Urbanized Page #2

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so that the flow

of people into cities

happens in a good way.

With the Lo Barnechea project the main

priority was location.

Behind me you see the group

of families in the situation before,

meaning they live in a slum.

What we are trying to do

is that knowing

that the location is so important,

because schools, transportation,

jobs are in this part of the city,

which is actually

the richest part of the city.

What we were looking for was to find

a design that was able to pay

for very expensive land, but keep

all those networks.

So much more important then an extra

square meter of house,

was a better located square meter

of land, which tends to be expensive.

With a subsidy that is about $10,000

that is given to a poor family

that will then become

an owner of the house,

we had to buy the land,

provide the infrastructure,

and build the houses.

Instead of producing tiny units,

we asked ourselves

"Why don't we think of it

as half of a good house?"

And we thought it was efficient

to make the half

that a family could never achieve

on their own.

And then allow families to do

the other half, on their own,

with their own timing,

according to their own needs.

We call it participatory design.

To have a participatory design means

to have families sitting at the table

to help us decide what are we going

to deliver from day one

and what can be left so that families

themselves take care of that.

We asked families

what was more important:

a water heater or a bathtub.

There was not enough money for both.

Decision makers, or politicians,

or professionals

they normally tend to answer

the water heater.

And in 100% of the cases

when we asked the families

they preferred the bathtub

over the water heater.

You have to understand

that they are coming

from no water, no sewage.

A shower meant to have a can with

water in the courtyard.

So they are going to have privacy.

More important than that,

when they move in,

they do not have money to pay

the gas bill to heat the water.

So knowing that in their priorities,

bathtub is much higher

than water heater,

let's do the bathtub,

and allow them over time

to buy the water heater.

Think about the final stage

and how design

can facilitate families' lives

to achieve that middle income

standard in the future.

That's how quality

should be measured.

And that is definitely not the way

social housing was

being measured, not the way

it was being designed.

Historically cities have come into

being for many different reasons.

Cities grow up around

logistical issues,

for example, on a port.

Or somewhere that is advantageous

specifically for trade.

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