INHABITING THE CALLE 13 Bogotá, Colombia Urban acupuncture, building city from the public space

Bogotá-Colombia, known as one of the most populated capitals in the world due to its spontaneous growth (a phenomenon that occurred not only in the capital but throughout the country) offers the opportunity to experience new urbanization strategies. One of the problems that this exponential growth entailed was the impact that urbanizations left on public space, which is one of the key concepts for increasing or reducing people's quality of life. Due to this, the important cities of Colombia, including Bogotá, have gradually tried in recent years to improve the land use plan, including features that help improve the precarious/ephemeral public space that exists. To face this situation, the street is understood as one of the important points of the public space and place where the encounter between people occurs, and for this reason, the proposed strategy consists of an urban development with a pedestrian approach, which provides the opportunity to dissolve the lack of public spaces along an important/historical axis of the city such as Calle 13, to improve the quality of life of citizens. Therefore, the purpose of studying La Calle 13 in its entirety is not only to provide guidelines for an intervention at an urban level that would help improve sustainability in terms of environmental, mobility, and public space, but also to go into detail with the design of different spaces adjacent to the street, to generate a revitalization of the whole by healing the parts. It begins with an environmental proposal on a historic square located at the beginning of Calle 13, which, through the restructuring of the pedestrian route and the use of vegetation, offers spaces of permanence that aim to help the health of the pedestrian also the path is aesthetically pleasing. Then in the Plaza de la Mariposa known for its high pedestrian flows due to its commercial nature, two types of intervention are proposed; The first, a little invasive, shows the new trend in Bogotá with the use of containers, this in order to propose spaces of permanence that give people a reason to appropriate the square in a different way; the second design refers to the memory of vegetation and water, generating a pocket park, which maintains the identity of a plaza-flow, but offers new characteristics for pedestrians. Finally, the intervention of a private parking lot located in the vicinity of a historic place for citizens such as La Estación de la Sabana, bringing with it an example of a participatory design that generates an on-air “museum” open by locals, with a local theme. This thesis proposal provides the opportunity to see how working at different scales improves the understanding of people's current needs and thus offers more rigorous planning, which satisfies the city through the fulfillment of the basic needs of pedestrians. Finally, the interventions are located in more urbanized areas in order to intervene in spaces that are currently highly frequented, but at the same time, give a guideline to continue creating interventions on a pedestrian scale along Calle 13, thus creating a corridor of experiences for the city.