Abstract
Facing climate emergency and disaster risks, cities are developing governing arrangements towards sustainability and resilience. Research is showing the ambivalent results of these arrangements in terms of inclusion and (in)justice, as well as their outcomes in emptying the ‘properly political’ through depoliticised governing techniques. Acknowledging this post-political thesis, however, critical analyses must also engage with re-politicization and focus on disruptive and transformative governance efforts. This article addresses the dual dynamics of de—and re-politicisation, focusing on the interplay of different modes of governing urban risk. We follow the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière and related interpretations in critical urban studies to recover the politics of the city. We focus on a post-disaster area in the foothills of Santiago, Chile. After a 1993 disaster, the State constituted a mode of governing risks based on physicalist interventions that discouraged local conflicts. This techno-managerial policing order made risks invisible while favouring real estate development. However, we show how local initiatives emerge in the interstices of formal and informal arrangements that contest this course. This emerging mode of governing risk, we argue, has the potential to recover incrementally urban politics and disrupt the dominant one through an egalitarian principle on the margins. Our contribution shows that, although these modes of governance coexist and are still evolving, advancing more just and inclusive cities require moving beyond consensus-based governance and focusing on the role of dissent and disruptive politics.
Highlights
Cities face multiple challenges related to the climate emergency and disaster risks
We examine the dynamics of urban politics in relation to risk management practices in a post-disaster context
We structure the results in two sub-sections: first, analysing the mode of governing risks that emerged in the aftermath of the 1993 disaster as a police order; and second, analysing the BEAF as a community-based initiative that might transform the dominant mode
Summary
Cities face multiple challenges related to the climate emergency and disaster risks. a set of novel policies, institutions, and governance arrangements have emerged to create sustainable and resilient cities (UNDRR, 2017; UNISDR, 2015). Questions have arisen on the democratic politics driving the coordination and reproduction of cities These follow David Harvey’s (1989) description of an urban governance shift from a managerial logic into an entrepreneurial one, where competition and marketbased development become primary forces. Since the usage of techno-managerial logics evacuates and even forecloses the ‘properly political’ (Swyngedouw, 2009), it is important to consider the depoliticised contexts where these urban initiatives might emerge. This requires reflecting on the dynamics of deand re-politicising urban governance on the ground
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