**2. Perspectives, challenges, and management**

### **2.1 The perspectives**

As detailed above, the contribution of arid environments on a productive scale is very significant and even more so in a context of climate change and energy transition.

The perspectives are to scale the results and contributions of the region to improve the quality and identity to improve the quality of the infrastructure of the northern cities. To this end, learning from the past by leveraging design solutions specific to the local microclimate determinant is key [17].

The disconnect in urban and building development is not new and derives from the central vision, and the absence of adequate infrastructure, which is also based on central decisions that are not very conscious and respectful of local realities and needs and end up in unfortunate experiences. The urban development of the city of Antofagasta is very abandoned, planning arrives late and is not articulated with the growth of the city and this generates disorder, generates spontaneous occupation that requires *Impacts of the Industrial and Technological Revolution on Territories and Cities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108743*

long and costly regularization processes to be in accordance with the regulations in force (**Figure 19**).

There are undoubtedly notable exceptions in architecture that also allow us to confirm this situation. In the case of Antofagasta, there are buildings such as the "Colectivos obreros," the Caliche building, and the Curvo building that do represent a modern architecture that adapts and brings together elements of languages very relevant to the environmental conditions. Issues such as fixed or movable eaves to shade the window and the interior of the room are repeated very efficiently in these buildings.

If the construction of urban shade and shadow in the envelope is an invariant element that is recognized in vernacular and contemporary architecture. At the urban and building level, it is required that the cities of arid environments develop proposals unpublished to their environment, that the proposals are correct to their environmental determinant, and take advantage of passive design solutions to develop proposals adapted to the climate, here the fundamental element that takes all the protagonist, is the appropriate response to solar orientation. Depending on the form and architectural program, the provision to solar gain from the north should be considered adequately because the living spaces to the south are often very uncomfortable.

There is an excellent opportunity to generate an architectural and urban language that innovates by being faithful to passive environmental conditioning strategies applied to architectural envelopes and new materials. The double skin, double roof, ventilated facade, and cross ventilation in the coastal desert and the pampas desert are very relevant strategies. In addition, vine-type plant facades provide moisture and color to facades in arid climates (**Figures 20**–**25**).

Shade is an architectural element that contributes to the identity of the urban space of desert cities, it must be present because it is a health requirement, given the high rates of skin cancer, for the welfare and enjoyment of public space. With this we will be promoting the importance of the square meters of shade in the public space of desert cities, in favor of this indicator itself and not of the square meters of green areas that will always be far below what the World Health Organization indicator establishes. Shaded structures on an urban scale should have as design premises the

### **Figure 20.**

*Case of a house in the Chacabuco saltpeter office, with a shaded corridor around the perimeter and a double ventilated roof and shading system.*

### **Figure 21.**

*Case of a Chalet house in the María Elena saltpeter office, with a ventilated façade with wooden trellised treillage so that the vine or climbing vegetation covers the architectural envelope.*

**Figure 22.** *Façade with fixed shade house vernacular house of María Elena.*

*Impacts of the Industrial and Technological Revolution on Territories and Cities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108743*

**Figure 23.** *Contemporary façade of new building Municipality of María Elena.*

**Figure 24.** *Capture of a woman in the streets of Antofagasta in search of sun protection and Fig.*

### **Figure 25.**

*Shaded shelter in the Trocadero Beach Resort, with great performance in terms of its design, providing continuous shade for the enjoyment of the sheltered walk.*

continuity of shade, a height, width, and filter quality that does not generate opaque or hard shade, but lets light filter through in a subdued manner. These are solutions that were very present in the vernacular architecture of the northern cities and it is very necessary to recover from the past to put them in the present (**Figures 24** and **25**).

At this point, it must also be said that the most suitable materials are not plastic sheds because they generate heat and uncomfortable brightness, the best are the natural elements that also have good behavior to the stress of high saline humidity of the coastal desert and resistance to high radiation and dryness of the intermediate desert.

## **2.2 The challenges**

When the city of Antofagasta has been affected by intense rainfall events in the present decade, when these phenomena were of very low occurrence and that this is associated with a human tragedy claiming lives, it is logical to think that if the creeks were dry for years and in a few hours are transformed into imposing beds of water and mud that buried parts of the city means that we have not designed cities observing the reality drawn in its geography. An urgent challenge is to plan safe cities in harmony with the ecology of the desert, it is urgent to carry out only corrective measures such as large infrastructure works to contain the force of water such as alluvial roads, but it deserves a review of the urban design of the city, planning of safe areas, where natural streams should mark and define lines of a conscious design, with areas of land use restriction for housing, assigning them to floodable park areas [18].

The urban sprawl of the city due to the explosive growth of its population due to various phenomena including high migration, construction costs, and high housing availability deficit, has given rise to illegal and uncontrolled land occupation processes, with high risk, given the occupation of the ravines at increasingly higher elevations of the Coastal Mountain Range (**Figures 26** and **27**).

On the other hand, the rains also bring a completely different phenomenon to the tragedy of the floods, the water brings the awakening of the seeds that were sleeping on the surface of the desert, the magic of the blooming desert covers the always barren

### **Figure 26.**

*Occupation of informal and self-built housing on the hills and ravines of the City of Antofagasta.*

*Impacts of the Industrial and Technological Revolution on Territories and Cities… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108743*

**Figure 27.** *Alluvial via in the ravines, city of Antofagasta.*

**Figure 28.** *Desert in bloom on hillsides in the city of Antofagasta.*

desert slopes, for a few days the magic happens and the desert landscape is transformed into a flowery spectacle (**Figures 28** and **29**).

The Atacama Desert is renowned for being the oldest and continuously driest nonpolar temperate desert on Earth, believed to have been arid since the Jurassic period and to have gradually evolved into hyperacidity during the Miocene epoch more than 5 million years ago. In addition, exceptionally high levels of ultraviolet radiation, extreme aridity, low or no soil carbon concentrations, and the presence of strong oxidizing conditions and/or toxic elements in particular habitats make the Atacama an excellent example of the extreme biosphere, the environmental limits that define life on Earth [18].
