The Dilemmas of Equity Planning in the Global South: A Comparative View from Bangkok and Medellín

Abstract

This paper examines equity planning in the face of growing adversity in cities of the Global South. The literature broadly addresses this question from the perspective of empowered social movements and/or insurgent citizenship practice. The actual experience of how equity practitioners interface with grass-roots efforts, however, remains understudied. Using case study data from urban upgrading programs in Medellín and Bangkok, we show that equity planners can be effective advocates to marginalized communities as they become embedded in local systems of trust. The paper also evinces the limitations and dilemmas planners confront in two extremely complex institutional and political settings.

Keywords

International planning and development sociospatial justice housing global context of planning

Introduction

Income inequality and urban fragmentation are persistent problems across the Global South. While high-end privatized enclaves for affluent classes have become increasingly common across cities of Asia, Latin America, and more recently Africa (Dávila 2016), underserviced informal settlements, typically disconnected from key infrastructures, keep consolidating and expanding in many cities of these regions (Koonings and Kruijt 2007; Watson 2013). These and other planning challenges shape the daily struggles of the poor, including unsecure housing tenure, threats of eviction and displacement, and lack of access to neighborhood amenities, mobility, and infrastructure (UN-Habitat 2009). In response to these trends, a few cities are embracing urban policy discourses oriented to values of sociospatial justice. The 2014 UN-Habitat’s 7th World Urban Forum in Medellín exemplified this momentum, where local governments and practitioners concluded the event with a commitment “to integrate urban equity into the development agenda, employing all means and resources available” (UN-Habitat 2014 n.p.). This article examines the role of planners and government agencies concerned with the implementation of equity planning initiatives. In particular, we look at the similarities and variations of two localized experiences designed to secure housing tenure and neighborhood upgrading for marginalized communities within a politics of redistribution and recognition.

Although we are concerned with the progressive capacity of planning, our framework does not assume an inherent benevolence to the planning profession. In fact, we echo scholars who criticize definitions of planning that fail to acknowledge its dark side (Yiftachel 1998). Indeed, planning has a long history of engagements with despotic regimes and is associated with attempts at social engineering through the reordering of the built environment (Scott 1998; Li 2007; Kamete 2009; Escobar 2011). Planners have also been accused of being complicit with projects of gentrification and dispossession under the guise of renewal (Roy 2006). These views, however accurate, can dismiss planners too quickly as politically uncompromised subjects, leaving them with almost no tools to navigate the current challenges they confront. Precisely, then, we call for a research agenda that, in acknowledging that planning can have ambiguous concerns for the public interest(s), examines experiences that, against the odds, afford critical planners with genuine opportunities to implement equity-oriented initiatives for lessons that can be shared with practitioners across both North and South.

In addressing questions of sociospatial justice in the Global South, the international development planning literature often adopts the perspective of empowered social movements (Friedmann 2002; de Souza 2006; Mitlin and Satterthwaite 2013) and/or “insurgent” citizenship practice (Miraftab and Wills 2005; Holston 2009; Miraftab 2009; Sletto 2013). These critical approaches focus on the everyday formal and informal practices that disenfranchised groups enact to contest urban injustices as they engage with the state or reject its legitimacy to reclaim their rights. These planning experiences aim to ultimately disrupt and transform oppressive economic, social, cultural, or political dominance (Miraftab and Wills 2005; Butcher and Apsan Frediani 2014). Within these perspectives, however, less has been said about how informal planning practices interface with formal planning actors and agencies; or how planners’ critical subjectivities may be of help to create scenarios of resistance, recognition, and/or redistribution.

In our experience, practicing equity planners in the Global South are sometimes able to catalyze conditions for collective action, leverage on windows of opportunity to amplify grassroots efforts, and disrupt the status quo while working within state institutions. Somewhat at odds with the prevailing wisdom in the field of critical planning, our case studies illustrate that even in countries that represent two of the most extreme examples of complex economic, institutional, and political settings in the world, self-reflexive planners can build relationships with marginalized groups and identify opportunities to play out their politics that can result in tangible advances toward sociospatial justice.

This article builds on the equity planning literature to address this gap while contributing to internationalize and decolonize equity planning traditions. Since the 1960s, the equity planning literature has focused on Western examples, often overlooking the diversity of institutional contexts where equity planning may be practiced. Equity planning scholarship is thus limited insofar as it takes for granted stable institutional and political contexts that are characteristic of a reduced number of Western democracies.

To overcome the present state of geographical bias in planning and urban studies, Roy (2009) recommends that researchers engage with new and unmapped “geographies of theory.” Similarly, Robinson (2011) calls for a “comparative gesture” in urban studies that could enable thinking across international experiences and beyond unitary geographical regions. Scholars embracing this perspective see the potential of cross-city comparisons to expose biased theoretical assumptions and to generate awareness of diversity and variation across cases, processes, and outcomes (Pickvance 1986; Robinson 2011). Other scholars invite comparisons that may ignite “a new planning imagination” by transcending obvious contextual discrepancies to identify “overlapping concerns, similar aspirations, and conventional principles, such as social justice” (Sanyal 2010, 330).

This article contributes to remap and reimagine equity planning by drawing on data from two cities that have recently implemented participatory planning programs through public agencies: Medellín (Colombia) and Bangkok (Thailand). While culturally dissimilar and geographically distant, Thailand and Colombia are compelling case studies. Both countries have growing economies and land markets that are disproportionately driven by private interests. And yet, both countries are internationally praised for their community engagement and slum-upgrading efforts. The planning agencies studied are similar in that they seek to improve the housing of the urban poor and to integrate informal neighborhoods into the urban fabric. We argue that one reason planners working in these agencies are able to promote the rights of marginalized groups is because of their mandate within special-purpose bodies. The positive potential of such entities has not received enough attention from academic planners, which is why we have chosen to focus on our two case studies.

There are important differences as well between the two examples. While the Bangkok case is a local rendition of a national participatory housing strategy, Medellín’s experience is the result of municipally developed policies which gives local communities more voice and enables accountability. The differences between the two cases enable us to illuminate and contrast planners’ strategies, dilemmas, and limitations in promoting access to housing and neighborhood amenities in contexts where democracy is partial, limited, or suppressed. In Colombia, equity planners may employ exceptionality measures to deliver social justice where the overarching planning system fails to do so. In Thailand, equity planners are more constrained by politics and rely on supporting communities’ collective action initiatives to gain housing tenure and improve access to public infrastructure in a problematic institutional landscape. Crucially, equity planners in both countries are in permanent contact with marginalized groups and are often useful advocates to communities as they become embedded in local networks.

This article is organized as follows: First, we contextualize equity planning in the global South. Next, we describe our methods as well as the marginalized communities and the planning system in Bangkok and Medellín. In the subsequent section, we compare and contrast the approaches and operational principles and priorities of the two agencies and examine the role that planners play in the agencies, CODI (Community Organizations Development Institute) and EDU (Urban Development Agency), that are the focus of our work. The case studies are followed by a brief discussion.

