Urban Policy and Spatial Planning in a Globalized City—A Stakeholder View of Santiago de Chile

Abstract

Taking Santiago de Chile as an example, this practice review explores urban policy-making and spatial planning in a globalized city. Based on an empirical study, it presents insights into the experiences, observations and recommendations of urban development stakeholders from the public, private and civil society sectors. First of all, the article highlights the main characteristics of public policies and spatial planning in Santiago as well as their relevance in the process of urban development. Second, it examines the sociopolitical conditions that either facilitate or hamper policy and planning efforts. The contribution concludes that if the task of improving urban policy and planning is to be taken seriously, it must go hand in hand with addressing overall problems of urban governance.

Keywords::

• spatial planning
• governance
• Santiago de Chile
• stakeholder stud

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to David Heredia who strongly supported the elaboration of this article with his intellectual input and his writing skills. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and critics on an earlier draft of this article. This work was made possible by the German Helmholtz-Association within the framework of the Helmholtz-research initiative ‘Risk Habitat Megacity’ (2007–2011). The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

¹ The governance concept in this paper is not intended as a prescription for the reform of existing political systems, policies or planning procedures but rather to help detect opportunities and risks in this endeavour.

² Along the lines of the governance literature, in our study we assign actor groups to three different spheres: the public sector, the private sector and civil society. This classification must not to be misunderstood as a clear separation of societal roles and goals of different actors. Instead, it is at the very heart of the governance debate that private enterprises and non-governmental organizations have taken over more and more functions of the public sector in past decades. In Chile, the frequent swap of individuals in their professional life between the public and the private sector is another case in point that tends to blur the distinction between state and society. Yet, the performance of governance actors can only be understood based on an understanding of whether they act on behalf of public, private or community interests.

³ The findings presented here result from an open question. Therefore, some of the categories, which adopt the notions the respondents used in the survey, necessarily overlap (e.g. ‘Real Estate Developers’ is a subcategory of ‘Private Sector’, the ‘Ministry of Housing and Urbanism’ of ‘Central Government/Ministries’). However, we chose this way of illustration in order to highlight actors the respondents referred to as particularly important.

⁴ Quotations taken from stakeholder interviews were translated from Spanish by the authors. Source abbreviations: ‘S’ for online survey (along with the number of the respective questionnaire), ‘F’ for focus group discussion and ‘W’ for workshops.

⁵ ‘Conditioned Development Zones’ (ZODUC) were introduced as new land-use categories in the Plan Regulador Metropolitana de Santiago (PRMS) (Santiago Metropolitan Regulatory Plan) in 1997, ‘Conditioned Development Projects’ (PDUC) followed in 2003 (Heinrichs et al., 2009).

⁶ This constitutional reform at the regional level—Law 20.390—was promulgated in October 2009. However, the amendment to the Organic Constitutional Law on Regional Government and Administration (19.175) to enable it to come into force is still awaited, so that the first election probably will not take place before the next municipal elections in 2016.