Rodrigo Caimanque Leverone
Nationality: Chile
Year of entry: 2013
Background
Rodrigo trained as an architect at Universidad de Chile and holds an MSc in Spatial Planning from University College London. His studies have been related to urban planning and governance, with a specific interest in urban politics.
In the professional field, his experience has been developed both in the public and private sectors. He has been involved in several projects at different scales such as state programmes of regeneration in deprived neighbourhoods, the elaboration of land use plans at municipal level, and urban studies at city scale.
Currently, his research is focused on the socio-political aspects underpinning processes of urban regeneration. In particular, he expects to provide bridges between the social production of urban governance in Valparaíso, Chile from a multi-scalar perspective and the uneven impacts in local urban spaces.
Title: The (urban) politics of Valparaiso's Regeneration: A scalar assessment of urban governance.
Keywords: Urban governance, politics of scale, coalitions, urban regeneration
Abstract:
The research analyses the socio-political processes that underpin the regeneration of Valparaíso from a multiscalar perspective. Drawing on the relation between theoretical concepts such as politics of scale and place, the project seeks to explain how the overlapping scales of urban governance are produced, and how influence the configuration of specific urban areas. It is argued that current changes in Valparaíso are a product of institutional strategies of spatial differentiation, derived from asymmetrical power relations among different actors involved in urban governance. The establishment of current normative and organizational frameworks for urban regeneration unfolds as both the product and the producer of uneven development.
The policies and strategies of urban regeneration across the city represents the increasingly interest to invest in the city, from public to private actors, especially after its definition as World heritage Site. However, current market-led strategies of regeneration have been mainly focused on few profitable areas, while ignoring the rest of the city. This entrepreneurial approach based on competitiveness, far from contribute to address structural problems of poverty and inequality, have been rather expressions of spatial fragmentation and social exclusion across the city. Through the case of Valparaíso it is expected to assess the correlation between the multiple scales converging in the construction of urban governance and specific place-based interventions, which in turn produced socio-spatial impacts affecting different scales. Within this relational process, the conformation of governing coalitions unveils both the inclusion and exclusion of actors in the political process of regeneration. Urban governance in Valparaíso meets unevenly supranational institutions, the state, private sector and locally-based social resistance, configuring a case with tangled hierarchies and contested processes of decision-making.
Supervisors:
Caren Levy
Ben Clifford
Funders:
Conicyt, Chile
Columns
Caimanque R. (2011), 'Hacia una planificación estratégica efectiva y la “espacialización” de políticas públicas' [Towards effective stategic planning and the spatialization of public policies], Revista Planeo.
Presentations
Caimanque R. (2014), Urban Regeneration and the dispute over public space: The case of Valparaiso, Chile. Seminar ‘Contra la reificación de tres conceptos claves en el pensamiento urbano' [Against the reification of three key concepts in urban thinking], 5th-6th June 2014, Barcelona, Spain.