Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru

Habitat International xxx (2014) 1e8

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Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru Lisa Strauch a, Guillermo Takano b, Michaela Hordijk a, * a Universiteit van Amsterdam, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, Plantage Muidergracht 14, 1018 TV Amsterdam, The Netherlands b Chance2sustain, Foro Ciudades para la Vida (Cities for Life Forum), Lima, Peru

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Urban megaprojects Spatial justice Urban development Housing policy Collective action Lima

Much in contrast to the city John Turner (1967) once described as progressive in terms of housing approaches for the urban poor, today in Lima, the capital of Peru, private enterprises have assumed unprecedented planning powers. The city that for a substantial part has been produced ‘from below’ through collective action is increasingly transformed ‘from above’ through large-scale urban development projects. The article discusses how Lima’s urban poor collectively resist the intervention of a megaproject in their neighbourhoods, the ‘Vía Parque Rímac’ expressway. This mixed-use project combines conventional road infrastructure with urban redevelopment, including public green spaces in the city centre. It is concluded that this emblematic project has significant implications for issues of spatial justice, political transparency and accountability. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction No city in the developing world is as famous for its approach towards housing the urban poor as Lima, the capital of Peru. The city was considered an emblematic example for researchers and policy makers interested in self-help forms of urban development because of its early acceptance of squatter settlements as a low cost housing policy e known in Peru as barriadas. Since the 1950s Peruvian governments permitted the massive occupation of public desert land and promoted incremental home building by the urban poor as a way to cope with the huge housing deficit that resulted from rapid urban growth (Fernandéz-Maldonando & Bredenoord, 2010). As early as 1961 the Peruvian government adopted the famous ‘ley de barriadas’, which legalized existing barriadas and promised the provision of services. This provision of services has never been realized to the extent envisioned, and given the fact that in Lima most invasions took place on peripheral, low value desert land, this was an easy and cheap ‘solution’ to the housing problem of the urban poor. The progressive housing approach hence quickly disintegrated into a permissive, or laissez faire, approach towards informal settlement formation. This has resulted in a city of which

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ31 0 20 525 4058; fax: þ31 0 20 525 4051. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Strauch), [email protected] (G. Takano), [email protected], [email protected] (M. Hordijk).

large parts have been produced from ‘below’ with very limited support from government authorities. At the same time the ‘formal’ development of the city’s higher income areas has been produced from ‘above’: important decisions on large scale infrastructure were taken without residents having a voice, and planning of these investments often took place behind closed doors. Additionally, market driven forces have gained special prominence under president Fujimori (1990e2000). Pro-growth, topedown policies were implemented with a greater reliance on market practices and the privatisation of urban planning. These two different spatial logics e the production of the city from ‘below’ through barriada formation and from ‘above’ though topedown, market led interventions e have resulted in a city with stark contrasts between the ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ spaces, reflecting Lima’s deep socio-spatial inequalities. While these two logics, though spatially segregated, have always co-existed, the subtle balance has increasingly gravitated in favour of the latter, entailing major implications for urban spatial justice. Within the current context of neoliberalism and globalisation, key actors aspire to transform the informal ‘mega city’ into a wellconnected competitive city. Or in the words of a major proponent, a former councillor at Lima Metropolitana: “Growth through investment, not through invasion” (Romero Sotelo, 2006). To materialise this urban vision, the rapid transformation of the urban landscape through large-scale development projects, or megaprojects (Kennedy et al., 2011), has shifted to the core of

