Planning for Sustainability in Buenos Aires: Transnational NGOs and Expert Knowledge Circulation in Buenos Aires

• In Event: 1451 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 12. Other Urban Issues

Abstract

This paper details the role and importance of transnational policy actors in the design and implementation of urban development models in Buenos Aires. It examines the dense networks of urban planning professionals, global consultants, non-profits organizations, and local officials who together produce a normative vision of the world-class city. Buenos Aires is not a hapless victim of multilateral agencies or NGOs, but nor is the process of policy adoption free from geopolitical influence. The reshaping of Buenos Aires through paradigms such as the “creative” and “sustainable” city evidence clear directionality, with institutions from the global North exercising considerable clout. The policies these institutions prioritize gain purchase because they intersect with both real quality of life dilemmas as well as a constantly evolving set of world-class city images circulating among local elites. In examining Buenos Aires’ adoption of a sustainable transportation development model downtown, as well as the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit, I explore the mechanisms through which international expertise acts as a key broker in the kinds of images, policies, and imaginaries that comprise city officials’ policy toolkit. To a significant degree, the success of these projects is measured by how well host cities, like Buenos Aires, integrate the rhetoric of world-class urbanism, expressed through values such as sustainability, inclusion, and liveability, into their city branding and international reputations. This paper shows how this discourse has become the primary product of an international urban development community, enshrined and circulated through networks of professionals that seed expertise in the global South and recursively legitimate the world-class ideal by rewarding amenable city governments with international recognition.

Author

• Jacob H. Lederman, University of Michigan-Flint