Housing without city, city without planning, planning without inhabitants: PPP for urban post-disaster reconstruction

Socio-natural disasters and their reconstruction processes are an opportunity for the territories and their communities. The 27F disaster initiated a Private Public Partnership (PPP) model that gave birth to the formulation of Master Plans as instruments of territorial planning and reconstruction. The PRES Constitution was the most publicized Master Plan of all. PPP for urban reconstruction claims for more conceptual attention to grasp its purpose of innovation and high-quality solutions based on citizen participation and high-level technical teams. The main housing project in Constitucion, Villa Verde, exposes the limitations of this model in order to break the trends in planning practices implemented in recent decades in Chile. The paper seeks to ask to what extent the PRES model overcomes the deficiencies of regular urban policies? And, to what extent were the affected communities involved? The findings show a reproduction of past planning practices due to technocratic rationality and private interests. The paper is based on a systematic experience of fieldwork since 2010 with the communities of Constitucion.