Michele Acuto 0:03
Hola, I'm Michele Acuto.
Caitlin Morrissey 0:05
And I'm Caitlin Morrissey.
Speaker 1 0:07
And welcome or Bienvenidos to the miniseries, ‘Walking the city with’ hosted by the Urban Studies podcast. This series, as I'm sure you know very well by now, is all about the people behind the ideas in urban research. We get them out of the lecture room, their books, their articles, to literally walk the talk with the authors and editors in Urban Studies. And the series is a bit of a world first for urbanists is that it is peer reviewed through the Urban Studies journal. So, it's a peer reviewed podcast, and you should know that you're in for a double-checked treat.
Speaker 2 0:46
And in this miniseries, we're putting the spotlight, or giving the microphone to, how these authors and editors are doing global urbanism by getting out there in the streets of cities around the world. So, who did you take for a walk this time, Michele?
Speaker 1 0:59
Oh, this one was a fun one. I went out with Sergio Montero, who's Professor and Director of the, brace, Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Speaker 2 1:12
And in this episode, we are talking with him about urban solution industry, best practice mobilities and theoretical frustrations.
Speaker 1 1:20
And as per usual, we kicked off by going with him on a bit of a journey through time to see how we got from teenager Sergio in regional Spain all the way to Professor Montero turning up at the World Bank in DC. Ready Caitlin?
Caitlin Morrissey 1:36
Let's go.
Michele Acuto 1:37
How did you get into urban studies?
Sergio Montero 1:40
I've been thinking a lot about that, actually, recently, and I think it has to do with the fact that I grew up in a small town in the south of Spain. This is like a 5,000 people that live there, and I lived there all my life, until I was 18, and growing up as a queer kid and teenager in such a small place, I think that my imagination about cities was an imagination of places of difference, of places where you can find where you're not so restricted by local values or like the rural, the kind of values that I felt that during being a teenager were sort of, like, restricting me and my personality. So, I think that I don't know I've been thinking a lot recently about this. If the reason that I'm so fascinated by cities has to do with my own personal life growing up as a gay kid in a small town in southern Spain. That's one narrative that one detail about yourself, and it's always about narratives, right? I think the other narrative that I tell myself sometimes is that I've always been fascinated by the differences between cities and regions. I've always, I'm not only interested in cities, but also in regions, and in regional differences and unevenness. And this, again, I think it has to do with my own personal life, growing up where a lot of my family migrated, including my brother and sister, migrated to Barcelona when I was growing up. So having this situation in which certain regions in Spain, in the north were richer, and therefore people had to migrate there, where me, I stayed and grew up in Andalusia. But I was also growing up in Andalusia in the ‘80s and ‘90s, where, after a socialist government, there was opportunities for education for going to public university with scholarships. That was something that my brother and my sister didn't have. And so I go to Barcelona every year and I would always be shocked by the differences between Barcelona and my hometown, my little village. So I think, like, this difference between regions, even within a country, was always like, part of, like, what fascinated me in studying cities, but also regional and regional economic development, which is my other area of research. Yeah, I think that's maybe why. Or maybe one of those, or the two combined that I became interested in urban but also in regional studies.
Speaker 2 4:09
So a lot of Sergio’s work has been on the posturing of cities as best practices, and this global circulation of policies and projects from one city as solutions to the challenges and issues faced in others. This is sometimes described as the urban solutions industry. And on your walk, Sergio told us about his interest in how these best practices emerge and begin to circulate, and who is involved in those processes.
Sergio Montero 4:33
Yeah, I think my interest with best practices and sort of, like the global circulation of ideas, probably again, has to do with my own life of being traveling. So I did, I'm from, originally from Spain, but then I did my PhD in Berkeley. But then I did my research in Latin America, and specifically in Bogotá. And I think Bogotá, when I first went to Bogotá in 2007 when I was still doing my master's thesis, that was like a big moment for me. Like, I don't know that what that city has, but it really sort of like moved something inside of me and started to realise all the things that were happening in that city. But then it was a complex, not a lot of people at that time, now, many people know about Bogotá, but at that time, it was not very, very well known. So everyone was like, you know, having all these narratives of, like, insecurity or drugs trafficking and how they are you going to Bogotá? What do you mean? Like, that's going to be, you're going to be killed! And then I suddenly, I discover Ciclovía. I discover all these, like, new bus transportation initiatives that are happening there. I'm like, well, they're all these things happening in this city from a planning perspective, and I was doing my master in city planning, it's, it's very interesting. So, I ended up very much interested in that. And I wrote, I remember, my master thesis on, on like the changes that, sort of like the political economy of the changes that have happened in urban planning in Bogotá. So looking at that time, very much at decentralisation processes, or like, how these changes that happened in Bogotá were related with bigger political and economic changes that happened in Bogotá in the ‘80s and ‘90s and in Colombia. But then for my PC, I became soon, little by little, and I remember being in Berkeley during my last year my Masters and then Enrique Peñalosa came to give a talk about Bogotá. And he was like, everybody was clapping. All the planners were fascinated. But then at that time I knew already enough about Bogotá to be also critical about the things that he had done in team Bogotá, through the Uber renewal plans in El Cartucho and other stories, so… But what started to interesting more was this how I was seeing also how Bogotá was being little by little constructed as a model. And then suddenly the courses on transportation planning had to have, like a chapter on Bogotá, or a session in Bogotá where, like some people, and examples from Bogotá would come up to the north, to the US, where I was living at the time. So, it was fascinating to me how this city that a lot of people associated with insecurity, drug violence, suddenly became this model for urban planning and transportation policy. I was critical of the model, and then I had this, this idea, okay, well, I can write my dissertation on being critical of the Bogotá model and show you how it's not so perfect and how all these things are terrible in Bogotá. But I could also write about what is happening here. How is this being produced as a global model and with the seats. And at the time, I was at Berkeley, and this was the time that Ananya Roy and Teresa Caldeira were there. So we were all very much thinking about, you know, thinking from the south, thinking, contesting, also these ideas of how ideas come from the north to the south. So, I was also thinking, oh, well, this is a kind of like a model that is coming from the south and starting not only South-South, but actually South-North. And so then I became so I was like, well, I want to sort of like do this research, because I think there's like some sort of power relations here that we cannot capture with the traditional ways of looking at urban politics because this is like a global aspect of dynamics that are happening. And even though Bogotá is becoming this model for other cities, there is the World Bank, there is like think tanks, there are a series of actors that are behind this that I at the time I didn't understand very well. And so I decided to do my whole dissertation about how actually Bogotá became a model. And so my fieldwork ended up being not in Bogotá, but in other cities in Guadalajara in Mexico and San Francisco, California that have used ideas from Bogotá to change something in their city. So I was very interested in like, who bring these ideas, like, where are these spaces and practices through which policy and ideas about urban planning circulate. And then I realised, for instance, that Washington DC became a fieldwork for me, like I had to go, because I soon realised that there were development institutions involved, that there were also global think tanks, like ITDP, and a series of actors that were very interested in Bogotá because the story of Bogotá, the narrative of this urban success that obviously is a narrative, but it was a very powerful narrative that allowed many actors to sort of promote BRT or Ciclovía Bicycle policy style around the world. So then Bogotá became, sort of like this best practice from the south, but in a way, also in only in the moment that align with the North agendas and priorities.