The Role of Equity Planners and Bottom–Up Planning in the Global South

In many cities of the Global South, lack of access to housing and basic services, environmental hazards, precarious livelihoods, and social exclusion delineate the lives of a large majority. Because states and institutions are often weak, and may lack the resources, capacity, or political will to expand public goods and rule of law to all citizens, access to basic services and housing for the urban poor often involves collective action, squatting, land invasions, and illegal subdivisions (Moser 2010). To protect gains achieved through informal urbanization, residents employ political strategies that have been characterized as silent encroachment (Bayat 2000; Sletto 2013), occupancy urbanism (Benjamin 2008), or everyday acts of resistance (Scott 1998). With time, these strategies transform shacks and precarious settlements into more consolidated built environments.

In the planning literature, inclusion of the “subaltern” groups into planning has received a great deal of emphasis both in the North and South (Beard 2003; Miraftab and Wills 2005; Sweet and Chakars 2010; Butcher and Apsan Frediani 2014). In particular, North Americans writing about the Global South have identified and applauded the counter-hegemonic practices pursued by marginalized segments of the population. Holston’s (2008) examinations of “insurgent citizenship” practices, for example, highlight the reclamation of rights that result from ordinary dwellers’ struggles for citizenship in peripheral urban Brazil. However, this scholarship suggests that bureaucrats only rarely play a marginal role in transformational efforts. Cases that explore more nuanced scenarios and wider constellations of actors with less predictable interests and ideologies are by far less common. Most critical planning literature that focuses on cities of the Global South does not recognize the potential for agency and scope of planning practitioners in these more complex environments.

Our case studies suggest that commitment to advance transformational goals can also be found at higher scales of political leverage beyond the grassroots level. There is evidence that these opportunities can arise from a variety of circumstances, including exceptional political occurrences in the context of progressive governments (Fung and Wright 2003; Baiocchi and Checa 2009); as outcomes of the heterogeneity of forces across state and society that shape state structures (Tendler 1997; Baiocchi, Heller, Silva, and Silva 2011), which can create conditions of “embedded autonomy” (Evans 1995); or as a product of planners’ own critical subjectivities (Healey 2010) and “self-reflexive praxis” (Rankin 2010), which may motivate planners in these contexts to mobilize progressive politics.

The equity planning literature provides some analytical and normative tools to explain the role of planners in the struggles of urban communities to reclaim their rights. Equity planning practice is broadly defined as “planning focused to improve the lives of the most distressed people of the city” (Krumholz and Forester 1990, 19). This perspective emphasizes that planners have concrete advantages at their disposal to strategically complement larger bottom-up struggles against systemic exclusions (Brooks 2002). For instance, “planners can use their access to elected officials . . . to shape decision making agendas. They can use their research and analysis to support particular projects or oppose them, to encourage or inform citizen action” (Krumholz and Forester 1990, 209). Similarly, the astute planner can stand up to the hidden agendas of powerful coalitions, and consider public-interest(s) with a long-term vision for change. In adverse political climates, planners can, as well, be agents of reflexive criticism and dissent within the state, a practice identified as “critical planning” (Marcuse 2009) that is inspired by right to the city approaches.

An important question is, how equity-oriented practitioners learn and enact socially progressive practices, and what motivates them in such pursuits. Harvey (2000) stresses the potential “insurgent agency” of the planner/architect, who is, “like everyone else, an embodied person. . . . He or she is also a bundle of emotions, desires, concerns, and fears all of which play out through social activities and actions (234)” (quoted in Pérez 2011). Such insurgent agency connects planners’ personal contextual experiences to the sphere of ethics and the political subject (Pérez 2011). Planners, then, “set their moral compass and do their intellectual probing in the flow of their work, as they work out what they notice, what to say and how to say it” (Healey 2010, 18). As we illustrate in our case studies, this moral calibration and self-reflection happens through everyday experiences and the relationships developed on the field (Sletto 2013).

In sum, the international development literature stresses the roles of collective action and bottom-up planning as the avenues through which marginalized communities gain access to housing and urban services in the informal settlements of low-income cities. However, little attention has been paid to cases where planners and planning agencies may have played crucial roles in mobilizing the state to advance the interests of such marginalized groups. We consider equity planning arguments to help fill in this gap. The equity planning approach provides an argument as per why and how planners may be motivated to become allies to local communities against exclusions. However, given its EuroAmerican orientation, the equity planning literature is seemingly restricted by assumptions about the institutional and political environments in which planners operate in a typical Western country. Equity planning practice can indeed emerge in a variety of contexts, many of which are often unaccounted for.

Methods

Our research design is based on a case study comparison that involved the analysis and synthesis of patterns, similarities, and differences across two urban policy programs. We selected our two cases because they share similar goals despite very different geographic, cultural, and institutional settings, providing rich examples of what reflexive planners can achieve in even the most problematic scenarios. Our knowledge of planning policy and practice in both cities has been acquired through years of in-depth research. The actual material we analyze to uncover the specific nuances of equity planning in both cities is drawn from qualitative methods. Data collection took place through one-on-one interviews, one to two hours long, conducted during fieldwork. Research participants included planners, policy makers, and community members in Medellín (2010–2014) and Bangkok (2010–2015). We also used secondary sources, including reports, policy memos, and scholarly and newspaper articles.

Fieldwork in Medellín took place as part of a doctoral dissertation research, while fieldwork in Bangkok was conducted as part of a larger project focused on the role of NGOs and planning institutions in the delivery of water services in Bangkok. Cases were first individually coded and analyzed and then examined comparatively according to categories of interest, similarities, and differences.

Medellín and Bangkok in Comparative Perspective

In this section, we present the experiences from two participatory slum improvement initiatives: the Baan Mankong Program (BMP) sponsored by CODI in Bangkok, and the Integrated Urban Projects (IUP), implemented by EDU in Medellín. Typical of many cities in the Global South, Bangkok and Medellín are divided across sociospatial lines where informality and agglomerations of urban poverty can be found in the peripheries, but also across these cities shaped as poverty pockets. Both initiatives aim to address the needs for housing and neighborhood upgrading in informal enclaves. At the core of both experiences are political decisions where there is a genuine goal of addressing the disadvantages of uneven urbanization and integrating informal neighborhoods lacking infrastructure into the urban fabric. However, while the BMP is a local version of a national strategy, Medellín’s IUPs are the result of local urban policy.

