As part of the ongoing climate crisis, cities are developing multiple sustainability and climate-related initiatives. While mainstream policies see cities as sites for saving the planet, urbanisation remains a contested issue, including efforts for managing risks. While there is an important work on the urban politics of risks, more attention is required to understand the genealogies of risk management configurations, especially considering the contentious character of 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. _x000D_
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In this presentation I focus on the case of the foothills of Santiago, Chile. Following qualitative and spatial methods, and using a governance lens to understand urban politics in practice, I describe the origins and outcomes of an urban risk configuration in place. With every strong rain and with The Andes mountains turning into a hazard, public actors oversee hydraulic infrastructure aimed to mitigate landslide impacts, while locals alert about the lack of evacuation routes and promote intra-household preparedness. Such initiatives however remain scantly integrated, overly focused on the emergency and bring to the fore a physicalist and even naturalised discourse regarding risks. As such, these anticipatory efforts work as a ‘patchwork’ of unconnected actions with ambivalent outcomes. Beyond the performativity of safety, long-standing communities in the area remain excluded as a consequence of their histories of disaster recovery (notably 1993 landslide that killed 26 people and destroyed hundreds of housing units), as well as current uneven development trajectories. I show how this ‘patchwork’ of initiatives, although critically questioned from below in regard to its effectiveness to deal with future impacts, contributes instead to reinforce socio-spatial injustices. _x000D_
Ricardo Fuentealba
Universidad de O’Higgins, Chile
ID Abstract: 321