and easier living conditions. The need for adequate infrastructure is rarely satisfied within city limits for the less privileged. This situation has forced people to squat on any empty place available, and is a common problem present in most cities. Each city, however, has its own peculiarities that are dependent upon individual social and political realities. This, in turn, affects growth and development. This project researches a squatter’s community in Quito: “Comité del Pueblo”, which is made up of approximately 70,000 people without basic infrastructure and with a hostile environment. The municipality ignored the new immigrants coming fro rural areas with their social problems and denied people the right to be included within its boundaries. This improvised town is configured around a densely populated main street, prone to violence and crime. Notwithstanding, most goods, food, and medicines are sold along the sidewalk. People have built their houses throughout very irregular topography, with basically no urban or green spaces for gathering. This has generated a poor but tenacious sense of community, with public transportation and basic services too far away. My proposal for urban inclusion was to create a massive, polycentric plan that would allow residents to live in urban nuclei with services, personalized growing modular housing to increase the sense of ownership, and green areas, and gathering places. Each nucleus has a 10 minute walking distance radius in order to allow a more accessible every day life; all of which would be penetrated by the city’s main transportation lines.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

The prize money will be destined to the first phase of building the basic structure that will allow the continuous growth 9 modular housing units. Each basic unit will cost about $9,000 usd, the additions and accessories will added according to the budget and time and materials of the owner. The remaining $19,000 will be destined for promotion and development. As the project keeps developing, and economically sustaining itself, it will be able to generate the money to invest in the services such as the market, the library, and elementary school and sports facilities.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

The project meets the entry criteria because it strongly addresses a social reality that most urban areas will face which is the fact that By 2050, two-thirds of all people will live in cities. In Ecuador this migration is constraint to a static master plan that does not welcome people with limited resources.
The strategy sets a goal to economically and socially include people into the city generation a concentration of services which also leads to an energetic condensation rather than an unwanted sprawl.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

I have worked professionally at architectural studios and in my own practice. However, I have learned the most through teaching. I held the chair as a university professor, at Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial, for second and third level architectural design studios, technical drawing, and theory of culture and thesis guidance. Although this academic experience has enhanced my knowledge in the field of Architecture, my students have been the ones that have taught me the most. They come from different backgrounds, and a great number of them are the children of rural migrants. I have noticed a common factor in their work: the need and interest for urban inclusion.

I am now undertaking a graduate program in Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University http://www.arch.columbia.edu/index.php?pageData=47/ in the city of New York that is allowing me to study broader and complex aspects of design, such as urban form and solutions for current and future social problems. I feel the Urban Design program would allow me to work at local and international levels to aid city officials in their design projects as a means of achieving social, energetically, ecological, and economic sustainable development for our cities.