Colombia

Colombia has extremely high levels of income inequality, social polarization, and political conflict, and yet, has a growing economy and expansive participation in global markets. The country’s economic performance contrasts with the lack of opportunities for social mobility, a disjuncture that in the last seventy years has prolonged the existence of insurgent armed groups.¹ In November of 2016, after four years of peace talks, an important milestone was achieved when the Colombian Congress ratified a peace agreement between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of President Juan Manuel Santos (El Tiempo November 30, 2016). Notwithstanding Colombia still endures violence perpetrated by a range of state and nonstate violent groups, mostly in remote areas. In parallel, Colombian cities have had their own share of violence and criminality. In the 1980s and 1990s, Medellín became a central node of the global drugs trade, reaching appallingly high levels of violence (Thoumi 2002; Roldán 2003). Nonetheless, the city has advanced dramatically in violence reduction, with a 90 percent decrease in homicide rates in less than twenty-five years. Criminal networks are however still active. Violence reduction has been the result of peace agreements, effective security policies, and social investments on the one hand; on the other, they are also the outcome of pacts among rival criminal gangs and their adaptations to less lethal although equally pervasive technologies of violence, such as threats and forced displacement (Doyle 2016).

In the late 1980s and 1990s as a way out to the governance crisis, Colombia adopted a new Political Constitution (1991) and embraced Urban Land Reforms (1989 and 1997). The hopes of these reforms were to improve state legitimacy, democracy, and service delivery. Praised for their progressive spirit, these legal advances recognize the social and environmental functions of urban land, and mandate local governments to develop plans to explicitly serve the needs of the urban poor (Piedrahita and González 2010). In a sense, the 1991 Constitution and the urban reform legislation can be characterized as a new social contract that attempted to redemocratize state–society relations (Murillo and Gómez 2005).

Planning context in Medellín

In Colombia, mayors were elected for the first time by popular vote in 1988, and since then, mayors are required to present a detailed Municipal Development Plan (Plan de Desarrollo Municipal, or MDP) that reflects the promises mayors campaigned on. These plans tend to be highly detailed. As Medellín’s former Chief of Planning stresses, “MDPs are the result of years of institutional strengthening and are the backbone of Medellín’s recent urban transformations” (Carlos H. Jaramillo, interview, December 2, 2011). Once the plan and the budget are approved by City Council, the MDP enables mayors with the potential to effect what Dávila (2009) qualifies as considerable changes during their four years of tenure. Since the passage of Law 152 in 1994, municipalities are also required to formulate a Territorial Administration Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial or TAP) every twelve years, to which the mayor’s MDP and all instances of spatial planning must conform (Piedrahita and González 2010). The city’s Administrative Planning Department is the entity in charge of coordinating and overseeing the MDP’s implementation, developing a policy strategy, and verifying compliance with statutes in the TAP (Puerta 2011).

Because the TAP tends to be unrealistic in some of its long-term goals, particularly with regard to the realities of informal urbanization, many laws and policies have been impossible to enforce in informal settlements, which are usually located in areas designated as environmental conservation lands, “high-risk,” or not geologically apt for development. Thus, there are tensions between the norms in the TAP—which in some instances private developers and land speculators have learned how to capitalize on—and informal urbanization patterns (Sotomayor 2015b). Thus, thousands of residents living in informal areas lack access to basic infrastructure (Echeverri and Orsini 2010). Additionally, there are concerns for the degradation of key natural ecosystems in the peripheries of the city that have been rapidly and informally urbanized, and the risks of flooding, fire, or landslides to which residents of such settlements are exposed to (Hermelin 2013).

Medellín’s institutional innovation, so to speak, relies on the strengths and political autonomy of its decentralized agencies, particularly, of Medellín’s Public Utilities Company (Empresas Públicas de Medellín, EPM) and the Urban Development Agency (or EDU). EPM delivers water, sanitation, gas, and electricity. It provides 100 percent coverage in water and sewerage for all formal and regularized neighborhoods, and applies differentiated tariffs (Guerrero 2011). Historically, EPM functionaries have played active roles in housing regularization and basic services provision, as connection to EPM’s services constitutes the first step for a household to secure tenure (Furlong 2013). Most crucially, given its profitable commercial operations nationally and across Latin America, EPM’s annual surplus has become an important source of income for the municipality specifically earmarked for social investments. Between 2008 and 2011, EPM transferred surplus profits to the municipality for a total of US$1.4 billion for an average annual contribution of 21 percent of the city’s revenue. This represents US$167.80 per capita of investment, which is higher than national government investments per capita in the city through intergovernmental transfers (US$162) (MCV 2012).

The Urban Development Agency (or EDU) is a decentralized municipal agency that under the administration of mayor Sergio Fajardo (2004–2007), was given the task of designing, managing and implementing strategic slum upgrading projects. With this goal, planners at the EDU took responsibility for coordinating the provision of key infrastructure, such as schools, transit, public spaces, recreational spaces, and public works projects to reduce environmental risks, particularly landslides in high-risk zones (Puerta 2011). To accomplish these goals, planners faced many challenges.

Medellín’s informal urbanization is largely located in the peripheral hillsides of the valley where the city sits, particularly, toward the Northeastern area. Currently, Medellín’s TAP identifies that 25 percent of the city’s area, which corresponds to approximately 2,400 ha, is composed of informal settlements with high conditions of poverty and marginality. Among these, 900 ha are extremely precarious, requiring basic services and comprehensive improvements. The remaining 1500 ha are auto-constructed neighborhoods with a higher degree of consolidation that still lack basic infrastructure, public spaces and neighborhood amenities (Echeverri and Orsini 2010).

It is estimated that 1,800 households in the city’s mountain peripheries are at a high risk of environmental hazards, a vulnerability exacerbated by climate change. As the rains have increased, low-income families in unstable geological zones are susceptible to mudslides and flooding, and the city has increasingly invested in risk mitigation actions, with some level of success (Hermelin 2013; Coffey 2015). But perhaps the highest risk in these communities continues to be the lack of security, rule of law, access to the justice system, and observation of human rights. Youth gangs and violent actors have retained a widespread influence and hold territorial control in many areas, sometimes even in plain view of the police (Doyle 2016). Insecurity thus poses one of the biggest challenges to a local agenda of sociospatial justice (Sotomayor 2017).

Thailand

Thailand, a country of some sixty-six million people, has been governed since 1932 under a parliamentary government system that includes a very influential constitutional monarchy.² Thailand has experienced eleven “successful” military coups since 1932 and seven attempted coups. Almost invariably, the military steps aside and allows a transition back to democratic elections that are normally described as tainted or corrupted (Askew 2010).

The government of the country is quite centralized, with Bangkok, a city of some ten million people (if one includes the city proper as well as the five suburban provinces that compose the capital region). Since at least 2005, when a populist leader named Thaksin was re-elected as Prime Minister, the country has experienced violent partisan encounters, particularly in the largest cities and, mostly, in Bangkok. The most recent military coup occurred in May 2014 following the collapse of an unelected interim government.³ The violence experienced in the streets of Bangkok follows a well-established pattern in that the military sees itself as responsible for preserving the existing order. When demonstrators become too unruly or occupy a key site for too long a period, the military generally moves in with clubs, hoses, and eventually guns (Pitsuwan and Caballero-Anthony 2014).

