History & Culture

In The oasis as a methodology: reading the territorial intelligence of Yucatán, Joseline Sierra Montero and Marwa Ridoini invite us on a journey through the history of the “oasis” concept to discover how the ancient Maya created spaces of balance and life that still defy time—teaching us an ancestral lesson in design and community that is more relevant today than ever.

Discover Urban Oasis: nature as a solution, where Ivonne Walls highlights the importance of transforming residual urban spaces into authentic biodiversity lungs. This approach seeks to improve social well-being, mitigate environmental impact, and reduce heat islands in high-density metropolitan environments.

In the article “6 design errors that turn a park into a Non-Place”, Sofía Medrano offers a guide to identifying when a park is uninhabitable, proposing suggestions based on native biodiversity and plant stratification to turn parks into true urban oases of permanence and life.

Andrea Esparza, in Micro and macro: Living the City in Connection with Nature, invites us to reflect on composting as a bridge between everyday life and environmental care. A brief look at how daily gestures can restore life to the soil, even in the heart of the city.

In the article “Pull Over to the Edge. (Wild) Landscape of the Urban Periphery”, by Pamela López, the author reflects on the city’s edges as territories of vertigo, where the wild and the civilized intertwine, revealing the boundaries, frontiers, and forgotten landscapes that still persist in the periphery.

Aida Tavakoli speaks about the importance of collective and adaptive hydraulic infrastructure, such as the johads in Rajasthan, which integrate local knowledge to care for water and the territory. Learn more about this in Rethinking Water Infrastructure through Territorial Interdependence: The Case of Johads in Rajasthan.