The national development of urban transport. The case of Latin American metros (1960s 1980s)

DHAN ZUNINO SINGH

Shanghai

Congreso; Governmental Visions for Transport and Mobility ? Strategic Transport Infrastructures and the State; 2020

T2M - Tongii University

Santiago de Chile, Mexico, and Sao Paulo have today large and modern metro systems which were planned and built originally in the context of national policies. Those policies sought to develop of local technology (know-how, technics, and materialities), although the metro was an imported transport technology. This papers recounts the way in which metros were conceived, planned, and implemented from a transnational history perspective, considering the relationship between the global circulation of knowledge and technology and the local assemblage of ideas, capital, experts, technics, materialities, and environment involved in the construction of a metro system. It highlights the importance of the national state in the origin of this urban mass transport system which in other cities were the result of municipal policies.