Sur-Urbano

In this episode, returning cohost Aurora Echeverría and I talk to Nora Libertun on her article, “Peripheral Growth in Latin American and Caribbean Metropolis: Gated Communities and Path Dependence”. Nora was great to talk to because she is a practitioner – currently working in the Inter-American Development Bank – but has also taught at numerous universities, including Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She brings this perspective in this article about how the legacy of core-periphery models within Latin American cities – where peripheries tended to be spaces of informality, poverty and divestment – laid the foundation for a new kind of periphery: that of gated communities. We talk about how the legacy of the relationship between the public and private now reproduces – or may potentially mitigate – inequality, and what policy makers can do to address these urban development patterns.

You can find her paper here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003132622-16/peripheral-growth-latin-american-caribbean-metropolis-nora-libertun-de-duren

Nora Libertun de Duren is a leading expert on sustainability, social inclusion, and affordable housing in urban areas. She has experience working in multilateral development banks, local government, and academia. Currently, Nora leads the Inter-American Development Bank research and knowledge agenda on cities; and mainstreams gender and diversity issues in urban projects. Previously, she was the Director of Planning and Natural Resources for New York City and has taught urban planning and international development at various universities, including Columbia University and the University of Buenos Aires, and currently teaches at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. 

Aurora Echavarria is a PhD student in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is a graduate fellow in the Latin American Cities Initiative. Her research centers on the relation between systems of local government finances, property taxation and the dynamics of urban inequality in public good provision. Aurora's dissertation research is supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship.

Cómo se vuelve la propiedad de la vivienda una forma de despojo, y cómo los migrantes latines en España lucharon contra el desahucio? Hablamos con Sophie Gonick 

Discutimos el libro de Sophie, Despojo y disidencia.  Las y los Inmigrantes y la lucha por la vivienda en Madrid, actualmente sólo disponsible en inglés: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33182.

Sophie analiza cómo las experiencias migratorias y las tradiciones indígenas del activismo sirvieron de base para luchar contra las ejecuciones hipotecarias y desalojo

Más allá de que Madrid es la tercera ciudad más grande de ecuatorianos (!), Sophie demuestra que a través de las experiencias de exclusión, y luchas que emergen como respuesta, las ciudades latinoamericanas se extienden más allá de nuestro continente.

Sophie Gonick es profesora de Análisis Social y Cultural en New York University. Estudió en Harvard y la Universidad de California - Berkeley, y su trabajo se encuentra en la intersección de la historia de la planificación, estudios críticos de raza y género, y debates sobre la migración.

Luisa Fernanda Pinto es abogada colombiana especialista en urbanismo y con una maestría en planificación territorial y gestión ambiental de la Universidad de Barcelona. Forma parte del equipo del PEMB  Barcelona como experta en vivienda en la redacción del nuevo plan estratégico metropolitano.

Second, we are starting Season II with an interview with the University of Sao Paulo's Eduardo Marques and cohosted by Marcela Alonso Ferreira. This was an timely conversation, in that Eduardo’s work examines the conditions and dynamics of redistributive urban policies and their changes in Sao Paulo. Understood broadly, it accounts for how progressive urban agendas become policy, and the conditions for their continuity, disruption or oscillation - a pretty fundamental question for the left. It was a hopeful message laced with fear, since we recorded just days before the October 30 presidential election. Now on the other side of the election, Eduardo and Marcela’s analyses are useful in understanding the significance of Lula’s victory.

Eduardo Marques is a full professor at the Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the University of São Paulo. He holds a degree in Civil Engineering (UFRJ, 1987), a specialization in Public Health (Fiocruz, 1988), an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning (UFRJ, 1993) and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Unicamp, 1998). He recently published the book “The Politics of Incremental Progressivism Governments, Governances and Urban Policy Changes in São Paulo” (Wiley/SUSC-IJURR, 2021), which I recommend to anyone interested in urban policies in Latin America. 

In this episode, we discuss two of Eduardo's recent articles: "Why do local governments produce redistributive urban policies?" and "Continuity and Change of Urban Policies in São Paulo: Resilience, Latency, and Reanimation". 

Marcela Alonso Ferreira is PhD candidate in Political Science at the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris interested in urban governance in Latin American cities. Marcela investigates the changes in land regularization policy and politics in São Paulo and Mexico City.

Marcela also mentions a research group called Cities are back in town, a seminar series convening urban scholars from various disciplines to discuss recent publications on cities worldwide. Many seminars are online so if you're interested, write to [email protected] to receive our mailing list.

s.

