The new proposal of the decentralized autonomous government of Guayaquil, regarding the creation of 19 new districts with the aim of zoning the city into sectors of approximately 150,000 inhabitants, should not be confused with a much larger initiative that would include the creation of the Metropolitan District of Guayaquil, which is nothing more than a special regime with legislative powers through the issuance of district ordinances and its own autonomous statute, through which it would take over the powers of the cantonal governments that make it up.

This is known about the proposal for the territorial reorganization of Guayaquil into 19 districts

What is proposed by this urban reorganization plan, according to the new director of planning, Luis Alfonso Saltos, is to prioritize the construction of works and the provision of services, creating neighborhoods where all services are available within 15 minutes. , as well as addressing territorial imbalances that may exist in Guayaquil, for example, in very large parishes such as Tarqui and Ximena. A proposal that is fully shared.

Guayaquil and its districts

What needs to be clarified in the proposed new rulebook that is intended to be adopted is whether there will be a shutdown or merger of city parishes and the creation of districts. I say this because according to COOTAD, the creation of the same does not exist among the powers of the Cantonal Council, but the possibility of regulating the demarcation of urban districts and parishes of Guayaquil, for which the Law says that the territorial configuration, identity, history, urban and administrative needs, as well as the application of the principle of equality between neighborhoods .

(…) should not be confused with a much larger initiative… the creation of the Metropolitan District of Guayaquil…

Moreover, according to the municipal regulations currently in force, cantons are territorial constituencies composed of rural parishes and the cantonal capital with their urban parishes, indicated in their respective creation law, and for those that will be created later, so that they will be it is necessary to improve the pencil when presenting the final proposal for the redistribution of Guayaquil, even more so when the structural component of the Land Use and Management Plan (PUGS) of our city is in force for a period of 12 years from 2021, since it is quite It is difficult to reform it since the Law on Land Management (LOOTUGS) and its technical regulations allow this only in the case of the development of a national project of a strategic nature that is carried out under the jurisdiction of the municipality or in the event of force majeure such as the occurrence of a disaster, both situations that the current municipal administration could not deal with call.

It is indeed a problem that the ZLOOTUGS and its regulations do not allow modification of the criteria for defining the urban boundaries of cantonal and parish centers, for example, population projections of human settlements only after 12 years from the creation of the PUGS; or, population density or the number of people living per unit area (hectares or square kilometers), in concentrated populated areas, since that is exactly what the new municipal administration is proposing. (OR)