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Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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contemporary city planning. Increasingly Lima is experiencing an important restructuring through topedown megaprojects under private concession schemes, transforming multinational business actors into critical city decision makers. This article analyses the interplay between new governance patters where market forces driven by international capital have a prominent voice, and the urban poor, who have to bear the consequences of the consolidation of neoliberalism in Peru. It does so by analysing the spatial injustices e such as displacement e created by a megaproject currently under construction in some of Lima’s oldest barriadas along the river Rímac in the city centre. It further investigates the opportunities and challenges for the collective contestation of such injustices from the affected communities. The article is based on an in-depth case study documenting both the history of collective action in the settlements affected, and their current resistance mobilisation against the megaproject. It is based on ninety open interviews with residents and their leaders and ten with government officials, representatives from the company executing the megaproject and civil society activists, carried out in 2012e2013. The production of the city from above The growing influence of neoliberalism in most Latin American countries has produced profound urban transformations, especially since the early 1990s (Portes & Roberts, 2005). With the increasing importance of market led development and the decentralisation of political functions to local governments, cities have been put at the forefront of neo-liberalisation and increasingly made responsible for realizing international competitiveness (Leitner, Sheppard, Sziarto, & Maringanti, 2007: 2). Not only key urban sectors have been privatised and liberalised, urban governing institutions have been restructured so as to respond more to the need of securing private investment and creating business friendly environments (Brenner & Theodore, 2003; Peck & Tickell, 2002). The most recent chapter of this story, especially in so-called ‘megacities’ in the global South, is an emphasis on restructuring urban space to be able to join the race to position the city on the map of the competitive global economy (Barthel, 2010; Deboulet, 2010; Dupont, 2011; Shatkin, 2008). Large-scale urban development projects such as specialised infrastructure, gentrification programmes and urban renewal projects have become an integral part of this process. However, most of these efforts to promote a marketable, modern city through megaprojects reinforce urban spatial and social inequalities. They give expression to contradictions between the aspirations of planning elites and the rights of urban dwellers as they often entail the displacement of local populations and livelihoods (Gellert & Lynch, 2003). This has led to increased conflict over urban space when communities contest urban redevelopment and its destructive impacts on their livelihoods (Fernandes, 2004; Newman & Wyly, 2006; Skuse & Cousins, 2007). However, the capacity of affected communities to mobilise effective resistance is often seriously hampered by the fact that they are commonly deliberately excluded from decision-making about megaprojects (Oliver-Smith, 2002: 16). Information tends to be strategically hidden from them as their interests and concerns go against powerful interests. Moreover, it has been contended that megaprojects commonly disenfranchise communities and inhibit contestation, especially the so-called ‘new’ generation (Lehrer & Laidley, 2009). In contrast to ‘old’ megaprojects that are singular in their purpose, new megaprojects are mixed-use, and appear to advance a multitude of urban development goals (i.e. integrating the development of infrastructure with the construction of social housing and urban

green spaces). Because of this plethora of land uses “these megaprojects inhibit the growth of oppositional and contestational practices” as they appear to offer something to everybody and please the various interests of an imagined ‘everyone’ (Lehrer & Laidley, 2009: 787). Additionally, megaprojects have a tendency to deepen spatial fragmentation as they constitute project-based urban interventions that spatially target specific places in the city e detached from the integrated development of the city as a whole (Swyngedouw, Moulaert, & Rodriguez, 2002: 569). The emblematic project replaces the regulatory plan at city scale. This downscaling of urban policies to project-based city interventions results in new institutional configurations characterized by power geometries that differ from those of the traditional arenas of government (Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 567). In relation to ‘ordinary’ government practices, the literature frequently describes megaprojects as resulting from ‘exceptionalist’ planning policies that comprise significant democratic deficits with respect to accountability, representation or participation. Citizens are commonly kept at substantial distance from megaproject decision-making (Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, & Rothengatter, 2003: 5) and accountability channels are often non-transparent, circumventing traditional democratic channels of decision-making and participation (Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 561). Megaprojects frequently promote narrow-minded pro-growth visions of the city that are removed from the realities of urban problems and challenges (Altshuler & Luberoff, 2003: 67; Garrido, 2013; Sami, 2013). They are accompanied by governance structures that involve a redistribution of decision power away from public to the interests of corporate growth coalitions, which tend to result in the perpetuation of spatial injustices in the city. Lima’s production of the city from above In Lima large-scale urban development projects have become a central element in contemporary city planning.1 Recent megaprojects have primarily aimed to tackle existing agglomeration problems that have resulted from rapid urban growth e such as huge infrastructure backlogs and transportation diseconomies.2 Despite the huge socio-spatial inequalities prevailing in the city, municipal decisions on transport infrastructure investments privilege private over public transport, mainly connecting wealthier districts to the city-centre and important hubs in the city. Most recently the international sea- and airports have been expanded, the first line of a metro system has been constructed and a number of new urban highways are in the process of being built or enhanced. In this process the private sector has come to play an indispensable role. Considering the limited budget of the municipality, the inclusion of the private sector through the development of publiceprivate partnerships (PPPs) (particularly through the granting of road infrastructure concessions) and the easing of existing bureaucratic rules and regulations are an important part of the urban agenda. Since the financing of this infrastructure comes from toll-concessions, the resulting privatised infrastructure is often inaccessible for the poor, increasing spatial segregation in the city.

1 Over the last 10 years 2 megaprojects for public transport (1,25 billion USD), 3 megaprojects for private transport (1,3 billion USD); 3 projects on international connectivity (1,4 billion USD) and four megaprojects to improve water and sanitation infrastructure (4 billion USD) were tendered in Lima. Of these 12 projects nine are either already delivered, or are currently under construction (Takano, 2013: 4). 2 Raw calculations of Peru’s infrastructure backlog for 2012e2021 are estimated at almost 88,000M USD (El Comercio, 2012).