Caitlin Morrissey 9:47
What was really interesting about Sergio's work on Bogotá was his realisation that the direction of travel isn't only from north to south or south to south, but the urban renewal of Bogotá was being packaged as a solution for cities in the Global North too so there's this south to north movement of global best practices happening as well.
Michele Acuto 1 9:47
Definitely, and something that I really wanted to talk to Sergio about as we were walking, is that in his articles and his scholarship, he really puts an emphasis on also who facilitates that movement and that mobility. And there's a… and he's been my point of reference to be very clear on thinking through the philanthropist and the power of the philanthropist in facilitating that movement and that change. So, for a podcast on global urbanism, we had to ask him about the global philanthropists.
Sergio Montero 10:53
There's this moment, when I was doing fieldwork in Washington, and in January every year, I think they still do it, they have this event called Transforming Transportation. And it's this global event that is the event where everyone that is doing transportation policy knows that, like the big debates and the big themes are debated there. So I thought, okay, I need to go there, because they always invoked Bogotá, the BRT, you know, you have a set of case studies or city stories that always became sort of like the glue that sort of like bring together those panels and those speakers. So I knew that. But what that was highly discussed in this kind of policy circle, international policy circle, so I saw part of my fieldwork was okay I need to be in January in Washington and go to the World Bank to this event to understand from an ethnographic perspective, like what actually happens here. So I went to Washington in January. It was really cold. It was the coldest experience in my life at the time. There were two days, and then I remember that the inaugural session was the World Bank president at the time and Michael Bloomberg, and they were discussing, like, what's next for cities? And like, how so... And I remember, like, this sentence that the president of the World Bank saying, Oh, we've been known as the knowledge bank, but now we want to be the solutions bank. And that kept resonating with me. And then the fact that Michael Bloomberg, at the time mayor of New York, but then already Bloomberg Philanthropy is becoming a bigger player in cities. Then there was something there that I felt okay, so this is what is happening. Like Bogotá is like, just like one of these solutions that are being circulated. So there is something in the expertise of that is being produced right here. That is what explains, not all, because that would be also very simplistic to say that this is just like, like that, I don't know, that BRT is like a project of the World Bank. That will be simplistic, but definitely is a powerful actor. So and then I realised that it's not just the World Bank, but it's all this philanthropic organisations. So there's, so actually, it was for that paper in urban studies that I became very much interested in connecting Development Studies and Urban Studies with this whole literature on philanthropy. That was at the time, I think, like now is more and more used in Urban Studies. But at the time, it was not that that connection was not very clear, like the philanthro-capitalism and the role of philanthropy in policy decisions.
Speaker 1 13:33
Just like that, we've already been to Bogotá in Colombia and Washington DC, the United States in the space of one episode, walking through the streets of London.
Caitlin Morrissey 13:44
We've been all over and just to bring this conversation about philanthropic engagement in the urban solution industry into the present day, Sergio mentioned that he was uncertain about the contemporary motives for this engagement with philanthropies becoming seemingly more outwardly motivated by issues of social and racial justice, but questioning is this a way to gain social and political legitimacy for more market-oriented goals, rather than a true transition to more progressive and socially-oriented rationales?
Sergio Montero 14:18
Philanthropy is becoming more and more interested in cities. And this not just, I mean, obviously Bloomberg is the big example, and maybe the main one that is working with cities in a very, sort of, like explicit way. But there's now a lot of other philanthropists that are doing that, and that, of course, probably has to do with the increasing inequality in the world. So like now that we have more people, more millionaires and more billionaires in this moment of time. Now that Thomas Piketty shows very eloquently, has shown in his research, now philanthropy has more money, and so there's more money to the things. And then there's this idea that cities can be the solutions, especially for climate change. And I think that's the other part of this story where, when climate change and urban health, which is, I think the two, maybe discourses that have been more promoting the idea of Bogotá transportation policies, anyway, so that you see that the Bogotá story is just like the rise in a way of philanthropic funding for cities, for issues of public health and for issues of sustainability and climate change. And so, I see there are more and more philanthropic organisations. Now, what I also see, and this is like something that I still trying my head around it, and I don't know if it's more like a speculation than based on data, but I think that it was happening is that philanthropic foundations are also realising themselves of that global, that global approach of best practices and quick solutions here and there is not working. So I think, and I hope, because I see more and more, for instance, a lot of public health foundations these days are talking about racial justice and talking about structural racism in a way that you will never hear this in the before, like 10 years ago, but even like 5 years ago, I would say. Now whether, and I'm not an expert in these issues, but whether this racial justice or structural racism that they talk about is they're talking in a meaningful and sort of, like multi scalar way in which they want to really attack the program, or it's just another way, another round of different, superficial interventions that I'm not sure, that for sure, but I think that there is a change, and there's also, I saw Hewlett Foundation, for instance, now is like funding all these initiatives to rethink economics and alternatives to neoliberalism in a way that I don't think I've heard that questioning neoliberalism before, no? And so… But again, I still don't know if that is some sort of a change, or it's just like another way in which the… this best practice or superficial interventions have evolved into now questioning bigger issues, because the philanthropists really want to attack big issues, right? Because that's where they want to be known for the millionaires that fund them. There's something interesting there. And I think more work should be done in this because there's a very powerful way in which philanthropic funding can impact on cities, particularly, and I don't know if that, if this significant change happening or it's just like the superficial change of discourse.
