A Motorway Named Rio

The studio will investigate the transformation of a motorway named Rio Santiago and research in what ways the rethinking of a key infrastructure could trigger an environmentally and socially just development of the urban habitat.

The Boulevard Rio Santiago is the main artery of the metropolitan area of San Luis Potosí in Mexico, a world heritage city with a population of one million people, a centre for international car fabrication, located in a semi-arid climate. The boulevard was built in a dry river, in part for its strategic location and in part for sanitation reasons. With a changing climate and a growing city, what had been a reasonable plan at its time, has become highly problematic: Recently occurring heavy rains frequently cause the flooding and mudding of the motorway bringing the city to a collapse.
The motorway’s trouble is prototypical (and a metaphor) for the challenges of contemporary cities and will serve as the spatial spine and conceptual entry point for engaging necessary transformations towards a city that is able to consolidate environmental systems, urbanization pressures and a culture of social participation.

When addressing the problem of the highway inevitably city-wide and interrelated issues unfold: water-management, urban climate, transportation networks, accessibility of jobs and services, social fragmentation and marginalisation, densification, cultural heritage and landscapes, leading finally into the question of how these aspects are embedded in urban form and public spaces.
Given the spatial constraints of the already built city, what are the opportunities to define synergies between the ecological and socio-economical challenges at hand? What are the appropriate scales to address the challenges?

The question of flooding and rainwater management for example needs to be situated within the scale of the region and might be coupled with the facilitation of improved water supply and health of marginalized populations and areas. At the same time, and at a local scale, social segregation and the physical and perceptual barriers that entrench the social divide and facilitated by the dissecting character of the motorway, could be eased through its upgrading into a green and ecological infrastructure. The question of mobility, with a strong demand for better bike connections and public transport, could be coupled with a reforestation of the main avenues, improving the city's urban micro-climate. Linked to transportation is the question of equal access to job opportunities, public facilities and services, impeded by the city’s vast extension and fragmentation. This could be countered by a densification and the accommodation of housing in the low rise inner city - an inquiry that potentially conflicts with the heritage buildings and the promotion of cultural landscapes and needs to be addressed on an architectural scale.

The studio will engage with the obvious urban issues of contemporary cities set at the intersection between region, landscape, urbanism and architecture. In San Luis Potosí they lay bare, calling for urban designs now.