City Unplanning: the Techno-Political Economy of Privately-Financed Highways in Lima
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City Unplanning: The Techno-Political Economy of Privately-Financed Highways in Lima Matteo Stiglich Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Matteo Stiglich All rights reserved ABSTRACT City Unplanning: The Techno-Political Economy of Privately-Financed Highways in Lima Matteo Stiglich Since 2009 the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima has partnered with private corporations to deliver three highway projects worth US$1.5bn. This process follows a state-building strategy developed since the 1990s to allow different levels of government to deliver infrastructure projects with private finance. In Lima, the model has almost exclusively produced highways through a specific scheme that allows firms to submit unsolicited proposals. In this dissertation, I investigate how the availability of private finance transforms the political process and local planning outcomes. I argue that rather than being simply a solution for cash-strapped governments looking to invest in specific pieces of infrastructure, the introduction of private finance shapes what projects get built. Private finance not only transforms the implementation part of a two-step process: it has a deep impact on the planning phase itself by setting constraints on what can be done and to what ends. I call the specific mechanism by which private finance influences planning ‘unplanning.’ Here, the state is not simply retreating to let the private sector determine priorities. In other words, it is not abandoning planning, or simply not planning. Rather, it is being transformed in order to follow a proactive role in attracting investment, and to adapt planning to the needs of private capital. The dissertation goes beyond understandings of infrastructures as neutral conduits and into their techno-political nature in order to reveal how they reflect, reproduce and become both the conduit and the site of political conflicts between private capital, the state, and urban dwellers. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abreviations ............................................................................................................ ii List of Tables and Figures ................................................................................................ iii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... iv Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Transport Infrastructure and Urbanization in Lima, 1900-2008 ..................... 30 Chapter 3: The Political Economy of City Unplanning ................................................... 85 Chapter 4: Techno-Politics of Automobility .................................................................. 156 Chapter 5: Conflicts Over Urban Space and Mobility ................................................... 208 Chapter 6: Conclusions ................................................................................................... 252 References ...................................................................................................................... 262 Appendix ........................................................................................................................ 282 i List of Abreviations Ademirr Association for the Defense of the Left Bank of the Rímac River Adepsep Association of Private Firms for Public Services AFIN Association for the Promotion of National Infrastructure Asovecmirr Left Bank of the Rímac River Neighborhood Association BRT Bus Rapid Transit COOPI Cooperazione Internationale (Italian International Aid Agency) CNV National Housing Corporation EMAPE Municipal Company for Toll Management GPIP Agency for the Promotion of Private Investment (Lima) GyM Graña y Montero IMP Metropolitan Planning Institute INEI National Institute of Statistics and Informatics Lamsac Línea Amarilla SAC (SPV for the Yellow Line) MIRR Margen Izquierda del Río Rímac (Left Bank of the Rímac River) MML Metropolitan Municipality of Lima ONPU National Office for Planning and Urbanism PPP Public-Private Partnership Proinversión Agency for the Promotion of Private Investment (National) SPV Special Purpose Vehicle SRZ Special Regulatory Zone/Zoning UDEAL Lima Architecture Students Association ii List of Tables and Figures Tables Table 1. Population and density of the Lima urban area (1876-2017). ................................... 31 Table 2. Characteristics of the three projects.. ......................................................................... 90 Table 3. Project shortlists. ...................................................................................................... 120 Figures Figure 1. Lima in 1908............................................................................................................. 34 Figure 2. Ring road proposed in 1949 ..................................................................................... 44 Figure 3. Lima in 1947............................................................................................................. 46 Figure 4. The street in Plan Regulador (1954) ......................................................................... 49 Figure 5. Arterial system in Plan Piloto (1949). ...................................................................... 52 Figure 6. Road system in Plan Regulador (1954). ................................................................... 53 Figure 7. El Comercio Gráfico, June 11th 1967. ‘Express to death for the reckless.’............. 64 Figure 8. Brasil, Arequipa and Paseo de la República roads. .................................................. 66 Figure 9. Residents of Villa El Salvador push a bus out of the sand (1971). .......................... 70 Figure 10. The three highway projects. ................................................................................... 91 Figure 11. Metropolitan Road System in 2011 and 2016. ..................................................... 115 Figure 12. Map of Lima: Port, Airport, Downtown (Historic Center). ................................. 164 Figure 13. Lima by income brackets at the block level (2013). ............................................ 165 Figure 14. Proposal for deconcentrating activities. 1992 Metropolitan Plan, p. 91. ............. 166 Figure 15. Flyer from a road safety campaign done by the Peruvian government, 2008. ..... 192 Figure 16. Brochure published by the Villarán administration. ............................................. 203 Figure 17. Map showing the location of Margen Izquierda del Río Rímac (MIRR). ............ 211 Figure 18. Street in Primero de Mayo. ................................................................................... 214 Figure 19. Location of neighborhoods affected by the Yellow Line ..................................... 215 Figure 20. Map of all neighborhood organizations in the MIRR. ......................................... 216 Figure 21. Original and modified route of the Yellow Line. ................................................. 228 Figure 22. Map showing northern section of New Roads of Lima. ....................................... 243 iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Elliott Sclar, for his guidance, rigorous comments and encouragement throughout the process of researching and writing this dissertation. I am grateful to Dr. Robert Beauregard for his guidance, and for his comments that were product of incredibly close readings of my drafts. I also want to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Antina von Schnitzler, Dr. Enrique R. Silva and Dr. Malo Hutson, for their constructive feedback. Many people at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and other departments at Columbia have been helpful during the years I spent there. I want to thank specially Dr. Clara Irazábal, Dr. Weiping Wu, Dr. Timothy Mitchell and Dr. Josh Whitford for conversations that broadened my views of the topic I was studying. I also found support and intellectual stimulation among my colleagues at the Ph.D. program, including: Jonathan English, Siobhan Watson, Maiko Nishi, José Antonio Ramírez, Amanda Bradshaw, Adele Cassola, Jonas Hagen, Eric Goldwyn, Lauren Ames Fischer, Jigar Bhatt, Valerie Stahl, Deepa Mehta, Bernadette Baird-Zars, Elizabeth Marcello, Rosalie Ray, Jenna Dublin, and Cathy Hyun Hye Bae. I want to thank Adrián Lerner, Óscar Sosa López and Stephan Gruber who read parts of my draft and offered helpful feedback. My project would not have been possible with the funding I received from GSAPP. I also received a travel grant from the Institute of Latin American Studies that allowed me to conduct pre-dissertation research. It would not have been possible either without the time offered by the people I interviewed or otherwise discussed my project with in Lima. For this, I am grateful to Miguel Prialé, Gustavo Guerra-García, Francisco Bocángel, Álvaro Espinoza, Augusto Rey, Daniel Ramírez Corzo, Teresa Cabrera, Jenny Rubio, Juan Tapia, Carlos Chacón, Cecilia Balcázar, Mariana Alegre, Cynthia Yamamoto, Daniel Graña, Pierre Nalvarte, Germán Alarco, Alonso iv Segura, Quentin Marchand, Patricia Pella, Pablo Vega-Centeno, Martín Monsalve, José Carlos Orihuela and all the other interviewees whose names I have not disclosed. I would also like to thank