Caitlin Morrissey 17:32
And in the context of Sergio's more recent work on formulating a posteriori comparisons, he offered us a peek under the hood of his experiences of publishing, and how he has confronted attitudes about where to, capital T, Theorize from, especially this idea that if you're theorising from the south, you can't claim to be speaking about a global phenomena, but an idiosyncratic or an individual case, but that the same standards wouldn't be applied to research emerging from large cities in the Global North.
Sergio Montero 18:02
So that idea of a posteriori comparisons is a more recent one after I had more, maybe a bit more time to reflect on all of the things that I've been doing research and then publishing about the circulation of policies and ideas and using Bogotá as my example. But then, then I reali… I also realized that I was be… in many of my publications, I was being disciplined into framing my research as a Bogotá case, or as like a Latin American case, like something that is case. And I actually, even that actually, to be honest, that first that other article in Urban Studies that is now called “Leveraging Bogotá and urban solutions”. It was initially called “Leveraging cities”, because my idea there was to think about, yes, I was using the case of Bogotá to think about a global process. But it was a global process where I was trying to theorise and think about but one of the reviewers was like, well, you're talking about here leveraging city, but you really are talking about particular case that is Bogotá. So I had to change the title of the article to have Bogotá in it. Whereas we obviously know that when people like write about, like, two or three cases in London or in the UK or in some small place in the US, they never, they don't have to necessarily include the names of their cities in the title. So the “A posteriori comparisons” article and as a method to come up with from this idea of, like, and I was seeing and also being based in as I was based at the University of the Andes for the last eight years, being based in Colombia, and then participating not only in the academic conferences of in English but also in the academic conferences in Spanish, I could also see how Latin American scholars tended to present there were always as the name of the city, very big in the title, it is a case study...
Michele Acuto 20:02
And back for a moment in the studio. I think one of the things that stood out in this bit of the conversation with Sergio was his honest self-assessment of the frustration of doing this in the field and the complexity of narrating that a posteriori and everyone marvel at Caitlin's perfect pronunciation in Latin slash Italian of a posteriori.
Caitlin Morrissey 20:27
Thank you.
Michele Acuto 20:29
The very interesting part here is that we have, again, another scholar that is out there, is across different countries, in different contexts, but is trying to figure it out. And I think it's a theme that has popped up repeatedly through the interviews in the series. So, I really wanted to hear more about how do you do that and how do you work in the field with those frustrations, with those complications, with those positionalities. So back to Sergio and what he did with the a posteriori and the scholars that he works with.
Sergio Montero 21:00
And you know, I was also very frustrated about that. And so, I was trying to think about, okay, so how can we use this idea of comparing, how the comparison of different cities can allow to us to think about global process? And I think that that came at a very interesting, obviously I was reading also very much like Jennifer Robinson ideas, which was very inspiring to me. And if we want to change the way that we theorise about global urban processes then we also need to change the methods that we use for that. And so, for me, the a posteriori comparison was both a way in thinking, okay, so how can we make this comparison work for people working on different cities so that by putting their cases or cities into comparison, they can then feel like they can make a contribution to like a global process. So it was like, to me, very much concerned with those ideas about how to think about the global from the local, how to escape the comfort of putting your city… the name of your city in the title, and then how, how do we create a community of scholars that collaborate with each other? Like we spent, like, I spent a lot of time in my field work. I guess I did, like, two years of field work. Did, I don't know, 95 interviews, ethnographic observation, and I has so much material. And I was like, well, yes, okay, so I did my dissertation, I published these articles, and now what? Like I want… There's so much more that I can do with this material when I put it into conversation, into conversation with other people, that their framework of reference or theoretical frameworks might be different, but we get to similar findings. So, by doing that, you open up a new way of reading your own findings in a way that you maybe wouldn't have expected in the beginning, if you were just like, by yourself, like doing your research design and doing the comparison a priori, no? Like in the beginning. I think the a posteriori is like, in a way, a very liberating way of saying, okay, these are the findings. You that… you you talk to other people, and then how can we put this into conversation? And how can we put different languages into conversation? Like in that article, in the a posteriori comparison, we compare the Bogotás policies with participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, which happened in Brazil, and I collaborated with Gianpaolo Baiocchi, who is a sociologist who's done extensive fieldwork in Brazil, and I don't speak Portuguese, so like it's a way to sort of put together two cases that would have been difficult. For one, I mean, maybe not that difficult because Spanish and Portuguese are not that different, but you can think about comparisons of different languages in a way that one… you cannot ask that to just one person. So I think that that was also in in my head. Sorry for...
Michele Acuto 1 23:49
No, it's beautiful. I actually, what I like is that I can't, I couldn't decide in that if it is about, there's a beautiful altruism in it, but a bit of a personally interested altruism, because you go, I've done all this work, so I also need to make it more meaningful than just for itself. So it’s a bit it's cosmopolitan, but also bit self-indulgent, but also a bit cosmopolitan.
