A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Back to the City in Santiago, Chile: Reading Inner-City Change Through the Hybrid Urban Change Lens
This research connects with the academic debate on inner-city change drivers in the global South. My research represents an effort to look differently at these processes by bringing forward the concept of hybridity. The need to analyse inner cities’ change in the South from a different perspective has been claimed by scholars studying cities worldwide who have raised the problem of north-south theory transposition/imposition. The main argument supporting such an assertion is that using concepts and theories from north-western cities to understand urban change in southern cities generates a theory-reality mismatch. This mismatch conceals relevant aspects of cities’ change in the South and, by so doing, inhibits a proper understanding of urban dynamics happening outside the realm of cities in the North. The case of Santiago’s process of inner-city change is a good example of the problem described. Characterised by a massive repopulation through housing verticalization, the process has been interpreted both as gentrification (i.e., progressive elitization) and ghettoisation (i.e., progressive marginalisation), which describe entirely opposite urban phenomena. Furthermore, there is a significant discrepancy between these two interpretative frameworks and the basic features of the case. I argue this theory-reality gap finds an explanation in the lack of attention to the contextual elements and mechanisms (interplay between structures and actors), inhibiting a more accurate comprehension of urban dynamics in southern cities like Santiago. However, this critique should not entail isolating southern cities’ analyses from global urban trends. It instead requires looking closer at the hybrid nature of city change processes. Therefore, building upon the concept of hybridity and its application to urban theory, I propose a different framework to analyse the process of inner-city change in Santiago, Chile. I consider a particular set of concepts that address what, in my view, are some of the missing elements in the academic ...
Back to the City in Santiago, Chile: Reading Inner-City Change Through the Hybrid Urban Change Lens
This research connects with the academic debate on inner-city change drivers in the global South. My research represents an effort to look differently at these processes by bringing forward the concept of hybridity. The need to analyse inner cities’ change in the South from a different perspective has been claimed by scholars studying cities worldwide who have raised the problem of north-south theory transposition/imposition. The main argument supporting such an assertion is that using concepts and theories from north-western cities to understand urban change in southern cities generates a theory-reality mismatch. This mismatch conceals relevant aspects of cities’ change in the South and, by so doing, inhibits a proper understanding of urban dynamics happening outside the realm of cities in the North. The case of Santiago’s process of inner-city change is a good example of the problem described. Characterised by a massive repopulation through housing verticalization, the process has been interpreted both as gentrification (i.e., progressive elitization) and ghettoisation (i.e., progressive marginalisation), which describe entirely opposite urban phenomena. Furthermore, there is a significant discrepancy between these two interpretative frameworks and the basic features of the case. I argue this theory-reality gap finds an explanation in the lack of attention to the contextual elements and mechanisms (interplay between structures and actors), inhibiting a more accurate comprehension of urban dynamics in southern cities like Santiago. However, this critique should not entail isolating southern cities’ analyses from global urban trends. It instead requires looking closer at the hybrid nature of city change processes. Therefore, building upon the concept of hybridity and its application to urban theory, I propose a different framework to analyse the process of inner-city change in Santiago, Chile. I consider a particular set of concepts that address what, in my view, are some of the missing elements in the academic ...
Back to the City in Santiago, Chile: Reading Inner-City Change Through the Hybrid Urban Change Lens
Brain Valenzuela, Isabel Margarita (author)
2023-05-28
Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College of London).
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720
| DOAJ | 2017