Puerto Rico Restart: UF Students take on UNESCO Project

Puerto Rico Disaster Relief



Six months after Hurricane Maria, University of Florida architecture students fly to Puerto Rico to provide disaster relief in a 10 day UNESCO project. In one city, abandoned buildings led to ideas for restoring street life. Architecture student Valerie Pretto says they focused on the street known as Ponce De Leon.
"Our proposal was actually based on the cultural aspect and that was analyzing the existing murals around the area.."
     Environmental concerns are an ongoing priority in some areas. Research associate Maria Barrios says there is a lot of pollution in the water so they plan to create a green buffer to start cleaning the water. She says this can help with future flooding. Communities near mountains experienced landslides from severe runoff. Architecture student Andrew Benavides witnessed this first hand. 
"Their houses would literally just fall on the side of the mountains because poor structural construction, poor ground, poor soil..."
     Team leader Nancy Clark says they're working with a storm water management team to introduce new wetlands to dread an existing canal out to two rivers and to make sure there is a circulation of water.  Students continue to map out solutions back at UF. They will be flying back to Puerto Rico in May for a follow up conference. 

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