ABSTRACT
The Chilean city of Calama in the Atacama Desert is a mining centre with a population of some 150,000, where 22" of the country's copper is extracted, accounting for a considerable amount of GDP. Despite this value, it possesses one of the planet's most adverse climates, with frequent windstorms, high ultraviolet (UV) radiation, a yearly rainfall of a mere 1mm and a variation in temperatures of 40C between day and night. Codelco, the state-owned mining company and the world's foremost copper producer, asked Elemental, the leading Chilean architectural and urban design firm, founded in 2000, to produce a participatory urban plan. The first proposals of Calama PLUS Urban Sustainable Plan in Spanish by Elemental and Tironi in December 2011 were to make Calama the best-connected city in the country with a new light rail system. Blocking the mines and threatening the copper production, the protestors demanded better living conditions and an improved quality of urban space in Calama.
