The evolution of Latin American metropolitan planning: institutions, instruments, processes and cultural traditions

PABLO ELINBAUM; DANIEL GALLAND

Lisboa

Congreso; AESOP Annual Congress. Lisbon-17. Spaces of dialog for places of dignity: Fostering the European dimension of planning. 11-14 July 2017; 2017

Universidade de Lisboa

Latin American metropolitan plans has historically developed and experienced diverse directions of spatial change as well as combinations of spatial models and planning tools. The fertility of these changes, however, tends to takes place deprived of institutional reforms capable of providing a consistent and steady legislative and cultural framework. This administrative lightness allows metropolitan areas to constitute schemes of significant technological innovation yet also of major socio-political conflict. In this light, the current Latin American metropolitan planning (or non-planning) situation could also be interpreted as a testing framework of innovation through which some actors benefit while others end up being excluded. This paper delves into the evolution of metropolitan planning in the region while focusing on experiences that could contribute to endorse a potential reform aimed at ordering the fertile yet also fragmented metropolitan planning and governance situation. In a similar vein, the paper seeks to identify planning aspects and qualities whereby metropolitan planning cases convergence and divergence. On the basis of instrumental specificity and innovative aspects at this scale of planning practice, the paper will finally establish a discussion concerning the feasibility of ultimately conferring Latin American metropolitan planning per se. In doing so, the purpose of this paper is threefold. First, by drawing from recent planning experience associated with some of the world?s greatest metropolis, the paper seeks to add to the development of comprehensive theoretical frameworks dealing with metropolitan planning. Second, the paper is aimed at conducting an international comparative planning study that analyses: (i) institutional and instrumental contexts, plan-making processes and cultural values (traditions, attitudes, habits, etc.) influencing planning structures, processes and outcomes (Knieling and Othengrafen, 2009) and (ii) the interests (and benefits) of key actors and decisions that influence and condition the institutional structure of planning. Based on this analysis, the paper is finally intended to discuss how the series of convergences and divergences withdrawn from the cases studies can illuminate a potential theory concerning the evolution of metropolitan planning in Latin America while also reflecting on potential means to improve current toolkit of planning instruments in the region. In pursuit of the above objectives and in order to identify the key interpretive categories associated with the evolutionary process of metropolitan planning in Latin America, the paper attempts to combine a triple methodological approach (instrumental, institutionalist and strategic-relational). To this end the paper builds on the comparison of two metropolitan case studies, namely Buenos Aires and Mexico City. The selection of cases is based on the criterion of most similar cases (Seawright & Gerring, 2008), which is founded on three typological conditions that make them coincide: (i) socio-economic conditions, (ii) the demographic condition, and (iii) the socio-political status, which is highly significant when it comes to assessing the evolution of metropolitan planning.