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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Nevertheless, building infrastructure is not only seen as a strategic instrument to modernise the city. The mere process of building it is also considered crucial for boosting national economic growth in the short term. Indeed, infrastructure has shifted from being a precondition for production and consumption to being at the very core of these activities (Flyvbjerg et al., 2003: 2e3). The construction sector has been the main driver for economic growth in Peru in the last years,3 giving governments a strong incentive to find new mechanisms that facilitate private investment in infrastructure provision. However, given the rapid and largely unplanned growth of the city, restructuring urban space through large scale infrastructure projects requires major spatial transformations and the redevelopment of spaces that are most often already inhabited e implying the displacement of people and livelihoods. The production of the city from below The rise of barriadas and the changing relevance of collective action The unmet demand for low-cost housing of rural migrants who have flooded Lima since the 1940s quickly led to the proliferation of sub-standard, informal housing. In the absence of affordable housing options, the poor began to tackle the housing shortage themselves by invading undeveloped land and constructing their own neighbourhoods, transforming land invasion and incremental home building into the most common way for Lima’s urban poor to access housing. The first squatter settlements were developed on the banks of the river Rímac and the hills close to the centre of the city (Barreda & Ramírez Corzo, 2004: 206). From the mid-fifties onwards, however, the settlements were mostly formed on the arid desert land in the city’s periphery since well-located land became scarce in more central areas of the city. After the initial phase of illegal land occupation the squatter settlements passed through several stages of consolidation. They began their history with makeshift habitation until they were finally fully urbanised and equipped with basic infrastructure (Riofrío, 1996). In this process the strategic organisation and mobilisation of communities played a crucial role. The development of the settlements became a collective enterprise: residents organised into neighbourhood councils and committees through which they worked towards the realisation of their common goals and channelled their demands to the government. In many ways, the exceptional story of Lima’s barriadas as sites for communitydriven development led researchers to re-think social dynamics in informal settlements. Inspired by what he had witnessed in Peru, John Turner (1967) helped to reframe the discourse on slums from spaces of deprivation and despair towards seeing them as ‘slums of hope’ (Chambers, 2005) e and advocated ‘self-help’ housing as a tool to overcome the housing shortage in poor countries. Another factor that facilitated the formation of barriadas was the acquiescent role of the Peruvian state. Squatter settlements were rarely evicted (Dosh & Lerager, 2006: 39), and collective organisation in the settlements was strongly encouraged by stipulating that the government would only discuss land issues with recognised neighbourhood associations, not with individuals (Hordijk, 2000: 76). Moreover, since the 1950s Peruvian governments have enacted a number of laws that granted many settlements a legal status and promoted incremental home building. With the enactment of the Law for Marginal Settlements (the famous ‘ley de barriadas’) in 1961, Peru was the first country to regularise ‘self-help

