Political power and urban development in Salvador: Trends of the last decades

Abstract

This paper analyzes the configuration of political power in Salvador and its links with the urban development of the city. It seeks to understand the intergovernmental relations between the municipal government and the state government and its relations with the coalition of private interests of the so-called “capitals of the urban”. The article starts from the city's metropolization process in the 1970s and reaches contemporary transformations that, since the 1990s, have characterized Salvador as a city focused on urban entrepreneurship that focuses on tourism, real estate production and carrying out recreational and cultural activities. The work was based on bibliographic research and on the collection of information in documents, management reports, newspapers and magazines, government advertisements and speeches by managers. The results illustrate the dilemmas of a poor and peripheral city whose urban development process was linked to the interests of several urban capitals and a regional political elite. Currently, the urban management of the municipality has been the subject of intergovernmental competition between the municipal and state public authorities, which, although from different political-party coalitions, operate within similar logic of intervention, based on a broad entrepreneurial program of urban management.