Guayas River Basin: Diversifying for Resilience

The transect crosses three major environments in the Guayas River Basin and runs from an estuarine complex (south) to a sweet water basin (north). These landscapes have been the object of exploitative monofunctional practices (shrimp farming, urbanisation and intensive cash crop agriculture) that have distorted the dynamics of the original ecosystems of mangroves, marshlands and tropical forests. Future urbanisation rates will increase the pressure on the environment, making water scarcity and food security serious issues. Climate change will only exacerbate the situation. Guayaquil recurrently experienced the immediate consequences of the shifting climate and is considered one of the world’s coastal cities at highest risk of damaging floods due to climate change. How can the Guayas Basin prepare for changing conditions of extreme heat, increased precipitation and sea level rise? 

The transect vision proposes the recovery of original landscape logics by rebalancing the interplay of landscape, settlement and infrastructure in four 5x5km sites. Within these squares, thirteen strategic urban projects tackle the following issues: The afforestation of monofunctional landscapes and productive environments to allow local economies and livelihoods to thrive, proposed topographical manipulations to create more space for water to flow, to be harvested, collected and cleaned,  diversified open (public) space and built typologies that respond to the range of specific water-related problems (e.g. surface flooding, water logging, pollution) and reduce urban heat island effects, and alternative social-spatial organizations in which ongoing dynamics can be incorporated to constructively support ecological cycles for the waves of urban development to come.