Sergio Montero 24:15
Yeah. No, definitely, and, but you can think of like, why do we and I got a lot of grants also do that fieldwork. So, like, it was a lot of work, but then you just publish some articles and that's it. And so, so it's not so much about me thinking, oh no, I should, like, I get more out of this. Rather than that is more thinking, like, there is all this thing that if, for instance, if I collaborate now with someone who's interested in bike activism, bicycle activism, then I can that, I can use some of the material to contribute to a different kind of debate that is going to be also interesting for that other person. And so how can we, you know, be… have an impact in different kind of debates and or even with policy, policy makers.
Caitlin Morrissey 25:13
And as always, we finish with our final question to Sergio, as we have with all of our guests, which is to ask them to tell us about a significant place in his research and his role as an academic, and his career trajectory. Here's Sergio.
Sergio Montero 25:28
I would take you to Bogotá, of course, because that is a city that has inspired me and in a lot of ways, and then where I feel like I also have a lot of growth, both personal but also professional. But it's always a city that I am fascinated with. And it's hard to explain the fascination with Bogotá, because I feel like Bogotá is a city that many people either hate or love. There's like no middle feeling about it, but I think it's a city that it's really vibrant, and it has many problems that Colombia has had for a long time, and that Latin America also has, like issues of violence or everyday violence, inequalities. But at the same time, it's always like, there's always new ideas coming. There's always new ways to think about, like one thing and so also challenging things that you think about urban studies. But I guess if you come from urban studies, you would probably be fascinated by it as well. If you are expecting, like a beautiful city to walk around, and it's not gonna be like your typical idea of like a tourist city. And maybe that's why I like it too. And yeah, I would take you there and like would try to, like, walk around the city.
Michele Acuto 26:52
And back in the studio. How fitting is that to wrap up our sixth episode talking about walking around the city and meandering in city walks, don't you think?
Caitlin Morrissey 27:04
Couldn't be more perfect. I absolutely loved this conversation with Sergio. It was inspiring. And, like all of the guests that we've had on the podcast, everything they said was fascinating. Everybody will take away different conclusions, and it's impossible to kind of summarise or reflect upon what they said, or to summarise the personal trajectories that they've been on. So instead, just going to take a couple of takeaways from what we heard. I thought it was really interesting to hear from Sergio how in real time, he was identifying and following the positioning of Bogotá as a best practice, following its south to north global circulation, the way it was manufactured as a solution by some of the world's largest philanthropies and think tanks. And his work on that topic has been incredibly influential and super interesting. And it's been fascinating to hear about his personal reflections and his journey into that research, particularly because I think we heard from Colin in our first episode about this idea that in retrospect, you can make sense of a career in urban studies or urban geography and begin to see that there are some common strands, or there are some subconscious paths that people take, whereas Sergio was highlighting, when he was telling us about his work on Bogotá, these real moments of clarity where the theory is happening right in front of you and it becomes this thing, this cause, this case that you really want to research. It is meaningful to you, and it matters to urban studies and urban life, that this phenomena is paid attention to in urban studies. And I just thought that that was really fascinating in a really relatable way, again, like Colin, of thinking through how academic trajectories or research trajectories come to be that they can be this crystallised. And the final thing that I'd reflect upon from what Sergio was saying, and I think it's really, again, another fitting way to end this episode in this part of the miniseries, were Sergio’s reflections on his a posteriori comparisons and his experimentation born out of this frustration that sort of designed to combat this idea that there are certain cities where you can capital T Theorize from in urban studies, and there are certain cities where you can learn about global processes from in certain cities where you can't. And just really combatting that, and also showing that there's an afterlife to research, where he was able to use his research on Bogotá and put it into comparison with other research on Porto Alegre, that perhaps they were not designed to be part of the same research study, but there was ways of bringing these two cities together with a colleague, in collaboration with somebody else, recognising the moment that we're in in Urban Studies, which is seemingly all about experimental comparisons, understanding how to quote, “actually do global urbanism”. So, I thought that was a great conversation and a brilliant way to end this part of the miniseries. What were you taking away from what we heard?
Michele Acuto 30:11
Yeah, I think I really take away the rather fitting image that Sergio paints for us of the urban scholar and urban theorist that gets out there, is on the road, and he poses in the Great Hall of the World Bank and has a theoretical moment right there in front of him. I think it's quite powerful, because it just tells us, as we're trying to do in the series, get out there and live on the street, global urbanism, and be careful on the practice of global urbanism. So, the philanthropists and development agencies and the actually existing global urbanism out there. What I really like is how Sergio has hijacked, in many way, a mode of that, industrial global solutionism. So uses the a posteriori comparisons very much like the companies and the philanthropists at times, sort of misuse the antecedents and the referencing of Bogotá, and he flips it on its head. It's quite courageous, and it gets out there. And apart from that, I absolutely loved, and I think this is a theme that we've seen through and through, it sort of rings with the images of Julie in Berlin, or the stories of Colin in the outskirts of Glasgow, and more, just this image that there's a personal trajectory to global urbanism that we're trying to paint real humans getting out there on the street, not just scribbling on papers and publishing, but also living those publications in many ways. So I think we've got quite a journey already here. We hope you've been enjoying what we've been doing here. We hope that you… Your feet are not as tired as mine, and we hope that you found some funny parts in it. So, for the moment, here you have it. Sergio Montero on solutionism, philanthropy, global circuits and some very honest reflexivity, I think, on his positionality with a tour of the Americas, from the Latina all the way to Canada.
And as per usual, if you want to read more or hear more, get into our show notes for a bit more links, for a bit more insights on Sergio's work. And until the next adventure out, thanks for listening. Thanks for walking the city with us. Thanks for coming to the studio and listening to our ramblings about walking the city with the scholars. Thanks for getting out with Sergio and see you, hear you, watch you in the next episode.
‘Walking the city with’ is a miniseries by the Urban Studies journal with the University of Bristol and the University of Melbourne, produced by Caitlin Morrissey in Manchester, Julia Macbeth in Glasgow, Kate Murray in Melbourne and myself, Michele Acuto in Bristol. Thank you for listening.
