Valparaíso: Una ciudad entre tiempos.

Resumen

We are faced with the challenge of economically developing a city that is rich in heritage, without causing drastic alterations in the urban profile considered part of its values. This is the moment when stances relating to patrimonial values can be concretely transformed into constructions. In order to do so we have to bring out the discourse on the "idea of city", dreamed up once more from this, our brief present. This argument reappears when we yet again observe the city as a unit of several fragments combined in their own specially constructed equation between past and future. In the game of glances, Valparaíso occupies a privileged position; from its topography to its denomination of amphitheatre city, there appear to be no doubts regarding an acquired value. However, the city sprawled beyond the close-knit unit of hills and gullies which form the bay and was opened up to a different urban and geographical visibility, forcing the repositioning of many of the discourses constructed on the city. Along with the varied formal architecture which represents historical times in the different styles manifested in the city, it is also necessary to consider the vast production of informal architecture, whose unhabitual way of constructing habitability should be treated as "providing an Event that surpasses us". In order to be named a World Heritage site, and having received this title on the 2nd of July 2003 under the category of "Cultural Landscape", several development projects, both plausible and dream ones -sorne already begun and others on a waiting list- are in the process of transforming urban spatiality. Contingencies flow from the real city to the imagined city, constructing the discourses that are transferred between them. The question we ask ourselves at this point is whether we will finally manage to see this particular Valparaiso constructing its development based on the characteristics that identify it.