Manifesto
A truly ecological, regenerative, and innovative transformation of today’s urban centers requires more than updated public policies: it demands a holistic vision of public space and a deep redefinition of its underlying infrastructure. This proposal introduces the concept of Ecological Urban Active Surfaces (E-UAS) as a new design paradigm that reimagines streets as active, dynamic, and resilient systems contributing to improved quality of life in cities.
E-UAS offers a direct critique of the traditional urban infrastructure model: a rigid, static street network primarily subordinated to vehicular traffic. In contrast, it proposes a radically different approach, where public space becomes a living urban territory, an organic platform for multidimensional experiences that integrate nature, culture, economy, and mobility. Streets cease to function solely as corridors of circulation and are redefined as stages of encounter that provoke new ways of inhabiting, connecting, and imagining the city.
Urban Ecology
Urban ecology is both the structural foundation and the strategic catalyst of E-UAS. Through permeable materials, native vegetation, microhabitats, and passive systems for climate regulation and water management, these surfaces promote biodiversity, mitigate environmental impacts, and regenerate the urban ecosystem. Responsively adapting to their immediate context—whether active or passive edges—they promote transversal ecological linkages that reconnect built space with urban nature.
Cultural, Community, and Commercial Programming (CCC)
Designed for much more than mobility, E-UAS raises the active appropriation of public space and provokes diverse forms of social, cultural, and economic interaction. By integrating ephemeral events and permanent structures, these surfaces reveal local cultural expressions, strengthen proximity-based commerce, and expand community life. Rather than prioritizing transit, they promote presence, enjoyment, and shared experience inviting the city to reclaim its public realm character and identity.
Mobility Innovation
Breaking away from traditional mobility logics, E-UAS proposes a paradigm shift in urban transportation. They support shared, low-emission, pedestrian-centered systems, integrating modular technologies and intelligent public-private microsystems. These surfaces celebrate micromobility and hybrid transportation models and adapt in real time to the dynamics of the urban environment—positioning mobility as a fundamental, yet non-dominant, layer within a regenerative, inclusive, and human-centered public realm.
San Francisco Market Street
The hypothesis for Ecological-Urban Active Surfaces (E-UAS) was tested in a ULI competition focused on a two-mile stretch of Market Street in San Francisco. Once a central corridor linking Twin Peaks to the Embarcadero—a hub of circulation, commerce, and culture—the city’s core has struggled post-COVID as office attendance lags and storefront vacancies rise. E-UAS proposes a different operating system for streetscapes: begin with design, innovation, and ecology—not throughput efficiency—to enrich contemporary urban centers. The framework treats the street as a living surface that cultivates economic exchange, cultural programming, and human movement in concert with urban ecologies. The pilot intervention spans Market Street from Van Ness to the Embarcadero, concentrating investments at pivotal hot spots: Civic Center/UN Plaza, Powell–Union Square, Yerba Buena/Moscone, Montgomery/Financial District, and the Ferry Building/Embarcadero. Across these nodes, E-UAS layers habitat, water management, micro-climate devices, and flexible public realms with transit and logistics, establishing a replicable baseline for how we trade, gather, and move in 21st-century cities.
Boise
Capitol Boulevard
Capitol Boulevard
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