2004 Bridges Summer Research Report Enrique R. Silva City and Regional Planning "The Model Highway: Chilean Neoliberalism, Capital City Planning and the Making of Santiago’s Costanera Norte"

In a recent series titled “Latin American Cities: Portraits of a Region Struggling with Economic Woes, Corruption,” National Public Radio’s program Weekend Edition cheered that “Santiago, the capital of Chile, is the envy of Latin America. The U.S.-inspired formula of privatization and free markets worked much better there than elsewhere on the continent, and Santiago is now seen as the most “first-world” capital in the region.” This image is only reinforced by characterizations of Chile as the odd, but virtuous, man out in Latin America. The New York Times of late portrayed Chile as the lonely, “rich kid on the block…the hypercapitalist state at a time when [its neighbors] are all moving leftward questioning free trade and open markets...”

In both the media and academia, these are relatively common narratives about contemporary Santiago and Chile. By virtue of its successful adaptation of a “foreign” model of market-led development, the country seems to have broken from its traditional Third World country status and its capital city moved up, apparently, in the hierarchy of world cities. The metanarrative here is that there appears to be a straightforward recipe for success and improving urban fortunes. This is both an empirically and theoretically problematic characterization of cities and development trajectories.

Empirically, if Santiago has reached first world capital status, it might be at best restricted to a fraction of both the population and the urban agglomeration. Theoretically, value-laden categorical ascriptions of “first” and “third” world cities, or global/mega cities, are limiting in two crucial ways: they circumscribe our knowledge of cities to the experiences of a few extreme or paradigmatic cities like New York or Lagos; and they perpetuate teleological or binary views of development. The discursive effect of “new first world capital,” for example, might well serve to negate Santiago’s history as the center of a dependent national economy; it also glosses over the process through which neoliberal policies were managed at the urban scale and by whom. Moreover, it assumes that the dissemination of development ideologies is unidirectional.

Within this context, I have embarked on a doctoral dissertation in City and Regional Planning that looks at Chile’s contemporary development trajectory through the lens of capital city planning, or what I see as state and social practices that mediate the relationship between the development of primate cities and that of the nation. I took advantage of the Bridges Summer Field Research Travel Grant to initiate my doctoral dissertation field work in Santiago, where I am analyzing, more specifically, the public planning of a private highway that runs through the heart of the capital, and the ways in which transportation infrastructure spatializes political relations and agendas.

Planned and promoted by the Chilean state as part of its agenda to modernize the country and make it globally competitive, Santiago’s Costanera Norte (CN) highway is being built and financed by the private sector with the latest construction and toll technologies. The 39Km (24 miles) public-private CN venture that cuts through eleven urbanized municipalities is the model highway of the model neoliberal Latin nation. The project seems to follow a basic bundle of neoliberal prescriptions: it theoretically frees up the infrastructure market and reduces the public deficit; it restores the “right to manage” projects and development to the private sector; and it asserts individualized opportunity rights over social entitlements by facilitating automobile use over mass transportation. Furthermore, proponents of the highway note that it is being built in record time, and the concession system that underwrites it is one of the World’s more effective state-run privatization schemes.

But, the CN’s sponsorship by the MOP appears to continue a long tradition of bureaucratic state intervention in urban infrastructure planning that arguably has contributed to Santiago’s uneven distribution of services and amenities, as well as socioeconomic spatial segregation. The CN also resurrects part of a 1960s master transportation plan for Santiago, and might well represent an outmoded way to improve urban mobility and thus jeopardize regional competitiveness. Moreover, it perhaps benefits the elite since it primarily connects wealthy enclaves in eastern Santiago with key sites of production and consumption to the west of the metropolitan region. Finally, it has never enjoyed political consensus within government or among the public.

Among the more striking aspects of the CN planning process has been the unprecedented levels of public opposition to the highway, and the ways in which it seems to be transforming forms of state contestation. This political contestation qua highway opposition is perplexing because of the variation within the substantive, class, temporal and spatial dimensions of the contestations. During the highway’s planning and bidding stages, residents with different income, generational, and political backgrounds from three central municipalities launched a grassroots campaign, Coordinadora No a la Costanera Norte (The No to the Costanera Norte Coalition). The campaign sought to stop the highway on environmental and democratic principles. On the one hand, the Coordinadora argued that the CN would ruin Santiago’s already precarious environment; it also challenged the very need for a highway to improve mobility. On the other hand, the MOP’s technocratic and secretive planning process was held up as a blatant contradiction of the government’s commitment to democratize the country’s political and decision-making processes.

