From mediterranean city to costal metropolis: The case of the great La Serena

Abstract

Since its beginnings, La Serena, Chile has had a troubled relationship with the nearby coast. A swampy coastal plain, pirate attacks and tsunamis caused it to retain an inland city character until the mid-twentieth century. “Plan Serena” (1948-1952) began a process of transformation by promoting conurbation with the port of Coquimbo. In the 1980s, the city reached the coastline with the opening of Avenida del Mar (Sea Avenue). This boosted tourism and real-estate development that have consolidated the process of conurbation around the bay. This research explores the different means of coastal urbanization in La Serena and evaluates their impact on urban development and city building. Representative places on the coast are studied using a comparative morphological and spatial analysis, thereby situating them in the political, economic and regulatory context in which they were produced. The findings point to the importance of the dialectical relationship between urban producer agents in relation to the quality of the resulting city that is produced. They show the progressive privatization and excessive densification of the coastal area of the bay as the metropolization process advances. Thus conflicts are created with better adapted and rooted forms, which, however, are more vulnerable to natural hazards and gentrification.