Paisajes urbanos híbridos-dispersos: tecnovación en gestión urbana sostenible

Abstract

Urban sprawl in Latin-American and Venezuelan cities derives from uncontrolled urban expansion of the periphery, due to the absence or infringement of geographical and legal restrictions through planned and spontaneous urban occupation (hybrid urbanization). This in turn results from migration and territorial laissez faire; limited urban management capacity and sustainability culture in public, private and community institutions although they perceived and inhabit a precarious environment and frequently protest demanding services, security and houses. For Sempere (2005, is caused by illegal ways of habitat production based on low density and extensive typologies. This urban pattern generates strong pressures against which there is no institutional capacity or will to respond due to political or ideological reasons. This disperse-unsustainable model in Maracaibo (capital of the Zulia State, located at the western extreme of Venezuela) has led to the explosion of the city boundaries, and the occupation of the edges of the metropolitan urban corridors, which run from the city across the Protective Zone (PZ). The PZ is a green belt of 20.800 Hectares, decreed in 1989 to act as a policy-container of urban growth by defining the city west boundaries and is in the process of transformation-mutation by urban rituals in expansion. It is the territorial expression of the contemporary forms of making city which result from the practice of the visible management government (VMG) in metropolitan Maracaibo, referred by Ferrer and others (2005) as Maracaibo’s metropolitan archipelago (MAM). The paper describes the method, innovative planningevaluation strategy (IPES) and the results of a study that evaluates the impact of sprawl -urban occupation of the Protective Zone (PZ)-, in Maracaibo’s -hybrid metropolitan archipelago- (HMA) sustainability. The IPES fills the gap of the local urban planning assuming the principles of sustainable development (SD) by means of braiding the urban planning process (UPP) with the Pressure-State-Response Model (PSR) and Geographical Information Technologies (GIT) -satellite images and GIS- to develop urban models, specific attributes and urban sustainable indicators (USI). The IPES (UPP+PSR) is a multilayered-relational model that works, within the PSR model and grapping this model with the UPP. In this model, the causes of environmental changes, Pressure are correlated with the urban-spatial scenarios, their effects State, with the diagnose synthesis and, the Response with the multilevel government and stakeholders, urban projects, actions and policies, proposed and undertaken to deal with these changes. To reach an ethical decision, a concerted vision of the future scenarios and to build an integral territorial hypothesis for the PZHMA, sustainability and governance -stakeholders’ participation- were the key principles of the study. The paper concludes presenting the IPES model (creative technovation), where the GIS models of vulnerability, consolidation, conformity of usage and the model synthesis, environmental and legal conformity-adequation of the urban occupation, serve as specific State Attributes; the envisioned urban - spatial scenarios constituted the Attributes of Pressure and urban governance, measured through three variables, legitimacy by performance, governability and participation, configured the Response Attributes and selecting as policy and integral hypothesis –vision for the PZ-MAM the E2 Scenario: Corridors of Tendencial Expansion because controls, adjusts and organises the present lineal urban occupation along the metropolitan corridors maintaining intermediate areas of green protection and re-creates a new hybrid sustainable urban landscape, a compact, dense and multifunctional-polycentric PZ-MAM.