Negotiating Ideology and Regulation: The Planning and Governing of Public Space in Bogota, 1988-2018

This dissertation argues that the increasing importance of public space in urban planning and politics is fundamentally transforming this discipline into a tool of governmentality. This work specifically explores the linkages between governmentality and planning practices to reflect on the political and on the social construction of the regulatory frameworks that shape the realm within which planning practice exists. It focuses on exploring the ways in which ideological narratives and regulatory concerns about public space intersect within policy-making and planning practice. It proposes that these linkages are much tighter than is generally recognized, and that planning practice could benefit from increasing awareness of the complex negotiation between these aspects This research uses the lens of governmentality and the social construction of public problems to examine the trajectory of planning and governing public space in Bogota through the perspectives of policy instruments and policy-makers. Findings suggest that the negotiation of ideological narratives and regulatory concerns occur in two parallel scales of time, long-term cycles and everyday practices of negotiation. In these two timeframes, politics, agents, institutions, and knowledge continually balance and accommodate ideas and concerns driven by both aspirations to innovate and the requirements of routine daily practices. In the end, this research reasserts the need to continue to examine the social construction of urban problems and their subsequent translation into policy instruments. It also suggests additional lines of inquiry into the intersection between urban planning and governing practice.