Despite the frequent upheavals and resulting political confusion that reigns in some governmental offices of the country, the cities of Thailand, including Bangkok, continue to be planned and governed as the country’s economy grows and, even, flourishes. The country’s Town and Planning Act (TCPA) dates from 1975 while the first legal city planning document in the country was created for Bangkok in 1992. Rüland (1996) argues that the long delay in the master plan for Bangkok reflects the interests of the landed elites in preserving the utmost flexibility for real estate speculation. The city has developed in a very piecemeal and unregulated pattern, sprawling over some 3,000 square kilometers and is subject to limited environmental and legal standard. Since Thaksin’s election, however, Thailand has moved ahead with decentralization of authority to secondary cities as well as implemented several promising urban planning measures.

Planning context in Bangkok

As documented elsewhere (Berquist, Daniere, and Drummond 2014), planning in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) proceeds rapidly and with little control or guidance from the state. This is partially due to the myriad central and municipal departments charged with implementing various aspects of urban planning, particularly within the capital city. The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority (BMA), for example, has at least 6 different entities that deal with roads, sanitation, water treatment, community planning, and housing. None of these entities and their activities are visibly coordinated in terms of reporting, financing, timing, or relative decision-making power. Similarly, at the national level, various Ministries, those of the Interior, Natural Resources and Environment, Energy, Transport and Science and Technology, all contain Departments charged with various aspects of planning design and implementation in cities (Bowornwathana 2010). The degree of overlap between various departments and bureaus results in competition between agencies, confusion over decision-making authority and limited ability to guide infrastructure investment. Additionally, Thai politicians have been known to interfere and influence planning decisions, often as a result of documented corruption (Montesano 2010). At best, this pattern results in a planning system that is inequitable and fragmented, particularly for the most marginalized populations, which are often to be found living in “slums.”

In the past, this fragmentation has prevented communities from organizing across spatial divides; however, recently the widespread adaptation of technology including access to the Internet has facilitated interurban and national organization of informal communities around a number of planning issues. These include flood protection, regularization of tenure, neighborhood improvements, and civil action. In addition to slumdwellers’ organizations, other important stakeholders in the planning process of urban space include local politicians, planning staff in various agencies at both the municipal and national level, public entities that own undeveloped land, and private developers (who are often connected to the military in some fashion).

Most informal settlements in Bangkok are found on small plots of land sprinkled throughout the urban area.⁴ In a pattern that seems to be playing out politically on the streets, it is often the case that settlements are located immediately adjacent to various other land uses, including high-income residential developments. Many slums average fewer than two hundred houses per community and are characterized by insecure residential tenures as well as the poor quality of shelter and inadequate access to services (UN-HABITAT 2003).

Typically, settlements reach a very temporary understanding with the actual landowners regarding their presence or use of the land for the construction of their housing. In most cases, the owners of the land beneath informal communities are public entities, such as the State Railways of Thailand (SRT), Crown Property Bureau (CPB), the Port Authority of Thailand (PAT), or the Treasury Department. However, given the poor quality of the homes and pathways constructed within most informal communities, public agencies are reluctant to provide even basic infrastructure to slum households. Informal settlers are often extremely resourceful at finding ways to connect to the services of less “compromised” residences and often work out arrangements to gain access to water, public roads, and electricity at a very low, if not free, cost.

At the same time, because the BMR has urbanized so rapidly, the price of land has increased by more than 100 percent per year over the past ten years.⁵ This has rendered residents of informal settlements even more vulnerable as many of them reside in locations of great economic value. Fifty years of neglect has resulted in what Hunter (2011) describes as “a process of social and spatial ‘pocketisation’ by way of ‘slums’ dispersed within central areas and along Bangkok’s network of canals (3).” Thus, the majority of slums are found in almost hidden parts of the city; they are typically divided from one another and the rest of the urban fabric because of lack of physical and social connections between adjacent, yet very different, communities.

Social Urbanism and Equity Planning in Medellín

Social urbanism is a policy of public investment in the city’s low-income peripheries meant to build on community participation to improve access to urban infrastructure and social services in marginalized areas (Puerta 2011). It is associated with the programs of government of two politically independent mayors: Sergio Fajardo (2004–2007) and Alonso Salazar (2008–2011). While political leadership and a budgetary commitment from the Mayor’s Office opened a window of opportunity to enact social urbanism (Brand and Dávila 2011), Medellín’s equity planners played a crucial role at least in three areas: first, planners contributed to generating evidentiary material and public support for a redistributive planning agenda; second, planners leveraged their social capital and the knowledge acquired through previous experiences with slum-upgrading to conceptualize and advance equity planning practice in the city; and third, planners made important efforts to build genuine community relationships. Finally, our case illustrates the conflicts, risks, and shortcomings of the social urbanism approach.

Evidence-Based Equity Planning and Public Support

Planners’ collection and analysis of socioeconomic data became a key driver of urban policy. In fact, mayors Fajardo and Salazar strengthened the roles and capacity of Metro Información: a division within the Planning Department in charge of producing official sociodemographic data and policy analysis documents for the municipality. With the support of the National University of Colombia, Medellín became one of very few municipalities in Latin America to calculate a Quality of Life Index and to implement a Quality of Life Survey on a yearly basis, gathering detailed socioeconomic data at the neighborhood level that was then used as a basis for social urbanism’s interventions.⁶ As Alexandra Peláez, former subdirector of Metro Información explained,

Our rigorous data collection has enabled the [municipal] administration to make sound decisions with regards to how and where to allocate public resources. We have been able to track the impact of urban investments and it has been gratifying to see our quality of life indexes moving up as a result of evidence-based policy. (interview, December 7, 2011).

With the use of high quality data, the adoption of a policy towards marginalized areas was justified through planners’ technical diagnoses, which shaped a prevailing discourse of a “social pay-back” (Alcaldía de Medellín and IDB 2008). Planners employed a redefinition of urban policy that incorporated Sen’s (2001) capabilities approach, and used tools, such as community consultations and GIS color-coded maps, to make the city’s extreme inequalities more evident to the public. In the 2004 map, the zones of chronic violence in the city unsurprisingly coincided with the lowest Human Development Indexes and quality of life rates across seven comunas (Puerta 2011). This graphic depiction of urban inequality became an important source of power for practitioners who were able to communicate a clear and simple argument to citizens and interests groups. Given the comprehensive nature of social urbanism, implementation required a high degree of coordination among all municipal agencies and divisions. Planners were also able to influence other bureaucrats and demand expedient collaboration from public agencies. Most importantly, neighborhood organizations, such as “Convivamos” in Comuna 1, or grassroots such as the Women’s Group from Independencias (“Asociación de Mujeres de las Independencias” or AMI) in Comuna 13, were able to absorb the evidence presented by planners and utilize the maps to strengthen their discourses and gain bargaining leverage. The role of “savvy planners” (Brooks 2002) with a deep understanding of the political context and the technical skills to influence policy making and bridge across to local communities helped to frame social urbanism’s redistributive approach.

