The former Secretary of Urban Development Álvaro García Resta assures that the recent reform of the Urban Planning Code (CUr) laid the foundations to balance the development of the City, through innovative instruments.
“I feel fulfilled for having held the discussion of the urban agenda for 10 years in a city like Buenos Aires – Álvaro García Resta starts. We really made the effort to be innovative in the processes, in the ideas, in not being afraid to have some discussions and in debunking some statements such as the threat of sale of public land what the city turns its back on the riverwhich for years and years we have repeated as burning beliefs now questioned.”
After 12 years of management, García Resta left his position on the last day of 2024, it has not yet been announced who will succeed him. The team of professionals at the Secretariat will continuity of public policies and the regulation of the CUr is on the agenda.
“He challenge is that the implementation of the tools helps to achieve greater success in their use, they must write the instruction manual for a complex standard, of course, due to the number of variables it handles,” he assures.
For García Resta, this new version of the CUr “is really a starting point for a more balanced city” since it seeks to “promote development in the most neglected areas, in this case, the south of the city, generate or motivate empty spaces in the central and densest area, protect the environmental asset increasing apple lungs and preserving the neighborhood identity more consolidated.”
In turn, the official highlights the process followed: “One dared to say that the CUr was going to be a code for everyone in the sense of generate consensus. We arrived after a very open and broad participation process, where we did not necessarily all think the same but we all gave in and gained a little by betting on the common good. It can be thought that there is a tension between the development and care of identity. However, this code manages to incorporate both instruments, understanding that there cannot be a single code for such a large and diverse city.”
With satisfaction, he affirms that “everything we set out to do happened” and attributes it to having generated “instruments to manage public policy and also in the specific project that becomes pure public architecture and hard, inhabited by the people whose lives you improved through a better building or better public space, and that is what they ultimately value.”
And ensures that the current management will continue to promote conditions for public-private coordination and to continue increasing the active architectural public.
“Having been able to institutionalize a anthropological vision of the city It is one of the greatest prides I have -he reflects-. The city is the physical expression of the life of the people in a certain territory and a certain time. If we do not understand how people live at this moment, in this place, we will hardly be able to generate projects that correspond to their lifestyle.”
This vision includes the user participationfor example, to define the needs program when designing a public space.
“How could an architect know what a certain community, a certain neighborhood wants: what it needs, what it desires is not the same as what it wants, needs or desires,” he points out. The city is an interdisciplinary factarchitecture must be nourished by other professions that understand the subject-user of the city in order to offer them the best object corresponding to their needs.”
The works on Plaza Houssay, Paseo Gigena (now renamed Ola Palermo) and the new public space in the former White Elephant are examples of that vision. Also, the Innovation Park, in this case an area of greatest congestion and wasted. “Our big bet is that it is a place of permanence, hence the mix of uses, encouraging access through public transport since it is an area very well equipped with infrastructure,” he closes.
