Vertical Peripheries: Planning and citizenship in Colombia’s commodified periurban housing towers

Role: Principal Investigator

Co-PI: Dr. Lina Brand-Correa

Collaborators: Dr. Adriana Hurtado-Tarazona; Dr. Friederike Fleischer (Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota)

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Grant

Duration: May 2022-May 2025

Summary:

Over the past decade, the private construction of government-sponsored low-cost housing in the form of mass-produced apartment towers at the urban fringes of Colombian cities has deeply transformed the country’s periurban landscapes. This project examines the effects and implications of Colombia’s national privatized social housing policy on peripheral urbanization processes in three cities (Bogota, Barranquilla and Medellin) with a view to governance and municipal planning, as well as residents’ possibilities for agency and citizenship, and their socioeconomic well-being. Specifically, we aim to understand how commodified social housing affects peripheral urbanization, urban planning processes, and ultimately, residents’ everyday lives.

Social urbanism and urban policy mobility at the margins of Latin American cities

Role: Co-Principal Investigator

PI: Dr. Ryan Anders Whitney (Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus)

Duration: March 2022-March 2023

Summary:

Urban planning is increasingly dominated by a series of “best practices” which are defined as the policies, programs, and projects that spark policy change in different cities from where they originally emerged. Within Mexico City, best practices originating in cities from across the globe – including bike share systems from Barcelona, Bus Rapid Transit from Bogotá, and central city revitalization approaches from New York City – have become common within the city’s central neighbourhoods. Less, however, has been said about the impact of best practices on neighbourhoods outside of the city’s central areas. For example, best practices from Medellín, including cable car transportation systems and escalators designed to improve mobility in informal settlements, have been inaugurated in Ecatepec, Iztapalapa, and Alvaro Obregon. This research explores the uptake of a series of escalators that were inaugurated in Alvaro Obregon, Mexico City, based on the experience of Medellín. 

Legal Mobilizations, Oppositional Publics and Citizen Participation in Urban Planning: The Case of Bogotá 

Role: Co-Principal Investigator

Co-PIs: Dr. Sergio Montero and Natalia Angel-Cabo (Universidad de Los Andes, Bogota)

Duration: February 2020-February 2023

Summary:

In recent years, an increasing number of urban planning projects and plans have been modified or paralyzed in Colombia through citizen lawsuits and judicial decisions. Our project asks: how is the rise in legal mediation in urban planning reconfiguring the actors and repertoires of citizen participation and mobilization in urban development, as well as the possibilities for creating more inclusive cities in Colombia? This interdisciplinary research is framed within debates about equitable cities and citizen participation in urban planning and city-building processes. Through a study of emblematic cases related to transportation infrastructure, housing and urban revitalization in Bogota, we hope to shed light on the limits and possibilities of judicial action for more social inclusion in Colombian and Latin American cities.

Decolonizing Planning in the ‘Undocumented’ City

Role: Co-Principal Investigator

PI: Dr. Liette Gilbert (EUC, York University)

Funding: EUC Small Research Grant

Duration: January 2021-January 2023

Summary: While planners and policymakers increasingly recognize the need to engage with many ‘stakeholders’ and include the voices and lived experiences of historically marginalized publics, people facing socio-legal exclusions – such as non-citizens, migrant workers, and others with precarious status, as well as Indigenous people – continue to be excluded from planning processes and adequate policy formulation. “Unauthorized” racialized migrants and people with precarious legal status are deeply embedded in the life of their communities and city regions. They participate in place-making, shape the urban fabric, and build regional economies. Yet, they do so in the “shadows” and in fear. They are increasingly confronted with state tactics of illegalization, expulsion and border enforcement that produce geographies of death in what De Genova and Roy (2020) describe as racialized regimes of citizenship. Like other instances of democratic governance, illegalized refugees and migrants are unsurprisingly excluded from participation in state-sanctioned urban planning. Our pilot research seeks to better understand how normative planning produces precarity and vulnerability for undocumented people living in Toronto and Montreal – but also, how could it incorporate claims and contestations for transformation. Our temporal and spatial inquiry of how ‘undocumented’ solidarity – in the current moment of COVID-19 pandemic and anti-racism mobilizations – seeks to analyse how the processes of municipal governance and planning in Toronto and Montreal (re)produce exclusion but could also foster a ‘just city’ for illegalized migrants. Our study is part of a larger project to decolonize planning practices and ideologies