Shaping the peaceful city: (post)colonial and transnational entanglements of security governance and spatial economic restructuring in urban Colombia

This contribution examines the impact of transnational actors, policies, and discourses on the dynamics of urban renewal and governance in Colombia’s conflict-ridden cities. Emphasizing local and global encounters in policymaking, we understand initiatives of spatial economic restructuring as central components of a larger project oriented towards cities’ adjustment to the requirements of global markets. Frequently, the rationality of such policies, based on a liberal approach that conceives of peace and development in terms of pacification and economic liberalisation rather than democratic transformation, has been successful in accommodating a violent context instead of confronting it. Based on an analysis of the Colombian towns of Pereira and Santa Marta and of national and municipal planning documents, we disentangle the ways such policies are embedded in as well as contribute to the perpetuation of historical, (post)colonial hierarchies traversing the spatiality and exclusionary urban politics in cities affected by conflict. These hierarchies in urban governance, as well as their transnational linkages, are a largely overlooked aspect in the literature on the Colombian conflict.