Main Research Topic and Context

San Francisco de Quito is one of the oldest cities in Latin America. It is the capital and the political, cultural and financial centre of the Republic of Ecuador. It is located at an average height of 2850 m.a.s.l. in the Andes range, more accurately within the Guayllabamba valley, in the Inter-Andean Alley plateau which separates the eastern and western sides of the Andean range. The city’s western end is defined by the eastern slopes of the active Pichincha volcano, which dominates the urban extension in such way that its hillsides are visible from any angle, shaping the city’s sectors. This geographical condition gives the city its peculiar elongated pattern, with 50 km in length and averaging 3 to 7 km in width, traversed by more than 100 ravines from east to west. The city, located about 25 km north of Quito’s old town, is crossed by the equator, which produces significant landscape diversity. The geo-morphological and geological conformation comes from the presence of the Pichincha volcano. The soil is composed of deep layers of lava and ash which have little resistance to river erosion and harden in contact with air. This has allowed the preservation until recent times of the engravings generated by the last ice melting: a system of seasonal watercourses, “quebradas”. It is a system of intermittently-formed rivers that rhythmically go through the city’s plain from east to west (Peltre 1989)