The Half City
Gina Cancione | Rodrigo Sole
The Half City uses crisis as a way to construct a new model of participatory urbanization. It is a way to reorganize the rural state of Yautepec, design community empowerment mechanisms within the built infrastructure, incentivize annual employment opportunities, and decrease dependency on central authorities post-disaster. Yautepec is a historic state embedded in the export crop of sugarcane, as well as corrupt local politics, and a new strategy for urbanizations is urgently needed. Using incremental, participatory urbanization termed our project seeks to trigger a new method of urban organization that more evenly distributes resources, as current infrastructural use and placement is controlled by centralized authorities. The Half City designs a framework in which parcels of land (of any size and shape) can be collectively owned and must incorporate a ring of public green space, an agricultural zone, and a roadway connecting to adjacent parcels. Basic requirements for each plot of collectively owned land, allows The Half City to be transformed based on the needs of individual owners. The area will become city that is not predominated by ‘structure’ – it will be a city that collectively develops all together over time. The Half City is a radical new model of gradual urbanization that empowers urbanization from the ground-up.
