Intermediate cities and systemic landscape planning: Alternatives for a renewed urban planning

Abstract

The rapid growth of current Latin American cities brings unsustainable patterns of urbanization, which tend to shape a fragmentary reality in relation to essential dynamics of the urban landscape -biophysical, urban, and socio-cultural. A phenomenon is observed in Latin American intermediate cities (cimes), especially with attention to extensive and poorly controlled urban growth models. There is also a lack of a holistic view over these cities, the existence of large open spaces, expecting to be built upon, and the non-consideration of the cities as systems. These facts demonstrate the urgency of thinking about alternatives for urban planning in these cities. Faced with these challenges, the article seeks to 1) deepen the approach of principles, strategies, and guidelines for the Systemic Landscape Planning (syslp), related to the biophysical, socio-cultural, and urban systems, based on an open space system as a restructuring element of future built-up spaces, and 2) point out challenges and opportunities for the practical application of such principles, strategies, and guidelines in Latin American cimes planning, as alternatives for the conception of a renewed urban planning.