¿Qué define un modelo de ciudad progresista? O más bien, ¿qué alternativas tienen los sectores progresistas y de izquierda - ampliamente entendida - para que las ciudades sean más justas, democráticas, y equitativas? Desde la elección de Gustavo Petro y Francia Marquez a la presidencia de Colombia, esta es la pregunta que nos hemos hecho entre muches que nos alineamos políticamente con la izquierda, y que amamos las ciudades. 

Por eso quisimos hablar con Maria Mercedes Maldonado, quien además de haber sido Secretaria de Planeación y de Hábitat y Vivienda para la alcaldía de Gustavo Petro, ha dedicado buena de su vida profesional y académica a pensar sobre esta pregunta. ¿Qué instrumentos y alternativas podemos imaginar desde el presente? 

Junto con Ana Prada, quien estuvo en uno de los equipos de empalme del Gobierno de Petro y Francia, hablamos con Maria Mercedes sobre el pasado, presente y futuro. Del pasado, repasamos los logros y retos que se enfrentó la alcaldía de Gustavo Petro y Bogotá Humana en temas de aseo y vivienda. De ahí pasamos a hablar sobre por qué el tema de las ciudades no protagoniza la actual agenda del proyecto político de Petro y Francia, y hacemos a un llamado a que existan políticas nacionales - no solo locales - en torno a las ciudades. Maria Mercedes ofrece algunas propuestas para el nuevo gobierno, que parten de rescatar el espíritu de la Ley 388 de Ordenamiento Territorial, y plantear nuevos modelos de vivienda que realmente le sirvan a les residentes urbanos de menores ingresos.  

Maria Mercedes Maldonado es abogada, urbanista, investigadora y activista en temas de ordenamiento territorial, y políticas de suelo, derecho a la ciudad y en temas ambientales y políticas de vivienda.  Fue secretaria de Planeación y de Hábitat durante el gobierno de Gustavo Petro, luego de trabajar muchos años en el CIDER de la Universidad de los Andes, en el Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y en el Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Como Secretaria de Planeación tuvo a cargo la coordinación del plan de desarrollo Bogotá Humana y luego fue coordinadora programática de la campaña a la presidencia de Colombia Humana en 2018.

Ana Prada es arquitecta, con una maestría en políticas públicas urbanas de la Universidad de The New School, en Nueva York. Hizo parte del equipo coordinador de Empalme del Gobierno Petro y Francia del sector estadístico, que comprende al DANE Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística  y al IGAC (Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi), especialmente en el empalme intersectorial del Catastro Multipropósito que es uno de los ejes fundamentales del programa de gobierno de Petro y Francia. 

This week we are talking to Martim Smolka, the man who has been the director of the Latin American and Caribbean program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy since it was made, 27 years ago. This is no minor thing: four of our guests on this podcast have worked or published with the Lincoln Institute, and its impact on Latin American land policy is profound - Martim has truly played an important role in the history of land policy in Latin American cities. In this episode, Flavia Leite and I talk with Martim about the Georgist theoretical underpinnings of progressive land policy, the history of these policies in Latin American cities, and why TIF may well be understood as the “anti-christ” of land value capture.

On the subject of TIF, check out Flavia and Bridget Fisher's critical analysis of the camouflaged risks and costs of TIF in Hudson Yards that we mention in the episode: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264275122001007

Martim is a Brazilian economist, with a Ph.D. in Regional Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1980). He was the director of the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for 27 years. At the LILP he developed (and lectured in) many educational programs for high-level public officials, members of academia, NGOs leaders and other professionals throughout Latin America.

Flávia is a PhD student in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Her research interest revolves around the relationship between formal and informal housing markets, with a specific focus on housing financialization, access to credit, and housing policy in Latin America.

¡Bienvenides a nuestro primer episodio en español! De ahora en adelante alternaremos episodios en español con los de inglés. 

Empezamos esta nueva etapa hablando con la abogada, activista y académica Carla Escoffié sobre su libro “ El Derecho a la Vivienda en México: Derechos Homónimos”, explorando cómo se ha concebido y provisionado este derecho en el contexto Mexicano, pero también en América Latina. De ahí pasamos a hablar sobre cómo este derecho se puede realmente defender ante un sistema judicial que favorece la propiedad privada y los intereses económicos poderosos - y por ello hablamos sobre las experiencias de Carla defendiendo este derecho en Yucatán. 

Culminamos con el llamado a que los y las planificadoras trabajemos más cercanamente con quienes ejercen el derecho, para juntes construir ciudades más justas y equitativas.

