Strategic urban planning in Latin America: experiences of building and managing the future

Strategic urban planning is a process which permits the articulation of the initiatives of public and private stakeholders which seek synergies for the development of a city. It is about (i) an adaptable, non-rigid methodology for which flexibility is an indispensable precondition; (ii) a tool for local development which conceives strategic interventions that guarantee the quality of life, and economic and social progress; (iii) a mechanism to promote progressive forms of governance, substantially improving local democracy through a real collaboration between public and private urban stakeholders; (iv) a modern, participatory and democratic form of thinking about urban development which permits to establish a reference for all those economic and social actors who can harmonise their own strategies with those scenarios which are desired for their city or territory; (v) a new instrument which facilitates the management of a city in a period of frequent and substantial changes which stimulates the necessary imagination to deal with this. This paper presents the experiences of Cordoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires in Argentina, Santiago de Chile, Santa Cruz de la Sierra and La Paz in Bolivia, Trujillo, various Districts of Lima in Peru, Bogota in Colombia, and Havana in Cuba in the field of strategic urban planning and the implementation of such plans. Strategic Urban Planning comes with the promise of a fundamental change in the city, opening new routes towards the new millennium with programmes and projects that are really transforming, modernising and innovative. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.