How to rescue a city: a study on the historical centre of Ciudad Juárez

• Grant number: 16/20119-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 30, 2017
• End date: March 02, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Rafael Antonio Duarte Villa
• Grantee: Maria Larissa Silva Santos
• Supervisor: Sergio Peña
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/07412-0 - Securitization and urban policy in Ciudad Juárez, BP.IC

Abstract

How to tackle crime and drug-related violence has been a core question to Latin American cities in the last decades. Consequently, many urban restructuring projects have been drawn to address insecurity, posing a significant focus on recovering the city image from a stigma of violence and disorder. The Plan of Urban Development of the Historical Centre of Ciudad Juárez (PMUDUCH), released in 2014, is a paradigmatic example of such attempt in a border city. It comprehends a wide demographic diagnostic of this Mexican city, identifying its main problems and challenges, proposing short, medium, and long-term guidelines to rescue the city from the legacy of violence left by the last upsurge of criminality that Juárez faced from 2008 to 2010. This project proposes to set the basis to examine an urban centrality - the historical centre of Ciudad Juárez, focus of a rescue plan claimed as successful by local authorities and major media, based on the factual argument of the dramatic drop on homicide rates since 2011. The fieldwork here designed intends to understand the role that the enhancement of the urban image plays in the effective restructuring of the historical centre of Juárez. It is organised in four main steps: analysing the context of the PMDUCH drafting; raising the documents derived from the PMDUCH, responsible for the major changes in the historical centre; mapping the commercial and services establishments responsible for the economic 'revitalisation' of the centre and; inquiring the plan-makers about the formulation and implementation process. The results of such investigation will allow me to assess the influence of the symbolic construction of a renewed urban image upon the effective changes in the city landscape. (AU)