From Recreational Park to Multifunctional Urban Platform: Transformations and Tensions in the Public Use of La Carolina park
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18537/est.v015.n030.a17Keywords:
La Carolina park, segregation, spatiality, public space, urban connectorAbstract
The research examines the role of La Carolina Park as an urban infrastructure whose historical evolution and spatial configuration reveal structural tensions inherent to Quito’s metropolitan development. Conceived in 1942 as a recreational metropolitan park, the park has been progressively reconfigured under the influence of its surrounding financial and corporate environment, consolidating itself as a strategic centrality in the northern sector of the city. This condition generates a functional duality: while it operates as a territorial connector and recreational space, it simultaneously reproduces inequalities through the differentiated distribution of access points, amenities, and tree cover. These elements, far from being neutral variables, shape patterns of use, permanence, and social appropriation of public space, producing forms of internal segregation that constrain the full exercise of the Right to the City. Based on a socio-spatial approach supported by fieldwork, the study identifies patterns of territorial fragmentation and discusses their operational implications for contemporary urban planning in Quito.
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