‘I know how to live from what the hill gives’: biocultural uses, tensions and partial reconstructions around the common goods of the Cerro Caracol urban park

Abstract

In the south-central Chilean city of Concepción, an irregular urban settlement named ‘Agüita de la Perdiz’ (Partridge Creek) built on the slopes of Cerro Caracol (Snail Hill) has become an emblematic neighbourhood, located within an urban biodiversity hotspot. The richness and biodiversity of the landscape have been used in different ways by the inhabitants of Concepción, but in the case of the Agüita de la Perdiz residents, it is also part of their way of life, representing an unusual people–nature relationship in urban spaces. We analyze the relationship between the community and the hill, with its forest, fauna, waters and recreational areas; the successive territorial dispossessions and the various conflicts involved in the operation of the Metropolitan Park, created to protect the hill; and the efforts led by community members to recompose their relationship with the hill. The case problematizes urban bioculture, from a political ecology of commons perspective, and co-management approaches for conservation.