President plans to transform Santiago
Source: Agencies |
January 24, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
CHILE'S President Sebastian Pinera is determined to fulfill an old dream: turning the river that once carried sewage through the center of the capital into a navigable waterway, lined with parks and attractions.
Inspired by the transformation of Barcelona before its Olympic games, Pinera hopes to encourage a greening of Santiago's most gritty neighborhoods with the Mapocho river project, which is finally beginning in earnest and is expected to be completed before he leaves office in 2014.
"We came to the conclusion that Santiago's soul, its backbone, was the Mapocho river, which we had abandoned tremendously," Pinera said recently as he laid the first stone in the initial US$28 million phase of the project - a riverside park to be financed with private donations. "We want to transform the Mapocho river into a more welcoming gathering place, pleasant and full of life."
The river, which runs for 34 kilometers through the capital, was turned into a concrete trench many years ago and stopped serving as -Santiago's open sewer only last year, when a treatment system was installed to collect wastewater.
Long stretches of the Mapocho's banks are lined with garbage, and homeless people live under some of its bridges. A relatively shallow but rapidly gushing and dangerous flow of water rushes down the middle of the canal year-round, swelling to considerable depths only with the snowmelt from the nearby Andean mountains that form Santiago's horizon.
The riverside park project should become a big attraction for Santiago's citizens. Slowing a section of the river with a system of five locks, the idea is to feed a lagoon where people can row around in small boats. There also will be a large swimming pool, green spaces for picnics, a huge fountain and a Ferris wheel.
Pinera has dreamed about this project for a long time and went public with the idea in 1990, asking his architect friend Cristian Boza to develop plans. At the time, the center-left -government scoffed at the idea, and the project was shelved.
As soon as he became president last March, the billionaire entrepreneur revived his dream.
Construction is being financed privately through donations by givers who will form a corporation to administer the funds. A company chosen through open public bidding will manage the park, which will charge admission.
Inspired by the transformation of Barcelona before its Olympic games, Pinera hopes to encourage a greening of Santiago's most gritty neighborhoods with the Mapocho river project, which is finally beginning in earnest and is expected to be completed before he leaves office in 2014.
"We came to the conclusion that Santiago's soul, its backbone, was the Mapocho river, which we had abandoned tremendously," Pinera said recently as he laid the first stone in the initial US$28 million phase of the project - a riverside park to be financed with private donations. "We want to transform the Mapocho river into a more welcoming gathering place, pleasant and full of life."
The river, which runs for 34 kilometers through the capital, was turned into a concrete trench many years ago and stopped serving as -Santiago's open sewer only last year, when a treatment system was installed to collect wastewater.
Long stretches of the Mapocho's banks are lined with garbage, and homeless people live under some of its bridges. A relatively shallow but rapidly gushing and dangerous flow of water rushes down the middle of the canal year-round, swelling to considerable depths only with the snowmelt from the nearby Andean mountains that form Santiago's horizon.
The riverside park project should become a big attraction for Santiago's citizens. Slowing a section of the river with a system of five locks, the idea is to feed a lagoon where people can row around in small boats. There also will be a large swimming pool, green spaces for picnics, a huge fountain and a Ferris wheel.
Pinera has dreamed about this project for a long time and went public with the idea in 1990, asking his architect friend Cristian Boza to develop plans. At the time, the center-left -government scoffed at the idea, and the project was shelved.
As soon as he became president last March, the billionaire entrepreneur revived his dream.
Construction is being financed privately through donations by givers who will form a corporation to administer the funds. A company chosen through open public bidding will manage the park, which will charge admission.
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