz, and Chiguayante Penco, this conurbation, which contains the capital city regional Conception, is the center of the directional del Biobio region, and provides all kinds of housing services, financial, government, educational, industrial, port and others in this region, which is shown in a market for urban land highly dynamic which operates in a framework of free exchange and regulated by the law on urban and inter-communal. The Region del Biobio bases its economic activity in the processing industry of forest and fishery products aimed at international markets and a major industrial base centered on the activities petrochemical and steel, supported by a port infrastructure, public and private services related personal services, financial, construction and transportation. In turn the Grand Design generates a gross domestic product of close to $ 1400 billion, about $ 40% of the regional GDP, bringing exports half of it. In order to explain the prices of urban land has been used for qualitative and quantitative analysis, supported by concepts and economic variables, sociodemographic, urban market and soil, among others. For the important role currently undertaken by the mathematical modeling â statistics for explanations of social and economic phenomena, has been formulated and estimated econometric models and hedonic effect to support the prediction and explanation of the variables market floor. This thesis concludes that the change in prices of urban land for the Great Idea, is explained by the temporary variables regional economic activity and the real exchange rate, which shows the dependence of this market with the national and international economy. Spatially prices are explained by the equipment, labor supply and services and the composition of the different socio-professional areas.

Author: GOULA MARIA.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: Dept. d'Urbanísme. Aula Pi i Calleja. ETSAB..
Place of preparation: ETSAB, Edifici A --- SD.

Summary: This thesis examines the image and its implication in the interpretation of the landscape. Conscious of its variable qualities, this subject has merged from the necessity of integrating the visual aspect in the interpretation processes in a systematical manner and of investigating its interpretive and operative potential. The variable image is proposed as an interpretive instrument for the visual analysis, and in the same time, as a critical revision of certain registries of the visual in landscape and urbanism theory. Of interest here are the distinct qualities of the image and its relation with the landscape, at the present time, through its evolution from a static image-picture to its extension through the introduction of the ¨view¨ in the landscape imaginary, towards an explicit demand for a new ¨ecology¨ of the image in the contemporary landscape project. It is proposed the introduction of the ¨variable¨, like a fundamental parameter in the construction of the image and like a contrast to the idea of the permanency that has been implicated in the definition of the concept of value and identity. The variable is understood here like a differential fact, like an expression of the materiality and the temporality of landscape, and possibly like what recovers a demand for a new sensibility. Investigate the tradition of the âvisual' means investigate the construction of the âvalueâ, focusing in some of its procedures. In such a manner, aside from the conviction that it might be necessary to reframe what it is or what it should be, nowadays, the concept of ¨value¨ from a projective perspective, this thesis proposes something concrete: investigate the idea of the âotherâ, like a vehicle for reframing some of the aspects on this theme. The ¨other¨ is used like a prism trying to illuminate the different foldings in the process of the construction of the ¨value¨. Here, it is understood from a reciprocal duality: the no-recognizable or emergent values and the no valuated landscapes. It should not be understood only as the deteriorated, the forgotten by the management, but as the regular, the simple and common, that is denominated here as the ordinary. The concept of the ordinary is revised because it is related to an idea of value, not as something significant that it should be protected, but with the concept of value as an emergency that should be revealed and projected. Finally, this thesis studies a change of paradigm that affected the contemporary thinking, consisting on the deviation of the interest from the centre to the limit. There is a specific interest of this thesis for the idea of the limit and its image. Through the image, limits in the landscape are being discovered and in the same time the image of certain situations of limit is being studied. Additionally, its being examined the importance of the visibility studies to define, question and handle the limits in landscape. In this manner, the limits are proposed like landscapes of opportunity and like elements (of increase) of complexity of the image and of interaction between ecosystems; here they will be called frontiers and they are combined with the issue of identity and with the value of the ordinary landscapes. They are identified like situations of transition, devoid of a recognizable image, which in the majority of the cases confers them an hybrid identity. The aim of this study is to discover some intermediate landscapes, parting from morphological and visual characteristics of the image, and furthermore explore its landscape potential and its contribution in the visual image of the geographic sites.