Hola, I'm Michele Acuto.
Caitlin Morrissey 0:05
And I'm Caitlin Morrissey.
Speaker 1 0:07
And welcome or Bienvenidos to the miniseries, ‘Walking the city with’ hosted by the Urban Studies podcast. This series, as I'm sure you know very well by now, is all about the people behind the ideas in urban research. We get them out of the lecture room, their books, their articles, to literally walk the talk with the authors and editors in Urban Studies. And the series is a bit of a world first for urbanists is that it is peer reviewed through the Urban Studies journal. So, it's a peer reviewed podcast, and you should know that you're in for a double-checked treat.
Speaker 2 0:46
And in this miniseries, we're putting the spotlight, or giving the microphone to, how these authors and editors are doing global urbanism by getting out there in the streets of cities around the world. So, who did you take for a walk this time, Michele?
Speaker 1 0:59
Oh, this one was a fun one. I went out with Sergio Montero, who's Professor and Director of the, brace, Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
Speaker 2 1:12
And in this episode, we are talking with him about urban solution industry, best practice mobilities and theoretical frustrations.
Speaker 1 1:20
And as per usual, we kicked off by going with him on a bit of a journey through time to see how we got from teenager Sergio in regional Spain all the way to Professor Montero turning up at the World Bank in DC. Ready Caitlin?
Caitlin Morrissey 1:36
Let's go.
Michele Acuto 1:37
How did you get into urban studies?
Sergio Montero 1:40
I've been thinking a lot about that, actually, recently, and I think it has to do with the fact that I grew up in a small town in the south of Spain. This is like a 5,000 people that live there, and I lived there all my life, until I was 18, and growing up as a queer kid and teenager in such a small place, I think that my imagination about cities was an imagination of places of difference, of places where you can find where you're not so restricted by local values or like the rural, the kind of values that I felt that during being a teenager were sort of, like, restricting me and my personality. So, I think that I don't know I've been thinking a lot recently about this. If the reason that I'm so fascinated by cities has to do with my own personal life growing up as a gay kid in a small town in southern Spain. That's one narrative that one detail about yourself, and it's always about narratives, right? I think the other narrative that I tell myself sometimes is that I've always been fascinated by the differences between cities and regions. I've always, I'm not only interested in cities, but also in regions, and in regional differences and unevenness. And this, again, I think it has to do with my own personal life, growing up where a lot of my family migrated, including my brother and sister, migrated to Barcelona when I was growing up. So having this situation in which certain regions in Spain, in the north were richer, and therefore people had to migrate there, where me, I stayed and grew up in Andalusia. But I was also growing up in Andalusia in the ‘80s and ‘90s, where, after a socialist government, there was opportunities for education for going to public university with scholarships. That was something that my brother and my sister didn't have. And so I go to Barcelona every year and I would always be shocked by the differences between Barcelona and my hometown, my little village. So I think, like, this difference between regions, even within a country, was always like, part of, like, what fascinated me in studying cities, but also regional and regional economic development, which is my other area of research. Yeah, I think that's maybe why. Or maybe one of those, or the two combined that I became interested in urban but also in regional studies.
Speaker 2 4:09
So a lot of Sergio’s work has been on the posturing of cities as best practices, and this global circulation of policies and projects from one city as solutions to the challenges and issues faced in others. This is sometimes described as the urban solutions industry. And on your walk, Sergio told us about his interest in how these best practices emerge and begin to circulate, and who is involved in those processes.
Sergio Montero 4:33
Yeah, I think my interest with best practices and sort of, like the global circulation of ideas, probably again, has to do with my own life of being traveling. So I did, I'm from, originally from Spain, but then I did my PhD in Berkeley. But then I did my research in Latin America, and specifically in Bogotá. And I think Bogotá, when I first went to Bogotá in 2007 when I was still doing my master's thesis, that was like a big moment for me. Like, I don't know that what that city has, but it really sort of like moved something inside of me and started to realise all the things that were happening in that city. But then it was a complex, not a lot of people at that time, now, many people know about Bogotá, but at that time, it was not very, very well known. So everyone was like, you know, having all these narratives of, like, insecurity or drugs trafficking and how they are you going to Bogotá? What do you mean? Like, that's going to be, you're going to be killed! And then I suddenly, I discover Ciclovía. I discover all these, like, new bus transportation initiatives that are happening there. I'm like, well, they're all these things happening in this city from a planning perspective, and I was doing my master in city planning, it's, it's very interesting. So, I ended up very much interested in that. And I wrote, I remember, my master thesis on, on like the changes that, sort of like the political economy of the changes that have happened in urban planning in Bogotá. So looking at that time, very much at decentralisation processes, or like, how these changes that happened in Bogotá were related with bigger political and economic changes that happened in Bogotá in the ‘80s and ‘90s and in Colombia. But then for my PC, I became soon, little by little, and I remember being in Berkeley during my last year my Masters and then Enrique Peñalosa came to give a talk about Bogotá. And he was like, everybody was clapping. All the planners were fascinated. But then at that time I knew already enough about Bogotá to be also critical about the things that he had done in team Bogotá, through the Uber renewal plans in El Cartucho and other stories, so… But what started to interesting more was this how I was seeing also how Bogotá was being little by little constructed as a model. And then suddenly the courses on transportation planning had to have, like a chapter on Bogotá, or a session in Bogotá where, like some people, and examples from Bogotá would come up to the north, to the US, where I was living at the time. So, it was fascinating to me how this city that a lot of people associated with insecurity, drug violence, suddenly became this model for urban planning and transportation policy. I was critical of the model, and then I had this, this idea, okay, well, I can write my dissertation on being critical of the Bogotá model and show you how it's not so perfect and how all these things are terrible in Bogotá. But I could also write about what is happening here. How is this being produced as a global model and with the seats. And at the time, I was at Berkeley, and this was the time that Ananya Roy and Teresa Caldeira were there. So we were all very much thinking about, you know, thinking from the south, thinking, contesting, also these ideas of how ideas come from the north to the south. So, I was also thinking, oh, well, this is a kind of like a model that is coming from the south and starting not only South-South, but actually South-North. And so then I became so I was like, well, I want to sort of like do this research, because I think there's like some sort of power relations here that we cannot capture with the traditional ways of looking at urban politics because this is like a global aspect of dynamics that are happening. And even though Bogotá is becoming this model for other cities, there is the World Bank, there is like think tanks, there are a series of actors that are behind this that I at the time I didn't understand very well. And so I decided to do my whole dissertation about how actually Bogotá became a model. And so my fieldwork ended up being not in Bogotá, but in other cities in Guadalajara in Mexico and San Francisco, California that have used ideas from Bogotá to change something in their city. So I was very interested in like, who bring these ideas, like, where are these spaces and practices through which policy and ideas about urban planning circulate. And then I realised, for instance, that Washington DC became a fieldwork for me, like I had to go, because I soon realised that there were development institutions involved, that there were also global think tanks, like ITDP, and a series of actors that were very interested in Bogotá because the story of Bogotá, the narrative of this urban success that obviously is a narrative, but it was a very powerful narrative that allowed many actors to sort of promote BRT or Ciclovía Bicycle policy style around the world. So then Bogotá became, sort of like this best practice from the south, but in a way, also in only in the moment that align with the North agendas and priorities.
