Strategies and outcome of citizen participation in current planning conflicts in Santiago de Chile

Over a long period, civil society played a minor role in urban politics of Santiago. Due to profound processes of de-regulation, liberalization and privatization, urban development is heavily influenced by the private economic sector. At the same time, weakening of civil society organizations and clientelism on the local level forced during the military dictatorship continue to have an effect on Chilean democracy. In recent years, however, conflicts of interest in urban development have been on the increase. Citizens are increasingly fighting against uncontrolled developmental measures such as large-scale real-estate or infrastructure projects.

In that context, the contribution examines the extent to which these strategies of participation in urban development contribute to a change in local governance processes and opportunities of participation. Two planning conflicts the Metropolitan Area of Santiago are studied in-depth. While the first conflict is located in the upper income municipality of Vitacura, the second conflict is taking place in the socially heterogeneous municipality of Peñalolén. In both cases, the attempts to change the local land use plans provoked strong protests, due to associated processes of densification and displacement. By means of different strategies, existing and newly emerged social movements and citizens’ organizations were able to stop the intended modifications.

First results show that negotiation processes are varying strongly depending on factors such as resources of the urban movements and citizens’ initiatives as well as the practices and interests of the respective municipality. Although the local governments partly react to the growing number of protests by incorporating additional participation instruments, rethinking of planning practices seems to be low and political will for real citizen participation is still missing.