"The way cities are produced today creates 'urban diseases'."
Salvador Rueda, speaker of the II Biennial of Latin American Architecture of the University of Navarra, defends an "ecological urbanism, compatible with the sustainability of cities".
"Urban diseases are dysfunctions of urban systems, the result of the way cities are produced today". This was stated by Salvador Rueda, director of the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona, on the occasion of his participation in the II Biennial of Latin American Architecture of the University of Navarra, which will close today at the conference room de Armas of the Citadel of Pamplona.
In his opinion, "the current model of mobility generates dysfunctions such as air pollution, noise, congestion, loss of working hours, deaths due to traffic accidents or pollution, occupation of space or audiovisual pollution, among others".
The expert said that today's cities, as they are planned, "have very little sustainable. In this sense, he defended an "ecological urbanism", which apart from taking into account the context, considers the function of guide of urban sustainability. "A function of efficiency that is sustained over time with a lower consumption of resources and that incorporates urban habitability as a prior premise. A livability that makes reference letter to public space, equipment and Building, biodiversity and social cohesion."
What makes cities unsustainable, he said, is the logic that prevails today, based on the consumption of resources: "Cities capable of consuming more land, more materials and more energy are those that have competitive advantages in the next stage".
Reconciling economic and environmental interests
Salvador Rueda said that in the field of sustainability Spain is behind other countries, such as those in northern and central Europe. "Mediterranean cities have natural conditions that in principle make them better than theirs, but they have been able to make up for that disadvantage and take the lead by being more innovative and incorporating added value into their technologies and ways of visualizing the city. They have made sustainability their banner, while we are still in the industrial revolution".
The urban ecology specialist assured that it is possible to reconcile economic and environmental interests in this field. "It can be achieved by changing the strategy to compete. By making information and knowledge the basis of competitiveness, we can achieve an equation that allows our cities to position themselves better and, at the same time, make them more sustainable."
The II Biennial of Latin American Architecture has presented in Pamplona the contemporary panorama of Latin American architecture. The initiative, promoted by the group of research AS20 of the School of Architecture together with the City Council of Pamplona, the Commonwealth of the Pamplona Region and the Navarre delegation of the high school of Basque-Navarre Architects, has brought together young architects from 5 Latin American countries: Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.