Capstone: Meagan Kearney

Paseo Marítimo de la Memoria (Waterfront Promenade of Memories)

This project entails a metropolitan waterfront promenade that will encircle Cartagena’s historic center and better connect both locals and tourists to the city’s existing public park spaces and the UNESCO World Heritage listed fortification systems. With a distance of approximately 3.5 miles, this promenade will serve as a “memory” walk, where it aims at interpreting Cartagena’s multifaceted social history, the city’s urban evolution, as well as its rich ecological connection throughout time through the lens of its historic walls within each region of the historic center. Such histories and layers will be interpreted throughout this linear pedestrian path within a system of public parks that make up the designated buffer zone to the walls.

As foreign investment and tourism related development saturate both the economy and the small historic region within the city of Cartagena, local presence and their traditional activities are increasingly being pushed outwards the historic walls. As such, local identity to the history and evolution of the city has increasingly become distant with the values of the remarkable fortification systems being underutilized, undervalued, and improperly used by both tourists and locals. Therefore, the historic walls and the traditional center are increasingly at risk of being swept by the demands of tourism in favor of privatization and a one-dimensional narrative that does not accurately represent the region’s diverse regional character and populations.