INDIVIDUAL THESIS
Faculty: Vicente Guallart

MAA02 14-16 -DYNAMIC CITYSCAPE Luisa Roth

The large majority of the global population lives in urban environments and the predictions are that by 2050 more than 80% of the world’s population will be living in cities. It is because of this that it’s important to understand how cities function as a productive system that acts as a key part of the global economy. Todays large cities deal with issues lie climate change, uneven growth, centralization of management, lack of sustainable large scale retro-fitting strategies and many more. To attack these issues a holistic strategy is needed, one that combines new technologies, cities and the social layer. It is not a question if the decisions taken should be bottom-up or top-down, but more of how to make the two work together as they are both necessary for the implementation of a successful model.

MAA02 14-16 – [AUTONOMY PROJECT] Juan Diego Ramirez

The alignment of the projects, layers of investigation and big scale initiatives, coordinated generally by the government and large corporations and the development of bottom up projects, generally driven by the civil society and the small business owners is crucial for the implementation of an innovative project within fertile grounds. One crucial step is empowering the population that shapes the city in order for them to take charge of their own destiny, without being dependent on economical and political conditions that resulted out of the globalization process. Second is the development of an ecological model that responds to the climate change issues by needing far less energy to function, it uses the local resources and keeps the production on a local scale. The focus is on strategical plans, sectorial plans and scientific knowledge to better understand and improve the construction of social communities in the cities and to be able to upgrade them through the filter of information technology as technology has always been a resource that boosted the changes in civilizations and improved in a big way the quality of life of the population.