Low-income gated communities have become increasingly popular in Bogotá, despite the contradiction that lies at their core: that life in a self-sufficient and closed type of housing is an unsustainable endeavour for a population that cannot pay for a privatised life. To navigate through this paradox, residents constantly negotiate those regulations that keep communities closed (which they cherish as source of order and tranquillity) with their own experience and needs. This negotiation derives into actions of “overflow” that challenge the planned space and, under current conditions, are destined to remain unrecognised by formal institutions.

This research explores the ways in which these actions can be translated into and enhanced through a spatial and regulatory “framework for negotiation.” The goal is to create the conditions for the growth of open living environments through actions that prioritize horizontal interaction and spatial flexibility. In this scenario, residents become the main agents of production of social, political, and economic complexity of their neighbourhoods.

A nationwide program for building one million dwellings aims to relieve the Netherland’s housing crisis: nearly a quarter of this construction will take place in South Holland. Currently, the construction industry needs a huge input of raw materials that is not only causing waste problems but is also decreasing environmental quality. A large part of construction and demolition waste (CDW) is being downcycled, losing economic and material value. This creates not only a need but an opportunity for a construction and demolition (C&D) industry based on circular flows and biobased materials. The goal of this project is to produce a vision with strategies for the implementation of circularity along with the resolution of spatial conflicts in different scales.An overview of the spatial, technical and economic needs of the C&D industry and its externalities in urban environments was made. This resulted in the understanding of the spatial conflicts currently taking place between these two spheres of development and the potentials that circularity will have on jobs and consumption patterns. From this, a proposal for a circularity model with three components was formulated: an open network with a central production hub and peripheric logistic hubs, an open program for these hubs that adapts to current and future needs, and open edges that create interactions with their built and social environment.