Imaginarios de desarrollo urbano: atisbos de cooperación local en una metrópolis neoliberal y competitiva

The city and the urban society materialize in time and space a system of power relations and mechanisms of exchange, which evolves through changes in the collective imaginary, the transformation of institutions and the material restructuring of cities. This article proposes a theoretical framework that integrates these perspectives with the objective of understanding how contradictory urbanization processes are articulated in Chile, identifying similarities and disputes related to public policies and social movements, since the last dictatorship until today. This study integrates and extends theories of social and institutional evolution in order to problematize the discussion of secondary sources, participant observation and cartographic analysis. The evidence thus obtained supports the thesis that recent transformations in Greater Santiago have been strained by neoliberal policies that have established dominant incentives for competition, while negating social imaginaries based on a complementary principle of cooperation and dismantling the corresponding incentive structures. We argue that this ideological confrontation can be overcome with long overdue institutional reforms, in order to generate an incentive structure capable of fostering participatory and intersectoral policies, without implying the abolition of established incentives for competitiveness. Several participatory programs implemented in the last decade, which have in common a strong urban or territorial component, have generated relevant knowledge that could inform the design of institutions capable of fostering competitive and cooperative practices in a more balanced way.