San Carlos Park
Combeau Muratgh
Cliente
San Carlos Park
Location
Santiago, Chile.
INTRODUCTION
In 2027, it will be 200 years since the construction of the San Carlos Canal, or, if you prefer, since the commissioning and founding of the Maipo Canal Society. Throughout its history, this canal has made a tremendous contribution to the city of Santiago: originally, it was built to increase the flow of the Mapocho River in the summer, to irrigate agriculture in the eastern valley (irrigation channels, tree-lined avenues, Cousiño Macul Vineyard), and, entering the 20th century, for energy generation (trolleys, public lighting, clean energy), as a collector of rainwater from the eastern sector, as the main irrigator of green spaces, and also, from the foundation of San Carlos, dealing with relevant issues such as conservation (Batuco wetland), social inclusion, community, and family.
This initiative began from a personal motivation that dates back 10 years. In 2010, I lived just a few blocks from the canal in the Providencia municipality, and I also worked at Elemental with Alejandro Aravena, a very stimulating and proactive office in terms of generating concrete proposals or projects to improve the city. I walked by the canal every day and saw how in some areas it resembled an abandoned lot, with insufficient sidewalks, unattractive railings, graffiti, and trash. In short, between Andrés Bello and Presidente Errazuriz, the canal looked more like a trench, a pit, rather than a valuable element of the urban landscape. During 2011-2012, I developed a presentation to share with different stakeholders, but progress was slow. Then, as often happens, life took me in other directions: I got married, went to study a master’s in Zurich, and later worked in Tucson, Arizona, for two years. When I returned in mid-2018, I set up my own office, and during this very particular year of 2020, I wanted to revive this project because it still feels relevant and necessary.
AGENDA
This time, thanks to the collaboration of Leonardo Del Valle and Juan Francisco Guzmán, both architects from UC who work with me, we have developed a new strategy to promote this initiative from two fronts: on one hand, bottom-up, meaning from the ground up, through social media, a website to gather support, and distributing information on the streets; and on the other hand, top-down, by meeting with different stakeholders who are directly or indirectly involved with the canal: the Maipo Canal Society, various municipalities, neighborhood associations, restaurant owners, the metro system, and real estate developers such as Territoria, among others.
Here, I will mention the example of New York's Highline for two reasons: the first is that it is, of course, a linear park that could have many similarities to what we are proposing, as it spans 2.33 km, 15 meters wide in many parts. But what struck me most about that project was that it started as a piece of railway infrastructure that later became obsolete and abandoned for decades. New York City mayor Robert Giuliani had signed a demolition order for that structure, but thanks to two locals, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, who saw the value and potential in the place, it was preserved and later transformed into a public park, now one of Manhattan's most iconic attractions. THE PROJECT
The San Carlos Canal is 31.5 km long, running from the intake at the Maipo River to the discharge into the Mapocho River in front of the Costanera Center. Along its path, it crosses and borders seven municipalities, six of which are urban: Puente Alto, La Florida, Peñalolén, La Reina, Providencia, and Las Condes. Thus, it begins in a rural setting and ends in a very dense, vibrant urban area, traversing municipalities with significant socio-economic differences. In this sense, a project for the San Carlos Canal is immediately a project of integration. This initiative aims to cover the entire canal, making it a metropolitan project. To begin, we will focus on the last 2.7 km that separate the Las Condes and Providencia municipalities. These 2.7 km are divided into 8 sections or "islands" due to the streets that cross from east to west. The total surface area of these 8 sections is 79,500 m² (almost 8 hectares), equivalent to the Forest Park between the Fine Arts Museum and Plaza Italia. Of these almost 8 hectares, 4.5 hectares correspond to the open canal. This is where we see a tremendous opportunity to add more public space, more pedestrian areas, continue the parks and bike lanes, increase urban tree cover, and also bring the presence of water closer and cleaner to pedestrians. We can even imagine that, given the low temperature of the canal's water, we could design a park with "natural air conditioning," using sustainable systems to manage the water and cool the air. Lastly, we believe that within these 2.7 km separating the two municipalities, the last four sections, between Andrés Bello and Presidente Errazuriz, are the most critical since they lack adjacent parks, are in a state of abandonment, and between Andrés Bello and Apoquindo, have already been unfortunately intervened to enable access ramps to the Costanera Center. FUNDING
We have conducted a preliminary study to evaluate the construction of one of the sections, between Av. El Bosque and Presidente Errazuriz, with the generous advice of the construction company EBCO (we are grateful for the time and willingness of Hernán and Marco Besomi), which allowed us to estimate an investment of approximately 10.5 UF/m² to cover and convert the canal into a park. In the mentioned section, 3,700 m² need to be covered, and additionally, the rest of the plot (another 2,000 m²) needs to be improved. Thus, we are talking about approximately 43,000 UF (1.25 billion Chilean pesos) for a high-standard park or promenade. If we extrapolate this to the entire most urgent section, between Andrés Bello and Presidente Errazuriz, the required amount is 185,000 UF, or about 5.5 billion pesos. This may seem significant, but two things happen: first, this investment is split between two municipalities, Las Condes and Providencia, so each must finance half: 2.75 billion pesos. Second, the new Law 20.958, the Public Space Contribution Law, has just come into effect. This law is a mid-term investment planning tool that requires real estate developments to contribute money, land, or projects. This law will provide new resources to municipalities, which will be exclusively allocated (70%) to public spaces and mobility. As a result of this law, each municipality will have to create a Mobility and Public Space Investment Plan (PIEP), which will contain a portfolio of projects where resources from these new contributions will be assigned. This law establishes a procedure to calculate the contribution each project must make based on its occupancy load (density of occupation) and the size and value of its land (tax valuation). For example, if someone in Las Condes wants to build an office tower of 25,000 m², i.e., a 25-story tower with 400 m² floors, on a plot valued at 30 UF/m², they will need to contribute approximately 360 million pesos. This means that with 8 projects of this scale in the pipeline, the park could be funded.