What’s behind urban interventions? Historical elements to unveil urbanistic rationalities in Chile

Abstract

The paper proposes the notion of Urbanistic Rationalities in order to identify contextual, theoretical and practical elements behind urban interventions during the XX and beginning of XXI centuries in Chile. Based on bibliographic revision of specialised literature, the paper identifies the concrete rationalities that have been hegemonic, providing background details of the context where they emerge, their theoretical references, main concepts and images of the city, emblematic projects tools and public housing characteristics, as well as the actors operating in each rationality. The paper concludes signaling that their differences are based on the relation between the economy and urban production, which changes along with the patterns of capitalist accumulation along the period of time, from a pattern centered in the internal consumption to one where the dity is seen as source of continuous absorption of surplus capital. Likewise, a process of increased technification is highlighted as well as the consolidation of the practice of territorial transformation as an exercise that depoliticises the debate on cities, distancing the practice of urbanism from that of concrete and situated dwelling hence from the specificities of local and urban experience.