Bewonen van (verloren) natte landschappen. Het identificeren van sociaal-ecologische onrechtvaardigheden door middel van landschapstransformatie

As urbanization gallops ahead, landscapes around the world are in a process of continuous transformation. As one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, and, as an agro-export economy, Latin American ecologies are exploited and depleted in the search for progress. The overwhelming presence of self-built settlements and severe landscape degradation across the region have been put forward as a central issue in several global reports including Habitat III and Agenda 2030. In 2008, Ecuador declared Nature as a subject of Rights in its National Constitution based on the Andean Indigenous notion of the Buen Vivir (good living), which advocates -simply stated- for the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature. Practical strategies of the Buen Vivir do not explicitly address space itself. Through both a diachronic and synchronic narrative of Guayaquil's intensive reshaping, this dissertation focuses on two crucial topographical operations: filling and cutting to reveal socio-ecologic injustices emerging from those operations. The theoretical framework of the Buen Vivir is used as a foundation and goal to propose desing principles that address such injustices.