3 The construction sector is holding a 1% share of the 6.3% national aggregate growth rate from 2012.

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development’. At a different point in time, the state even actively assisted and planned barriada development (Collier, 1976). While the state’s acceptance of squatter settlements and endorsement of self-help development can be attributed to some extent to a progressive, pro-poor political agendas, this approach also effectively washed its hands of the responsibility for providing affordable housing to the urban poor. Furthermore, an important geographical factor influenced the government’s permissive attitude: unlike in most other cities, the availability of land was not a problem in Lima. The city was surrounded by (publicly owned) desert land without commercial value on which low-income families were allowed to settle. Therewith the government could satisfy the demand for urban land by the poor but also prevented them from squatting valuable or privately owned inner city land. Some foresighted local actors warned in the 1970s that decreasing availability would become a problem (Riofrío, 1978), and indeed the attitude towards invasions has drastically changed since the turn of the century (Hordijk, in press). Many of the initial squatter settlements have undergone remarkable transitions towards consolidation. However, depending on their location in the city, levels of consolidation diverge. While the peripheral barriadas have been constructed on land relatively easy to urbanise, many settlements closer to the city centre are located on land not suited for construction. Therefore, many are still not fully consolidated and have begun to show signs of decay (Ramírez Corzo & Riofrío, 2006: 11, 64 pp.). Also social dynamics in the settlements have changed. Once the settlements acquire basic services and individual land titles, collective action tends to decline (Dosh & Lerager, 2006). In the initial development stage, communal organisations undertake those activities that are prior to and necessary for individual activities (Riofrío, as cited in Hordijk, 2000: 95). With the improvement of a neighbourhood’s infrastructure the need for collective mobilisation considerably decreases and people focus more on personal development and individual home construction (Dietz & Tanaka, 2002: 205). Likewise, the social utility of previously indispensable community-based organisations, such as the neighbourhood council, has become increasingly unclear and often contested. However, organisational structures usually do not disappear. Rather neighbourhood organisations lay dormant and can be reactivated once the community faces new collective challenges. The neighbourhoods located along the river Rímac next to the historical centre of the city, our case study area, are indicative of the heterogeneity of urban conditions across the settlements. The area is commonly referred to as the ‘Margen Izquierda del Río Rímac’ (MIRR) and the ‘Margen Derecha del Río Rímac’ (MDRR) (the Left and Right Bank of the River Rímac). Here, approximately 50 settlements, at different stages of the urban consolidation process, are home to more than 80,000 people (INEI, 2007). The individual settlements emerged through land invasions from the late 1920s onwards and today most neighbourhoods have achieved access to basic services though collective action. Most residents have also long replaced their makeshift shelters with constructions in brick and mortar and many houses have even expanded to multi-family apartments home to various generations. Nevertheless, there are also settlements that already exist for years but have been constructed in spaces difficult to urbanise such as on top of sanitary landfills and on the steep banks of the river Rímac where houses are at serious risk of collapsing into the river. These neighbourhoods show a certain level of consolidation of the individual dwellings but still lack access to basic infrastructure. Urban conditions are hence very diverse across the different settlements (see Fig. 1). Their inhabitants, who have built up their neighbourhoods from below, currently face the consequence of a megaproject intervention planned from above.

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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Fig. 1. Highly diverse urban conditions across different settlements in the MIRR and MDRR (Source: author’s collection).

The Línea Amarilla e Vía Parque Rímac megaproject First stage of the megaproject: Línea Amarilla In March 2009, the Brazilian construction company OAS submitted an unsolicited bid for a 571M UDS megaproject involving the construction of an inner city toll highway to the municipality of Lima. The project, designated ‘Línea Amarilla’ (‘Yellow Line’, LA), offered a complementary transportation axis to a part of the currently heavily congested ‘Vía Evitamiento’ expressway and included three main components: the redevelopment of the existing Vía Evitamiento; the construction of a 9 km new highway component along the Rímac river; including the construction of a 2 km tunnel underneath the river. The primary motivation for the investor were the profits it would obtain from a 30 year concession of the highway’s tolls, including a concession of the existing toll system from the Vía Evitamiento, considered the most profitable in the country.4 The megaproject entailed vast social implications, as the new highway would run though the low-income settlements of the ‘Margen Izquierda’ and ‘Margen Derecha del Río Rímac’, displacing at least 1350 families. Several aspects of the LA project mark it as an emblematic example of the expanding role of the private sector in urban planning processes in Lima. The LA proposal was a ‘private initiative’ and consisted of an unsolicited bid, conceived outside of the municipality’s infrastructure plans. The ‘private initiative’ is a special Public Private Partnership (PPP) mechanism that authorises national and foreign private sector actors to present unsolicited proposals for infrastructure development to different levels of government. Special agencies have been set up to evaluate such proposals. In the case of Lima the GPIP (‘Agency for the Promotion of Private Investment’) fulfils this task. During the evaluation process, information must be confidentially kept by the GPIP until the project is declared ‘as of interest’ or not by the metropolitan council. If declared as ‘of interest’, a call for interested third parties is made who are given 90 days for declaring their will to participate in a bidding process. If no competing parties are interested, the construction is automatically granted to the initial proposer.

4 The Vía Evitamiento generates 65% of the total toll income sources of the municipality. Calculations made by OAS indicate that the concession will make minimum gross revenues of approximately 4170M USD after 30 years. In: Diario16 (n.d. 2013) and OAS (2009).

