Prefigurative urbanization: Politics through infrastructural repertoires in Guayaquil (original) (raw)
Related papers
Occupancy Urbanism: Radicalizing Politics and Economy beyond Policy and Programs
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2008
AbstractThis article proposes a narrative of city contestations beyond policy and programs. It considers why Indian metro elites, large land developers and international donors paradoxically lobby for comprehensive planning when confronting ‘vote bank politics’ by the poor. Poor groups, claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims, open up political spaces that appropriate institutions and fuel an economy that builds complex alliances. Such spaces, here termed ‘occupancy urbanism’, are materialized by land shaped into multiple de-facto tenures deeply embedded in lower bureaucracy. While engaging the state, these locality politics remain autonomous of it. Such a narrative views city terrains as being constituted by multiple political spaces inscribed by complex local histories. This politics is substantial and poses multiple crises for global capital. Locally embedded institutions subvert high-end infrastructure and mega projects. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ helps poor groups appropriate real estate surpluses via reconstituted land tenure to fuel small businesses whose commodities jeopardize branded chains. Finally, it poses a political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well-meaning progressive activists and the rhetoric of ‘participatory planning’. This is also a politics that rejects ‘developmentalism’ where ‘poverty’ is ghettoized via programs for ‘basic needs’ allowing the elite ‘globally competitive economic development’.This article proposes a narrative of city contestations beyond policy and programs. It considers why Indian metro elites, large land developers and international donors paradoxically lobby for comprehensive planning when confronting ‘vote bank politics’ by the poor. Poor groups, claiming public services and safeguarding territorial claims, open up political spaces that appropriate institutions and fuel an economy that builds complex alliances. Such spaces, here termed ‘occupancy urbanism’, are materialized by land shaped into multiple de-facto tenures deeply embedded in lower bureaucracy. While engaging the state, these locality politics remain autonomous of it. Such a narrative views city terrains as being constituted by multiple political spaces inscribed by complex local histories. This politics is substantial and poses multiple crises for global capital. Locally embedded institutions subvert high-end infrastructure and mega projects. ‘Occupancy urbanism’ helps poor groups appropriate real estate surpluses via reconstituted land tenure to fuel small businesses whose commodities jeopardize branded chains. Finally, it poses a political consciousness that refuses to be disciplined by NGOs and well-meaning progressive activists and the rhetoric of ‘participatory planning’. This is also a politics that rejects ‘developmentalism’ where ‘poverty’ is ghettoized via programs for ‘basic needs’ allowing the elite ‘globally competitive economic development’.RésuméCet article rend compte des contestations urbaines au-delà de l’action publique et des programmes. Il porte sur les raisons pour lesquelles les élites métropolitaines indiennes, de gros aménageurs fonciers et des donateurs internationaux plaident paradoxalement pour un urbanisme complet lorsque la politique de vote bank se heurtent aux pauvres. Ces groupes, qui réclament des services publics et gardent des revendications territoriales, ouvrent des espaces politiques qui s’approprient des institutions et alimentent une économie aux alliances complexes. Ces espaces, dénommés “urbanisme d’occupation”, sont matérialisés par des terrains formés de multiples occupations de fait, profondément ancrées dans les échelons inférieurs de l’administration. Même si elle implique l’État, la politique de ces localités demeure autonome à son égard. D’après cet exposé, les terrains urbains sont constitués de nombreux espaces politiques aux historiques locaux complexes. Cette politique, non négligeable, est source de problèmes pour le capital mondial. En effet, des institutions ancrées au plan local bouleversent d’énormes projets d’infrastructure haut de gamme. “L’urbanisme d’occupation” aide les groupes pauvres à s’approprier les excédents immobiliers grâce à des modes de jouissance fonciers reconstitués pour stimuler de petites entreprises dont les produits menacent des chaînes de marque. Enfin, elle suscite une conscience politique qui refuse la discipline des ONG ou des partisans progressistes bien intentionnés, de même que