Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper describes the consequences of affordable housing production at peri-urban areas in the Amazonian Ecuadorian towns. Throughout exhaustive qualitative methodologies that engage different social actors, it has been identified that public policies creating outside settlements reproduce socio-economic fragmentation and territorial exclusion. Moreover, there is evidence that there is not sustainability inside those human settlements, even if they try to ‘include’ citizen’s participation strategies and international legislation criteria, as it is in this case of analysis in ‘Hermana Guillermina Gavilanes’ settlement in Pastaza – Ecuador.

Extractivism means both an economic system and a model of territorial appropriation. Appropriation of material and immaterial resources that tend to reorganize the space and ways of life of the territories, transforming it substantially with irreversible social, environmental, economic and spatial implications. In this sense, this research makes a reflection on the socio-spatial characteristics generated by mining extractive activities in the Ecuadorian Amazon foothills, where large-scale industrial and small-scale extractive activities converge in the same territory, through of a cross-sectional study that relate the space and the actors that produce it, constructing descriptive diagrams and drawings that reflectively detail the space of the extraction. It is argued that industrial mining triggers linear processes while artisanal mining triggers dense processes with incremental logics.

The Amazon is a territory in constant transformation motivated by resource extraction under development models that place capital over indigenous communities and nature. The changes are reflected in modes of occupation of the space modified with the implementation of infrastructure and facilities with western urban logic. This is the case of the Punta de Ahuano facility, located in the Ahuano parish on the banks of the Napo River, an innovative bamboo structure financed with public funds in 2012 after the construction of the Jumandy airport. This article is derived from a previous project managed by the associations within the parish to recover the use of the facility after multiple attempts without success. The objective is to highlight the knowledge obtained using an interdisciplinary methodology that combines a sociocultural analysis based on Participatory Action Interaction, compared to the quantitative evaluation using observation matrices of public spaces based on “Placemaking” to search for a comprehensive and complementary approach to assess architectural structures. The main findings show contradictions between state planning and the dialogue of knowledge, the ways of inhabiting and conceiving the Amazonian spaces from collaborative planning, and the lack of community participation in planning and design processes. Finally, the sustainability of the Punta de Ahuano facility is in crisis because it was not enough to consider ecological materials when the territory and management were not considered as intrinsic principles of the design. 

Urban growth is a process that invades rural areas lacking basic and public services. In the case of the city of Quito, many of its inhabitants made the decision to move to the Calderón parish, generating a significant division of the territory, grouping into areas lacking in planning, generating spatial segregation.The purpose of this articule is to determine the evolution of the spatial segregation phenomenon over a period between the 1990 and 2010 censuses, making use of quantitative and qualitative information collected from various public sources, with which a mapping and tabulation in a matrix of categorization of variables whose score was weighted based on their importance in the quality of life of the population, which allowed to construct a cartography of the space with the clear identification of socioeconomic zones.From the present investigation, it was possible to determine that the urban expansion process responded to a phenomenon of socio-spatial segregation that had the objective of guaranteeing the new inhabitants of the territory, a place to live, safe and accessible to their socioeconomic reality. The political-administrative reality of Calderon allowed this phenomenon to be reproduced until the point of multiplying the number of inhabitants in a very short period of time, defining a great variety of sectors with diverse socioeconomic characteristics, forming invisible barriers that enhance a social differentiation, affect its urban dynamics.

This paper presents the first analyzes of the visits made in the disaster area, after the Pedernales earthquake of April 16, 2016. A group of engineers from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the National Polytechnic School carry out primary structural evaluations, which they are reported in files established by the MIDUVI (The Ministry of Urban Development and Housing). Various maps are presented with the classification or damage class of 58 evaluated structures, of which emphasis is placed on 23 structures corresponding to health. Additionally, photos of failures and structural pathologies post-earthquake are presented, which show recurrent anomalies in structures in the locality. The activities carried out by the delegation of professionals and collaborators are briefly presented, it is expected for a future eventual seismic activity in the country that the population, authorities and construction professionals visualize the changes to be made, to avoid material and of lives losses. Identification parameters are established for safety evaluations in structures after an earthquake, where the green color corresponds to inspected and the occupation is legally allowed, for the yellow color corresponds to restricted use and occupation in certain areas is prohibited, for the color red corresponds to unsafe and occupation is prohibited. 

