El desmantelamiento de las instituciones científicas de la Junta para Ampliación de Estudios

The present strategy of peri-central urban and demographic recovery was first launched by Santiago-Centre municipality¹⁴ involving the creation of the public-private Corporation for Development of Santiago (Corporación para el Desarrollo de Santiago, CORDESAN) in 1985. This was a relatively unique case in Latin America of concentration of sectoral state powers in one institution at local level (Luque and Smith, 2007). This institution would succeed at implementing a first model for renovation through two highly subsidised new-build residential projects, targeted for middle-low-income households in some relatively decayed neighbourhoods of the core. With the years, CORDESAN would be empowered with additional several legal attributions, also elaborating from 1990 onwards a complex strategic plan of reinvigoration of the image of the comuna as an emerging global centre, a friendly place for international market functions. As seen in CHAPTER 2, The role of the Ibero-American Centre for Strategic Urban Development (CIDEU) as strategic partner and technical consultant of the municipality was vital (Steinberg, 2001). At any rate, the success of Santiago-Centre in its own programme of renewal would be a landmark to imitate in future operations in peri-central comunas like San Miguel, Quinta Normal, Recoleta and in general those that more recently have attracted successfully property investment to their areas (Devia, 2003). Initial CORDESAN’s aims were very straightforward:

14 In terms of its budget and financial stability, this municipality is the most powerful in the country. Its annual budget is around US $ 110 millions.

a) Organising, promoting, planning, coordinating and executing projects for the local urban, economic and social development, through actions of design, remodelling, renewal, rehabilitation, reconstruction, building, greening, and reducing the pollution, prevention of urban deterioration and architectural heritage conservation in Santiago-Centre comuna.

b) Elaborating studies, research and experimental plans aimed at boosting the comuna’s development.

c) Linking developers, financiers and the municipality, evaluating the actions developed.

d) Financing and giving technical consultancy to other institutions for research in urban renewal topics.

CORDESAN defined a strategic plan for Santiago-Centre’s urban and demographic recovery, considering three main actions: first, to lobby the central government¹⁵ for friendlier building regulations to the renewal via transforming the National Law of Planning and Construction (LGUC) and a previous special subsidy (that would lead in few years to the implementation of the URS); second, to gather possible buyers of the new units, landlords interested in selling plots, and possible interested developers; third, to develop a friendly business environment in Santiago-Centre via local- and central-state investments in improving local infrastructure. After an initial stage (1992-1994), an adjustment phase (1995-1996) that implied considerably relaxing the building regulations contained in Santiago-Centre Master Plan, and a phase of consolidation (1997 onwards), the renewal of Santiago-Centre can be considered as a highly successful case of high density redevelopment (Valenzuela, 2003). Thenceforth, between 1990 and 2000, Santiago-Centre municipality increased ten times its share in the construction of new housing in the metropolis, jumping from a 1.1% of the units and

15 In 1987, this institution published a very convincing study to prove that the cost of allocating a single new resident in the periphery (considering new networks, amenities and roads to provide) ascended to nearly US $ 6,500, whilst the cost of allocating the same person in the centre was barely above US $ 360 (Valenzuela, 2003).

1.16% square metres built in the Greater Santiago in 1989, to 13.8% of the units and 11%

of the square metres offered in the metropolis in 2001 (Rojas, 2004).

In 1998 CORDESAN started to lose its leading role in the process of renewal because the market had been already launched. Yet the corporation keeps up to now its original institutional composition, gathering a broad array of private and public institutions’

representatives, being chaired by Santiago-Centre mayor and composed by four of the largest national banks, three NGOs, five public and private universities, three private public services suppliers, five union associations (including the National Association of Building Firms) and two housing cooperatives (Valenzuela, 2003).

At any rate, the relatively high presence of private firms’ representatives in the corporation makes explicit its entrepreneurial goals. From the beginning, CORDESAN gave high priority to a little regulated local property market as an indisputable condition for boosting the so far timid activity of urban renewal. But also CORDESAN’s experience had a multiplier effect. Not only the subsidised market of urban renewal trickled down to several neighbouring comunas, but also its entrepreneurial logic – i.e.

municipal-private type of management, relative freedom of action in terms of redefining its own goals, and its high capacity for lobbying the central and regional offices of MINVU for ad hoc urban regulations and subsidies – have been emulated (some interviewees even claimed ‘copycatted’) by almost every peri-central municipal apparatus, with uneven results though (Devia, 2003).

However, if from the beginning the internal composition of CORDESAN covered a broad array of institutions, it did not include as members any citizen representative.

Despite the fact that Santiago-Centre municipality and CORDESAN had launched three citizen ‘municipal conventions’ (Valenzuela, 2003) seeking to gather local people’s impressions about the process (with some effectiveness at regulating ex-post some imperfect local guidelines in certain over-dense districts) some researchers have estimated that the quality of the participation in the whole process of new-build redevelopment has been rather poor. Regulatory changes for protecting environmentally or architecturally valuable areas were done only after long periods of destructive renewal had taken place (Ibid)

At any rate, what CORDESAN’s experience made clear is that Santiago’s model of urban renewal could not have been accomplished without municipal active intervention in underpinning the market (let alone central-state supply of subsidies for the purchase of new units). Levels of citizen participation had been limited to stages of consultation only, but there has not been active residents participation in the management of the programme. This idea seems also to have been learnt well by the peri-central municipalities like PAC, as will be seen in CHAPTER 6.

4.3.2. Central-state response: the Urban Renewal Subsidy (URS),