Santiago’s [Governor
of the Metropolitan Region] CLAUDIO
ORREGO on fighting urban inequality [June, 09, 2016]
Source: CITISCOPE; June, 9, 2016
“SANTIAGO’s innovation among the Latin American cities
is we’re among the first to approach the governance challenge of metropolitan
areas. LONDON did it,
ROTTERDAM is trying to do it right now.
BARCELONA did
it.”
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Governor Claudio Orrego of the Metropolitan Region
of Santiago, Chile. (Orrego Presidente/Wikimedia Commons/cc)
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How do you fight urban inequality? Claudio Orrego has some strong feelings about that.
Orrego is governor, or intendente,
of the Metropolitan Region
of Santiago. It’s a regional body that
coordinates the development policies of Chile’s capital city and dozens of
other jurisdictions in the Santiago area. Orrego led one of those smaller
municipalities, Peñalolén, as mayor
for eight years.
After standing for election in the
2013 Chilean presidential race (he finished third), Orrego was appointed to his
current post by Michelle Bachelet, the person who beat him.
Orrego spoke on a panel on the “INCLUSIVE CITY” at last week’s Chicago Forum on Global Cities. He drew thunderous applause when he
said that his challenge as a politician is “to convince the haves that the problems of the have nots are their own problems.”
Orrego went on to say that overcoming
the historic divide between Santiago’s rich and poor needs to be at the top of
the agenda. “If we’re not able to tackle this inequality,” he said, “I
think the social unrest, the violence and the crime, and the insecurity of the
people will make it a less competitive city worldwide and countrywide.”
(Watch
a video of the panel below.)
Orrego cited Medellín, Colombia, as a
city moving in the right direction. Medellín ended its reign of
narcotics-related violence, he said, in part by investing in high-quality
transport, libraries and public spaces in the poorest parts of the city — a
philosophy Orrego described as seeking “urban justice.”
“They understood this very basic linkage
between urbanism and violence,” he said. “By building infrastructure of the
best possible quality in the most poor neighborhoods of the city, you’re making
a strong political statement.”
I caught up with Orrego for a few
minutes after the panel to find out more about Santiago’s approaches. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
[Q.1] Christopher Swope: You said
earlier that we should replace the term “social justice” with “urban justice.”
What do you mean by that?
Claudio Orrego: After so many years of military dictatorships in Latin
America, we tend to reduce democracy or human rights just to political rights —
to be able to vote, to express yourself.
But to have a real democracy, you
need people to think they belong to the same country, that they belong to the
same community and they belong to the same city. And that means starting to
make more visible what “urban rights” are. We cannot eliminate social
inequalities so easily, but urban inequalities — that’s a shortcut.
When you have a big area where you
have rich boroughs and poor boroughs, what you’ll see is that disparity and
inequality just widen over time. Because the rich neighborhoods will have
better investment.
We’re making 11 new parks in Santiago
in the poor places, to level up that part of the city. We we’re putting all our
money and power as a metropolitan area for those places.
[Q.2]: Why parks?
A: We do well for Latin America in terms
of the amount of square meters of green areas per inhabitant. But the tyranny
of the average is that you have neighborhoods where you have 30 to 40 square
meters per inhabitant and others where there’s less than 1 square meter per
inhabitant.
So we’re trying to level up. We have
a very proactive policy of open spaces that are not left for the local
municipality. We will run them. We will make sure that the quality of the park
and the safety will be maintained.
[Q.3]: You mean the metropolitan
government will do that?
A: Absolutely. That’s the only way to
make urban justice. The same with transport, the same with environment. Some
urban investments require a more general approach, a more general metropolitan
governance.
Santiago’s innovation among the Latin
American cities is we’re among the first to approach the governance challenge of metropolitan areas. LONDON did it, ROTTERDAM
is trying to do it right now. BARCELONA
did it. But the new issue of cities is how they govern them. And of course, you
cannot limit the transport system from one city to the other — it has to be holistic. It has to
be integrated. Both from a payment perspective but modes of transport,
bicycles, cars, buses, metro, trains.
We’re in a transitional period in
which whatever we do, or not do, in the next few years will really affect the
capacity of our city to be not only inclusive but also competitive.
[Q.4]: Is Chile a model in terms of
how the metropolitan system is set up?
A: No. But we’re working on it. We’re going to be
electing our governors — metropolitan governors — in the next year. We’re
cherry picking good practices from different places. And we are coordinating
the investment of different ministries.
Not only do we have territorial
segmentation but also ministerial segmentation. So the minister of housing will
build houses, but they will never coordinate with the minister of public works
or transport. So now we’re having this holistic approach to neighborhoods — we
call it the planes integrales,
comprehensive plans for neighborhood development.
Below is the video of the panel, The Inclusive City,
courtesty of the Chicago Forum on Global Cities.
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