An infrastructural ecology for Lima

Abstract

Lima is facing an infrastructural crisis. Its infrastructure has reached the limits of elasticity, capacity and implementation. Its systems are ecologically challenging and are ecologically challenged. Born as top down system, they currently require too much investment from institutions in order to be governed and managed. We should rethink the conventional understanding of infrastructure as the hidden physical organizational structure of urban development, and favor a multi-scalar shared social approach to infrastructural production. Infrastructure needs to be civic and social, 'micro' and 'macro', hard and soft. Housing, the single, most powerful drive of Lima's growth needs to be reconsidered as an essential component of this infrastructure. This thesis proposes to analyze the set of elements that can constitute a new ecology of infrastructural pieces, in order to foster a new form of development and solidification of the peripheral informal settlements in the city of Lima.

The questions of open ended infrastructure in Lima, and the relationship between the limitations of 'hard' and 'soft' are on the table today: 46% of its citizens have resorted to informal housing for a place to live, most of which have no access to basic services1. Paired with population increase, immigration, and the unpreparedness of governments to provide infrastructure and services, this pressure is challenging risk management and governance capacities. The limitations to achieve the next generation of infrastructure in Lima are neither technical nor financial; they are spatial, social and political2. This thesis challenges conventional understandings of infrastructure by looking at it through the lens of ecology (which implies the study of the interaction between the elements of a system, beyond their independent development) and uses this lens to propose a new infrastructural system.

First, it catalogues the infrastructural pieces at play, defines their relationships, and documents how infrastructure is implemented throughout the region. Second, it proposes new pieces and partnerships of this system that encourage negotiations, develop new and existing relationships, and define operations and rules oriented towards a processes of urban solidification. These rules consist of physical, spatial and social interactions, moving energy, economy, and labour through the territory. These rules can mobilize dialogue between the built and unbuilt, objects and territories, organisms and environments. The thesis addresses the specific relationship between informal settlements and their geography, and proposes a dialogue between solidification and impermanence.

The goal of the thesis is to define a system capable of supporting and expanding itself while producing a legible project in the territory: an infrastructural ecology that enables different lifestyles, new interactions, and civic dialogue.