A second form of contestation has emerged in the wealthier and politically conservative eastern suburbs affected by the CN. Small neighbourhood-scale groups formed around quality of life issues associated with the construction process and the design of key highway intersections. Their contestation of the state’s planning process, however, seems to have been motivated more by specific political animosities than by complaints around the planning process per se, thereby turning the highway project into a new platform for political feuds.

I was in Santiago for the last half of August 2004 thanks to the Bridges Grant. During this period, I was able to observe the final phases of construction for the Costanera Norte, the government publicity and media coverage around the soon to be inaugurated electronic toll system for Santiago’s urban highway system and, perhaps more importantly, how within the span of one year since my last field visit there was a true “boom” in public-private highway and transportation infrastructure projects. This “boom” has interesting implications on the scope and tenor of my original dissertation proposal. I also collected key public documents and policy papers that provide the formal framework for the Chilean government’s privatization of public infrastructure programs, its transportation and development plans for the Greater Santiago Region and its policies to engage and promote citizen participation in urban planning and development. The compilation of documents and observations were also complemented by a set of interviews with state bureaucrats and neighborhood activists. Together, all of these activities are helping me organize a more extensive and detailed research strategy for 2004-05, the year in which I hope to conduct the bulk of my dissertation fieldwork via periodic and strategic visits to Santiago.

My last visit to Santiago was in August 2003. At that time the subjects of urban highways and the privatization of infrastructure projects were circumscribed to relatively positive reactions over a handful of inter-city toll highway projects that had been recently inaugurated, the launching of a revamped and glossy master plan for public transportation (TranSantiago), the extension of the Metro system and the buzz over the construction of the Costanera Norte. In a city jaded by over fifteen years of an unprecedented building boom that brought with it the demolition and reconfiguration of entire neighborhoods, traffic congestion and the heavy and ubiquitous sounds of jack hammers, it was still difficult to ignore and not contemplate the Costanera Norte as it cut through the center of the metropolitan region and pushed the Mapocho river off to one side to make way for high-speed traffic lanes.

For those awaiting a swift response to Santiago’s traffic problems, the construction sight was perceived as effective and impressive planning, the arrival of state-of-the-art construction technology, and one step closer to “modernization.” For those who were aware of the neighborhood opposition to the project, the highway meant at least two things: 1. the government’s fundamental commitment to a program of infrastructure privatization could not be shaken by organized citizen protests; yet, 2. these same protests seemed to be affecting the way in which both the government and the private developers rolled out infrastructure projects in the city.

Confirmed by this year’s visit, this last point meant specifically that the government has made its plans and development contracts more accessible to the public, and it has further institutionalized a citizen outreach program for public infrastructure projects across the country. The private sector, on the other hand, has incorporated design and project changes to mitigate impacts on neighborhoods, especially along the CN route. Additional research is needed, however, to assess the extent to which private developers change project plans to avoid construction delays associated with neighborhood opposition.

With regard to the government, its changes seem to have made the concessions program and state planning processes more transparent, but the extent to which this may improve government accountability and responsiveness remains to be seen. A recent meeting between neighborhood residents, municipal authorities and the MOP around a proposed tunnel and highway through the city’s Metropolitan Park indicates little change in the realm of government responsiveness. According to an interviewee, this meeting ended in the Ministry’s acknowledgement of the citizens’ and municipal objections, and an invitation to future audiences with members of the Ministry. Nevertheless, the Ministry still declared that the project would proceed as planned. The underlying message seems to have been that the highway projects will move ahead because they serve a greater good.

An interview, however, with an MOP official responsible for promoting government policies on citizen participation and promotion of sustainable development within the Ministry, underscored how difficult it is to institutionalize a participatory planning process within the state bureaucracy. Certain of the current government administration’s commitment to the democratization of Chile’s policymaking process, this official argued nonetheless that the pressure felt by the government to promote national economic development, especially via infrastructure upgrades, undermines a more systematic and forceful approach to reforming authoritarian and technocratic bureaucratic practices. Cognizant of the lack of resources and priority given to participatory planning programs, especially in relation to the privatization programs, the MOP official suggested that a little work and attention to participation is better than none at all.

What I also found this year was less attention on the CN and debates on the need for highways, but a lot of government and public anticipation over the promise of an imminent modern highway and toll system. As some interviewees commented: “The CN is here, what’s there to do about it now?” The CN has become effectively one of at least four other highways under construction to the West, North, and South of the Santiago Metropolitan Region — part of the MOP’s plan to create a privately managed, “free-flowing” high-speed road system within Santiago that is accessed only by commuter-consumers who have bought an electronic toll transponder.

