Who is the city for? Socio-institutional networks and urban development processes in the centres of Salvador (Brazil) and Cali (Colombia)

Abstract

This article is the result of a doctoral thesis entitled “Para quem é a cidade? Socio-institutional networks and urban development processes in the centers of Salvador (Brazil) and Cali (Colômbia)”. An analysis is made of the meanings of how public-private management networks are consolidated in processes of contemporary urban reforms in two Latin American cities: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and Cali, Department of Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Foram analyzed the Revitalize Program implemented since the year of 2017 and the Revive Program, of more recent execution, in the city of Salvador, in the same way as the Cidade Paraíso Project developed since 2009 in the city of Cali. We have analyzed the main networks and institutional directors of two respective programs, identifying their main urban agents in the public and private sectors, their institutional relations and the types and logics of management networks for the execution of two programs. To identify and analyze the urban agents, a content analysis of two institutional documents was carried out, an analysis of two days, interviews carried out with public agents, private agents and the resident population, as well as a review of the literature produced on the reforms in the historic centers of two cities . This type of urban management networks in the context of neoliberalization of cities and global capitalism is characterized by the consolidation of territorial power that aims to consolidate urban practices around the logic of Modernization, Recovery, Revitalization, Competitiveness, Refunctionalization of spaces and consolidation of Smart Cities. In this sense, we are assisting a capitalization of public functioning that is parallel and associated with the interests of private capital in the urban reforms analyzed. These reforms strengthen and reinforce, in the second case analyzed, the heritage tourist vision, the administrative recovery, the refunctionalization of the center, the consolidation of a business center and boutiques, the improvement of mobility or the redensification of businesses. These networks, governments and local political powers in turn are articulated in a national and continental trend to build business cities and various urban enterprises. It is concluded that the networks of public-private management in the context of neoliberal production in Latin American cities produce conflicts around two uses and contra uses of only urban, to the extent that they focus solely and exclusively on the consolidation of a city of businesses and not We offer social programs and social housing for the resident population. Likewise, this tendency being continental in nature is also evident in specificities in the cases analyzed.