Slum at the center : participation and radical planning in Villa 31, Central Buenos Aires

Abstract: Citizen participation has as a planning strategy, become increasingly enveloped and is today often described as a way to deepen democracy. At the same time, there is reason to question this rhetoric as many researchers argue that these strategies does not live up to what they promise. The aim of this paper is to understand how citizen participation work under the neoliberal scheme, focusing on issues of power and how this processes can be understood as legitimizing practices. A case study has been conducted in Villa 31, a centrally located and conflict-traded slum area in Buenos Aires. Critical theory regarding citizen participation and theories of radical planning constitutes the theoretical foundation. Two different types of civil dialogues are identified in the case, one of which represents a clear official dialogue process and the other has been conducted more informally. These separate processes illustrate both that dialogues can be seen as a tool for maintaining the status quo. But also how civil dialogues can act as a more progressive force when allowing it to take a more activistic form. The essay points out that it is important to identify how dialogue processes relate to residents' own self-organized spaces for participation in order to understand how these processes can be a way to empower marginalized groups.