Contextual and Reflexive Equity Planning Praxis

Although Medellín’s equity planners have had diverse social and professional trajectories, a commonality among the planners interviewed was their involvement with international cooperation projects and local universities, which enabled them to accumulate social capital and reflect on the outcomes of shared experiences. Social urbanism was constructed upon precedents such as PRIMED: a participatory slum-upgrading program. Implemented in the late 1990s under an international partnership (involving the municipality, the Colombian National Government and the German Development Bank), PRIMED took an in situ approach to slum upgrading and was successful in the rehabilitation of precarious dwellings by expediting land titling processes and improving the provision of basic services (Betancur 2007). PRIMED was discontinued, nonetheless, because of its lack of effective coordination among the different governmental departments and decentralized agencies involved, resulting in overlaps and program delays (Sotomayor 2015a). Many of the planners (including architects/urban designers, social planners, and engineers/planners) involved in social urbanism were recruited based on their former participation in PRIMED.

Other planners who contributed to shape social urbanism had teaching roles in local universities. This is true of both Alejandro Echeverri, who was former professor of architecture and urbanism at Bolivariana University (currently involved with EAFIT University); and Carlos Mario Rodriguez, a former university professor who joined the EDU in 2004 as Director of Urban Design. As Echeverri recalls, during the 1990s, a research collaborative group was formed involving progressive architects, planners and urban researchers, who were interested in understanding the needs and urban morphology of Medellín’s low-income neighborhoods:

Before we came to work with Fajardo, 6 or 8 years before that, a group of people in the city including myself, we were looking for a different type of intervention for marginalized neighborhoods. In my particular case, I was pursuing a PhD, and studying urban form in the Northeastern Comuna. Other people in local universities had thoroughly studied PRIMED. We formed a group of applied research in 2000, and we involved our students. Two years before Fajardo won the elections, he approached us, and invited us to work with him. (interview, December 3, 2010).

Spaces of academic interaction and shared practice enabled these planners to build networks and to create instances for debate and reflection: what went wrong, what practices were effective, and which ones needed to be perfected. In practice, these accumulated experiences and social capital imprinted Medellín’s urban upgrading projects with a highly creative yet contextual character where most of the small and large-scale interventions proved to meet local needs with some level of experimentation and success.

Planners, such as Rodriguez, disavowed the idea that planning interventions for the poor need to relocate, homogenize, or formalize communities. Instead of proposing a program of mass-produced social housing with little character—a popular approach across Latin America—planners defended the right of local communities to preserve their collective history, their social ties, and their heritage landscape. In other words, equity planners put forth residents’ right to “shape and be shaped” by the city (Harvey 2008). From the perspective of urban design, Rodriguez asserts,

We worked towards recognizing the aesthetic value of diversity and towards an understanding that each of these homes that cling on that hillside and that were made by each one of its inhabitants have a very important landscape value. These auto-constructed slopes, with all their challenges, are an important heritage that we wanted to preserve and make visible. (interview, December 5, 2011).

Community Relationships beyond Participation

Beyond the most obvious innovations, planners’ community relations deserve mention. In Medellín, low-income communities have been historically distrustful of government officials, particularly, since they are fearful of state violence and evictions (Roldán 2003). In turn, collective action has been integral to Medellín’s self-help urbanization process. Residents have improved and consolidated their neighborhoods through collective efforts of mutual assistance and associational practices. There are strong local leaderships, which are credited for negotiating many of the gains residents have reclaimed from the state.

More crucially, in the 1990s, a few low-income communities that were excluded from municipal planning provision organized to develop their own territorial development plan at the comuna or district level, often, with some technical assistance from local NGOs and universities. The success of the first few grassroots plans were quickly replicated by other neighborhoods, to eventually be supported by the local state.⁷ These documents, their ongoing processes, and updated renditions have become powerful tools for community leaders in articulating and negotiating local demands. Although social urbanism’s overall urban strategy had some preset principles, such as a plan for building library parks, many of the goals and projects contained in community grassroots plans were considered. Actors typically missing from planning scenarios were purposefully engaged in design workshops, in particular, children and youth.

Amid a complex institutional and governance setting, EDU’s planners often went out of their way to develop relationships of trust on the ground, dedicating hundreds of hours to participatory planning activities, including a wide diversity of publics and interest groups. Planners also responded to the fears and anxieties of local communities by meeting deadlines and compromises. For example, in reference to a small-scale in situ rehousing project for 220 dwellings that was literally on a stream (the Juan Bobo Ravine project), Brand (2013) highlights that these redevelopments

were undertaken with the intimate participation of residents, no family was forcibly re-housed, all transactions were by voluntary agreement, and there was no significant cost for those families as municipal budgets and multiple subsidies were focused on the project. . . . It was . . . intensive in both financial and institutional resources, especially technical personnel and on-the-ground staff. (5)

Rosalba Cardona, a ninety-one-year-old community leader in the Santo Domingo neighborhood, explained to one of us that EDU staff were initially not well received in the community. Opening the doors to the IUP was, as she describes it,

a matter of tears, sweat and insults. . . . I’ll never forget the day when Cesar [a chief planner at EDU] hugged me, and said: “Doña Rosalba: tell these people that this process is like a marriage. We have our difficulties but at last we kiss.” . . . That phrase sounded so funny to me, coming from a top manager. But he was right, because later on we became very close. (interview, September 26, 2011)

Thus, planners worked with communities through instances of collaboration and contestation in the development and implementation of neighborhood improvement plans. This approach led to compromises that increased the trust and the complementarity of actions by communities and the local state.

Conflict, Risks, and Shortcomings

EDU planners were in a very privileged position that allowed them to implement social urbanism projects with a high degree of creativity, grounded on local relationships, and interinstitutional collaborations across municipal departments without much opposition from the political system. However, they did face ongoing difficulties and conflict, particularly, as they navigated micropolitics and the influence of violent groups; as they tried to build partnerships, gain the trust of local leaders and residents, and acquire land for projects.