la rhétorique de “l’aménagement participatif”. Cette politique rejette aussi un “développementalisme” où la pauvreté est “ghettoïsée” par des programmes en faveur des “besoins fondamentaux” qui permettent aux élites un “développement économique compétitif au plan mondial”.Cet article rend compte des contestations urbaines au-delà de l’action publique et des programmes. Il porte sur les raisons pour lesquelles les élites métropolitaines indiennes, de gros aménageurs fonciers et des donateurs internationaux plaident paradoxalement pour un urbanisme complet lorsque la politique de vote bank se heurtent aux pauvres. Ces groupes, qui réclament des services publics et gardent des revendications territoriales, ouvrent des espaces politiques qui s’approprient des institutions et alimentent une économie aux alliances complexes. Ces espaces, dénommés “urbanisme d’occupation”, sont matérialisés par des terrains formés de multiples occupations de fait, profondément ancrées dans les échelons inférieurs de l’administration. Même si elle implique l’État, la politique de ces localités demeure autonome à son égard. D’après cet exposé, les terrains urbains sont constitués de nombreux espaces politiques aux historiques locaux complexes. Cette politique, non négligeable, est source de problèmes pour le capital mondial. En effet, des institutions ancrées au plan local bouleversent d’énormes projets d’infrastructure haut de gamme. “L’urbanisme d’occupation” aide les groupes pauvres à s’approprier les excédents immobiliers grâce à des modes de jouissance fonciers reconstitués pour stimuler de petites entreprises dont les produits menacent des chaînes de marque. Enfin, elle suscite une conscience politique qui refuse la discipline des ONG ou des partisans progressistes bien intentionnés, de même que la rhétorique de “l’aménagement participatif”. Cette politique rejette aussi un “développementalisme” où la pauvreté est “ghettoïsée” par des programmes en faveur des “besoins fondamentaux” qui permettent aux élites un “développement économique compétitif au plan mondial”.
2006
Curiously, even progressive planners usually share with their conservative counterparts the assumption that the state is the sole urban planning agent. This paper outlines that even if the state is sometimes controlled by more or less progressive forces and even influenced by social movements, civil society should be seen as a powerful actor in the conception and implementation of urban planning and management. Drawing on examples from urban social movements in Latin America, in particular favela activism, the sem-teto movement and participatory budgeting, it explores how civil society can conceive, and even implement, complex, radically alternative socio-spatial strategies. This can be seen as part of a genuine attempt at ‘grassroots urban planning’.
2011 - The politics of urban assemblages
City, 2011
In this short response I would like to address some of the criticisms made by Neil Brenner, David Madden and David Wachsmuth (2011) to the programme of urban studies presented in the volume Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies (Farías and Bender, 2009). I will do this by addressing some crucial differences between this approach and the project of critical urban studies, which, as Brenner et al. noted, is not thoroughly discussed in the aforementioned volume. I think there are four fundamental matters to be discussed: the style of cognitive engagement (inquiries or critique), the definitions of the object of study (cities or capitalism), the underlying conceptions of the social (assemblages or structures) and the envisaged political projects (democratization or revolution). Obviously these pairs of concepts don't represent clear-cut distinctions. They do, however, signalize differences of emphasis making up the politics of urban assemblages.
This paper develops a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the role of space and politics in governing relationships between cities, critical energy, water, waste and transportation infrastructures and resource flows. It presents a view of cities as dynamic, experimental social spaces underpinned by infrastructural unevenness with variable provision of and access to resource flows. An emerging set of new pressures to the ways in which cities, infrastructure and resource flows are organised under conditions of neoliberal urbanism is reviewed. The paper then reflects theoretically and conceptually on the ways in which these pressures can be appropriated in terms of the re-organisation of city, networked infrastructure and resource flows as predicated on tensions between transformative reconfiguration and obduracy from historically produced social and institutional coalitions.
