Sofia Guevara: The instability of the concept of risk in urban areas. Residents and managers facing flooding in Barrio Luján and La Carpio (San José, Costa Rica)

At the crossroads of risk research and urban studies, this thesis examines the establishment of neighborhood crisis management committees (CCEs, or Comités de Crisis de Vecindad in Spanish), participatory mechanisms promoted by Costa Rica's national risk management policy since 2006 and established in the country's capital, San José, since 2012. Created on the initiative of municipalities and composed exclusively of residents, the CCE aims to involve residents of areas affected by emergencies in risk management actions.

In the Costa Rican metropolitan area, these mechanisms are particularly prevalent in neighborhoods affected by urban flooding, which disrupts daily life in the city and is emblematic of so-called "urban" risks. These risks are linked to morphological factors, as well as to settlement processes, urban activities, and services.

Adopting a systemic approach, the study focuses on the relationships forged between municipal officials and local residents within these participatory committees. The thesis draws on a variety of empirical data: a study of institutional archives, cartographic work, and interviews and participant observations in two neighborhoods with different socioeconomic profiles, Barrio Luján and La Carpio.

The thesis shows that vertical mechanisms, designed a priori by bureaucrats to spread a "culture of risk" among the population, are instrumentalized by both residents and local officials to defend their respective projects and interests in the territories concerned. The systemic and comparative approach reveals that this instrumentalization is neither unambiguous nor fixed: it evolves in line with the interactions between the two actors. Thus, by highlighting the contextual and dynamic nature of the definition of risk according to neighborhood, the thesis draws attention to the unstable nature of the categories proposed by public risk management, which are reinvested and overwhelmed by the way in which residents appropriate them. In both cases studied, residents constantly point out the limitations of public policy and its contradictions with regard to its stated objective. From this perspective, the thesis highlights the contribution of residents' conceptions of the territory and invites reflection on new pluralistic frameworks for risk policies.

Keywords: risk management, flooding, participation, mobilization, city, Costa Rica.