Resistencias estéticas a la colonialidad urbana en Buenos Aires. ¿Nuevas formas de decolonialidad?

This text aims to critically reflect on the structure of the coloniality of power in “making city”. For this, we first review some links between the analysis of coloniality/decoloniality, the urban planning processes associated with “new urbanisms” and the “creative city” model, and the possibilities of street art as an enabling practice for a decentralized conception of the city. Then, from an ethnographic approach, we present three case studies in the city of Buenos Aires where these processes come into play, showing how coloniality operates in government practices and the potential decoloniality in community/ collective practices in popular neighborhoods that, we believe, promote other ways of “making city” and of inhabiting urban spaces. It is concluded that the disputes generated by the urban aestheticization by the government tend to recreate parameters of the modern-colonial, while the self-managed art projects carried out in popular neighborhoods enable various types of decentralized thoughts that invite us to think of new forms of decoloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]