PUBLIC SPACE IN QUITO (ECUADOR). AN INNOVATIVE TOOL TO EMPLOY THE TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The paper discusses the concept of public space implemented by the Quito Metropolitan District Municipality (MDMQ) from 2009 to 2014 as a source of capital and territorial cohesion, proving that this concept is understood in a broader way that management was understood in the tradition developer. This concept includes a number of perspectives that enrich its meaning: a traditional perspective, a dynamic perspective, an environmental perspective and a social perspective. In addition, its introduction in local government was endowed with its own budget programs, ensuring the sustainability of a community policy for the public space. As is proposed in view of MDMQ, public space is an instrument of sectoral coordination, whose interpretation as a transverse program is new in the speech of existing scientific studies, since it has concrete and visible experience of its use to promote territorial cohesion. In addition, it is an instrument for ex post project evaluations municipal networks, to bring the discussion to a tangible territorial level for the population and the local administration and to discuss a territorial cohesion perspective of capital.