Author: ROS MCDONNELL DIEGO.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE VALENCIA [www.upv.es].
Place of defense: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.
Place of preparation: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

Summary: This thesis aims at the study of urban development in the city of Cartagena in the period of time between 1896 and 1960, it was time for implementing the legislation "Ensanche" to that city. The period studied begins in the year 1896, when the circumstances in the city of Cartagena, such as population increase of population, the abundance of local capital or poor health environment and the city, making it necessary measures urban areas. This demand crystallizes in the "Expansion Draft, Reform and Sanitation in the city of Cartagena," it states:-Zone for the future development of the city, the Ensanche. - Changes to run in the old city; Reform Interior and-measures to be followed to eradicate unsafe in the city and its surroundings; Sanitation. To make the study explores, among other things, the projects undertaken, and its implementing regulations, administrative processing, compliance with the expected incidence Ramo War, funding for municipal works, the management system, the consequences of urban flooding Cartagena or the relationship between City Hall and companies awarding of infrastructure works and sewerage.

Author: ECHAVE MARTINEZ CYNTHIA.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: SALA D'ACTES DE L'ETSAV.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, EDIFICI A CAMPUS.

Author: VICENTINI ANDREATTA VERENA.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: Aula Pi i Calleja de l'ETSAB.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, Edifici A --- SD.

Summary: The central theme of this thesis is the relationship between the urbanistic transformations identified in the urban plans of the City of Rio de Janeiro and Europeans references, from where the most paradimatic ideas have come. Because Rio de Janeiro’s history, since it became the capital of an independent country, has had the same economic and social models of transformation phases as those cities that have reflected its image, and for that reason it has to recur (sometimes with temporary delay) to the same models and solutions. The object of the thesis is to inquire how these models have been magnified, such in the importance of its ideas, which wished to find in society the capacity of transformation that probably wasn’t so powerful, as to the magnitud of its spatial interventions, frequently enormous facing to any other european parallel realization, which converts themselves on the best critical laboratory of that models. And besides the magnification it had been disseminated the urbanistic ideology and, frequently, the spatial realizations, it was also wished to follow these elements of adaptation of ideas, of “carioquization”, that sometimes were so powerful that converted brazilian arquitecture and urbanisme a world reference, showing a process of “go and return” proper of the urbanistic ideation construction. The thesis studies ten urban plans and the most important urbanistic works in the city, believing that cities are constructed by accumulation, and that Rio has an examplary and powerful history. In the first part of this thesis both aspects of the ten urban plans are analysed theoretical, ideological and instrumental, trying to find coincidencies or differencies amongst the parallel chains of urbanistic thoughts based on European or North American matrices. For that purpose the primary bases of this research has to be found out - the original documents of each plan. The fact that it was posible to make a comparison under the same base for a variety of documents, made it also possible to identify the degree of influence that these plans have had on the construction of the actual city, and moreover, allows us to declare positively, as a conclusion of this thesis, that the selected plans, not other ones, are the ones that reflect precisely the urbanistic development of Rio de Janeiro, its beginnings, the degree of maturity of the compared proposals of problems in each period and also the level of city thecnical ordenation and construction of each period. The second part deepen in every detail of each one of the three urban plans of the nineteenth century, in which Brazilian urbanism were graduated, respond to an intentional research-work criteria, the ones that are mostly unknown, the ones that one could find new correspondence with the occidental urbanism thoughts of each period, trying to find in them the answers to the suggested hypothesis and creating a method that certainly could be applied to the other twenty urban plans, obviously much nearer to their occidental homologue plans as far as the degrees of development arrived by the city and its multiple and constant relationship between technicians and techniques from other countries. The most important result of the present doctoral thesis consists in offering a fan of redrawn and reinterpretated Urban Plans plotted over an only base (the present digital catastral cartographic base of Rio de Janeiro) and its identification of correspondance with determinated occidental urbanism thought, which has helped to qualify the proposed hypothesis.

Author: TAPIA GOMEZ MARI CARMEN.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: AULA PI I CALLEJA.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, Edifici A --- SD.

Summary: The present thesis looks at how minority groups are using public space in the historic part of Barcelona. It identifies the principal transformations characterized by the original functional use of the space, the intrinsic meaning that each space has in the end and the social and the cultural borders that the different groups end up creating in regards to the urban space. In this way, public space appears like a great stage where distinctive forces, from the performance of many actors and their activities to the inevitable segregation and seizure of the space interact. The study shows that the participation and conflict, that seems to occur at the same time in the “Old City” depends upon many different factors, among which, the fact that cultural differences are fundamental in the moment one has to explain uses, symbols and the people that are acting out their part in this great drama. It is therefore necessary that we consider the impact of the multicultural diversity both in the analysis and the design of the space in question. For the sake of the study, understanding this reality is one way to bring to light the different ways in which people have made the area their home, to understand the nature of the public space and to establish the base from which we are able to reflect on our environments, the profound character of our prejudices and about our responsibility in proposing new integrating projects.

Author: MUÑOZ BRAVO MERIDALBA.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: AULA PI CALLEJA - ETSAB. UPC.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, EDIFICI A Campus SUD.

