Dreams of Mud and Concrete: Dissonant Memory Landscapes and the Struggle over Infrastructure Development in Los Platanitos, Dominican Republic

Abstract

Memory-based storytelling may contribute to co-productive planning approaches based on endogenous epistemologies and ways of being. Specifically, ambivalent memory performances, emerging from the embodied and emplaced memory of the speaker, reveal contested community histories, serve as a source of critical learning, and foster diverse forms of claims-making. By drawing on the case of a stormwater development project in the informal settlement of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, this article considers the production of dissonant memory landscapes through ambivalent testimonies of community histories, illuminating the implications of such memory work for storytelling in community-based planning practice.

Keywords:

• memory
• storytelling in planning
• informal settlements
• infrastructure development
• Dominican Republic
• Latin America

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Juan Torres, Gabriel Báez, and the efforts of colleagues, friends and co-researchers in Los Platanitos, especially Evelyn Hernández and the members of Mujeres Unidas. Additional thanks to representatives of the Ayuntamiento de Santo Domingo Norte and to the students in the Los Platanitos studios, especially José Guzmán, Shavone Otero, Ricardo Venegas and Juan Tiney Chirix for their work on the oral history project. I also want to thank Dr. Rachel Berney and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments which significantly improved the paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Los Platanitos, residents refer to themselves and others by their first names or their nicknames (apodos), and I follow this convention here.

2 See the project website with links to all reports produced through this initiative: https://sites.utexas.edu/santodomingo-informality/.

3 See the project website at https://sites.utexas.edu/santodomingo-informality/biografias/.

4 See US Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Human Research Protections, “Scholarly and Journalistic Activities Deemed Not to be Research: 2018 Requirements,” available at https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/45-cfr-46/revised-common-rule-regulatory-text/index.html#46.104.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation International Research Experience for Students Program [Award No. IIA-1358127]; the Environmental Protection Agency P3 Program; the Mebane Endowment, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin; and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin.

Notes on contributors

Bjorn Sletto

Bjørn Sletto is Professor of Community and Regional Planning program at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include insurgent and decolonial planning, community-based research, and environmental justice. He has conducted research on Indigenous territoriality and participatory mapping in Venezuela and urban informality in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, focusing on the role of critical pedagogy for insurgent planning in neoliberal contexts. His latest book is Radical Cartographies: Participatory Mapmaking from Latin America (UT Press). Email: [email protected]