Co-production and Public Space: Perspectives and Experiences from Latin American Informal Neighbourhoods.

Abstract

The project “Upgrading Informal Settlements by the Coproduction of Inclusive Public Spaces: urban design strategies for sustainable and resilient development in informal neighbourhoods’’ (short name: SURLab) was initiated in 2020 as a collaboration between research groups of the Department of Architecture of the KU Leuven, the Facultad de Arquitectura of Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil and LlactaLAB Sustainable Cities research group at Universidad de Cuenca. The project tackles the challenge of triggering sustainable and resilient urban development through the participatory design of public spaces in lowincome informal neighbourhoods. Public Spaces in ‘barrios populares’ (Popular neighbourhoods) in the Ecuadorean cities of Guayaquil and Cuenca were seen as representative working cases.