Soul to concrete

Abstract

This article inquiries the application of urban integration policies and their impact on popular neighborhoods. It recognizes the importance of the management and territorial control modalities, focusing on the ``Collaborative Urbanism Project with a gender perspective'', executed by the State since 2022 in the largest peripheral zoning of the city of San Luis (Argentina), home to more than twelve hundred families. The text characterizes the strategies executed in the República neighborhood, according to the convergence between initiatives forged from above (by virtue of rationalist technical criteria and spatial planning devices) and horizontal mechanisms promoted from below (through awareness and community participation). The analyzed data includes public documents and periodicals, within a larger qualitative design that also integrates interviews and observation. The case allows the recognition of the complex dynamics of ordering that affects both, the territory and the community, and the tensions between urban planning and its results. In contrast to the promises of social inclusion and future well-being made to the inhabitants, we observe that social relations are vertically integrated, based on renewed formats of social enclosure.