Summary: The new image that the Venezuelan city acquired thanks to radical transformations operated from the first half of the XX century, image of disorder and chaos, was dramatically foreseen and/or registered by our narrators and novelists of the period. This thesis rakes in the imaginary literary of that modern urbanization, in order to understand the reasons exposed by our intellectuals, and that explain in part the mistake in the materialization of our modernity. It offers a constant interconnection between the literature content and the material experiences in the construction of the Venezuelan modern city. The thesis tries to recreate three big scenarios: the traditional city that grows and its transformation; the city of the oil and the one based on a supposed anti-urban attitude. Three scenarios although apparently disconnected, but they are linked to obey all one desired and necessary modernization. The novels constitute the primary sources in which it is based the investigation, also supported by the same novelists' exemplary essays and for specialized references about the urbanism in Venezuela. From the first scenario the city spaces that the writers exalt as principal constituents of the city highlight and that them experiment radical changes. In the second one, a comparison among literary references of oil towns in foreign countries, in order to know if the previous experience in those countries influenced in the materialization of our towns. And finally, in the third one and last imaginary, it is highlighted the contradiction between an apparent anti-urban literature attitude and the deep urban vocation of the inhabitants and the writers of the country. Therefore, city and literature are conjugated to give body to this thesis.

Author: FIOL COSTA CARMEN.
Year: 2006.
University: POLITÉCNICA DE CATALUÑA [www.upc.edu].
Place of defense: AULA PI CALLEJA. ETSAB.
Place of preparation: ETSAB, Edifici A --- SD.

Summary: Jaussely’s 1907 Plan of Barcelona and Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago are similar beaux-arts proposals designed to organise the city formally and functionally during its transition into a metropolis. The city grid hierarchically organizes its streets and introduces diagonal roads, so as to generate structured and representative growth. The study compares the original plans and interpretative drawings on the same scale. The point of reference is the Paris model and Hénard’s plan of main roads. Paris has a longitudinal axis that is the city’s main avenue and the main territorial axis, which, reinforced by the city’s most representative public buildings, becomes its backbone. The axis of vertical symmetry organises the diagonal ring roads. Both in Barcelona and Chicago, the location of the civic centre along the complementary vertical axis - rather than on the main longitudinal axis - weakens the territorial connection. In the case of Barcelona, reinforcing the longitudinal axis of the Gran Via with other facilities and, in a design in which diagonal streets play the leading role, converting Avinguda Diagonal into the emblem of the Plan and city would have added more structure. Chicago’s Michigan Avenue has become the structuring axis that gives continuity to the Plan. A prior reading of the city is essential if we are to make a strategic proposal that will coincide with the city’s lines of force. The grid unit used in Barcelona is the same as the original block of Chicago, 133 x 133 m or 1/12 x 1/12 mile; Cerdà’s blocks have the same measurements as the Chicago block. The basic grid unit used in Chicago is 1/2 x 1/2 mile, which produces areas of city with blocks of the same size, cut off by streets from the main road network. This corresponds to 6 x 6 blocks of the central quadrangular area of Barcelona cut off by main streets. When a grid-based city changes scale, the diagonal streets become the streets that articulate the city with the territory and allow it to develop. The birds-eye views and fragments of perspective study drawings are placed in Jaussely’s plan. The six plans from the 1905 competition and the numerous plans from the 1907 project and its general interpretative view allow us to observe the complete proposal. Jaussely structures the urban tissues of the plan and fabrics of the hilly areas around the main avenues, Diagonal and Meridiana, using an exceptional angle of 45º to the rest of the grid. With these N-S and E-W grid lines, he defines the diagonal ring roads that, together with the perpendicular streets, determine the new connective nuclei. These intersections form a built-up square and are the centres of urbanity of the “picturesque” proposal. When one of these intersections requires more relevance, new radial roads are added that connect it directly to other points of interest. The monumental buildings have multiple façades and the laterality of these views produces an effect of fleetingness and surprise. Burnham’s visions create an itinerary of the city with a bird’s eye view. An attempt is made to limit the expansive force of the grid by using progressive polygonal limits around a main centre with complementary symmetrical centres, as a way of constructing a dense and volumetrically significant central nucleus. In the Chicago Plan, the diagonal streets introduce the territorial connection; these are rapid freight lines from the centre that form the polygonal circuits to divert incoming traffic. Streets of the 1/2 x 1/2 mile block are reinforced and linear continuity is ensured in order to generate urbanity. Emphasis is placed on the landscaped shore, the park system, and the connectivity of the outer circuits.