The influence and territorial control of youth gangs, vigilante fronts, and paramilitary militias in areas of physical intervention posed major risks and challenges for public functionaries. Though not publicly acknowledged, small truces and covert transactions took place between the municipality, local leaders, and youth gangs, in order to negotiate the personal security of public officials on the field. Planners had to understand and navigate these micropolitics, and often confronted situations where their safety was compromised. A planner who contracts with EDU described some of the security concerns functionaries had to deal with:

We always had agreements in place with local gangs that allowed us to circulate and do our work. Community leaders would deal with these groups and always accompanied us. We wear EDU’s monogramed vest and cap, and that’s how they know who we are and what we’re up to . . . but security is never guaranteed and we have faced some risks. . . . In Comuna 13, at first, all public officials would quit: Engineers, architects, contractors, everyone. It was very hard. (planner-geologist, interview, September 13, 2011)

In terms of promoting an equity planning agenda, EDU’s planners did contribute to reduce disadvantages in the communities where social urbanism projects were executed. They have helped to improve the local quality of life, state–community relationships, and arguably, reduced marginalization. However, there are a number of shortcomings to consider. First, the benefits of the IUP concentrate in small areas, failing to reach residents of other neighborhoods with high needs. Second, the construction of some neighborhood amenities has stirred local controversies given the opportunity costs involved. During focus groups and interviews, residents overwhelmingly raised concerns about unemployment, security, and inadequate housing conditions. These are problems that residents would like the municipality addressing (Sotomayor 2015a). Third, public works projects undeniably generated some uprooting and displacement. Because of a fault in policy design, many residents sold their land to the EDU or negotiated their untenured shacks but were not given the chance to find a home in the same neighborhood. Fourth, sustainability of social urbanism’s projects is not guaranteed. Although there has been some continuity, the two mayors that followed after Salazar’s government (Aníbal Gaviria, 2012–2015, and Federico Gutierrez, 2016–2019) have given social urbanism new names, twists, and priorities. The last two administrations have put more emphasis on internationalizing Medellín’s model for city marketing purposes than in giving continuation to social investments. There have also been setbacks in terms of state–community relationships. A new manager of EDU under Gaviria’s administration had a very confrontational attitude toward low-income communities. Such approach damaged some of the relationships that former planners had carefully built with residents and leaders, and who became distrustful of the manager’s practices.

Overall, for the period studied, EDU planners were able to effect change because they were part of a political agenda, had a clear institutional mandate, and counted with substantial fiscal resources. Nonetheless, although EDU’s planners have supported redistributive outcomes in IUP areas, their equity visions and innovative praxis are hardly scalable to the citywide and regional planning objectives of the TAP and of other planning authorities. These have become largely guided by urban boosterism and the local elite’s aspirations to transform Medellín into a global city. Scale of action thus represents a salient dilemma for Medellín’s equity planners.

Equity Planning in Bangkok⁸

The example from Thailand is drawn from planners who implement a program known as the Baan Mankong (“secure housing”) initiative run under the auspices of CODI, an unusual quasi-governmental organization. CODI was set up in response to a decade of unsuccessful implementation of housing policies for the urban poor. There are at least some five thousand “slum” or squatter communities within the kingdom of Thailand; these are estimated to house some 8.25 million people (CODI 2011). Estimates suggest that in Bangkok proper, approximately 300,000 households find shelter within 1,500 informal communities. Thailand and its capital city have attempted a wide range of approaches to housing the swelling urban populations since the 1970s when squatter settlements first emerged as a major planning issue. Initially, the response of the Thai Government was to attempt to evict and demolish the most obvious settlements, particularly those on centrally located land. In the 1980s, a newly formed National Housing Authority (NHA) within the Ministry of Housing embraced a resettlement approach that focused on relocating evicted residents of informal settlements into low-income apartments generally situated on the urban periphery (Boonyabancha 2005). Much like most infrastructure and public service provision in Thailand, the NHA use a top–down centralized planning process. Not surprisingly, their relocation efforts did not succeed and the NHA began to look at other alternatives to obtaining better quality and more secure housing for informally housed residents starting in early 1990s (Yap and De Wandeler 2010).

Over time, the NHA gained positive experience with slum upgrading initiatives that involved providing informal settlements with both technical assistance and soft loans. By the end of the 1990s, 6,400 households and 800 communities had qualified for assistance through community-led informal settlement projects. In 2000, in response to a number of factors including the international emphasis on community participation, the positive track record of community-led initiatives in the urban housing field, and the availability of funding for social programs because of strong economic performance, the central government decided to create a separate agency to spearhead investment and upgrading of squatter settlements. The new entity, CODI, operates within the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (which absorbed the Ministry of Housing at the same time), independently of the NHA (which now focuses entirely of providing low-income apartment housing to urban residents).

CODI’s role is to run programs that provide savings and credit, housing loans, and microfinance loans in addition to organizing and supporting community engagement and empowerment, that is, to implement equity planning. Since 2003, CODI has operated as a centralized site directing a national scheme that relies on matching community savings programs with participatory design and community activism around infrastructure and housing gains. Community members work with CODI architects, NGOs, progressive academics, and local bureaucrats to “upgrade and transform existing communities and to construct new communities with a program of low interest loans and community based design practices” (Elinoff 2014, 96). A clear objective and one that has met with considerable success of CODI’s housing program is to create synergy between the voluntary sector, the state, and to some extent, the private sector.

Creating opportunities for informal community members to link across the divides and participate in the investment and improvement of their communities is the philosophy adopted by CODI staff via the Baan Mankong program. CODI planners operate through community networks in cities across Thailand. In essence, CODI staff assist communities to apply for grants and low-interest loans to use for housing and community improvement purposes. In particular, CODI employees focus on initiatives that can improve the security of tenure of informal settlements as well as enhancing the quality of their shelter and immediate access to services. The key innovation of the CODI approach is that it links community groups into larger networks and seeks to lend to the networks, who then lend to community groups for projects that they have self-identified, negotiated, and designed. The networks address a weakness in the earlier attempts to use community savings groups and loans to upgrade housing by allowing community groups to share knowledge, information, and best practices. The networks can help to “strengthen the negotiating power of communities in their dealings with landlords and local governments” (Yap and De Wandeler 2010, 337). More than 850 projects assisting 90,000 households in 1,500-plus communities have participated in CODI projects since its creation in 2003.

CODI planners, because they are based outside of the agencies that normally control land and development (such as the Ministry of the Interior), are able to approach both government staff and private developers without appearing as a threat. It is clear from their position with the Ministry of Social Development that their focus is on well-being and not necessarily on generating profit or controlling the city’s development path. Rather, most planners describe their role as facilitating communication and negotiating agreements from parties who do not normally deal with each other, such as community organization and banks or slum networks and private or public landowners). The fact that CODI planners, in the main, take their roles seriously and deliver on their claims has allowed their model to flourish (Storey 2012).

In Bangkok, as elsewhere in Thailand, the typical housing/infrastructure improvement process requires communities to develop and present their plans for improvement to CODI staff and its Project Approval subcommittee. The subcommittee is composed of local NGO members, qualified academics, bureaucrats from the area, and local residents with some experience in the granting/approval procedures. Community plans are usually developed in an iterative process with CODI staff and architects/academics who have volunteered to be part of the Baan Mankong project. Community members are required to answer questions about their plans and defend them at relatively formal meetings. Often, a community will need to present its plans several times before gaining approval. The process can create synergy between communities in the network and also, ideally, between different local stakeholders and community members.

