UPC Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas
Today I attended my first day at UPC taking Studio IX and Urbanism Seminar with Professor Fernando Correa, assisted by Marianela Castro. I am determined to learn Spanish in one month, so that I will be able to understand conversations and people's opinions more clearly.
Nontheless, in the Urban Seminar we were discussing the topic "El Transporte Publico" (public transit) and understood something very important. The students, between 21-28, are battling political barriers inherited from their past generations.
There was an overwhelming sense of defeat and hopelessness in these young, creative students.
Transit seemed like a good idea to them, but the factors of time, money, construction and most of all completion were not just immense obstacles to them, but also the reason not to implement in the city of Lima at all. The positive change mass transit can have in Lima by far outweighs the pollution and congested chaos which their publically run transit system currently provides. Local peruvians I have spoken with thus far all concur that the traffic is terrible, unsafe and would need to change.
What has created this struggle for young Peruvians to trust their governing bodies? What can be done to empower positive change for the next generation? If there is no encouragement to perform these changes, what will happen to the future of Lima?
These are some questions I would like to hear your opinion on, as I will be giving a lecture on Sustainable Urbanism on Wednesday (day after tomorrow) and intend to instill that positive change is possible.
They have the potential to take charge in developing a re-invigorated future vision of their city.
Furthermore, I am gearing up research in earthquake analysis in order to understand the conditions informal construction can have on shantee towns compared to the metropolitan fabric when earthquake hits. For this I hope to speak with Julio Kuroiwa Horiuchi, renowned Peruvian seismologist to get some answers.
Thank you Prof. Correa and Marianela for today's insight.
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