After evaluation through the GPIP the LA project was declared ‘of interest’ in June 2009 by the majority of the municipal council, headed at that time by mayor Luis Castañeda Lossio (2003e2010). As no competing bids were proposed within 90 days, OAS obtained the concession. The contract was signed in November 2009 between GPIP and LAMSAC (Línea Amarilla S.A.C. e a locally based special vehicle formed by OAS to hold the concession contract). The construction was expected to start in May 2010, implying that the land destined for construction had to be cleared before this date. The evaluation and approval process presented several ‘exceptionalist’ governance features characteristic of megaproject operating principles (Altshuler & Luberoff, 2003: 251; Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 561). While the agency GPIP was responsible for the (technical) evaluation of the private initiative, the metropolitan council took the final (political) decision. The evaluation process took place behind a ‘veil of secrecy’ (Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 567) that hindered transparency and political discussion. The private initiative mechanism is set up to protect the information held by the proposer to guarantee its competitive position in an eventual bidding process. Technical information was hence managed very discretely, even in relation to councillors, pre-empting criticism and discussion in the name of commercial confidentiality. Furthermore, the project could only become subject of public discussion once it was made public by the media. However, at that moment, the proposal had already been declared of interest and the concession would have been granted in any case. Moreover, the LA initiative was not only conceived of outside the municipality’s planning frameworks but also largely ignored existing ones, as far as there were. A lack of proper planning instruments, the dismantling of planning institutions and the lack of enforcement when it comes to existing regulations have significantly empowered the real estate actors in Lima (Miranda Sara, 2013). The project was approved without being aligned with the recommendations made in the Master Plan for Metropolitan Lima (1990e2010) and the transport plan, exemplifying how urban projects increasingly substitute comprehensive city planning as means for interventions in cities (Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 567). Lacking proper planning, the project is at its current state rather poorly integrated into the existing road infrastructure: contrarily to the project’s most cited objective of creating a rapid connection to the air- and seaport in Callao (El Comercio, 2010), the highway actually stops when it reaches the limits of the neighbouring region Callao, with great risk of generating bottlenecks.

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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Social contestation of the Línea Amarilla project Extensive resistance rose from the affected communities of the MIRR and MDRR after the project was publicly announced. Not only had they never been informed or consulted, the compensation schemes were also insufficient for buying alternative housing. The contract considered compensating the affected families, but it established a differentiated scheme for tenants and holders of a legal property title. The latter were to be compensated with 200 USD per m2 for built area and 70 USD per m2 for non-built area. Residents without a title, a majority of those concerned, were to be compensated for their plot with a one-time payment of 5000 USD. Furthermore, in 2007 the municipality of Lima had changed the zoning of the MIRR in exactly the area destined for constructing the highway. Due to the settlements proximity to the steep bank of the river Rímac, the city ordinance 1020 declared the area as high-risk area, prohibiting any residential use in the zone. Activists and residents alike suspected that the megaproject and the ordinance were linked as it legitimated the eviction politically and significantly lowered the market price of the dwellings. In response to the threat the megaproject posed to the communities, they mobilised in resistance and took to the streets. Given the pending social conflict over the LA project it was a hotly debated topic throughout the municipal election campaign in 2010. The mayor candidate Susana Villarán (in opposition to the Castañeda government) made the LA project central to her electoral campaign and declared to the protesting communities that if elected she would suspend the project. However, when Villarán was elected and took power in January 2011, she could only cancel the contract at high political, and eventually financial, cost. Contract renegotiation and second stage of the megaproject: Vía Parque Rímac The new administration opted for a contract renegotiation. In June 2011 Susana Villarán announced the modification of the project and renamed it ‘Vía Parque Rímac’ (Road Park Rímac, VPR). The new project reduced the number of affected families in the MIRR and MDRR to 950 by modifying the original roadway, and improved the economic conditions of the compensation scheme. It established that all residents would be compensated with a minimum of 30,000 USD for each dwelling and that the amount for compensation would be calculated by a valuation of the dwelling’s market price. The reallocation scheme offered to the affected household, however, did not improve. As under Castañeda’s administration, the project offered a housing unit of 60 m2 in an apartment block in the MIRR built by the concessionaire. Apart from the compensation scheme, the concessionaire was obliged to invest 2.5M USD into urban upgrading projects in the MIRR and MDRR to benefit those families not directly affected by displacement. Additionally, the new contract included two important campaign promises from Villarán: a connection of the most populated district San Juan de Lurigancho and the city centre at an extra cost of 20M USD, and the inclusion of the ‘Río Verde’ (‘Green River’) project into the construction. The project includes the canalisation and greening of 6 km riverfront and the construction of the ‘Proyecto Río Verde’ (Green River Project) a 25 ha metropolitan park close to the city centre at a cost of 80M USD.5 The redesign of

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While the new design of the roadway reduced the number of affected families in the MIRR, the project Río Verde with the development of the ‘Proyecto Río Verde’ will entail the relocation of various informal settlements from the area Cantagallo housing approximately 2500 families and a commercial area.

