La Ciudad Abierta

Abstract

Planned cities can be recognized as such from certain clues that help you to discover and then to interpret the layout and design of their roads and buildings. These clues are mostly of a geometric kind, in addition to various structural symmetries and the evidently contemporaneous realization of the most characteristic parts, such as the perimeter walls or the inner “cores†of these cities. In this sense, planned cities can be considered as “closedâ€, while a planned city with a structure that is not determined or designed from the start is “openâ€. This is an important initial consideration for understanding the Ciudad Abierta (CA), or “Open Cityâ€, situated just a few kilometres north of the city of Viña del Mar in Chile: This extraordinary place covers an area of about 270 hectares, facing the restless shores of the Pacific Ocean that are subject to much seismic activity. The main road that follows the coastline from Valparaiso to Quintero in the North separates the site into two portions: to the west a large area of sand dunes that extends down to the ocean, and to the east an area that rises to an altitude of about 120 meters consisting of green hills, the westward facing sides of which are sometimes very steep with deep canyons and crevices.