The Baan Mankong program and, indeed, the entire CODI approach, are not without critics. As Elinoff (2013, 2014) notes, the process can be very asymmetric, with poor people being told by wealthier people, including academics and planners, that their ideas and plans do not measure up to CODI standards or norms. In addition, Elinoff (2014, 99–100) argues that the Baan Mankong program serves the much more insidious objectives of the Thai state to deny marginalized citizens their right to control their own development through prioritizing learning over improving dire living conditions. At the same time, however, experience with communities in CODI-assisted settlements suggests that living conditions are much improved and that residents are pleased with the progress made in a relatively short period of time. As noted by a community leader from the Klong Lumnoon community in Bangkok, which received funding and assistance through CODI in 2011:

If we use our small money to come together and link our forces together, it is making our links among community people very strong. And this strength that we have when we come together is a kind of freedom, it opens our minds together. . . . With this huge link across the country, no government can stop us! We can make the government go in whatever possible way, as benefits the poor. The small finance that we manage in our savings groups and our city funds is a very good tool to link us together, to think together, work together and build our power together.⁹

It certainly appears that the Baan Mankong program is structured around “constructing” governable citizens who play by the rules (Elinoff 2014). It is also true, however, that as according to Somsook Boonyabancha, CODI’s first director, there have been important advances toward the empowerment of communities:

Collectively then, the co-produced knowledge that is being created is in the hands of the people, then the next step, to claim other rights as communities and local districts etc., is left to the people. There isn’t a need for CODI or the Baan Mankong program to lead this, they have already planted the seeds as the catalyst in getting people to start re-thinking about the role they have to play in creating sustainable and just communities. (Boonyabancha 2004, 50)

The implementation of Baan Mankong clearly relies on the energy and contributions of community residents (Boonyabancha 2005). Planners cultivate relationships over time with both local people and community organizations, who are gradually trained and encouraged to create savings groups; develop housing, land, or environmental proposals; join a local community network; and eventually take over the management of their community initiative. CODI staff support innovative and responsive financial agreements between the landowners of a particular site and the community groups that occupy that location which address the specific requirements and desires of the communities. For example, many public landowners have signed thirty-year leases with squatter communities in return for agreeing not to increase the size of the settlement and using CODI funding to invest in sanitation infrastructure. In addition, planners are responsible for insisting that any lease or contract be executed between the landlord and the community as a whole and, furthermore, that individual households are not allowed to sell their premises on the open market for at least 15 years. This stabilizes communities and prevents “gentrification” that frequently accompanies slum upgrading efforts.

It is well documented that the Baan Mankong program has allowed CODI to flow significant additional financial and technical resources into poor settlements on a much larger scale than has ever been possible in Thailand. Communities have gained materially and learned more about the legal and economic realities of the system in which they are enmeshed. Given how difficult it is proving to change the system politically, acquiring the skills to organize politically, and to craft strategies that can make substantial differences in their communities, is valuable and appreciated.

Prapart Sanpradap, a community leader from the Bang Bua Canal community (another Bangkok community that has participated in the Baan Mankong program), stated recently that

in Thailand we have been fighting for a slum law for ten years. We mobilized all the community to support this bill because those of us who live in squatter settlements and slums should have rights too. But we never got those rights and we never got the bill. The way we got our land and housing and security only happened when we made concrete change and showed the possibility by people, showed a new way. We are the ones who have to make that change, according to our way. And that change becomes its own law.¹⁰

A key factor identified by community members and CODI staff is the creation of a sense of trust and cooperation between planners and residents. This requires a good deal of time and continuity since staff ask communities to develop capacities over time that build up their abilities as they contribute to trusting relationships between planners and community organizations. These include forming savings groups, attending network meetings, and taking responsibility for identifying and acquiring the land for housing their community. Giving communities the responsibility for identifying their needs and designing their solutions enhances social equity through engagement. Individual communities are mentored and coached by other members of the network and planners about how to approach landowners, what kinds of negotiation or arrangements are possible and financially viable, what terms are reasonable, and so on.

Another aspect of the Baan Mankong approach is the emphasis placed by planners on linking communities to local governments, professionals, academics, and other NGOs to engage the entire network in a process of urban planning on a citywide scale. In this way, not only do the planners help to combat the social isolation of individual communities but they help to integrate the plans to overcome physical barriers to inclusion within the urban fabric. Rather than upgrades to individual settlements occurring piecemeal, the upgrading projects supported by CODI subsidies and housing loans are complementary and create linkages across geographic areas. Furthermore, the communities oversee the implementation of the projects themselves, which strengthens their voice in the shape and substance of their environment.

A final objective of the planners working with CODI is to empower squatter settlement residents through giving them more political influence. Working in concert with networks allows communities to engage in broad-based social activism and encourages public entities to be more flexible and responsive to requests for land and housing tenure. CODI communities frequently participate in demonstrations and campaigns to increase tenure security and/or protect slums from natural disasters. The opportunity to share knowledge, resources, and efforts has made a tangible difference in the capacity of some communities to stand up to the forces of development, for example, private landowners and real estate speculators among others. Elinoff (2013) notes that a perhaps unintended consequence of the CODI approval process is to, in fact, provide communities with the connections and the knowledge to make “immoderate” demands on the Thai state. It certainly appears that at least some community members are convinced that the relationships they have forged as part of the process and practices associated with the program create political openings and opportunities. According to Boonyabancha (2009) and Mitlin and Sattherthwaite (2013), some of the critical lessons from CODI’s efforts include recognition of the importance of synergies between state and society as described by Evans (1995).

This is not to imply that the community participation and engagement that flow from the Baan Mankong model work well for all communities and situations. There remains a fundamental lack of financial assets and land security in the squatter settlements of Bangkok and Thailand, more generally. There is still a major lack of cohesion and consistency in planning across the urban landscape, and planning efforts, while inspiring, still represent only a small improvement for a few fortunate communities. Some of the most impoverished communities are still not able to come up with the basic funds needed to even join the CODI-facilitated networks, let alone raise funds sufficient through savings groups to qualify for loans or subsidies. The political chaos that surrounds planners and the fact that CODI staff are part of the existing flawed bureaucracy limits what can be achieved through concerted and dedicated efforts to introduce change into the urban landscape. On the other hand, social equity planning as practiced locally in Bangkok limits the damage that market-based tools can do to communities by tapping into the assets within organized communities and networks and allowing them to respond in more inclusive ways to the market forces and the broader Thai state that generally seek to exclude them.

Discussion

Recent debates in urban studies and planning theory call for an increased awareness of the wide scope of ideas and practices that planning encompasses (Sandercock 1998) and the diversity of contexts on which planning practice takes place (Beard 2003; Watson 2009, 2013). A “de-centering” of urban planning theories from Euro-American experiences is necessary to strengthen the explanatory power of urban planning epistemologies (Robinson 2002; Watson 2009), including normative perspectives such as equity planning. In the previous sections, we have provided two such examples of contrasting cases and different institutional circumstances that articulate such overlying concerns with equity and sociospatial justice.

