Smart City: The Gentrification of Puebla

Smart City: The Gentrification of Puebla
June 25, 2017
By Diego Martín Velázquez Caballero

https://www.semanarioelreto.com/single-post/2017/06/25/Smart-City-La-Gentrificaci%C3%B3n-de-Puebla

The neoliberal technocracy has long established a less political and more administrative style of government. The new public management is shaped by changing some functions of the traditional system in the public sector and establishing within it the elements of the market. That is, to use management, instead of the public allocation of resources; Privatization, rather than public bodies; Incentive schemes of competitiveness, rather than distribution of taxes; Liberalization, rather than regulation; And neoclassical economics, rather than the humanist.

This mutation is due to the replacement of bureaucratic processes by market ordering. Customer orientation, quality, privatization, trade and competition are the economic solutions imposed on political problems. The art of government is something that is increasingly forgotten in the ruling class. Instead of politicians, we find highly corrupt technocrats.

The proposal of SMART CITY or INTELLIGENT CITY for the capital of Puebla, affirms to be oriented to improve the quality of life of the citizens and to use the co-responsibility of the society, private initiative, universities and government in the work strategy. However, as in other urban projects, for example AUDI CITY MODEL, it has precisely lacked the concurrence of public and private actors to generate governance that will bring these macroprojects to a successful conclusion. The urbanization program does not seek a shared city, it is a business subject to the great multinationals. Concession, privatize, outsource, digitize are the strategies to remove the poblanos their city. Under modernity, colonialism is always the epitome of exploitation.

 The increase in violence in the state capital is a sign of the abandonment, disenchantment, disregard and insecurity that is felt in the City. The PAN municipalities have manifested a profound contradiction to govern the most important municipality of Puebla. Is the capital so insignificant that it has passed from an unfortunate administration to a directed one? The poor results achieved by the National Action Party at the head of the municipal government are evident. But today the facts can no longer be disguised or qualified, and are waiting to be explained objectively. Puebla is underway. The SMART CITY strategy goes on to say that, faced with the government's inability to meet social demands, everything must be privatized and that only those who can afford the high costs of managerial quality should be left to live. The development of these urban models seeks to create markets, where the citizen is placed as a consumer, precisely because of the Government's inability to provide efficient services, and create a competitive environment in the provision of public goods and services with the spirit Business. In the capital, the situation began with water, street lighting and mobility; now the technocrats say that the rest can go.

According to the situation in Puebla, it is necessary to consider the bifurcation that exists between the highly urbanized spaces and the agricultural subsisting rural ones. The gap between these spaces must be closed and seek a development that reaches for all. What would not be more important to divide the metropolitan area of ​​Puebla into several municipalities or delegations? What sense does it have to continue with centralizing measures in the political, economic and social that end up being exclusionary, classist and xenophobic? How long will the cities of the country be governed by participatory and independent democracies?

Ignacio Corona (2004) manifests the contradictions and falsehoods between the real and symbolic cities evidencing the case of Guadalajara. The spirit of insubordination, chaos and nostalgia in the Latin American cities that make them chaotic, depends on a coloniality that does not want to be suppressed and that manifests itself in every stroke, street, building, architecture. Guadalajara will not stop being the "Cathedral of the Narco", with all that implies, in spite of the urbanistic lies that are imposed. ¿Puebla will be the Huachicol Temple, eternal Huichilobos that chases the conservatives?

Latin American cities will not cease to drag the characteristics of a failed modernity. Architecture is a silent witness of history; But he is a witness who does not lie. Erratic public works, white elephants, useless technologies, urban corruption, informality and poverty; Are unavoidable elements of social analysis that can not be covered with facades even if they bear the label "Smart".