The Toa Baja, Puerto Rico Studio: Dealing with Climate Change, Protecting Biodiversity, and Retrofitting Suburbia

This course will offer students the Department of Landscape Architecture and from the Urban Design Concentration of the Department of City and Regional Planning the opportunity to address environmental, social, and urban challenges of peripheral suburban communities in the vicinity of larger urban conglomerates. Such is the case of the coastal Municipality of Toa Baja located to the west of the Metropolitan Area of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This Studio will ask participants to simultaneously envision ecological, urban, and socio-cultural strategies for Toa Baja, tapping its rich natural features, reverting the current “dormitory and suburban conditions, and strengthening the weakened economy. Emphasis will be on the creation of a robust pedestrian-friendly public realm, the revitalization of the old core of Toa Baja which suffers periodical flooding, the creation of a new centrality/mixed-use district serving/retrofitting its Levittown (its main residential district) and the areas of emergent urbanism with urban and landscape-base approaches practices responsive to environmental and cultural nuances. Multi-scalar and poly-performative solutions (from territorial, urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture, and architectural proposals) will be, intending to maximize natural, urban, human, and financial resources.