URBAN PLANNING AS CULTURAL PROCESS: A STUDY OF ARMENIA, COLOMBIA

This is an ethnographic study of the processes of urban planning and urban development in Armenia, Colombia--a city of intermediate size. It is posited that planning is a cultural process, one whereby people shape their living environments according to cultural patterns. (Development is understood here to be a broader, more organic process but also culturally patterned). The study consists of a socio-cultural matrix sketch of the city, within which political and institutional elements are considered. Four case studies illustrate the confluence of social, cultural, and political factors around issues in significant areas of urban development. Social structure is considered with reference to points where planning and development impinge upon it; the frame of reference is the viewpoint of upper- and upper-middle-class planning professionals. Special focus is placed upon elite groups, the politics of planning, and the physical city as culturally patterned space.;The sociocultural matrix was found to contain traditional Antioqueno values of entrepreneurial vigor, regionalism, familism, and economic conservatism in those sectors tied to coffee agriculture. Because of the coffee economy with little diversification, money traditionally is tied up in land and real estate, which makes urban land-use policy a matter of concern to the influential elites of Armenia, who use the political and planning structure to defend and promote their interests. A cacique, or political boss, was found to control the critical junctures of society and government in this centralist system, and a small power group dominates many of the city's socioeconomic institutions.;While a planning agency does indeed exist in Armenia, it does not have the power or the continuity to effectively channel the growth of the city. Given the present social and political conditions of the city--a wealthy and entrenched upper class and an equally entrenched political boss--it does not seem likely that the prospects for "rational" planning will improve markedly. The informal process of urban development is not random or disorderly, but follows established cultural patterns useful to providing orderly growth. Since planning does not seem possible outside the cultural matrix which houses and informs it, Colombian planning theorists might well look to their cultural patterns for ideas and limitations on planning, and try to utilize the patterns they find in urban development.;Despite claims by some observers that there is no effective urban planning in Colombian medium-sized cities, there was found to be a planning process in Armenia. A large number of agencies was found to perform planning functions, both formally and de facto. But the wider concept of urban development was found to be more powerful since most of substantive planning is done informally--and since the planning office does not have an adequate field of real powers to plan.