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Paper short abstract

In Cuenca, Ecuador, a controversy around new bike lanes set what we could call climate populism against anti-climate populism. However, the conflict was not merely ideological or discursive, but shaped by the everyday practices and materialities of the city.

Paper long abstract

In 2021, the municipality of Cuenca, Ecuador, implemented various bike lanes as part of its effort to make the city more sustainable through mobility. Although these bike lanes were the product of participatory planning processes, they immediately sparked controversy among the local population. Especially small business owners in the affected streets feared that the new street layouts might harm their businesses by reducing car traffic. As so often in local political debates, the issue provoked dichotomizing narratives conjuring “the people” as the victims of an external other, be that the local government or elitist, foreign ideas. This kind of populist backlash against climate initiatives can be compared to similar developments elsewhere including, for instance, the 15-minute-city conspiracy theories. At the same time, the climate initiatives in Cuenca themselves operate on a very similar dichotomy, according to which they save “the people” from the dehumanization of the modernist city and its classist car culture. Thus, in a sense, the situation sets climate populism against anti-climate populism. However, I suggest that the issue should not be reduced to a conflict of ideas, ideologies, or discourses. Both sides of the conflict are elicited as much, if not more, by the concrete, lived experiences of a changing city. If Noortje Marres proposes a pragmatist theory of “the public” as made through material devices and problems, the same can be said of “the people” of populism. This presentation explores the consequences of this suggestion for thinking about populism and climate action today.