Caitlin Morrissey 9:47
What was really interesting about Sergio's work on Bogotá was his realisation that the direction of travel isn't only from north to south or south to south, but the urban renewal of Bogotá was being packaged as a solution for cities in the Global North too so there's this south to north movement of global best practices happening as well.
Michele Acuto 1 9:47
Definitely, and something that I really wanted to talk to Sergio about as we were walking, is that in his articles and his scholarship, he really puts an emphasis on also who facilitates that movement and that mobility. And there's a… and he's been my point of reference to be very clear on thinking through the philanthropist and the power of the philanthropist in facilitating that movement and that change. So, for a podcast on global urbanism, we had to ask him about the global philanthropists.
Sergio Montero 10:53
There's this moment, when I was doing fieldwork in Washington, and in January every year, I think they still do it, they have this event called Transforming Transportation. And it's this global event that is the event where everyone that is doing transportation policy knows that, like the big debates and the big themes are debated there. So I thought, okay, I need to go there, because they always invoked Bogotá, the BRT, you know, you have a set of case studies or city stories that always became sort of like the glue that sort of like bring together those panels and those speakers. So I knew that. But what that was highly discussed in this kind of policy circle, international policy circle, so I saw part of my fieldwork was okay I need to be in January in Washington and go to the World Bank to this event to understand from an ethnographic perspective, like what actually happens here. So I went to Washington in January. It was really cold. It was the coldest experience in my life at the time. There were two days, and then I remember that the inaugural session was the World Bank president at the time and Michael Bloomberg, and they were discussing, like, what's next for cities? And like, how so... And I remember, like, this sentence that the president of the World Bank saying, Oh, we've been known as the knowledge bank, but now we want to be the solutions bank. And that kept resonating with me. And then the fact that Michael Bloomberg, at the time mayor of New York, but then already Bloomberg Philanthropy is becoming a bigger player in cities. Then there was something there that I felt okay, so this is what is happening. Like Bogotá is like, just like one of these solutions that are being circulated. So there is something in the expertise of that is being produced right here. That is what explains, not all, because that would be also very simplistic to say that this is just like, like that, I don't know, that BRT is like a project of the World Bank. That will be simplistic, but definitely is a powerful actor. So and then I realised that it's not just the World Bank, but it's all this philanthropic organisations. So there's, so actually, it was for that paper in urban studies that I became very much interested in connecting Development Studies and Urban Studies with this whole literature on philanthropy. That was at the time, I think, like now is more and more used in Urban Studies. But at the time, it was not that that connection was not very clear, like the philanthro-capitalism and the role of philanthropy in policy decisions.
Speaker 1 13:33
Just like that, we've already been to Bogotá in Colombia and Washington DC, the United States in the space of one episode, walking through the streets of London.
Caitlin Morrissey 13:44
We've been all over and just to bring this conversation about philanthropic engagement in the urban solution industry into the present day, Sergio mentioned that he was uncertain about the contemporary motives for this engagement with philanthropies becoming seemingly more outwardly motivated by issues of social and racial justice, but questioning is this a way to gain social and political legitimacy for more market-oriented goals, rather than a true transition to more progressive and socially-oriented rationales?
Sergio Montero 14:18
Philanthropy is becoming more and more interested in cities. And this not just, I mean, obviously Bloomberg is the big example, and maybe the main one that is working with cities in a very, sort of, like explicit way. But there's now a lot of other philanthropists that are doing that, and that, of course, probably has to do with the increasing inequality in the world. So like now that we have more people, more millionaires and more billionaires in this moment of time. Now that Thomas Piketty shows very eloquently, has shown in his research, now philanthropy has more money, and so there's more money to the things. And then there's this idea that cities can be the solutions, especially for climate change. And I think that's the other part of this story where, when climate change and urban health, which is, I think the two, maybe discourses that have been more promoting the idea of Bogotá transportation policies, anyway, so that you see that the Bogotá story is just like the rise in a way of philanthropic funding for cities, for issues of public health and for issues of sustainability and climate change. And so, I see there are more and more philanthropic organisations. Now, what I also see, and this is like something that I still trying my head around it, and I don't know if it's more like a speculation than based on data, but I think that it was happening is that philanthropic foundations are also realising themselves of that global, that global approach of best practices and quick solutions here and there is not working. So I think, and I hope, because I see more and more, for instance, a lot of public health foundations these days are talking about racial justice and talking about structural racism in a way that you will never hear this in the before, like 10 years ago, but even like 5 years ago, I would say. Now whether, and I'm not an expert in these issues, but whether this racial justice or structural racism that they talk about is they're talking in a meaningful and sort of, like multi scalar way in which they want to really attack the program, or it's just another way, another round of different, superficial interventions that I'm not sure, that for sure, but I think that there is a change, and there's also, I saw Hewlett Foundation, for instance, now is like funding all these initiatives to rethink economics and alternatives to neoliberalism in a way that I don't think I've heard that questioning neoliberalism before, no? And so… But again, I still don't know if that is some sort of a change, or it's just like another way in which the… this best practice or superficial interventions have evolved into now questioning bigger issues, because the philanthropists really want to attack big issues, right? Because that's where they want to be known for the millionaires that fund them. There's something interesting there. And I think more work should be done in this because there's a very powerful way in which philanthropic funding can impact on cities, particularly, and I don't know if that, if this significant change happening or it's just like the superficial change of discourse.
