Neoliberal planetary urbanization and the discourse of resilience and sustainable urbanization: A critical reflection on the “new global urban agenda”

Abstract

From the point of view of a critical urban theory, this analysis article aims to examine the relationship between the production of space in the process of neoliberal urbanization, with the restructuring and rescheduling actions linked to policies and agents that produce urban space, and its current link with the phenomenon of climate change and its role in the urban restructuring of world cities. To this end, the connection between the global risk society paradigm and the rise of discourses and narratives as: resilience and sustainable urbanization associated with the phenomenon of climate change and its main disseminating agents. This analysis is completed with reflection on the construction of narratives about the role of autonomy (individual and collective) and the decentralization of the State, present in the neoliberal discourse of risk production and management and of space production in global governance. It is a qualitative research. To carry out the study, in addition to extensive bibliographic research, a documentary analysis was carried out to examine reports, websites and documents linked to multilateral institutions, among others. It is concluded that, currently, there are devices/narratives that promote the State’s lack of responsibility towards the socially and environmentally vulnerable populations of cities in the Global South, and the stimulus to the privatization of common goods and public services. These devices are linked to the pattern of contemporary hegemonic neoliberal planetary urbanization.