Disasters and Urbanization: Risk Configurations and Uneven Spatial Development in Chile

As part of the ongoing climate crisis, cities are developing multiple sustainability and climate-related initiatives, with new roles for governments, residents and local organizations. While mainstream policies see cities as sites for saving the planet, urbanization and city development remain as contested issues, including how these relate to efforts for managing risks. There is an important work on urban disaster risk management. However, more attention is required to understand the genealogies of risk management configurations, especially considering the contentious character of urban disasters. These configurations emerge from historical, spatial and political processes and bring forth multiple actors across scales and domains of governance to deal with hazardous environments.

Following qualitative and spatial methods, and using a governance lens to understand urban disaster politics, in this presentation I analyze two cases in Chile. On one hand, the foothills of Santiago, the country’s capital, where a number of initiatives exist after a landslide disaster in 1993, although scantly integrated and overly focused on emergency measures. The case describes how long-standing communities in the area remain excluded in risk management while also experiencing uneven development trajectories. On the other hand, I focus on smaller cities located in a more rural region in the center-south of Chile. In 2023, two meteorological events triggered important floods in both rural and urban spaces in the area, increasing awareness on the potential impacts of climate change for local residents, while also encouraging them to engage in local policy processes associated to risk management. Both cases highlight the emerging character of the risk configurations in place, including their contested discourses and practices, as well as their uneven impacts. Ultimately, the article shows the challenges to implement disaster mitigation initiatives and argues to develop more attention to the political dimension of city-making to govern risks inclusively.