Caitlin Morrissey 17:32
And in the context of Sergio's more recent work on formulating a posteriori comparisons, he offered us a peek under the hood of his experiences of publishing, and how he has confronted attitudes about where to, capital T, Theorize from, especially this idea that if you're theorising from the south, you can't claim to be speaking about a global phenomena, but an idiosyncratic or an individual case, but that the same standards wouldn't be applied to research emerging from large cities in the Global North.
Sergio Montero 18:02
So that idea of a posteriori comparisons is a more recent one after I had more, maybe a bit more time to reflect on all of the things that I've been doing research and then publishing about the circulation of policies and ideas and using Bogotá as my example. But then, then I reali… I also realized that I was be… in many of my publications, I was being disciplined into framing my research as a Bogotá case, or as like a Latin American case, like something that is case. And I actually, even that actually, to be honest, that first that other article in Urban Studies that is now called “Leveraging Bogotá and urban solutions”. It was initially called “Leveraging cities”, because my idea there was to think about, yes, I was using the case of Bogotá to think about a global process. But it was a global process where I was trying to theorise and think about but one of the reviewers was like, well, you're talking about here leveraging city, but you really are talking about particular case that is Bogotá. So I had to change the title of the article to have Bogotá in it. Whereas we obviously know that when people like write about, like, two or three cases in London or in the UK or in some small place in the US, they never, they don't have to necessarily include the names of their cities in the title. So the “A posteriori comparisons” article and as a method to come up with from this idea of, like, and I was seeing and also being based in as I was based at the University of the Andes for the last eight years, being based in Colombia, and then participating not only in the academic conferences of in English but also in the academic conferences in Spanish, I could also see how Latin American scholars tended to present there were always as the name of the city, very big in the title, it is a case study...
Michele Acuto 20:02
And back for a moment in the studio. I think one of the things that stood out in this bit of the conversation with Sergio was his honest self-assessment of the frustration of doing this in the field and the complexity of narrating that a posteriori and everyone marvel at Caitlin's perfect pronunciation in Latin slash Italian of a posteriori.
Caitlin Morrissey 20:27
Thank you.
Michele Acuto 20:29
The very interesting part here is that we have, again, another scholar that is out there, is across different countries, in different contexts, but is trying to figure it out. And I think it's a theme that has popped up repeatedly through the interviews in the series. So, I really wanted to hear more about how do you do that and how do you work in the field with those frustrations, with those complications, with those positionalities. So back to Sergio and what he did with the a posteriori and the scholars that he works with.
Sergio Montero 21:00
And you know, I was also very frustrated about that. And so, I was trying to think about, okay, so how can we use this idea of comparing, how the comparison of different cities can allow to us to think about global process? And I think that that came at a very interesting, obviously I was reading also very much like Jennifer Robinson ideas, which was very inspiring to me. And if we want to change the way that we theorise about global urban processes then we also need to change the methods that we use for that. And so, for me, the a posteriori comparison was both a way in thinking, okay, so how can we make this comparison work for people working on different cities so that by putting their cases or cities into comparison, they can then feel like they can make a contribution to like a global process. So it was like, to me, very much concerned with those ideas about how to think about the global from the local, how to escape the comfort of putting your city… the name of your city in the title, and then how, how do we create a community of scholars that collaborate with each other? Like we spent, like, I spent a lot of time in my field work. I guess I did, like, two years of field work. Did, I don't know, 95 interviews, ethnographic observation, and I has so much material. And I was like, well, yes, okay, so I did my dissertation, I published these articles, and now what? Like I want… There's so much more that I can do with this material when I put it into conversation, into conversation with other people, that their framework of reference or theoretical frameworks might be different, but we get to similar findings. So, by doing that, you open up a new way of reading your own findings in a way that you maybe wouldn't have expected in the beginning, if you were just like, by yourself, like doing your research design and doing the comparison a priori, no? Like in the beginning. I think the a posteriori is like, in a way, a very liberating way of saying, okay, these are the findings. You that… you you talk to other people, and then how can we put this into conversation? And how can we put different languages into conversation? Like in that article, in the a posteriori comparison, we compare the Bogotás policies with participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, which happened in Brazil, and I collaborated with Gianpaolo Baiocchi, who is a sociologist who's done extensive fieldwork in Brazil, and I don't speak Portuguese, so like it's a way to sort of put together two cases that would have been difficult. For one, I mean, maybe not that difficult because Spanish and Portuguese are not that different, but you can think about comparisons of different languages in a way that one… you cannot ask that to just one person. So I think that that was also in in my head. Sorry for...
Michele Acuto 1 23:49
No, it's beautiful. I actually, what I like is that I can't, I couldn't decide in that if it is about, there's a beautiful altruism in it, but a bit of a personally interested altruism, because you go, I've done all this work, so I also need to make it more meaningful than just for itself. So it’s a bit it's cosmopolitan, but also bit self-indulgent, but also a bit cosmopolitan.
