Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the urban social movements that have recently emerged in Chile and use heritage as a politic resource of reivindication to transformate the actual neoliberal system of urban governance.

Paper long abstract:

The military dictatorship in Chile imposed an ultra-neoliberal development model that had impacted the field of city planning. The implementation of these policies had several negative consequences in the cities including an abrupt growth of them to outlying areas, rampant property speculation, extreme spatial segregation of social classes, and the degradation of historic districts because of a massive internal migration.

Nowadays, after over twenty years of democracy in Chile, urban planning is still defined by private interests wich have priority over citizens' rights. As a part of this context, it has recently emerged in Chile certain urban social movements that seek to defend the right that every citizen can decide on the fate of its territory. They have initiated heritagization processes in their neighborhoods and have mobilized to demand that both their territory, architecture and traditional lifestyles were legitimized by the State as heritage. In this context, heritage is used as a political resource, which is activated to address threats to loss of ownness caused by the actions of the State in partnership with the private sector.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of those social movements that use the discourse of heritage as a reivindication strategy. From a multiple case study based on participant observation of social movements that emerged in Santiago (Chile) this article elaborates on how it is carried out the strategy of resistance and how this political use of heritage has allowed the movements to influence urban governance systems.