This research uses Urban Regime Theory and identifies one in Pudahuel, Chile. It examines the process through which the public-private agreements and a strategic agenda were organized to develop urban and social policies in Pudahuel commune through local actors between 1994 and 2010. Given the lack of decentralized planning in Chile and taking advantage of a change in the balance of power in Pudahuel, local actors imagined and produced environmental and social policies based on their local reality. And concluded the process with a local masterplan, mainly financed by the private sector. The process develops a model of urbanization through compensation. However, this does not guarantee full citizen participation, effective alternatives to segregation nor balanced development. The analysis also serves as an indicator of how effective the central government is in directing the urban economy. The Pudahuel regime was eventually used as a model for national urban programs; both reductionist models of the initial meaning of producing urban policies through compensation that consider local environmental conflicts.
Introduction \n \nWhile the continuous flow of events – within the complexity and dynamic systems theory – seems to be a given, we still cannot tell the exact nature of future events, prior to their emergence. This research aims to establish a code for the city as a semantic system that models cities and monitors their sociospatial metabolism. In setting the general schema for its ontology, the research disregards the difference between the observable and the nonobservable as well as the anthropocentrism this distinction implies (DeLanda 2013). In this context the city is composed of both the actual and the virtual, the “city as is” and the “city as it could be”, respectively. As they both inform and enhance the city’s identity, its production is to be explained through a process ontology format without the need for a designing author. \n \nSuch an autopoietic system Humberto Matura and Fransisco Varela classified as a ‘machine’ which is ‘organized as a network of processes of production of components, continuously realizing the network of processes that produced them’ (Maturana and Varela 1980) thus able to process information over time. As this information is both actual and virtual, the concept of a code is introduced as a mediator mechanism. The material agency of this productive process, key to Deleuzian ontology, is described as a bifold process which constantly informs itself, including a “convergent phase of selection” and a “divergent phase of design” (Spuybroek 2008: 189). \n \nFor the convergence phase – one to inhabit the virtual domain – a code of Design Patterns (Passia, 2016) is organized by gathering information that is relevant and providing its topological structure, one that concentrates on the relations instead of the components. A movement towards quality, order and organization. In the divergent phase – one to inhabit the actual domain – an affective mechanisms’ index (Roupas, 2016) is organized to guide the actualization as the code germinates and transforms into actual spatial structures with geometric and qualitative properties. (Spuybroek 2008: 189) A movement towards quantity, matter and structure. \n \nConvergent phase: the code’s organization \n \nTo propose a framework for the code’s organization, we introduce Christopher Alexander’s (Alexander et all. 1977) 253 Design Patterns as the code’s elementary units. Each Design Pattern is a diagram that describes form through a set of rules or criteria, expressing a relation amongst a particular context, a particular system of forces that is repeated within the context, and a spatial configuration that allows these forces to balance. Design Patterns’ internal structure, already quite fluid and dynamic, is essential for the code to simulate two important processes: the process of representation – that is to gather and store information about the city – and the process of self-organization – that is to develop organized structure and adapt it to cope with the changing fields of information (Cilliers 1998). \n \nIn that respect, Design Patterns are introduced onto a surface in space as assemblages pointing to modes of information transmission (Wilden 2011: 220). On that surface they are free to assemble and reassemble anew, as they use their ability to communicate at different spaces, levels and scales. Through a two part population-thinking process their regularities and tendencies are documented and protocols of interconnected networks of communication are established. (image 01) These two parts of the populationthinking process agree with Henri Bergson’s distinction between difference in kind and difference in degree (Bergson 2014: 23). Mapping their difference in kind describes the city’s dimensions as Design Patterns’ assemblages while mapping their difference in degree defines its dimensional gradients as degrees of Design Patterns. \n \nAs Design Patterns start populating this autonomous surface, the manifold gets activated and energized. At the end of the first part of the process, the manifold will have four spaces of possibilities pointing them as the city’s four dimensions, each inhabited by specific Design Patterns: \n \ninteriority vs. exteriority \nintegration vs. separation \nconcentration vs. decentralization \nsimilarity vs. heterogeneity \n \nAfter the second part, each dimensional space will be organized according to four varying degrees of intensity called dimensional types, where the same Design Patterns will be employed to produce the full array of all degrees. (image 02) \n \nThrough this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city’s code: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elementary units, themselves consisting of degrees of intensity (Passia, 2016). \n \nDivergent phase: the code’s structure \n \nEntering the divergent phase and while the code maintains in full its topological organization, it transforms its structure to become formative by replacing its elementary units. To allow for the material structures to remain open and thus able to create variations of oneself, an affective mechanisms’ index is created, a map of the affective capacity of spatial objects at different scales, from design objects to buildings and urban configurations. Those spatial structures are theorized as assemblages, that is systems composed of interacting parts. And since all assemblages are parts of larger assemblages, their components’ ability to engage is contingent. (Meillassoux 2012:10) \n \nIn order to analyze and produce spatial assemblages of that kind, we point to their more stable characteristic: which is their ability to affect and to be affected. (Deleuze & Guattari 1987:xvi) In mapping the assemblages’ affective ability, spatial objects are analyzed in two axes. (Delanda 2006: 13) The first axis focuses on the relations that the assemblage’s material and expressive components develop in order to enter the assemblages. The second axis records the processes known as A-signifying signs or A-signs, (Guattari 1995: 54) which are the triggering mechanisms able to stabilize or destabilize the assemblage and thus allow its parts to assemble anew. These mechanisms are introduced as intensities that transform the object beyond meaning, beyond fixed or known cognitive procedures. They belong to a molecular level which is populated by modulations, movements, speeds, rhythms