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Between Chinampas : Recovering the prehispanic urban structure towards a sustainable megacity in the Tláhuac borough.

The area that once were “The Great Tenochtitlán”, the aztec city surrounded by five lakes, greenery and impressive sustainable systems for housing and agriculture has turned out to be a megacity growing uncontrollably, leaving a negative environmental and social impact within. Over the last 60 years the population has increased from 5.2 to 8.8 million (INEGI 2010) in the Distrito Federal and from 5.7 to 20.8 million in the ZMVM (Metropolitan Area of the Mexican Valley) known as Mexico City, area which is projected to be the third biggest city in the world by 2015 (United Nations 2005). Research Questions: What would it take for a megacity such as Mexico City to take a shift into sustainable urban design and re-development? How can infrastructures such as transit, waste management systems and public spaces interact in a hybrid urban fabric of blue and green structures, in which the natural landscape and the built environment complement each other? Aim: The aim of this study is to address a research in one of the 16 boroughs of Distrito Federal: Tláhuac, which will be the place for the first metro line reaching the urbanized south-east, therefore the activation of the area is imminent. Tláhuac is a borough with an agricultural-urban character. The area is inhabited by middle-low income families. Its connection to the city, commercial areas and public space is deplorable. The site has large areas of non-utilized agricultural land, these areas are constantly squatted, one large plot of land with these characteristics is right next to the site where the new metro line will be built. Methodology and Design Tools: The study and design is supported by the emergent discipline: Landscape Urbanism, its theory of infrastructural landscapes is used as a way to conceal the urban and the regional, and so as the belief that “Landscape has replaced architectural form as the primary medium of city making” (Waldheim 2006). The methodologies used are literature review and spatial analysis. The final outcome is a new way to do urbanism in the post-agricultural areas of Mexico City, by including the preexistent landscapes as the urban fabrics when developing towards a more urban character. The basic design tools are; infrastructural landscapes throughout the use of the canals and chinampas, urban agriculture, eco-housing, recycling stations and inclusion of new services and community areas.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-123983
Date January 2012
CreatorsCrespo Uribe, Carolina
PublisherKTH, Stadsbyggnad
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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