Today, the mainstream buzz is less around the new highways per se than around the way the MOP and the concessionaires have handled the distribution of the transponders for the automatic toll system. The system was supposed to be inaugurated on 1 September on one stretch of the privatized North-South Highway, but not enough people bought the device and not all of the highway improvements were complete. Fearing a huge backlash of disgruntled consumers, the MOP decided to postpone the inauguration until December. The ensuing problem was less the delay than the fact that the government would likely have to pay the concessionaire for the three months that the system would not be in operation as stipulated in the concession contract and terms of agreement. Within this context, many people seem to be getting — just now — a sense of what road privatization means and that it is not only going to be costly for the MOP, but also for them. The President, however, called the delay a big joke compared to the savings Chileans will have once the entire highway system is up and running. In addition, people are wondering why they will have to pay tolls for using highways that were already built by the state and paid for via taxes years ago, as is the case with the North-South Highway and a branch of the Costanera Norte.

Although all of these highway projects existed on paper and they were largely bid out to private developers a few years ago, I was left wondering whether this highway “boom” could have been rolled out and validated without the prior insertion of the CN on the Santiago landscape. Within a year’s time, the CN seems to have gone from government flagship project and citizen bête noire to just one part of a bigger transportation system promoted enthusiastically by the government, constructed feverishly and efficiently by private development consortia and accepted grudgingly by those Santiagüinos who objected to the government’s vision of urban development.

This shift in attention from one highway to a system of highways and from opposition to apparent acquiescence underscores the complexities of the urban planning process and socio-political relations in Chile. The boldness of the MOP’s development vision and the ability to implement it with the private sector in a relatively short time-span suggests a systematic approach to planning and policy implementation that might well be unprecedented in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America. This, despite a laundry list of daily anecdotes about mismanagement and improvisation on the part of both the government and private developers. Indeed, although the urban highways are not up and running, the MOP’s road concession program and planning model are already held up as a preferred and efficient development model that should be applied to other public sectors. During my visit, the Ministry of Health announced that it was going to move ahead with the privatization of state hospital renovations and construction and begin the process with the help of the MOP’s Concessions Directorate. Although these concessions will not hand over management of health services to the private sector as initially stipulated by the government, they will provide the developers with exclusive rights to real estate development on public property and the right to manage and charge for nonhealth services on hospital premises.

Politically and socially, the MOP’s planning capacity has to be understood not only in technical terms, but also in political and relational ones. How exactly are diffuse urban conflicts managed? In reaction to citizen protests and the impacts these had on the execution of its projects, the MOP has developed a series of manuals to promote participatory planning for all of its projects. Nonetheless, as mentioned earlier in this narrative, judging the effectiveness and substance of these efforts is complex. In the face of the MOP and private sector’s apparent planning powers, what and where are the voices of dissent and alternate visions of the city? For one, albeit extreme case, the group Coordinadora No a la Costanera Norte has transformed itself into a nongovernmental organization called Ciudad Viva (Living City) that has broadened its focus from the highway project to sustainable urban development advocacy. Members of the Pedro de Valdivia Norte neighborhood have shifted their attention from the CN to the proposed tunnels and highway spur that will cut through one edge of their neighborhood, demanding that the path of the highway avoid breaking the urban fabric of the residential neighborhood. More time in the field will be needed to assess other citizen reactions to the MOP’s projects across Santiago.

I will return to Santiago this November to participate in the Architecture Biennial, which has “Urban Reforms” as its central theme. This will be an opportunity to meet with and listen to the universe of public officials, professionals, academics and residents involved in the day to day negotiations on Santiago and Chile’s urban future. In this regard, what was made more apparent during my visit to Santiago is that the concessions program is not simply about efficient project implementation and purportedly sound fiscal policy on the part of the state. It is also about opening new spaces for real estate speculation, land development and construction-driven employment generation in a country where high unemployment rates are pivotal electoral issues. Together, all of these issues raise multiple demands for an evaluation of Santiago’s development pattern and how the public sector is implicated in sustaining or curbing it.

Finally, I will also use my November visit to follow through with more interviews of neighborhood activists and groups advocating alternate visions of urban development. In the meantime, I will be analyzing the government’s contracts and terms of agreements with the consortia that are building the major highways in Santiago. I will also continue to trace the history of the MOP’s concession program and its evolution over the past decade as more and more projects have been executed under this mode of development.