Mapocho 42k: connectivity on riparian landscape as memorable public space

Abstract

The MAPOCHO 42K Project originates in 2009 as part of an undergraduate academic experience under the support of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, which later develops as an eight-yearlong applied research, whose main effort has been to become a real proposal for the city of Santiago. Its main starting point is to recover the potentiality that the Mapocho riverbanks still hold to become a Metropolitan scale public space, in the way of a backbone for Santiago from east to west, able to consolidate its special vocation of geographical, environmental and social continuity of the riparian space. The project proposes the recovering of these riverbanks as a large geographical Promenade of 42 km for pedestrians and cyclist, that allows to connect every social and topographic stratum among 11 communes, and, at the same time, all the existing or potential parks along its path, as part of a riverside green corridor that turn the landscape continuity back to the city life, as an memorable ordinary experience.