San Agustin del Norte: a Caracas zone which will defend its historical heritage with an appropriate mix of new uses.

Abstract

San Agustín del Norte is a central zone where residents face deterioration of its habitat -buildings and open public spaces- affecting citizens’ life quality. Communities’ organizations have asked to the Venezuela Central University for an approach of implementing guides of solving theirs problems. In order to contributive for a better understanding of this zone, both teacher and students made an experience working together the community. The issue raises several aspects of deep concern for planning theory and praxis, where urban management involved actors -planners, municipality planning office, private investors and communities- must assume proactive actions towards a new dynamic influence on urban quality, in its spatial terms, and social-economical and cultural dimensions. In this paper, the morphological values of urban and architecture spaces of this zone are examined, not only for academic purposes but also for guiding future interventions, in order to prevent neighborhood displacement for inappropriate urban redevelopment process as consequence of disarranged political measures coming from local authorities and private investments. The goal is to achieve quality action, conceived as an interactive process, where the actors participate with roles clearly defined in time, for environmental solutions through out a sustainable plan for urban and architectural historical patrimonial preservation, including reuse of some spaces.