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the project raised the costs from 571M to 703M USD and the concession was therefore extended from 30 to 40 years. With these changes the project became a mixed-use project that, as Lehrer and Laidley (2009) indicate, are more difficult to contest because they appear to advance a multitude of urban development goals (i.e. integrating the development of infrastructure with the construction of social housing and urban green spaces). In her discourse, Villarán justified the renegotiated project in those terms, claiming that it successfully balanced public interests, demands from the affected populations and requirements of the investor. She declared: “we now have a better project for all” (Villarán, quoted in Stiglich, 2012: 97). Nevertheless, concerns from the affected communities continued to be largely excluded. Spaces of participation provided for by the VPR project Given the communities’ demands for information and dialogue, the Villarán government set up an office that organises informative workshops and provides advice to residents who wish to register for an apartment in the housing blocks under construction by the concessionaire. With this invited space for participation, the municipality claimed to have met the residents’ “right to participation and information” and to have eased the “atmosphere of tension and distrust towards the municipality and the concessionaire” by providing a space for “permanent dialogue with the affected residents” (Interview 29 October 2012, Municipality of Lima). Nevertheless, in fact the space only provides information about conditions of the project that have already been set and does not allow for discussion. Overall, both private and public project authorities delegitimise the protest movement and deny that the social conflict in the area is still on going. Rather resistance is seen as transitory, something that will pass with time: “In the beginning some leaders of some neighbourhoods made some activities, like some street blocks but those were temporary things, not massive e eventualities” (Interview 29 October 2012, Municipality of Lima, responsible for community relations with VPR). Furthermore, compensation of the affected residents will be elaborated through the ‘trato directo’ (direct treatment) mechanism e establishing that project authorities will deal with each resident case by case, defining the problem as an individual, not a collective one; certainly a strategic decision to impede collective organisation and claim making on the part of the communities. After the renegotiation of the contract and the announcement of the VPR project the municipality and company rhetorically framed the megaproject as a ‘socially viable project that represents a real opportunity to improve the living conditions of the people from the Margen Izquierda del Río Rímac’. The media echoed this discourse and hence the social implications of the project were largely absent in the public debate. While there has been sporadic media coverage of communities’ protests activities, these did not translate into a critical engagement with the megaproject but rather tended to delegitimise the protesters’ cause. While the limeñian media foregrounded the modernizing part of the project, i.e. the construction of a tunnel underneath the river Rímac, it ‘backgrounded’ the social implications. Affected communities were portrayed as beneficiaries of the project that were given the opportunity to escape from their precarious living conditions at the ‘edge of the abyss’, while resisters were framed as irrational, ungrateful rebels (La Republica, 2013). Reactions from below of the people affected Demands for information in the absence of any consultation When in November 2009 the local government signed the contract for the execution of the megaproject, the families to be

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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displaced from the MIRR and MDRR had never been consulted nor informed. Indeed, during the evaluation of the project proposal, communities from the affected areas tried to approach the GPIP in order to demand information but the agency refused to provide any, alleging that the confidential (and competitive) character of the process did not allow so as populations were not considered an intervening part of the administrative process.6 As such, the majority of the affected families learned about the project just like every other citizen of Lima: via the public media. Only six months after the signing of the contract the land clearing process was supposed to be initiated, however a resettlement plan for the displaced people was absent. The project only mandated a cash compensation scheme that was clearly insufficient for buying alternative housing, especially for the majority not holding a legal property title. In the words of a local neighbourhood leader: “they said that we should leave from here because our situation is informal, our homes precarious and because we are at high risk. But we said: have you thought about relocation? No! They were just saying take your 5.000 dollars and save yourself from there. But we know our rights. From there we began to organise” (Interview, 20 October 2012). The exclusionary design of the project rapidly ignited resistance among the affected communities. Neighbourhood associations came together to mobilise the population. Dwellings to be demolished were draped with slogans voicing resistance ‘this house is private property e the presence of Línea Amarilla LAMSAC is prohibited’. More spontaneous resistance activities included preventing project personnel from entering the settlements or evicting them when they wanted to conduct surveys or soil studies. In spring 2010 communities staged two street marches, one to the headquarters of the concessionaire and another to the congress. The main objectives of these mobilisations were to demand transparency and access to information; prevent the pending eviction and defend the right to housing; and fight the Municipal Ordinance 1020 which declared the settlements along the riverbank as high risk area and legitimised the displacement of residents with a low compensation (Interview resident MIRR, 23 November 2012). The two marches constituted an effective form of bringing resistance into the public eye and put pressure on political authorities. Susana Villarán and congress representatives supported the population in pleading for the unconstitutionality of the ordinance at the Constitutional Court, arguing that it violated the residents’ right to property. Although the court’s judgement (emitted in June 2011) did not overturn the ordinance, it obliged the municipality to implement an adequate relocation plan for the residents occupying the risky banks of the river Rímac. It further mandated that a relocation scheme needed to be set up with the participation of the residents. However, even after Villarán was elected mayor, no meaningful dialogue was established between residents and project authorities; during the fieldwork in 2012/13 the lack of information was still the top concern of all residents. A list of affected households had not been disclosed implying that nobody knew who were the definite affected. While on the one hand the lack of information was the main reason why the resistance movement rose up in the first place, on the other it was also the reason why it was difficult to sustain. All interviewees were aware about the megaproject, however, concrete knowledge about compensation schemes, options for relocation or even about whether their house was affected or not, was often lacking. This generated uncertainty and led to desperation and inaction, with direct effects on people’s capacity to

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According to ‘Oficio 471-2009-MML-GPIP’.

organise resistance e a condition that both the public and private project authorities were certainly not eager to change. Negotiating compensation and resettlement When the new mayor renegotiated the contract with the concessionaire, she partially responded to the demands of the resistance movement. The monetary compensation was improved and the number of families affected by displacement reduced. Although the amount for compensation and the form of resettlement continued to be hotly contested, the improvements, such as the higher compensation offered, altered the basis for decision making about resistance. Rather than resisting relocation, some residents came to acknowledge the possibility of accepting relocation under adequate conditions and committed themselves to fighting for an improved compensation scheme. In general, people rarely challenged the project in itself but thought to fight ‘for just compensation’. They were careful not to portray themselves as opponents to the development of the city, but demanded a fair distribution of the benefits of this process. One neighbourhood leader argued: “we are not against this project but we are against the lack of dialogue. We are not against modernity but we want a fair deal” (Interview 16 December 2012). Another affirmed that: “we believe that the project is a necessity, all the streets are very congested. But if they want to remove us from here, the centre of Lima, to send us to who knows where, what we want is at least a fair compensation” (Interview 20 October 2012). Many residents indeed feared the devastating spatial consequences of relocation. Given the fact that in the settlements one dwelling is often home to more than two families, the 60 m2 apartment offered as alternative housing was insufficient. Furthermore, it meant that residents would be cut off from homebound income sources such as shops and workshops located within their dwelling or from the possibility of renting out parts of the house to tenants. Moreover, people who refused to accept the apartment would be forced to move to the far outskirts of the city as land prices in the centre would prevent them from being able to purchase land in the central districts. Similarly, this entails a threat of impoverishment, as people are disconnected from their current place-related income sources and the urban opportunities that define the central location of the settlements. Moreover, all residents perceived relocation as an uprooting. The settlements’ collective history gave residents a strong incentive to demand the recognition of the socialecultural sacrifices they were forced to make: “Here in this neighbourhood we have been able to transform a sanitary landfill into a home. And we’ve done that with our own efforts, the government has given us absolutely nothing, not a penny. We want that they respect us for this. We are Peruvians and from our country they want to evict us. All we want is that they recognise our efforts” (Interview 06 December 2012). Following in the footsteps of past collective strategies, neighbourhood councils assumed the role of defending the residents’ interests. Strategies and objectives of the negotiation process, however, diverged among the settlements, indicating the diversity of interests that formed the basis for different collective activities. One neighbourhood association hired an independent appraiser to conduct a price evaluation of some houses and invited the company to do the same. Significantly, the evaluations turned out to be quite different. The company established that the value of the land was 65 USD/m2 whereas the independent appraiser set the price at 300 USD/m2. Furthermore, as apart from the apartments neither the company nor the municipality planned a resettlement scheme for the affected communities, the neighbourhood council took up the initiative to look for a suitable place for relocation and proposed certain conditions under which they would agree to relocation: the

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

L. Strauch et al. / Habitat International xxx (2014) 1e8

provision of an urbanised plot with the first story already build. Another neighbourhood organisation centred its strategy on the rejection of relocation and tried to negotiate a new roadway design. Given that this specific community did not occupy the margins of the river, the neighbourhood council claimed that there was ample space to move the street closer to the river and therewith render displacement unnecessary. The council sent various letters with this ‘proposal’ to the company and the municipality, however, did not receive any responses. Overall, negotiation strategies did not bring about any results and the company proved unresponsive to peoples’ demands. Having established that they would deal with each relocation case individually, collective claims and proposals were ignored.

