Not as easy as it sounds: Participatory planning in Buenos Aires

When I reflect on my first two weeks in Buenos Aires, there have been many things that I expected to encounter; I definitely anticipated haphazardly navigating the public transportation system and awkwardly engaging in small talk (in Spanish!) with my coworkers. However, as I adjust to living in the city and working in the city government’s Housing Institute, one experience that I didn´t expect was to be passing around a cup of matte, a type of Argentine tea, in a community center and listening to community representatives voicing their opinions about the urbanization project currently taking place in their neighborhood. This experience is just one of many occasions where I have had the opportunity to observe what participatory planning looks like firsthand.
Currently, the city´s government is dedicating a considerable amount of resources to urbanizing the villas, the Argentine version of shantytowns and integrating them into the urban fabric. Unlike past attempts at urbanization, community participation is essential to the development and implementation of these plans. Project coordinators meet each week with community delegates to discuss topics such as design and construction, and as I walk through the office on any given day, it is not uncommon to see a conference room filled with community members discussing the project with government employees.
Before this internship, phrases like “participatory planning, “and “cities for everyone” were a part of my vocabulary, but they were largely abstract ideas. A highlight of this internship has been observing how the Institute is implementing concrete plans. During my second week, the Institute hosted a conference where the speakers discussed social issues and gave impassioned calls for inclusion, integration, and equality. For me, it was interesting to realize that while those types of events can play an important role in changing people’s mindset, the next challenge becomes actually carrying out this paradigm shift. What do you do when there is too much participation in participatory planning? How do you manage coordination with a different government agency that the community distrusts? These are just a few of the challenges currently facing the Institute, and witnessing them firsthand has challenged my rather naïve and simplified approach to thinking about public policy and governance. In these next weeks, I am looking forward to learning more about the projects going on throughout the city and the different facets of participatory planning.
Written by Kristina Harris ’20, International Relations major, FSI Global Policy Intern at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