The Geopolitics of Cities. Old challenges, new issues
This book occupies a critical space at the local, national and international scales debate about the ongoing process of construction of the “New Urban Agenda”. Concurrently, this book shows the profiles of a new geopolitics involving cities and nation states debating at the same time in contradictory and combined way the new directions of global urbanization. This book is presented as a continuation of the various efforts made by the Ipea in preparing Brazil to Habitat III and the wording of the Brazilian Report to the UN conference. The many efforts include the elaborating on: regional and national seminars, virtual platforms for social participation, other books, publications and reports, surveys, interviews, data bases, monitoring processes, negotiations in government and civil society, television programs, video documentaries etc. This rich and innovative route involved more than 2,500 people and, according to comparisons made with 34 other countries and as presented here in one of the chapters of this publication, qualifies as the most thorough participatory process of the New Urban Agenda development. The organization of this book, as well as the invitation of several experts and scholars contributing to this debate, are directly related to the National Seminar Habitat III “Participa Brasil,” conducted by Ipea and partners in Brasilia in early 2015. Due to the complexities involved several topics addressed at that time could not be considered by the Brazilian Report for Habitat III. Most of which are due to the intersectionality of analysis necessary for understanding, escaping or surpassing the manner of an official government report to the UN is shaped. Thus, important issues such as geopolitics between states and cities, technological innovation and its impact on international networks and deepening of democracy, as well as many other pending critical issues, justify the collaboration between scholars concerned to generate these innovative ideas and to explain the current process of urbanization. The goal was to make them accessible to a broader audience. Similarly, the search for new contributions could focus precisely on issues that require deeper analyses and references.
Die Erde, 2019
Research has found that contestation has gained more attention in the urban development of Santiago de Chile. This contestation is seen by some scholars as the reaction to the predominant technocratic way in which consensus has been reached in the spatial planning of Santiago in the last decades. This article wants to show the potentials for rekindling collaborative city-building experiences in a setting of governance and political democratic processes. Therefore, this study reviews specific experiences of production of urban space from the 1960's 70's in Santiago, noted for complex interactions and presence of organized resident, workers and grassroots actors. An emblematic public building-icon of the socialist regime-and peripheral housing estates that represent the model of 'self-organization'-are shown to reveal the diversity of actors that were involved, the context of their formation and the interdependence they perform to reach consensus in urban development. Zusammenfassung Bisherige Studien haben bezeugt, dass in der Stadtentwicklung von Santiago de Chile Protestbewegungen mehr an Bedeutung gewinnen. Einige Autoren und Autorinnen deuten diesen Aufmerksamkeitsgewinn urbaner Pro-testbewegungen als eine natürliche Reaktion auf die technokratische Weise, wie in Santiago die räumliche Pla-nung in den letzten Jahrzehnten umgesetzt wurde. In der Governance Debatte werden solche Bewegungen als Bestandteil politischer Prozesse der Demokratie anerkannt. Vor diesem Hintergrund möchte dieser Artikel über die Potenziale vergangener kollaborativer Stadtentwicklungserfahrungen reflektieren. Es werden spezifische Erfahrungen der Herstellung von Stadträumen in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren in Santiago beschrieben, bei denen komplexe Interdependenzen zustandekamen und das Bestehen von organisierten Bürgern, Arbeitern und Grassroot-Akteuren nachgewiesen werden konnte. Ein exemplarischer öffentlicher Bau-Ikone des sozialisti-schen Regimes-und benachteiligte Wohnungssiedlungen, die das Modell der Selbst-Organisation darstellen, zeigen heute die Vielfalt an Akteuren, die sich in der vergangenen Stadtentwicklung Santiagos engagiert haben. Bei der Darstellung der Entstehungsgeschichte dieser Projekte wird klar, dass damals eine komplexere Inter-dependenz zwischen Akteuren bestand und der Konsens, im Vergleich zur heutigen chilenischen Stadtentwick-lung, viel eher in kooperativen Prozessen gesucht wurde. Vol. 150, No. 2 · Research article