Today, 2.8 billion people live in the cities, equalling half of the entire population. By the year 2030, 60% of the global population will be urban dwellers according to the United Nations.
Uncontrolled urban growth is a global thematic; we intend to discuss it holistically and in a multidisciplinary approach.
Local expertise can contribute to a solution finding process in regards to potentials and threats that come with the theory and practice of urbanization processes. Conventional methods are compared to unconventional methods that may already be successful practice in certain parts of the world.
In this context, Costa Rica serves as a case study for us: a country typically known for its protected nature, which already has more than 60% of its people living in urban areas. There is an upcoming awareness of the problems related to the uncontrolled large-scale low-density suburban sprawl that is continuously substituting the nature surrounding the city and preventing services from efficiently reaching the urban fragments that grew more and more distant. So far, no centralized strategy or vision has been proposed to a privately controlled real estate sector in order to deal with the local crisis that is shared by many cities and countries worldwide.
We compare this situation to the international perspectives of a cross section of practitioners working on the city, such as
Yona Friedman, Rem Koolhaas, Cecilia Tacoli, Josep Montaner & Zaida Muxi, Jaime Lerner, Jorge Jauregui, Enrique Peñalosa and Alejandro Echeverri (amongst others).
The research resulted in a series of national and international publications as well as a series of lectures, conferences and university workshops in Costa Rica.
Credit
The research program was formulated by Oliver Schütte and Marije van Lidth de Jeude.
The socio cultural discourse in Costa Rica was developed in collaboration with the Facultad Latino Americana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).
The academic workshops were developed in collaboration with the Veritas University in San Jose, Costa Rica.
San Jose, Costa Rica, 2006 – 2009.