Urban Fragility and Resilience in Latin America: Conceptual Approaches and Contemporary Patterns

Koonings, Kees; Kruijt, Dirk

doi:10.5040/9781350223820.ch-001

Cited by 12 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…On the other, the latter may try to deny its responsibility by declaring the individual the sole architect of their future. Koonings and Kruijt (2015) have made similar observations for resilience-focused reforms.…”

Section: The Preventive Turn and The Making Of Secure Cities In Guate...supporting

confidence: 62%

Assembling prevention: Technology, expertise and control in postwar Guatemala

Hochmüller

2023

Security Dialogue

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This article examines the technopolitics of prevention in postwar Guatemala. In the 2010s, experts and policymakers shifted security governance in Central America’s most populous country towards anticipation. Against the background of rising gang violence, they implemented a set of sociopolitical and techno-material measures – based on the latest crime-control technologies, new policing strategies and urban design methods – in Guatemala’s most violent municipalities. The stated goals were to reconstruct state sovereignty and to improve public security by strengthening community resilience and inducing positive behavioural change in ‘at-risk’ citizens. Zooming in on the case of Villa Nueva, the article examines the emergence and effects of Guatemala’s ‘prevention assemblage’. It demonstrates that this technopolitical project has failed, as prevention turned into a new layer of control that shifted responsibility to local communities, further securitized urban spaces and populations, and reproduced exclusionary and repressive security governance.

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Section: The Preventive Turn and The Making Of Secure Cities In Guate...supporting

confidence: 62%

Assembling prevention: Technology, expertise and control in postwar Guatemala

Hochmüller

2023

Security Dialogue

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“…Nevertheless, the social spatialization of Bogotá and Medellín has typically manifested itself in the identification of marginalised neighbourhoods in each city as being inherently violent, and Ciudad Bolívar and Comuna 13 hold a mythic status as notorious sites of violence. Geographies of urban space, as often emphasised in Latin American cities, are significant markers of their fragmentations and divisions; rapid urbanisation, displacement, and vast inequalities have led to exclusionary cities, defined by inequality, informality and violence (Koonings and Kruijt 2007, 2009). Alongside material and social forms of marginality, the symbolic dimension means that these neighbourhoods have traditionally figured in urban imaginaries as ‘territories of fear’ (‘ territorios del miedo ’).…”

Section: De-stigmatising Ciudad Bolívar and Comuna 13mentioning

confidence: 99%

Violence against a backdrop of colours? Ethnographic insights into tensions between urban transformation and ongoing violence in marginalised neighbourhoods

Griffin

Young

2023

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Since the early 2000s, the two largest cities in Colombia have been lauded as success stories of urban transformation. However, there is a tension between urban transformation narratives disseminated in international media and political discourse, and the realities of ongoing violence and insecurity. Drawing on ethnographic research following creative arts projects, this article offers empirical detail on how people negotiate this tension in marginalised urban neighbourhoods, which are often the most affected by overlapping forms of violence while being key sites of transformation policies. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation in Bogotá and Medellín, we show the complexities of how grassroots creative projects both mobilise transformation politics and negotiate violence in everyday life. By focusing on the local scale, we consider both the important gains that have been made since urban transformation became a key tenet of local government policy, particularly around challenging stigma, and the challenges that local populations continue to face. Ultimately, we argue that the experiences of the creative organisations we speak to reflect the need to negotiate ongoing structural violence and fluctuating support from the state. In contrast to depoliticised transformation narratives, this has implications for understanding the state’s role in the reproduction of violence in everyday life and appreciating the limitations of aesthetic transformation in marginalised urban communities.

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“…Scholars have provided a multitude of analyses of violence and resilience in the region's major and secondary cities (e.g., Durán Martínez 2017; Koonings & Kruijt 2015). The growing urban spaces located at the geographical margins of the nation-state, however, have only recently started to receive scholarly attention.…”

Section: The Literature: Transnational Flows and The Urban Condition ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Insecurity, Contested Governance, and Civic Resistance at the Colombia-Venezuela Border

Hochmüller

2022

Journal of Illicit Economies and Development

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Urban Fragility and Resilience in Latin America: Conceptual Approaches and Contemporary Patterns

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Assembling prevention: Technology, expertise and control in postwar Guatemala

Assembling prevention: Technology, expertise and control in postwar Guatemala

Violence against a backdrop of colours? Ethnographic insights into tensions between urban transformation and ongoing violence in marginalised neighbourhoods

Urban Insecurity, Contested Governance, and Civic Resistance at the Colombia-Venezuela Border

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