Over a billion people around the globe live in unplanned of self-constructed settlements frequently at peri-urban locations, excluded from the benefits of city life, and occupying high-risk sites. Latin America is still considered the continent with the highest social inequalities, manifested in the disconnection between the formal and the informal areas. These areas are characterized by environmental/health problems, the lack of communal services, infrastructure, and public spaces, poor accessibility, stigmatization by the formal city, and presenting low income and high levels of violence.

This project posits that landscape-driven approaches are powerful tools to address the concerns above, fostering social inclusion, breaking down physical and cultural barriers, connecting the settlements to their natural systems, linking formal areas to the informal ones, improving physical and performative relations among the informal settlements, and establishing productive local, urban, and metropolitan networks. Supported by Quito municipality, a composite of informal enclaves, including Comité del Pueblo, La Bota, and Puertas del Sol, located on rather flat land in the northeast of Quito, Ecuador was selected as the site.