and spasms. (Lazzarato & Melitopoulos 2012: 240) As a-signs cannot be isolated from matter, we thus point to affects as the result of the a-signs’ capacity to trigger the selection of one action possibility – affordance – among many. \n \nTo that end, approximately 100 a-signs have been mapped via the analysis of numerous contemporary spatial objects of various scales, including works of art and installations. In that respect an affective mechanisms’ index is created (image 03), one where all the a-signs are listed as an index of techniques that could enhance the affective capacity of the final design object. Each a-sign is now connected with the list of affects it triggers and which thoroughly defines it. And vice versa, as the same affect can be triggered by different a-signs, the design object is allowed to lie in a perpetual state of becoming. Through the affective mechanisms index we are now able to analyze and direct the design objects’s final form while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation. \n \nTo define spatial objects, A-signs are categorized in terms of their aesthetic power to affect and to be affected and are placed onto the respective dimensional areas of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation. On the basis of the general categories of form, structure and surface, different part’s degree of contingency are evaluated and measured. (image 03) By replacing Design Patterns with A-signs we introduce affects as material information that is immanent in the spatial object while at the same time they confer no meaning; they only convey some information without semantic content. The affects’ ability to merge with the material world without mediation allows them to avoid the realm of representation. With this codification we are able to control the final form of the design object while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation. \n \nConclusions \n \nHaving the same code with different components – Design Patterns and A-signs – we are able to construct a machine that connects the convergent phase of selection with the divergent phase of design. Through this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elements, themselves consisting of degrees of factors. At the same time, through the a-signs we have actively connected the convergent and divergent phase. In the code we organize for the city, the elements and the relationships exist in the same continuum thus effectively bridging the gap between the actual and the virtual city. The code we have organized for the city resembles Deleuze’s abstract machine : ‘a map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, or intensity, which proceeds by primary non-localizable relations and at every moment passes through every point, ‘or rather in every relation from one point to another’
The economic empowerment of urban local bodies is essential for the effective delivery of urban development programmes. These institutions are to be provided adequate financial resources to carry out various development activities in the cities. They are to be empowered to raise tax and collect fees from their municipal areas and also get due share of the grant-in-aid from the central and provincial governments in time. The financial aspects of intergovernmental relations veritably influence the nature, scope, and depth of democratic decentralization. Urban finances are critical elements in sustainable urban development. Moreover, effective and efficient urban financial management system will go a long way to improve the financial health of the local bodies. It would enhance their economic competitiveness; make the delivery of urban services effective; expand and diversify their revenue; and generate fund through capital investments. Thus, municipal finance is one of the most important areas of the urban development system. Smart urban finance is the key requirement without which the quality of life of people in urban areas cannot be effectively improved.
Redemocratization in the Southern Cone has contended with a fiscally weakened state and ideologically divided groups. Years of free-market military rule have scaled back the welfare state and deteriorated public health care. Draconian cutbacks in public spending have forced private voluntary organizations (PVOs) to provide care for the urban poor. Shantytown health care and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have surfaced to fill the gap created by a shrinking public sector under military rule in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. This paper overcomes some shortcomings of Weberian and Marxian analyses of bureaucratic behavior and empowered social groups through the study of shantytown health care as a new social movement. A comparative review of medical-care policy in Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Montevideo reveals that only Santiago and Montevideo hold promise for decentralization. Neighborhood-based activities in shantytowns remove primary care from the marketplace by decommodifying it. Success of shantytown health care under democratic rule depends on its ability to remain autonomous. In doing so, it would avoid cooptation by political parties and the stigmatized public health system.
espanolDiversos estudios, ensayos, discursos, trabajos, etc., sobre la «ciudad hispanoamericana», concuerdan que la fundacion de ciudades en America represento algo asi como la implantacion de una forma de vida civilizada en los pueblos nativos indigenas, convirtiendose dicho acontecimiento en una de las aportaciones culturales del viejo al nuevo continente. Este criterio, que sostienen en la actualidad algunos sectores del pensamiento iberoamericano, plantea algunos interrogantes: ?Ha sido verificado este criterio en la realidad geografica del vasto territorio americano con el detenimiento indispensable para llegar a conclusiones ciertas? ?Responde este criterio a la realidad de los conocimientos alcanzados por las civilizaciones prehispanas y en particular la civilizacion andina representada en su ultima fase de evolucion autarquica por la cultura inca? ?Tenia dicha cultura una forma de organizacion territorial? Este articulo intenta desde nuestra propia experiencia ofrecer respuestas partiendo del analisis de un caso particular, Ias ciudades hispanoandinas del Ecuador. EnglishA host of studies, papers, speeches, theses and what you will on-The Spanish-American City» seem to agree that the founding of these answered something akin to a wish to set up forms of civilized life amongst the native population and that thus these represent a cultural gift of the Old to the New World. Though this idea has been taken up by certain sectors of Ibero-American thinking of Iate, one or two doubts as to its validity could still be raised, or so the paper claims. Has it in fact ever been put to the proof in terms of the immensity of the americas in such a way that such an examination could offer some hard and fast conclusions, we are asked? Does it answer to that stake of affairs that our knowledge of pre-hispanic civilizations allows us now to understand? this mos especially when considering the andine culture as then bodied forth in the last flowering of Inca cultures evolution in autarchy. Was this culture orgainized in a territorial way? The paper, based as it is on the author's own experience, offers answers to these questions that take the Hispano-Andine cities of Equador as their touch stones.