Nuestro co-host esta semana es Alfonso Fierro. Alfonso Fierro es Profesor de Literatura Latinoamericana en Kenyon College, y está terminando su doctorado en la Universidad de California Berkeley, donde estudia utopías urbanas en el trabajo de escritores, arquitectos y planificadores después de la Revolución Mexicana.  

https://editorial.tirant.com/co/libro/el-derecho-a-la-vivienda-en-mexico-derechos-homonimos-carla-luisa-escoffie-duarte-9788411131452

In this episode, cohost Julian Gomez and I talk to Professor Amy Offner about her book, Sorting the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas. This is the "untold story of how welfare and development programs in the United States and Latin America produced the instruments of their own destruction". We focus on the history of Ciudad Kennedy in Bogotá, a borough in Bogotá built with support of the Alliance for Progress, and whose history reveals  how the logics of assisted self built housing has its roots in the New Deal and Cold War, and held the seed of austerity even as it required major state involvement. We also read the Colombian presidential elections - then just days away - and what the history describe in Prof. Offner's book tell us about the face-off between Gustavo Petro and Rodolfo Hernandez. 

Prof. Amy C. Offner (Ph.D. Columbia University) studies twentieth-century US history in global perspective, with special focus on Latin America.  Her research and teaching address the history of capitalism and political economy, empire and foreign relations, and social and intellectual history. You can find her book here.

Julián Gómez Delgado is a PhD student in sociology and historical studies at The New School for Social Research. His research in political and historical sociology revolves around state formation, capitalist development and social conflict across Latin America, with a special focus on Colombia.. You can find him on twitter @juliangomezdel

It has become common sense to assert that compact cities are better, among other things because agglomeration economies make them more productive. However, what if this apparently universal rule doesn’t always apply? In today’s episode, cohost David Lopez García and I talk to Prof. Paavo Monkkonen about an article he co-authored titled Compact cities and economic productivity in Mexico. We talk to Paavo about why Mexico’s economic structure and land-use needs mean that agglomeration economies don’t behave  in the same way in Mexican cities as they do in the global north, and how this impacts the relationship between density and productivity. It was a great conversation, and incredibly timely as we try to figure out a post-pandemic future

Paavo Monkkonen is Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, director of the Latin American Cities Initiative and Faculty Cluster Leader for the Global Public Affairs Initiative. He researches and writes on the ways policies and markets shape urbanization and social segregation in cities around the world.

David López-García is a Visiting Lecturer in the Urban Studies Department at Queens College-CUNY and at the Observatory on Latin America (OLA) at The New School. He is also external faculty in the Doctoral Program in Urbanism at the University of Guadalajara. Broadly speaking, his research spans urban political economy, urban structure, urban accessibility, distributional effects of transport and land-use policies, and institutional arrangements for urban governance.

Does property undermine development, and specifically, the construction of infrastructure? Along with co-host Aurora Echaverria, we discuss  Prof. Alisha Holland's article "Roadblocks: How Property Rights Undermine Development in Colombia". 

Looking at the case of Colombia, Prof. Holland argues that strong property rights encourage opportunistic behaviors that undermine infrastructure investments, even though political economy models define property rights as essential for economic development. This is especially important given the lengths that Colombia's president-elect, Gustavo Petro, went to great lengths to promise to never expropriate. Is it time to rethink property rights, from the left as well as the right?

Check it out the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajps.12706

Prof. Alisha Holland is an Associate Professor in the Government Department at Harvard University studying the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban politics, social policy, and Latin America.

Aurora Echavarria is a PhD student in Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is a graduate fellow in the Latin American Cities Initiative. Her research centers on the relation between systems of local government finances, property taxation and the dynamics of urban inequality in public good provision. Aurora's dissertation research is supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellowship.

Can land use regulations end up incentivizing informal settlements, or mitigate? In this episode, cohosted by Flavia Leite of UC Berkeley, we interview Prof. Cynthia Goytia of Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. We talk to Prof. Goytia about an ambitious multi-year project which charts the relationship between land use regulation and informal settlements in over 300 municipalities across 10 different Latin American countries. We talk about the prevalence of low density residential zoning in Latin American cities, the impact this and other land use regulations have on promoting or mitigating informal settlements, and what local governments can do to leverage what is arguably their cities’ biggest asset – their land – to make more inclusive cities.

Although the reports we discuss are not yet publicly available, we will post it when they are published. 

Cynthia Goytia is Head of the MSc. in Urban Economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she also has founded and chairs since 2012, the Urban Policy and Housing Research Center (CIPUV), one of the most prestigious urban research centers in Latin America. She has developed a relevant and influential body of academic research on urban policies, housing and land markets. She is a senior urban consultant to Argentinas and Latin American governments, the World Bank, United Nations Inter-American Development Bank and CAF (Banca de Desarrollo de America Latina), and fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Flávia is a PhD student in City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Her research interest revolves around the relationship between formal and informal housing markets, with a specific focus on housing financialization, access to credit, and housing policy in Latin America.