Master Plan For The Historical Centre Of Asunción

Background Information

The plan has been supported by the National Secretariat of Culture of Paraguay and the Municipality of Asunción.

The plan is part of the Citadel Cultural project and is the result of the document "Comprehensive Action Plan of the Historic Center of Asunción", presented in November, 2010.

Through the efforts of the National Secretariat of Culture, the National Government, decreed in January 2015, by Decree No.2985, the creation of the Council of the Master Plan for the Revitalization of the Historic Center of Asunción (CHA Plan).

In March 2016, the Council gave the CHA Plan to the Executive Secretariat for the execution of the plan creating the (ASU-LAB), the managing entity responsible for implementing the plan.

Goals of the Initiative

•Stop the depopulation of the Historical Center and increase the density of residential services, therefore revitalizing the city center.

•Densifying the urban fabric with a mix of uses, providing the necessary facilities to make the city center attractive again to all the population.

•Promote the use and improvement of public space through interaction between public and private spaces. Generate meeting spaces promoting new urban experiences.

•Reuse and enhance the singular buildings that constitute the historical heritage of the city and urban environment, most of which are empty, abandoned or underused.

•Design strategies for sustainable mobility.

•Promote the creative economy, tourism and cultural industry.

•Promote citizen and institutional participation through digital tools to develop an agenda of projects, whilst establishing financial mechanisms and management.

•Improve the relationship of the city with the bay and the nature reserve bank of  San Miguel.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative

In the CHA Plan the wide network of collaborating partners has enabled a significant mobilization of human resources in terms of staffing support to the design team. EcosistemaUrbano has led the development of the plan by involving hundreds of people:

•The projects behind the CHA Plan are promoted and funded by the National Secretariat of Culture of Paraguay.

•The College of Architects of Paraguay, has provided technical support in the phase of urban data collection.

•Hydroelectric ItaipuBinacional has provided a significant financial contribution enabling the implementation of the Executive Secretariat of the Master Plan of the Historic Center of Asunción (CHA Plan), called ASU-LAB (Asunción Laboratory Open).

•Students participating in Paraguayan Union of Students of Architecture workshops conducted surveys and citizen interviews that were uploaded to the platform and served as relevant information to the development of the plan.

•Students at the Autonomous University of Madrid, under the tutelage of the anthropologist Héctor Grad.

Resources Used for Implementation

EcosistemaUrbano has been the link between citizens, stakeholders, the local government and technicians and in the process has developed:

•10 strategies, located around specific areas of the city.

•An action plan with more than one hundred specific actions linked to physical spaces and a timeline for their implementation.

•40 pilot projects, which could be implemented in the first phase.

A participatory process has been incorporated into the plan to promote debate and reflection among citizens, through:

•Working sessions with the institutions to define the specific needs and main lines of the plan.

•Workshops with entrepreneurs and creative residents of the city, including university students, primary school students, normal citizens interested in the plan and Chacarita citizens affected by the relocation plan.

•Web platform that remained open and available throughout the process, serving as a repository of ideas that people wanted to share and suggest

•Asunción Open Urban Lab (ASU-LAB), an entity that serves as a link between public institutions, private organizations and citizens.

Innovation for the Initiative

The initiative is certainly evolutionary, and it represents a significant evolution both in the practice of urban planning in Latin America and in the EcosistemaUrbano proper practice. We propose 10 intervention strategies in which we rely on participatory processes and some existing global examples combining all this information together under a fresh new approach. In some cases the improvement of space is at the forefront of thought in the short term due to floodable areas, and  yet we also uphold long-term changes that are intended to foster tourism, culture, economy or the quality of life of the citizens.

This project also represents a further step in the evolution of EcosistemaUrbano practice, refining its participatory methodology and adapting it to new challenges.

Innovation has been applied in

The innovation resides in the process itself, since the beginning of the design involved the citizens, leading to a new vision of institutions and a deeper knowledge of the needs and the challenges of the city for the institutions themselves.

With all this background we propose a different approach. Not a master plan but a master ‘process’, supported by a set of strategies that are sufficiently specific but also flexible enough to enable progressive implementation over time. The plan doesn’t pretend to cover all aspects of reality, but only influence the critical aspects, which have the greatest chance of success and implementation and result in a greater, more widespread positive impact on the city.

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

Asunción has had a limited capacity to evaluate and manage its challenges and has suffered a deep lack of information relating to the city in all fields of knowledge. To overcome this we have adapted the following approaches:

•Preparing a technical proposal called "Urban Future Vision" and structured in 10 strategies, an Action Plan and 40 pilot projects.

•Integrating a participation process to promote debate and reflection among citizens.

•Creating the Asunción Open Laboratory (ASU-LAB), an entity that serves as a link between public institutions, private organizations and citizens.

•Generating new information and mapping the city in collaboration with students.

Outcomes and Assessments

Community strengthening, coordination and integration between different sectors, organizations and institutions.

Through the participation process:

•Strengthening the social groups involved in urban change, for example in the Chacarita Alta.

•Coordination and contact between the various participants through workshops.

•Discovering information about the city throughout the participatory process.

Urban design strategies and improvement of public space

•Increase residential density, improvement of facilities and service quality in the Historic Center.

•Creation of a compact and dense urban front along the new coastal road, where the creation of new creative and business opportunities will be encouraged.

•Improve the urban landscape in various types of streets: dynamic corridors that boost economic activity; ecological corridors that integrate new green infrastructure; civic corridors connecting the most important historical and government buildings.

•Empowerment strategies for a better use of natural resources.

Governance and institutional capacity

The ASU-LAB is a revolutionary tool that will serve to communicate, share information and accelerate the procedures for different projects related with the city center and beyond.

Cultural diversity, strengthening identity and promotion of creative economies

All strategies include actions that enhance the existing micro-economies (the formal as well as the informal), fostering and regulating activities related to crafts, food, tourism, culture and tradition.

Methods Applied

•Analysis of the existing urban, social and economic context.

•Identification of possible agents members of CHA Plan process for its design phase and subsequent implementation.

•Working sessions with the institutions to define the specific needs and the main lines of work for the Plan.

•Technical design work and development of the CHA Plan, including 10 main strategies, more than 100 actions and 40 pilot projects.

•Participative process with citizens. Consultation, discussion, and collection of technical data from activities and urban actions.