The "road capacity" of the chilean master plan is it good enough for shaping a sustainable built environment?

Abstract

The "road capacity" of the Chilean Master Plan is a tool developed to measure the capacity of streets in terms of supporting the size of vehicle flow. This tool considers topics such as land use, population density and street width. The purpose of this technique is to incorporate it to the Master Plan, as a town planning instrument, so as to cope with traffic forecasting and congestion. However, the technique does not embrace any sustainability concept, this is due to a disregard of any district ´s social or environmental needs. Therefore a sustainable urban development would doubtfully be reached. It is argued that some other approaches are required for shaping a sustainable built environment in which it is understood that the streets are a public space for people rather than a platform for moving vehicles only. This means, to promote accessibility as well as mobility. In this paper the author reviews borrowed concepts such as "carrying capacity" and "environmental capacity" from bioregionalist and ecological disciplines using a case study in outskirts of Santiago´s metro area.