The Dynamics of Contingency: Neoliberal Redevelopment Governance in Chicago and Buenos Aires
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THE DYNAMICS OF CONTINGENCY: NEOLIBERAL REDEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE IN CHICAGO AND BUENOS AIRES BY CAROLINA ANA STERNBERG DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor David Wilson, Chair Professor Sara McLafferty Assistant Professor Ashwini Chhatre Assistant Professor Ana Margheritis, University of Florida, Gainesville i Abstract Neoliberal redevelopment governance has been ascendant worldwide in the last two decades and has come to profoundly influence mainstream urban politics. This project seeks to understand these formations from a comparative vantage-point, focusing on the global cities of Chicago and Buenos Aires. The study critically interrogates these governances to determine the degree to which they have significantly different institutional affiliations, operations, and outcomes. At issue is an important notion in the theorizing of these governances: contingent neoliberalism. While nascent research has suggested the possibility of a strong contingent aspect to these governances, its specifics remain under-explored. The intellectual merits of this project thus rest on a novel focus: the study of contingent urban neoliberalism. Current work on contemporary urban governance in the west, to date, peripheralizes the centrality of contingency. Common sets of institutions, interests, programs, and motivations are seen to permeate and characterize these governances across the enormous diversity of places (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Hackworth, 2007; Peck 2001). My study, in contrast, probes the nuances of these features to reveal their rich specifics and place-rooted basis. Using a cultural economy frame, my goal is not to marginalize the influence of structures that embed within capitalist economies and societies. Indeed, this is a foundational part of my study. However, I chronicle the inseparability of local-ness, place rootedness, historical specificity, human agency, and political variability that poignantly embeds within the human made operation and effects of locally circulating structures. ii To the Sternbergs and my extended family in the US iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor, Professor David Wilson, for the patient guidance, encouragement and advice he has provided throughout my time as his student. I have been extremely lucky to have an advisor who cared so much about my work and professional development, and who has responded so patiently to the ups and downs of my research. I also owe tremendous debt of gratitude to Professor Sara McLafferty and to Angelina Cotler, Associate Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. They both provided invaluable encouragement and I truly thank them for all they have done for me. I am also very grateful to have received many research grants that helped me in various ways to develop this project and to conduct dissertation fieldwork in Buenos Aires and Chicago. These includes grants and/or fellowships from the Beckman Institute, the Geography Department, the Nelle M. Signor Scholarship in International Relations Program, and the Tinker Foundation. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has also encouraged me to have (lots of) fun while I developed and finished this project. Last but not least, this research is dedicated to my family in Argentina and Hsiung, all of them this time and all of them in my heart. iv Table of Contents CHAPTER I: ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Theoretical framework ........................................................................................................................................... 6 Methods and data ................................................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER II: .................................................................................................................................................... 12 NEOLIBERALISM, ITS DIFFERENT APPROACHES AND ITS CONTINGENCY Different approaches ............................................................................................................................................ 13 Neoliberalism as a contingent construct .............................................................................................................. 16 CHAPTER III: ................................................................................................................................................... 20 NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE ASCENDANCY IN THE U.S. AND THE REDEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE IN CHICAGO Neoliberal governance ascendancy ...................................................................................................................... 21 Chicago’s neoliberal redevelopment governance ................................................................................................ 26 CHAPTER IV: ................................................................................................................................................... 31 PILSEN: A NEIGHBORHOOD IN TRANSITION Neoliberal redevelopment governance in Pilsen .................................................................................................. 32 Neoliberal redevelopment’s subtly changing rhetoric......................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER V: .................................................................................................................................................... 78 ARGENTINA’S NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE ASCENDANCY, INSTITUTIONAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS, AND THE BUENOS AIRES NEOLIBERAL REDEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE Argentina’s neoliberal governance ascendancy and 2001 crisis ......................................................................... 79 Impacts of neoliberal policies on Buenos Aires’ real-estate market ................................................................... 81 Buenos Aires’ neoliberal redevelopment governance ......................................................................................... 84 CHAPTER VI: ................................................................................................................................................... 90 LA BOCA AND SAN TELMO: COMMUNITIES IN TRANSITION ............................................................... 90 Neoliberal redevelopment governance in La Boca and San Telmo ................................................................ 91 Principal redevelopment initiatives in La Boca and San Telmo ................................................................... 102 Neoliberal redevelopment’s subtly changing rhetoric .................................................................................. 120 CHAPTER VII: ................................................................................................................................................ 128 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Works cited ......................................................................................................................................................... 136 v CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction Current research within urban political economy has identified the dramatic ascendancy of neoliberal governance in cities across the globe (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck, Leitner and Sheppard, 2007). Its salient characteristics are an emphasis on individualism, the drive to privatize state programs and operations, and the attempt to retrench the state with a special emphasis on shrinking the welfare state (Jessop, 1998; Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Harvey, 2006; Peck and Tickell, 2007). Widely seen and examined as a trans-local-ideal type, this entity has frequently been characterized as a monolithic and universal formation whose form, foundation, and impacts are remarkably similar across places (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck, 2001). This governance seeks to “re-entrepreneurialize” cities physically and socially in advanced capitalist societies. Critical scholarship has conceptualized the neoliberal city as an entrepreneurial apparatus directing its energies to achieving economic success, attracting investment, and inducing job growth in competition with other cities. In this context, it is a city in which local bureaucracies are progressively transferred to non-state and quasi state bodies (Jessop, 1998; Peck and Tickell, 2007). Planning and growth decisions are increasingly driven by cost-benefit calculations rather than missions of service, equity, and social welfare (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Leitner, Peck and Sheppard, 2007). Moreover, these governances now ostensibly offer an unparalleled harsh and punitive justification for their policies, programs, and growth trajectories (Smith, 1996; Keil, 2002). Residents are expected to behave responsibly, entrepreneurially, and prudently or face flagrantly punitive consequences. All these manifestations have been accompanied by critical social outcomes (e.g., deepening patterns of residential segregation, intensifying the informal balkanizing of populations, exacerbating