Adaptive Publics: Building Climate Constituencies in Bogotá

Abstract

This essay foregrounds the political constituencies assembling around the problem of climate change in cities. Recent experiments in urban climate governance in Bogotá, Colombia, are shown to challenge liberal democratic notions of the “public” by linking a redistributive economic agenda to the technical project of adaptation. An analysis of interventions aimed at building social infrastructure throughout the city’s hydrological systems reveals how the inclusion of the urban poor is enacted through practices of measurement. While urban politics in Latin America has long revolved around popular demands to be counted, climate change adaptation is the most recent idiom in which claims to recognition-through-enumeration are being articulated.

Queering as (un)knowing: Ambiguities of sociality and infrastructure

“…Barry 2001; Hecht 2011; Von Schnitzler 2016), infrastructure functions at both techno-political and emotive levels – it shapes the subject’s life at a material level, as well as provides a semiotic framework for the subject to make sense of her personal experience and social position (Lesutis 2022b). The abstract discourse of rights to citizenship, devoid of these relations, therefore, might create epistemological obscurity, particularly in the postcolony whose histories cannot be comprehended through liberal conceptualisations of state-society relations (Zeiderman 2016).…”

"Low-Income Housing Backlogs and Deficits “Blues” in South Africa. What Solutions Can a Lean Construction Approach Proffer? "

“…It is based on adapting, adopting and deploying the Toyota Production System (TPS) in the project management of housing building and construction projects (Antunes and Gonzalez, 2015). LC and manufacturing describe the application of TPS concept focused on identifying and eliminating waste and facilitating continuous product improvement for either processes or products (Womack et al, 1990;Suh et al, 2015;Rane et al, 2016). In any case, "Lean Thinking" is linked to "lean thinking principles", namely building and construction norms and standards (i.e.…”

“…Considering the preceding discussion, there is little wonder that in fact, by 2010, the Minister of Human Settlements expressed concern with respect to the fact that the "number of informal settlements has increased to more than 2,700, containing a total of approximately 1.2 million households in 2010" (National Department of Human Settlements, 2010). LC presents an opportunity to address housing deficits and backlogs as it improves the rate of turnover in delivering housing units, adopting housing technology and construction methods that reduce land needs, construction assembly processes and workflow constraints and waste (Womack et al, 1990;Koskela, 1992;Smith, 2014;Lee et al, 2017).…”

Territory, sustainability, and beyond: Latin American urbanization through a political ecology

“…This understanding would enable the promotion of proper democratic participation in social relations between people and between people and the environment. While urban politics in the LAC region has long been related to social justice, it is equally important to document how it is being articulated through environmental imperatives such as climate change (Zeiderman, 2016a(Zeiderman, , 2016b. Therefore, the notion of territory is an opportunity to re-frame concepts such as the people's rights to the city (Lefebvre, 1968cited in Harvey, 2012, which is a concept grounded in ongoing social uprisings elsewhere in the region set against processes of accumulation and dispossession of biodiversity, water, urban space, and housing, among other things.…”