Expansion of Greater Santo Domingo, an unknown due to lack of plans

Despite unprecedented urban growth , planning in Greater Santo Domingo remains a challenge. With a population that has increased 84% in the last two decades—from 2,062,966 inhabitants in 2002 to 3,798,698 in 2022—the metropolis's boundless expansion is compounded by the limited capacity of local governments to regulate and meet the demand for basic services.

Of the 91.58 square kilometers of the National District, only 3.16 kilometers are vacant, undeveloped, and vacant, while a mere 2.79 kilometers are used for recreation and green areas. Thus, expansion is limited to a verticality that warrants regulation: although 63.25% of urban land is consolidated—that is, has basic services such as road access, electricity, or water—that does not mean it is fully developed .

The National District Mayor's Office is the only one of the seven within Greater Santo Domingo that has a territorial planning plan developed in 2020, two years before the enactment of Law 368-22 on Territorial Planning, Land Use, and Human Settlements. The implementing regulations for this plan are still being reviewed by the Legal Advisory Office of the Executive Branch.

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"Very little has been done in terms of implementing land use plans . In many cases, there is a lack of political will ," said architect Omar Rancier, recalling that, despite the development of other land use plans both in Greater Santo Domingo and nationwide, "their implementation is very slow."

Although local governments can dispense with regulations to begin implementing the law —as President Luis Abinader argued last March when questioned by the press—having these regulations will help establish the initiatives underway in other municipalities, Junior Santos assured.

"The (other) municipalities have initiatives, but if we don't have a national land use plan, there won't be local land use plans , because they'll conflict," observed Santos, who is president of the Greater Santo Domingo Commonwealth and mayor of Los Alcarrizos.

Standards and potential areas

Seventy-three percent of the National District's territory already has new regulations based on the land use plan, and the rest does not yet, stated Luis Alejandro Pérez, Director of Urban Planning for the National District Mayor's Office.

The official acknowledged the city's historical deficits in infrastructure and urban services, especially regarding the lack of public spaces, pedestrian mobility, and stormwater management.

He indicated that the mayor's office has conducted capacity studies for public services (such as drinking water, sewage, and energy) in the Central Polygon, as a mandatory input before granting construction licenses to large projects .

Furthermore, it considers that one of the areas with the greatest growth potential within a regulated plan is in the pericentral area of ​​the city – which includes sectors such as Villa Juana, Villa Consuelo, Ensanche La Fe, Villas Agrícolas, Ensanche Luperón, Miraflores, San Juan Bosco and Mejoramiento Social – and that it would require the transformation of already underutilized or deficient infrastructures to generate a more compact city .

"It's being proposed as a new central hub , so that it can have a much denser development and, perhaps, relieve some of the congestion in the entire central area," he emphasized.

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Initiatives and diagnoses

Unlike the District, other municipalities are now developing draft land use plans or working to identify the main needs of their districts.

The Santo Domingo Oeste City Council plans to have the Council of Aldermen approve a draft land use plan this year, which was developed with the support of the School of Architecture at the University of Santo Domingo (UASD).

The growth of informal communities that occupied land without water, electricity or paving, and the construction of a storm drainage system, are among the main motivations for the development of an urgent planning plan in the municipalities of Santo Domingo Este and Boca Chica , respectively.

Meanwhile, at the Los Alcarrizos City Council , one of the main constraints on developing this initiative is the need for specialized technical personnel .

Lack of resources

Although Junior Santos considers the approval of regulations for the land use law "urgent," he acknowledges that the budget limits local governments' ability to approve and implement land use plans .

"With its own resources, no city council has the capacity to do that . Not even the National District, because the larger and more populated they are, the more technical studies they require, and those studies are expensive; they require professionals dedicated full-time to the task," he concluded.

As an example, he said that just the soil study to determine whether the old Dominican Postal Institute (Imposdom) building in Los Alcarrizos could be converted into a cultural center in the municipality costs 175,000 pesos .

"Imagine if we had to conduct a soil study of the entire municipality to be able to implement zoning . All of that requires resources; a lot of resources," he added.

Pérez agrees. "While the (District) mayor's office has a qualified technical team in urban planning and architecture, the level of complexity of the projects and the size of the area mean that resources are limited," he observed, after indicating that collaborations with universities and multilateral organizations have enabled the execution of some of these projects.

For Santos, territorial regulation is a task that will take time , and in which the State must be involved , to ensure that the law and its regulations are complied with on equal terms and that there are more sources of financing .

" The most important thing about this is that we're starting . We now have a legal framework that we didn't have before. It's not ideal, but we already have one," he emphasized.

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