SPS Seminar with Andrea Pliego (UNAM, Mexico City)
Thursday 28 March, 12:30-13:30, 01 West 270
Amphibian Housing for a Resilient City
Towards an integral approach on adaptable housing systems in the water basin of México City
The interaction between the biophysical systems and the urban area in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of México (MAVM) has been neglected by the governance system when it has promoted business strategies, reaching a socio-ecological decay that places its inhabitants in a vulnerable state1. In this sense, housing processes have been affected; inhabitants have created their own production methods which respond to the lack of affordable housing provision and real estate companies are producing housing with no habitability standards2, these two actors benefit from the most affordable land in the outskirts of the metropolitan area3, developing a vulnerable city which keeps expanding and exploiting more of its environmental resources, specially affecting the water cycles in the river basin and generating regional competition for water resources, floods, draughts and subsidence4. Both kinds of housing systems; the government promoted and the socially produced, do not cope with the agenda for an urban resilient and sustainable city (ODS framework), where habitability, health, water access, sustainable cities and communities are some of the goals for housing in the MAVM5. This research proposes the use of an integrated urban planning method, where the basis for resilience is the recognition of biophysical units6 and accordingly; the adaptation and deploy of existing housing to these units, establishing an integral criteria for different housing system types in the Water Basin of the Valley of México, to reach a better urban resilient path, in which social, ecological and utilitarian dimensions and scales are aligned with the existing environmental resources7. This path could cope with the historical problem of the low harnessing of the environmental value that this river basin can provide to achieve self-sufficiency8.
References used for the abstract:
1.(Suárez et al. 2017; Castillo, 2010), 2. (Hastings, 2007) 3. (Isunza et al.2011), 4. (Romero-Lankao, 2018; Soto, 2015; Kalach et al., 2010; De Urbanisten et al., 2015), 5. (INFONAVIT, 2018), 6.(Bacchin, 2015), 7. (Forgaci, 2018), 8. (Ezcurra et al. 2005).
Andrea Pliego Rentería
Andrea Pliego comes from the Housing Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of México, where she is working on applied research of existing and new housing systems in Mexico City. She studied the first year of the master in Restoration and Sustainability in the Politecnico di Torino as part of her fourth year studies, and she is currently a research trainee at Spatial Planning and Strategy in the Urbanism Department of TU Delft. She participated in the 2nd National Congress of Housing in 2015 with a progressive housing university project and in the 2017 Cumbre INFONAVIT.
