Practices of Resilience: Questioning Urban Adaptation in The Chilean Social Upsurge

In November 2019, Chile, the host country for the COP25 summit, suspended the event after weeks of street protest against the socio-environmental impacts of the extreme neoliberal policies that affect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups of population. In cities, this results in socio-spatial and climate inequalities exacerbated by technocratic and market-driven logics that inform planning systems and urban adaptation. The social upsurge and the call for a new constitution to guarantee social justice and the protection of natural resources as a commons have intersected grassroots climate initiatives with decades-old territorial socio-environmental demands challenging institutional climate discourse. This chapter discusses how bottom-up resilience practices, such as the Chilean ecobarrios, create alternatives to neoliberal climate agendas in contested urban spaces. The case also demonstrates how the emerging Latin American debate about the rights of nature and buen vivir (living well) can influence urban adaptation through a postcolonial perspective.