“They Sold Us Illusions”
Informality, Redevelopment, and the Politics of Limpieza in the Dominican Republic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22018409 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Raksha Vasudevan (0000-0002-9785-9967, The University of Texas at Austin), Bjørn Sletto (0000-0002-8371-7917, The University of Texas at Austin) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 252-262 |
| Publication date | 2020-08-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Planning (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2183-7635 • E-ISSN: 2183-7635 |
| Publisher | Cogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.17645/up.v5i3.3129 |
| OpenAlex | W3081974082 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 27 |
In the capital city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, climate change and environmental concerns are used to justify massive redevelopment projects in informal settlements located along the rivers Ozama and Isabela. Residents in such river communities negotiate the uncertainty of state planning under a new socio-environmentalism that prioritizes the environment over social concerns, while continuing to pursue bottom-up neighborhood planning despite the powerful rationality of limpieza (cleanliness), the pervasive techniques of responsibilization, and the celebratory spectacles of megaprojects. The uncertainty resulting from governance under socio-environmentalism produces ambivalence towards environmentcentered projects among residents. Drawing on oral histories and interviews with long-time community members, we suggest that residents engage in three ‘sensemaking strategies’ to process their ambivalence in the face of daily precarity, in particular the ongoing threat of evictions. Residents ‘keep up’ with the state and strategically utilize planning language to advocate for community priorities. They engage in practices of storytelling that reproduce a deep sense of community and provide a longer historical understanding of planning interventions. Finally, through verbal speculation and other ‘unsanctioned speech acts’ they analyze disruptions caused by socio-environmentalism, build solidarity with other communities, and think ahead despite uncertainty
Ambivalence · Environmental ethics · Environmentalism · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Redevelopment · Social science · Sociology · Law · Social Psychology · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Imagining Cities of Inclusion—Formulating Spaces of Justice
Dreams of Mud and Concrete
Developing a relational solidarity politics in ethnographic research
Walking with Youth in Los Platanitos
The interplay of climate coloniality and insurgent planning in the Dominican Republic’s Ozama River Basin
From ‘poor devil’ to middle class? Navigating resettlement and (in)formal reterritorialisation under Covid-19
The politics of spatial memory and the Barrio
History can't be written without us in the center
Out of the Closet
Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking
The Rules of the Game and How to Change Them
Resilience, Talk and Action
Recasting neo-liberalism in the americas
Securing Sustainable Communities
Sustainable urban water management and integrated development in informal settlements
Insurgent Planning and Its Interlocutors
Contesting inclusive urbanism in a divided city
The Responsibilities of the Poor
Meanings of Citizenship in Latin America
Seeing from the South
Urban Informality
Governance Innovation and the Citizen
Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities
Insurgent Planning
Planning as Urban Therapeutic
Indicators as a Governmental Technology? The Lessons of Community-Based Sustainability Indicator Projects
Municipal Neoliberalism and Municipal Socialism
Beyond Fugitive Speech
The Everyday and the Episodic
Unsettling Neoliberal Rationalities
The age of responsibilization
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |