translated from Spanish: Port city: the urgency of (better) investing

We are living challenging time, a multifactorial crisis where authority and citizens are demanded in new ways of interaction, (in)mobility and production, preamble to reactivating ourselves in a better way.
As we have already seen during the pandemic, one of these actions has been to separate sectors of the city, which has proved highly complex due to the inevitable commitment to vital functions and the proper understanding of the dynamics of urban life. The same is true in all enclosures that by scale or functionality end up insulating themselves from the urban conditions of their environment. They are borders that degrade or rightly impede the social integration of the inhabitants. This is also the case for many of the urban port enclosures.
On the other hand, in the understanding that it is not possible to consider as a country that the urgency of investments by the crisis makes us accept poorly designed projects, it seems necessary to rethink models that without necessarily increasing investment amounts, achieve capacity targets and amplifi profits, an issue that has otherwise been explored in various alternatives, but in a new version whose improved designs allow to adjust and modify official projects.
These design and placement adjustments enable you to achieve your initial goal, but with better options that reduce impacts and amplify benefits, by enabling new spaces for multiple economic activities and jobs, in what should be a comprehensive offshore or waterfront project, of the port city.
It is important to mention by the way the Proposal of the Port Chamber to incentivize new investments, which cannot leave aside the recognition of urban environments and their environmental particularities. In the case of Valparaiso, the above justifies a location of the expansion of the port to the south, which releases the center of the bay for new uses to Parque Barón, while for San Antonio, the damping of the new infrastructure along an improved Barros Luco Urban Axis, with environmental considerations for the mouth of the Maipo as a basic condition, is achieved. And so with many of our cities facing this process.
These adjustments and cushionings in favour of economic diversification and redistribution of good urban standards are in line with the approaches of the National Council for Urban Development, the social integration proposed by the MINVU in the recovery of central areas, the reviving guidelines of the Infrastructure Fund through Country Development, which through public-private investment proposes significant investments in recovery , where urban infrastructure and quality are key.
Moreover, the last observation of the Council of National Monuments to the addition of the new accessibility project in Valparaiso, confirms the impacts already warned by various entities, highlighting once again the inadequateness of the TCVAL site. With this, validate the opening of the polygon of the new tender to San Mateo, where the road infrastructure already exists and does not generate the conflict between pedestrians and trucks, between the heritage area and the new platform, facilitating the opening of the urban maritime front already mentioned, appearing at least as something relevant to evaluate and incorporate into the concession or the next bidding process.
It is clear that the instances of dialogue, today virtual, are needed to overcome the social, health, economic and environmental crisis, so here the state, the academy, the company and the social actors can collaborate in this new coordinated and private collaborative public gaze, which must change both our life and that of the space we cohabit in each of our cities.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish