Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on the case study of Plaza de la Hoja - a social housing complex built for IDPs in Bogotá - to explore the contradictions inherent in development at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, while also highlighting the key role of social movements in the search for just urban futures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted with residents in Plaza de la Hoja - a social housing complex built for internally displaced people in Bogotá, Colombia - to explore the contradictions of 'immanent' and 'intentional' development (Cowen and Shenton 1995) at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, while simultaneously highlighting the role of social movements in the search for just urban futures. On the macro-level, Plaza de la Hoja reminds us that capitalist development in Colombia has contributed to the violent displacement of over eight million people (Oslender, 2007; Grajales, 2017), but also of the role of humanitarian norms in committing the Colombian state to protecting the displaced. The existence of the housing complex is a testimony to how development's production of 'relative surplus populations' is tempered by movements campaigning for a more 'protective biopolitics' (Murray Li, 2010, 2017). On the meso-level, Plaza de la Hoja reveals the 'splintering' (Graham and Marvin, 2002) of Bogotá's urban development, while simultaneously reflecting the potential of progressive social movements in the city. Illustrative of endemic territorial segregation in Bogotá, Plaza de la Hoja also represents an effort to reduce such segregation, as well as a response to demands for housing by the displaced themselves. On the micro-level, the everyday lives of the residents in Plaza de la Hoja are characterised by marginalisation and exclusion. At the same time, the housing complex has been positioned at the centre of resistance processes that challenge not only violence in Colombia, but also neoliberal development more broadly.