7 - Insurgent planning practices and university– community engagement in popular urbanization: the Urban Planning Commission in the land reclamation of Guernica, Buenos Aires

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In Latin America, popular or peripheral urbanizations (Caldeira 2017; Streule et al. 2020) are often framed by policy-makers and in public debate as expressions of anti-planning, disorder, improvisation and illegality. In general terms, popular urbanization practices, which we describe in detail further, produce reactions from the state that can unfold in different negotiation and contestation approaches. In Argentina, not only are these processes unassisted by the state but also they are usually repressed and evicted. However, we consider that this type of urbanization develops as processes based on collective initiatives and self-organization that configure insurgent planning practices as alternatives to both the state and the market.

When these urban popular planning practices are supported by university– community engagement, without interfering in the democratic decisionmaking processes that often characterize them, they become strengthened in their technical and legal aspects. This is the case in Argentina, where, in historical terms, university and popular sectors engaged together to conceive and set up alternative planning practices. The innovative and relevant interactions between academia, marginalized popular sectors and social movements allow the emergence of prefigurative planning with a focus on inclusive development.

In this regard, this chapter aims to reflect critically on the positionality and practices of academic planners in engaging with groups reclaiming land in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. We consider that planning theories should be permeable to practices and that this self-reflection can contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice. Thus, we analyse the collective action and insurgent planning practices that took place from July 2020 to October 2020, throughout the process of recuperación de tierras (hereafter, land reclamation) of a peri-urban area located in Guernica town (Presidente Perón municipality), in the south of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. During the land reclamation carried out by the inhabitants of the Guernica lands, the Comisión de Urbanismo de la Recuperación de Tierras de Guernica (Urban Planning Commission for the Guernica Land Reclamation; hereafter Comisión) was created by students and professors from both the faculties of geography and architecture of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the National University of La Plata (UNLP), to provide the inhabitants with academic and technical planning support. Most of them were active members of research and university community extension projects, professors, student associations and practitioners from social and political organizations.