The big bang of neoliberal urbanism: The Gigantomachy of Santiago’s urban development

Francisco Vergara-Perucich and Camillo Boano
Additional contact information
Francisco Vergara-Perucich: Universidad de Las Américas, Chile
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jose Francisco Vergara Perucich ()

Environment and Planning C, 2021, vol. 39, issue 1, 184-203

Abstract: This study presents a spatial history of the origins of Santiago’s neoliberalisation, unveiling its urban history from the critical point of view of land at the centre of social classes’ dispute over city life. It situates the contestation and struggle over land in a genealogical progression from the origins of the disciplinary field of urbanism (1932) to the transformation of its regulatory framework, making it an exclusively profit-oriented practice complementary to processes of wealth creation through urban transformations (1979). As an allegory, we used the Gigantomachy to interpret these struggles. Special emphasis is given to the land struggles that occurred in Santiago as a part of this migratory process and how the contestation of private land became an alternative to the government’s incapacities to resolve the urban poor condition. This contestation would lead to the dominant class looking for alternative politics that ensure the defence of their property. This study presents neoliberalism as a response to such a call. Neoliberalism in Santiago was the way to transform the problem of housing scarcity in big business for the dominant class. The study historically outlines this process in what may be considered as the first neoliberal urban policy in the world, depicting the big bang of neoliberal urbanism.

Keywords: Neoliberalism; urban policy; planning; political economy; urbanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654420946759 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:39:y:2021:i:1:p:184-203

DOI: 10.1177/2399654420946759

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().