Spanish and Us Colonial Projects: Social Practice of Spatial Ordering in Latin America and Southeast Asia

• In Event: Cultural Heritages

Abstract

This paper will discuss histories of urban planning in Latin America and Southeast Asia during the Spanish and US colonial periods. Considering a broad definition of urban planning, as the social practice of spatial ordering, I will discuss common threads in the histories of these regions that allows for productive debates about transnational and trans-imperial histories. Scholars have suggested how colonies served as laboratories of experimentation for urban planning and were used to expand the project of modernism, modernity, ‘civilization’ [sic] and capitalism. This paper contributes to this research by asking to what extent are the tools used for the practices of spatial ordering similar or different in Spanish and US colonial projects? This exploratory analysis of secondary literature posits that although the enacted practices varied by geography of implementation due to local contextual differences, there were some common tools used through Latin America and Southeast Asia such as the imposition of social hierarchy, enactions of power, the import of policies used elsewhere, the use of the law, the enablement through discourse, and the practice of othering. Research discussing urban planning as a colonial tool is prolific. However, most of this research is geographically bounded to a region or is bounded by the colonial power (eg. French colonies, British colonies, etc.). By putting in conversation geographies that are not usually discussed together, I aim to contribute to broader conversations of colonialism in urban planning and also, potentially, about the resistances to these colonial practices.

Author

• Samantha Saona, Columbia University