Factors hindering collective claim making: the diversity of the displaced The Margen Izquierda and Derecha del Río Rímac, like many low-income settlements in Lima, draw on a long history of collective action in the upgrading of their neighbourhoods. Confronted with the threat the megaproject posed to the settlements, resistance could be quickly organised by reactivating existing organisational structure in the communities. Yet, more than 60 years after their original foundation, today the settlements in the MIRR and MDRR are highly diverse, both in physical and social terms. Inevitably, this means the megaproject will affect people in different ways. For some, relocation is a sheer necessity to prevent risk, while for the many owners of multi-story houses relocation will be a change for the worse. This degree of internal diversity played an important role in the development of and participation in resistance. The resistance movement represented the interests of those that perceived they were exposed to the highest losses. A key theme in their discourse included the articulation of the right to housing and the defence of property. As a neighbourhood leader argued: “We did the protest marches on the basis of the right to housing. We know that under the constitution we all have rights, we have already resided in the area for years, we have titles, we have all the services, we are recognised, we pay taxes. The authority cannot just remove us because they feel like it, as if we were invaders, as if the land was property of the state and not private property” (Interview 23 November 2012). Residents strategically aimed to position themselves as rightful inhabitants of their settlements, either through having a legal property title or through the length of their pacific stay. De facto, the most deprived in the settlements were therewith excluded from the fight for justice. The heterogeneity of housing conditions in the settlements hence presented a challenge for finding common objectives and interpretations for the resistance movement, as a resident from the steep riverbank argued: “The problem here is that the urban conditions are very different from each other. There are houses that are better located. Therefore they have another vision of the compensation. And they have better legal weapons to fight, too. But the problem for us is that we are close to the river. For us staying is not a possibility” (Interview 23 November 2012). Furthermore, there is not only a broad spectrum of different dwelling conditions, but within many communities only a part is affected by displacement. The company considers those not affected by displacement the ‘neighbours of the project’ and invests

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in the upgrading of the settlements, educational programmes and charity events (Interview 26 September 2012, LAMSAC). Residents that stay hence benefit from the company’s ‘benevolent’ interventions. These project features hence weakened unified resistance and proved a well functioning strategy to lessen opposition within the settlements e a characteristic identified as inherent to many ‘new’ megaprojects (Lehrer & Laidley, 2009). Conclusion Under the logic of neoliberalism Lima, the city once known for its progressive approaches towards housing the urban poor, is being rapidly transformed by the interests of powerful private developers that are e even in the face of known negative externalities such as the displacement of poor city dwellers from their selfconstructed settlements e determined to push through their progrowth agendas. In this context, what are the possibilities and constraints for the urban poor to contest this ‘production of the city from above’ from below? The case study has shown that neighbourhood movements from the Margen Izquierda and Derecha were dedicated to drawing attention to the inequities and injustices inflicted upon them through the Línea Amarilla/Vía Parque Rímac megaproject. Drawing on their long collective history, resistance could be quickly organised through re-activating existing neighbourhood councils. However, in the now much more heterogeneous settlements, interests diverge which impedes sustained collective action. Furthermore, mobilisation dynamics can no longer be understood in terms of the interaction between the local or national government and poor citizens, since power dynamics in the city are shifting. The elite is no longer only a national one, but has strong linkages to global capital and the interests of multinational corporations that are often even more powerful than local governments. In this scenario, the urban poor now find themselves under the pressure of global market forces that are unresponsive and not accountable to their collective demands. Furthermore, the case of the LA/VPR project exemplified how authorities increasingly aim at dealing with poor citizens on an individual basis. This stands in sharp contrast to past practices and the collective culture in the settlements. Moreover, the case constitutes an example of how urban development policies have shifted to placing emphasis on projectfocused urban restructuring measures. These place specific interventions have replaced planning at city scale, preventing neighbourhood movements from transcending the localised issues associated with the project’s implementation and from translating their demands into broader claims for justice in the city. Those are arguably the most significant implications of the shift from ‘producing the city from below’ towards ‘producing the city from above’. The place/project-specific urban interventions led by the interests of multinational private capital e and backed by their power e that characterise contemporary urban planning in the city, leave little space for the aspirations of the city’s low-income population. This questions the resilience of the city ‘produced from below’ in the face of those forces ‘from above’ that are shaping Lima’s neoliberal urban future. Acknowledgement This paper is part of the research project “Urban Chances e City Growth and the Sustainability Challenge. Comparing Fast-growing Cities in Growing Economies”, funded under the 7th European Union Framework Programme (Project No 244828), www.chance2sustain.eu, and is part of the special issue on Megaprojects, Settlement Dynamics and the Sustainability Challenge in Metropolitan Cities of India, Peru and South Africa.

Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005

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Please cite this article in press as: Strauch, L., et al., Mixed-use spaces and mixed social responses: Popular resistance to a megaproject in Central Lima, Peru, Habitat International (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2014.02.005