Urban parks are increasingly recognized not only as green infrastructure but as essential cultural and ecological assets that articulate the relationship between city, memory, and environment. This work explores the complex transformations experienced by El Bosque in La Plata, a 19th-century park originally conceived under hygienist principles and integrated into the rational urban grid of the planned capital city. Over time, this foundational logic has been eroded by institutional expansion, spatial fragmentation, and restricted public access—resulting in the loss of over 65% of the original open surface. Yet, despite this degradation, El Bosque continues to serve as a symbolic and functional core for the wider metropolitan area, linking La Plata, Berisso, and Ensenada. Through a landscape urbanism perspective, the research identifies two strategic enclaves—the now-inactive Zoological Garden and the underutilized Hippodrome—as key to unlocking the park’s reintegration. These zones, currently disconnected from the park’s broader identity, are reimagined as catalysts for continuity, capable of restoring ecological balance, social inclusiveness, and recreational diversity. The proposal envisions a network of micro-landscapes, pedestrian circuits, and civic platforms that dissolve architectural barriers and respond to contemporary urban demands, while respecting the park’s historical and environmental significance. This approach challenges the rigid dichotomies of natural versus artificial, or built versus open, offering instead a dynamic model of adaptive reuse rooted in the lived experience of public space. The forest within the geometric city becomes not a relic of the past, but a renewed spatial framework for collective urban life—one that integrates memory, mobility, and ecological intelligence within a cohesive and resilient urban form.
Carasatorre, M.C., 2024. Urban Park and Contemporary Life: The Forest in the Geometric City. Doctoral thesis. Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, National University of La Plata.
