Philipp Horn

In Bolivia, urbanisation increasingly takes place in peri-urban settings situated outside the boundaries of cities. Unlike previous research that considers peri-urban developments such as rural-to-urban land use transitions to be characterised by state absence and little regulation and planning, this article demonstrates that such developments occur precisely because of the presence of particular multi-scalar governance configurations. Drawing on case study material from peri-urban La Paz, the article demonstrates how legislative reforms by Bolivia’s national government on decentralisation and municipal delineation, which failed to establish clear jurisdictional boundaries, create a situation of hyperregulation whereby multiple local authorities claim political control over the same territory by deploying distinct and at times conflicting, legal and planning frameworks. While hyperregulation enables a loose coalition of elite actors, including government authorities, resident leader...

The expansion of middle-income countries in the global South is now widely acknowledged as significant for international development research and practice. But, as yet, scholars have not fully considered how middle-income countries are responding to the new global goals on international development (the Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs) outlined in Agenda 2030. Equally, insufficient attention has been paid to how – if at all – the SDGs shape domestic development policies and practices in middle income countries. We ask these questions in Ecuador, a country that recently moved from being a lower middle-income and donor dependent country to a more autonomous higher middle-income country with the capacity to promote its own national domestic development approach, Buen Vivir (in English: living well). Deploying a qualitative case study methodology and drawing primarily on in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with policy makers working in Ecuador's national government and in the capital Quito, we show that policy makers' engagement with the SDGs is selective, with an emphasis on those goals and targets which are considered of domestic importance. Both the national government and Quito's local government are currently focussing mainly on SDGs 10.2 (breaking inequalities) and 11 (inclusive cities). We demonstrate that, in practice, how policy makers understand implementation of these ''priority " goals is not consistent; it depends on political preferences, where policy makers are located in the architecture of decentralised governance and the context-specific challenges they face. Evidence from Ecuador suggests that the SDGs cannot be understood as a single coherent template for development that states will simply adopt. Rather they should be analysed in the context of a rapidly changing architecture of global power, shaped by the context-specific nature of national development challenges and national political structures, including decentralisation.

Research on planning for diverse and cosmopolitan cities often centres on case studies in the global north and fails to take into the account the complex challenges faced by ethnically diverse and divided cities in the global south. Interested in generating conceptual and practical ideas on 'planning for diversity' in the latter context, this paper introduces findings from recently completed comparative urban research in Bolivia and Ecuador – two countries which recognise indigenous 'rights to the city' in political constitutions. Relying on the method of a variation-finding comparison and drawing on theories of social actors, urban governance and asset accumulation the paper critically examines the implementation of indigenous 'rights to the city' in the capital cities La Paz and Quito. It is argued that there exists an ongoing discrepancy between legal rhetoric on indigeneity and actual urban policy and planning practices undertaken by officials in national and local governments who are often guided by perceptions of the city as 'white' space in which indigenous rights are subordinated to individual rights or to principles of market-driven urban development. The practices of governments are contrasted to urban indigenous people's aspirations, asset demands and associated attempts to (re)gain access to collective living, working and cultural spaces. Drawing on the findings from both cities, it is argued that 'planning for diversity' in cities of the global south and elsewhere should be guided by decolonial principles which are responsive to the context-specific aspirations and asset demands of historically marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples.

The historical construction of indigeneity as essentially rural policy category represents a key cause for the ongoing exclusion of urban indigenous peoples and blocks progress in delivering Agenda 2030 in Latin American cities. Even in Bolivia and Ecuador where urban indigeneity is recognised through constitutional reforms there are obstacles to the delivery of policies shaped to urban indigenous interests. By reviewing experiences from these countries, this article highlights that policy delivery problems are a result of multiple factors, including (1) rural constructions of indigeneity, (2) conflicting development priorities, and (3) difficulties in promoting universal rights while simultaneously guaranteeing indigenous rights. The article concludes with policy recommendations for more inclusive urban development approaches which leave no indigenous person behind.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be achieved by 2015, owing to conceptual flaws in their design as well as the structural and political constraints faced during implementation at the country level. While criticism of the MDGs is widespread, innovative ideas on addressing these operational challenges are still scanty. By reviewing a number of experiences, including those of the Foundation for the Promotion of Local Development (PRODEL) in Nicaragua and the Ministry of Cities in Brazil, this article highlights the importance of incorporating an asset-accumulation perspective into MDG-related policies and programmes as a way of generating an enabling environment that opens up new opportunities for poverty reduction in the cities of low- and middle-low-income countries.

Published at Open University’s Innovation, Knowledge and Development ‘Disputed Landscapes’ blog. You can access the official version here: http://www.open.ac.uk/ikd/blog/disputed-landscapes/how-implement-people-centred-element-new-urban-agenda-philipp-horn

This thesis critically examines the role of indigeneity in urban policies and planning in a context of constitutional changes that have taken place in Bolivia and Ecuador in the recent decade. It departs from previous academic and policy research which mainly studied indigenous rights in rural areas and focused on urban indigenous peoples as outlawed, excluded, or insurgent subjects. Instead, it conceptualises the translation of indigenous rights into urban policies as a complex process in which a multiplicity of social actors – including government officials and urban indigenous groups – are involved. Drawing on the practice-centric literature on urban policy and planning, it recognises that the work of government officials is influenced by multiple factors such as constitutional texts as well as their personal views, interest group demands, and the wider structural and political environment surrounding them. Government attempts to translate indigenous rights are contrasted to urban indigenous peoples’ own understandings of indigeneity and associated interests and demands. In addition, this thesis uses an asset accumulation framework as well as the concept of tactics to identify how urban indigenous peoples address and negotiate their interests and demands and try to influence decision-making processes from the bottom-up. The thesis relies on La Paz (Bolivia) and Quito (Ecuador) as ‘illustrative cases’ to study the role of indigeneity in urban policies. As both La Paz and Quito represent capital cities, it was possible to approach government officials operating at multiple scales – international, national and local – as well as ordinary urban indigenous residents. Methodologically, the thesis employs a qualitative, case study comparison and draws on information derived from semi-structured interviews, document analysis, participant observation and participatory focus groups conducted during eleven months of fieldwork. In terms of comparison, this thesis makes use of a variation-finding approach. By explaining variations between the cases through focusing on the unique processes and factors that shaped the translation of indigenous rights within each city, it intends to offer a more nuanced and context-responsive approach for studying urban indigeneity and addressing indigenous rights in cities. A central finding of this thesis is that the incorporation of indigeneity into urban policies and indigenous people’s own practices to fulfil their specific demands were characterised by a set of conflicting realities: First, for government officials the translation of indigenous rights into urban policies sometimes clashed with other priorities – such as addressing universal rights and interests of non-indigenous pressure groups – or with their own views of the city as a ‘white’, ‘western’, and ‘modern’ places. Second, urban indigenous peoples articulated multiple and contradictory identities. They mainly did this by voicing specific demands for land – an important asset which they associated with the preservation of a communal and traditional lifestyle but also with aspirations to lead a modern and capitalist life in the city. Third, the findings reveal that indigenous peoples – particularly their community leaders – had to enter in negotiations with governments to access different assets such as land, housing, or education. In these processes leaders manoeuvred between different worlds. They had to conform to political agendas and – particularly in the case of Bolivia – to official spatialized understandings of identity and rights which often conflicted with their own sense of being indigenous in the city.