Transdisciplinary urban planning
Introduction
Lake Sagaris (Montreal, 1956) is a Canadian-Chilean writer who came to live in Chile in 1980, and stayed forever. During the 1980s she worked as a freelance foreign correspondent for various English-speaking media: Globe & Mail, CBC, Times of London, NPR, Pacifica Radio, Newsweek, Economist Intelligence Unit, among others. From 2000-2010, she worked as a bilingual editor and translator for international companies and agencies, including ECLAC and the ILO.
At the same time, and with the end of the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), he began to participate in citizen activities in the Bellavista neighborhood, an emblematic neighborhood in Chile for its history of diversity, migration, heritage and rebellion. A space of poetry and science, a popular world of work cooperatives, theaters and good gastronomy, the neighborhood began to suffer greater urban deterioration in the 1990s. At the end of that decade, the highway project, the Costanera Norte, threatened to sink (literally) the neighborhood, destroying it forever. However, a coalition of 25 organizations from Independencia, la Vega, la Vega Chica, Tirso de Molina, la Pérgola Santa María, Bellavista (Providencia and Recoleta) and Pedro de Valdivia Norte was formed, raising a citizen voice, demanding binding participation in decision-making about territories so loved and so important, for residents and visitors.
The book, Another Class of Love: Ciudad Viva and the birth of a citizen urbanism in Chile (2019, https://estudiosurbanos.uc.cl/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/9789560107060-Sagaris-2019-Otra-clase-de-amor.pdf, tells the story and documents a good part of this process as part of the doctoral work he carried out, in 2013, Sagaris received his doctorate in Planning and Geography from the University of Toronto, one of the 25 best universities in the world.
Between 2000-2010, Sagaris and other organizations from La Vega founded Ciudad Viva, an organization that made the practice of "citizen urbanism" a reality, that is, urban planning led by citizen organizations. One of his greatest achievements was to turn the paradigm of the bicycle as an obsolete vehicle for poor men (perpetuated in the 1990s by a bank's advertising), converting the bicycle, and "Cycloinclusion", as an effective strategy for social inclusion, security, health and well-being. Winner of several awards for Innovation in Citizenship and Subdere, Ciudad Viva achieved several important projects. Among them, a Roundtable with the Regional Government, Ministry of Transport, Macleta (Mujeres Arriba de la Cleta) and other organizations, with the support of a team from the Netherlands, Interface for Cycling Expertise. This Roundtable, along with other citizen initiatives, especially the culture and bicycle festivals, of Bicícola, managed to forever change the importance of bicycles in the Santiago environment, and then throughout the country.