EXPLANATION

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For this third phase of my analysis I focused on exploring how do formal settlements behave, with my site of La Sierra as a case study. I studied firstly how did this settlement start and how it has evolved through time. The settlement uses the main road to Rionegro as a central street around where it started developing and then goes up in perpendicular streets from this road. This road is still currently the centre of the community. 

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The way these settlements grow is through an evolving colonisation by independent housing. The local community council divides the parcels and decides whether a person or family can build their house in a plot of land. Since most of these houses are illegal, what the people building them look for is become as permanent and solid as possible, as the most solid the less likely it will be removed by the city authorities. However, the evolution of the house is also very dependant on the size of the family and their wealth. The houses usually start just as a small barrac called rancho made out of pieces of wood, cardboard etc that people find around, with this there is already a presence on the place and there won't be someone else coming and building there. After this rancho becomes more sofisticated and later on as the family grows and has more money it becomes a more solid brick house. At this point the house is considered a house and cannot be removed by the city authorities. Eventually these houses keep expanding and go up one or two stories. 

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This constant evolution of the housing combined with a lot of them happening at the same time is what makes informal settlements this organic urban form that keeps is constantly growing and changing.

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Right now, la Sierra is at a key level of development, firstly it still has a lot of empty plots and most of the housing its at its third stage, with some houses at the fourth stage along the main street and some at first and second at the very top of the site. The arrival of the metrocable and the new facilites built by the government make it very liekly that the settlement will grow very rapidly in the next 5-10 years.

REFLECTION

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After this phase of my analysis I got very overwhelmed and I thought that there was no way I was going to able to design something significant for the site that would go along the line of "integrating urban and natural processes". I realized that the urban processes that define this site are incredibly complex and very difficult to understand, even worse work with them since I was not in control of absolutely anything.

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However, after speaking with my tutors I realized that I could design without be in control of everything, and that maybe the challenge for this project was to learn how design in environments where not everything is under control and how to change my way of thinking from the idea of masterplanning to design interventions.