Sergio Montero 24:15
Yeah. No, definitely, and, but you can think of like, why do we and I got a lot of grants also do that fieldwork. So, like, it was a lot of work, but then you just publish some articles and that's it. And so, so it's not so much about me thinking, oh no, I should, like, I get more out of this. Rather than that is more thinking, like, there is all this thing that if, for instance, if I collaborate now with someone who's interested in bike activism, bicycle activism, then I can that, I can use some of the material to contribute to a different kind of debate that is going to be also interesting for that other person. And so how can we, you know, be… have an impact in different kind of debates and or even with policy, policy makers.
Caitlin Morrissey 25:13
And as always, we finish with our final question to Sergio, as we have with all of our guests, which is to ask them to tell us about a significant place in his research and his role as an academic, and his career trajectory. Here's Sergio.
Sergio Montero 25:28
I would take you to Bogotá, of course, because that is a city that has inspired me and in a lot of ways, and then where I feel like I also have a lot of growth, both personal but also professional. But it's always a city that I am fascinated with. And it's hard to explain the fascination with Bogotá, because I feel like Bogotá is a city that many people either hate or love. There's like no middle feeling about it, but I think it's a city that it's really vibrant, and it has many problems that Colombia has had for a long time, and that Latin America also has, like issues of violence or everyday violence, inequalities. But at the same time, it's always like, there's always new ideas coming. There's always new ways to think about, like one thing and so also challenging things that you think about urban studies. But I guess if you come from urban studies, you would probably be fascinated by it as well. If you are expecting, like a beautiful city to walk around, and it's not gonna be like your typical idea of like a tourist city. And maybe that's why I like it too. And yeah, I would take you there and like would try to, like, walk around the city.
Michele Acuto 26:52
And back in the studio. How fitting is that to wrap up our sixth episode talking about walking around the city and meandering in city walks, don't you think?
Caitlin Morrissey 27:04
Couldn't be more perfect. I absolutely loved this conversation with Sergio. It was inspiring. And, like all of the guests that we've had on the podcast, everything they said was fascinating. Everybody will take away different conclusions, and it's impossible to kind of summarise or reflect upon what they said, or to summarise the personal trajectories that they've been on. So instead, just going to take a couple of takeaways from what we heard. I thought it was really interesting to hear from Sergio how in real time, he was identifying and following the positioning of Bogotá as a best practice, following its south to north global circulation, the way it was manufactured as a solution by some of the world's largest philanthropies and think tanks. And his work on that topic has been incredibly influential and super interesting. And it's been fascinating to hear about his personal reflections and his journey into that research, particularly because I think we heard from Colin in our first episode about this idea that in retrospect, you can make sense of a career in urban studies or urban geography and begin to see that there are some common strands, or there are some subconscious paths that people take, whereas Sergio was highlighting, when he was telling us about his work on Bogotá, these real moments of clarity where the theory is happening right in front of you and it becomes this thing, this cause, this case that you really want to research. It is meaningful to you, and it matters to urban studies and urban life, that this phenomena is paid attention to in urban studies. And I just thought that that was really fascinating in a really relatable way, again, like Colin, of thinking through how academic trajectories or research trajectories come to be that they can be this crystallised. And the final thing that I'd reflect upon from what Sergio was saying, and I think it's really, again, another fitting way to end this episode in this part of the miniseries, were Sergio’s reflections on his a posteriori comparisons and his experimentation born out of this frustration that sort of designed to combat this idea that there are certain cities where you can capital T Theorize from in urban studies, and there are certain cities where you can learn about global processes from in certain cities where you can't. And just really combatting that, and also showing that there's an afterlife to research, where he was able to use his research on Bogotá and put it into comparison with other research on Porto Alegre, that perhaps they were not designed to be part of the same research study, but there was ways of bringing these two cities together with a colleague, in collaboration with somebody else, recognising the moment that we're in in Urban Studies, which is seemingly all about experimental comparisons, understanding how to quote, “actually do global urbanism”. So, I thought that was a great conversation and a brilliant way to end this part of the miniseries. What were you taking away from what we heard?
Michele Acuto 30:11
Yeah, I think I really take away the rather fitting image that Sergio paints for us of the urban scholar and urban theorist that gets out there, is on the road, and he poses in the Great Hall of the World Bank and has a theoretical moment right there in front of him. I think it's quite powerful, because it just tells us, as we're trying to do in the series, get out there and live on the street, global urbanism, and be careful on the practice of global urbanism. So, the philanthropists and development agencies and the actually existing global urbanism out there. What I really like is how Sergio has hijacked, in many way, a mode of that, industrial global solutionism. So uses the a posteriori comparisons very much like the companies and the philanthropists at times, sort of misuse the antecedents and the referencing of Bogotá, and he flips it on its head. It's quite courageous, and it gets out there. And apart from that, I absolutely loved, and I think this is a theme that we've seen through and through, it sort of rings with the images of Julie in Berlin, or the stories of Colin in the outskirts of Glasgow, and more, just this image that there's a personal trajectory to global urbanism that we're trying to paint real humans getting out there on the street, not just scribbling on papers and publishing, but also living those publications in many ways. So I think we've got quite a journey already here. We hope you've been enjoying what we've been doing here. We hope that you… Your feet are not as tired as mine, and we hope that you found some funny parts in it. So, for the moment, here you have it. Sergio Montero on solutionism, philanthropy, global circuits and some very honest reflexivity, I think, on his positionality with a tour of the Americas, from the Latina all the way to Canada.
And as per usual, if you want to read more or hear more, get into our show notes for a bit more links, for a bit more insights on Sergio's work. And until the next adventure out, thanks for listening. Thanks for walking the city with us. Thanks for coming to the studio and listening to our ramblings about walking the city with the scholars. Thanks for getting out with Sergio and see you, hear you, watch you in the next episode.
‘Walking the city with’ is a miniseries by the Urban Studies journal with the University of Bristol and the University of Melbourne, produced by Caitlin Morrissey in Manchester, Julia Macbeth in Glasgow, Kate Murray in Melbourne and myself, Michele Acuto in Bristol. Thank you for listening.
