This presentation discusses the key arguments and contributions of my recently released monograph,
Chile Underground: The Santiago Metro and the Struggle for a Rational City (Yale University Press, 2024), and introduces my new research on the relationship between infrastructure and the urban environment.
Chile Underground examines how and why the Santiago Metro system developed from its origins in the 1960s to the present, even in the midst of political and economic turmoil during Chile’s Cold War. It asks how changing ideologies shaped the project during Chile’s democratic socialism (1970–1973), neoliberal anti-communist dictatorship (1973–1990), and return to democracy (1990–2010). Drawing on Chilean and French archives, I argue that Chilean-French relations and French financing were crucial to the project’s survival during the Cold War. The Metro’s history also illuminates the contested process of implementing neoliberalism and the unexpected continuities of state planning and visions for a rational city that persisted despite free-market reforms. Most importantly, this story demonstrates that the Metro came to symbolize the nation and became a critical site where planners, workers, and urban residents contested Chile’s path to modernity.
Despite growing concern by Chilean scientists about the problem of urban air pollution in Santiago, government planners did not emphasize the Metro’s environmental benefits until late, in the 1980s, when smog had reached epidemic proportions. In fact, the Metro as a state infrastructure project was part of a broader urban modernization program that emphasized urban highways (vialidad urbana) in the 1960s and 1970s. The Metro was justified, in part, to relieve street congestion to make it easier for private automobiles to circulate. The latter part of this presentation builds on Chile Underground to explore the connections and disconnections between urban infrastructure in Santiago and growing concern about the public health effects of air pollution.