In both cities, we focus on agencies where we uncovered planning practices that attempt to be transformative and support the interests of marginalized groups in contexts where democracy and citizenship rights are differentiated, restricted, or suppressed. The planners in both institutions assist informal communities navigate the complexities of the planning and legal system to attain more secure housing and crucial basic services. Importantly, they not only do this work because it is their profession but also because they see their role as pivotal to the achievement of greater equity. In other words, despite the apparent lack of “insurgent” planning, these planners support opportunities for greater political expression and enhance community capacity to control their own lives. While at first glance, these planners may not be disruptive of hegemonic relations of power, in the long run they support visions and programs that help marginalized groups to consolidate their neighborhoods and advance their interests. These planners develop relationships built on communication and, given that democracy in these states is dysfunctional, equity planners are seen as an alternative resource to advance what the formal political system fails to deliver. When a window of opportunity opens up, as in the case of Medellín’s popular election of progressive mayors, these planners may also help to redefine new democratic spaces of state–society interaction.

There are a number of lessons to be gleaned from the case studies. The first is that the nature of institutions matters. Both CODI and the EDU have at least some autonomy to design and execute improvements and fulfill commitments to the community. This is true despite the fact that, historically, Colombia and Thailand are highly unequal societies. A downside associated with creating such specialized bodies is that it compartmentalizes equity planners into roles that are reactive to housing and neighborhood deficiencies, but that especially in the case of Bangkok, fail to meet a growing demand for housing by low-income newcomers to the city (Yap and De Wandeler 2010). Consequently, it could be argued that equity planners in these agencies are less able to scale up their innovations to other divisions and, obviously, cannot change the continuous reproduction of locational disadvantages at a larger scale. To advance social justice goals, equity planning perspectives would need to be incorporated into effective urban and regional planning that includes affordable housing provision to prevent new slum formation.

A second key lesson is that in spite of politically charged circumstances, it was possible to improve sociospatial justice for many citizens because of the political commitment and dedicated funding provided by municipal and national governments. In Colombia, mayors have become key actors in urban development as a consequence of state decentralization processes, which since the 1990s, gave municipalities substantial fiscal capacity and responsibilities for service delivery. As a result, highly committed mayors like Fajardo have had the power to implement far-reaching urban reforms (Dávila 2009). Bangkok’s Baan Mankong relies heavily on funding provided by the national government as well as general support from the BMA to address at least some of the concerns of organizing settlers which allowed slum settlements to be improved and legalized. As long as the key political stakeholders remain committed to this initiative, citizens can be relatively confident that their quality of life will continue to improve. If, as is now the case in both countries, political will becomes less committed, planners’ achievements may start to erode.

Another aspect is that both the BMP and social urbanism were initiated and piloted by planning agencies and, once they achieved fruition, were praised as international best practice on the part of development agencies. This has, to some extent, protected both the initiatives and the institutions from political winds of change in that politicians are reluctant to be seen to cut programs that are so closely linked in the public eye to increased equity. They may, however, reduce their budgets and give them new spins, as it is the case in Medellín.

In terms of governance, the fact that social urbanism was a municipal initiative of the Mayor’s Office made policy actors more visible, accessible, and accountable to local residents who were able to react to social urbanism in participatory planning engagements, in the media, and in the polls. The popular election of consecutive mayors who have been somewhat aligned—or at least not radically opposed to—mayor Fajardo’s original ideas has kept alive to some degree the general principles and concerns expressed in social urbanism. Conversely, in the case of Thailand, there is very little if any political accountability given the current political climate and highly centralized political system.

In terms of participation, social urbanism had an ample civic engagement strategy and recognized conflict and contestation as legitimate components of a democratic planning process. In turn, participation in BMP is restricted by the capacity of local communities to prove a saving capacity and establish saving networks. Thus, BMP has been criticized for engaging only “disciplined” types of community activism where participants recognize top-down impositions and unite according to program requirements.

A final lesson relates to the nature of top–down progressive planning initiatives in cities of the Global South. Both initiatives could be described as top–down in that the original notion or scheme is one proposed by experts, that is, people who do not live in squatter settlements that are the target of the intervention. Nonetheless, many citizens believe that they are better off following the intervention than they were before it was implemented. Were they given the best possible intervention given the cost? Could they have been implemented in a more inclusive and sensitive manner? Of course. However, the fact that something substantial was actually completed on the ground with the purpose of benefiting the traditionally voiceless is something quite remarkable especially given what it is to even provide low-income residents of cities in high-income countries with adequate affordable housing and community amenities. While these types of initiatives may need to be modified significantly in order to be replicated elsewhere, particularly in the North, they do represent potential paths to follow in cities that are home to sizeable informal settlements, that is, everywhere in the Global South.

In the end, the case studies illustrate that planners can work within governance systems that are dysfunctional to provide residents with information and opportunities to improve both their physical neighborhoods and to articulate their demands. In contrast to what might be assumed from recent planning debates, it is not always the case that the circumstances of the urban poor living in informal settlements are hopeless. Yes, they are not ideal but for the citizens involved in some of these planning programs, the quality of their lives is better. Their connection to the planners goes beyond the professional technocrat to involve authentic relationships. This is not by any means a rose-colored glasses view of equity planners. Rather, it is a place-based analysis of the activities that planners engage in and within cities of the Global South. In places that are unlikely to experience a revolutionary transformation of the political/economic reality, small steps and a learning component are used as an institutional window of opportunity to transform.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank professor Lisa Drummond and post-doctoral fellow Danny Marks for their collaboration throughout this research. We are also very grateful to professor Mildred Warner, to JPER editors, and to three anonymous reviewers for providing us with insightful comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research in Medellín was completed thanks to a research award provided by the International Development Research Centre of Canada. Both authors acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada to conduct their fieldwork.

Notes

Author Biographies

Luisa Sotomayor is an assistant lecturer in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include international development planning, urban policy, housing, and governance.

Amrita Daniere is a professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and vice principal, Academic and Dean at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. Her recent research project encompasses issues of climate change resilience in cities of Southeast Asia as well as provision of basic services, such as water and sanitation, in megacities of the Global South.

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The Dilemmas of Equity Planning in the Global South: A Comparative View from Bangkok and Medellín

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Role of Equity Planners and Bottom–Up Planning in the Global South

Methods

Medellín and Bangkok in Comparative Perspective

Colombia

Planning context in Medellín

Thailand

Planning context in Bangkok

Social Urbanism and Equity Planning in Medellín

Evidence-Based Equity Planning and Public Support

Contextual and Reflexive Equity Planning Praxis

Community Relationships beyond Participation

Conflict, Risks, and Shortcomings

Equity Planning in Bangkok 8

Discussion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Notes

Author Biographies

References

Equity Planning in Bangkok⁸