Inhabiting the Edge
San Jose de Cocotog Community Agenda 2018-2040
A look to the edge
San José de Cocotog is a peripheral commune of the city, located in the northeastern sector and surrounded by streams in all its limits. The commune is made up of five heterogeneous neighborhoods, agricultural and livestock housing together with an exuberant nature typical of the edge of the city of Quito. Its extraordinary culture and traditions establish the fundamental conditions to look optimistically at its development and ensure the well-being and progress of its inhabitants.
Instruments for the revaluation of landscape and culture
The communal agenda is a document made from an extensive participatory process together with the inhabitants of the commune through the realization of different workshops, meetings and mingas. The agenda contains 51 projects to be implemented until 2040, which mainly seek: Preserve the culture of the largest indigenous commune in the urban area of the city, rescue its natural landscape that has been a rubble dump for more than 50 years and generate a sustainable strengthening between the urban city, the ancestral-rural city and nature. In this way, it seeks to make the city aware of the reality of an ancestral and natural community, using mostly graphic tools to transcend physical borders and understanding the entire project as a possible model that can be replicated in analogous realities.
It is important to highlight that the architectural and urban projects proposed have been enriched thanks to transversal elements such as the cultural identity of this commune. In this way, in the prioritized projects it is possible to identify elements that make visible the symbols and cultural heritage of an ancestral population. The proposal of an ecological path, beyond being a landscaping project, constitutes a component for the recovery of the relationship of the community members with their environment composed of streams, trails and exuberant landscape with a view towards Tababela. This element is really important since, for a long time, the streams have not been more than a dump, which has made the walks through the streams to the San Pedro River no more than part of the stories told by the grandparents.
In this way, the result of this research consists in highlighting the intrinsic relationship of architectural and urban projects with the social fabric that inhabits it. Thus, the 51 projects proposed in Cocotog's communal agenda underline this fundamental feature. Inhabiting, caring for and feeling the environment that surrounds us, and in this way, giving way to the splendor of this space on the edge of the city.
It is necessary to become aware of the conflict that is generated in natural spaces located on the urban edges thanks to pollution and the disproportionate disposal of waste in rivers and streams. Above all, when the edges of the city have a high potential to become hubs of local production. This is how this research has sought to revalue these spaces while respecting the cultural forms present in the territory and proposing actions to create more inclusive spaces together with a local economy and environmental protection program.
Contest organized by the Metropolitan Institute of Urban Planning IMPU.
First Place, Los Valles Sector.
Members: Byron Cadena, Juan Pablo Navas, Dennise Santillán, Gustavo Abdo.
June 2018. Quito, Ecuador.