When Visions for City Planning and Development are Translated into Practice

The ‘knowing-doing’ gaps between policy goals and their outcome when implemented is of increasing concern both in practice and in research. This paper explores how the visions of a sustainable development and the corresponding planning are translated into practice; what aspects of visions and plans are translated, what is lost in and what is added in the translation. The paper is based on the case-study of La Chureca, the rubbish dump and slum of Managua, Nicaragua, and its regeneration program that ran from 2009 to 2013 and included the construction of a new landfill, a recycling station where part of the waste-pickers now are formally employed, and new housing for the informal settlement’s residents. The analysis is based on interviews, observations, workshop participations and document analysis; gathered from 2009 until 2012. It combines action net theory with the sociology of translation as theoretical framework. Despite the initial compliance to the program (funded and initially led by international aid organizations), local actors enacted a myriad of small acts of defiance and resistance that, without abruptly contesting the project, shaped it to better fit local needs; a) first by municipal politicians and officers, and b) later by beneficiaries that felt that they were not fairly benefited by the program (women, eldery). We conclude that the implementation of visions cannot be seen as scripted translations of plans into reality, but as uncontrollable and uncertain processes in which myriads of translations twist policies and plans from below. The question is therefore not whether plans work (or succeed) but how they work.