The ‘Metro de Quito’ project is a reference for underground construction worldwide, this project signifies the highest subway train around the world with reference to sea level (2 900 meters above sea level) the most important construction site of ‘Distrito Metropolitano de Quito’. In this important construction it was possible to count on technological development and the safest method of tunnel construction through (EBP). This article describes the characteristics of the construction process of the segments or segments of reinforced concrete with steel, polypropylene or mixed fiber that cover the tunnel of the ‘Metro de Quito’ line. In this project, it will be used in 3 EBPs called ‘La Carolina’, ‘Luz de América’ and ‘La Guaragua’. This article presents the construction process, physical, geometric, complementary and special characteristics. The segment manufacturing process consists of a production line with waiting or stop points that add up to a total of 18, several work at stops is essential to have a good quality in the segments, at each stop the care and neatness to comply with the construction process since if there is a failure in the process, this has a direct impact on the final product, the mistake in one of the points of the procedure will bring with it losses in all resources, since you must perform the diagnosis, evaluation, repair or rejection of a segment. 

This paper reflects on the socio-economic consequences of social housing proyects in the periphery of cities driven by housing policies, whose contents, although inserted in international legal and programmatic frameworks, reproduce fragmentation and territorial exclusion. A qualitative methodology is structured in different moments and with several actors, and it shows the fragile socio-economic and cultural sustainability of the territories created by this type of intervention. Moreover, it is clear that social accompaniment strategies, as tools added to this type of policy, in their attempt to improve the quality of life of the population who are beneficiaries of housing of free social interest are limited by realities that are contrary to their goals. As in the case of the Urbanization1 Amazonian Sister Guillermina Gavilanes in Pastaza (Ecuador). 

This paper presents the evaluation of urban vulnerability This paper develops an approach to the urbanization phenomena that currently occur in a part of the Ecuadorian Amazonian territory as a manifestation of the ‘infrastructural urbanism’ and extractivist processes that are taking place in the region. It is based on some interpretative hypotheses about the role of infrastructures (roads and rivers) to generate or transform the urban space production dynamics and build new ecologies. The research is based on the study of Zamora, Yantzaza and El Pangui cities, which are going through strong urban transformation processes, marked by conditions of vulnerability and inequality in access to resources and by an uncertain and weak relationship with the local socio-ecological systems. Finally, it reflects on the challenges faced by Amazonian urbanization to achieve balance in a diverse, rich and complex territory 

Extractivism means both an economic system and a model of territorial appropriation. Appropriation of material and immaterial resources that tend to reorganize the space and ways of life of the territories, transforming it substantially with irreversible social, environmental, economic and spatial implications. In this sense, the present research, through a cross-sectional study that relates the space and the actors that produce it, constructing descriptive diagrams and drawings that reflectively detail the space of the extraction, makes an introspection on the socio-cultural characteristics, space generated by mining extractive activities in the Ecuadorian Amazon foothills where large-scale industrial activities and small-scale (informal) artisanal activities converge. It is argued that industrial mining triggers linear processes while artisanal mining triggers dense processes with incremental logics. 

“A deep desire dominates us: we still want to have cities where we can live as Aristotle says not only safe and healthy but also happy” Bruno Taut The concept of care related to the cities and built environment we live in, whether urban, rural or architectural ones, has been broadly investigated in different times and disciplines. Nowadays, it is a current topic driven by climate change and the public health events that have become mainstream in recent years.  Important political events such as COP26 in Glasgow suggest to urgently act with novel solutions that are no longer linked to a single area of knowledge, but with collective and a systemic approach of interdependence. We need each other to transform human and space conflicts into opportunities for caring our planet. The current human and urban contested environment, where values, convictions and behaviors define a complex panorama, claims for new paradigms of living together.