A new city hall for the city of San Miguel de Allende

This thesis program has evolved from a previous Urban Design project for the city of San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. A conceptual plan for the city of San Miguel de Allende was devised by a team of four Texas Tech University students of design Architecture (myself included) under the direction of Dr. George T. C. Peng. Thus, this thesis program is a continuation of the project and involves the design of a new city hall - a major, recognized need and proposal stemming from the development of the conceptual comprehensive plan for the historical colonial city of San Miguel de Allende and it's municipality. The city hall is to be part of a government complex consisting of federal, state and local government entities.

Government offices play a major role in people's daily activities - a role that increases daily. The automobile is now the main source of transportation that is used to access and implement those activities. Like most older cities, San Miguel de Allende was not built to accommodate the automobile. The city's streets are narrow, parking is limited, and the present governmental services are scattered throughout the downtown area, rendering government services aimost inaccessible to the automobile. This creates a great amount of difficulty for the present users of the governmental services. In order to exercise a business transaction with a government agency, people are forced to waste time, taking extra hours and sometimes days to conduct interactions with the present governmental services. The results are often congestion, stress, pollution and frustration. The problem has become so evident that the three levels of government are seriously interested in finding a solution to the growing problem.

The objective of San Miguel de Allende and its municipality is to consolidate the government agencies into one complex, thus creating a new Urban Center - a new downtown area with an expression that reflects a fast growing contemporary society that is rich in history. Other objectives of the government center include: vastly improving accessibility to the various governmental agencies, facilitating better communication between the people and the government agencies and providing for the future expansion and growth of the government agencies.