TOWARDS A POST-NEOLIBERAL CHILEAN URBANISM: EXPLORING THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF THE LATIN AMERICA PLACEMAKING MOVEMENT WITHIN THE ACTUALLY EXISTING NEOLIBERAL CONTEXT

In Chile almost 50 years of neoliberal urban policies have led to the denial of the Lefebvrian Right to the City through the preeminence of the monetary value of the space over its social one, and the consequent alienation of part of the population from urban services. The social crisis brought about by the neoliberal process escalated into October '19 massive protests, through which Chileans obtained a new Political Constitution to move toward a post-neoliberal state form. This tentative affirmation of post-Neoliberalism demands an understanding of Neoliberalism's obstinate resilience through the analysis of its forms of contestation. Among these, Tactical Urbanism (TU) movements, like the Latin America Placemaking one, stand out as a self-evident alternative to neoliberal urbanism. The transformative potential of TU movements for re-establishing the Right to the City within neoliberal urban contexts has mainly been evaluated through theoretically driven and result-oriented perspectives, leading to contrasting results. Such a theoretical impasse has been overcome by social movement researchers who have adopted more interpretative approaches to explore insurgent urban practices with a focus on the potential of their ambiguities. Accordingly, this research aims to contribute to understanding the complex relationship between tactical and neoliberal urbanism, focusing on its contradictions. I aim to study it by exploring the specific case of the Latin America Placemaking Movement and its transformative potential within the Chilean actually existing neoliberal urbanism by answering the question “How does the Latin America Placemaking Movement represent an alternative to the Chilean neoliberal urbanism for achieving the Right to the City?”