Abstract
Diagnosed as urban sprawl, the dispersed ways of landscape occupation characteristic of the territories that surround the urban centres in the southern highlands of Ecuador—here referred as in-between territories due to their partial rural-partial urban nature—are commonly misunderstood and demonized as chaotic. Through the construction of spatial narratives, this article analyses the rationalities behind this landscape of scattered occupation. The aim is to expose the multi-layered and complex nature of these territories. By means of a case study, San Joaquin, the interplay between natural systems—such as abundance of water, rich soils, flat topography and irrigation systems, and the less obvious socio cultural constructions—are explored. So too is the changing nature of the landscape and its population, essential for a full understanding of the territory. Scattered patterns of occupation can also be sustainable ways of inhabiting the territory, due to a quality of complementarity, and multitude of interplays delivered in the pattern. Because of landscape’s incremental capacity for building social and economic networks for their inhabitants, the present study is understood as a tool to envision and explore future possibilities of integration between the pressuring processes of urbanization in San Joaquin and its productive landscape, which counts as a readily available resource for the local population.
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Notes
- 1.
In pre-colonial times, the southern Ecuador was occupied by the Cañari culture, who conformed a kind of horizontal system of autonomous Cacicazgos which held commercial and political interactions between them. The Cacicazgo was a regional unit of socio-political organization in the Andes. It was comprised by several family based units (Ayllus). Ayllus were grouped around a Llajta, which was a symbolic nucleus where the ethnic authority had seat, and worked as a center of cohesion and organization. During population reorganization by the Spanish in the early colonial period, several llajtas were established as centers of the ecclesiastical Parishes which functioned as both administrative and political centers of territorial control.
- 2.
Cultural and racial mixing between white and indigenous population.
- 3.
They were called forasteros, which means foreign, stranger. Belonging to a community was essential to the identity of indigenous peoples, the decision to abandon their communities implied the uprooting of their identity, to stop being.
- 4.
Indios libres translation to English is “free natives”.
- 5.
Translation by the author.
- 6.
Commerce with the coast had been practiced since pre-colonial times, through routes intermittently reactivated during the colony and in a more continuous manner during the heyday of toquilla hats exportation.
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Rivera-Muñoz, M. (2018). Abundance of Interplays Delivered by Scattered Patterns of Occupation. San Joaquin in Cuenca, a Case of Study in the Southern Highlands of Ecuador. In: Viganò, P., Cavalieri, C., Barcelloni Corte, M. (eds) The Horizontal Metropolis Between Urbanism and Urbanization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75975-3_20
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