Iván Poduje


Iván Slavko Poduje Capdeville is a Chilean architect, pundit and politician.
He won the 2018 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna Award in the urban planning category for his active participation in public debate. In that capacity, Poduje has written three books on social disintegration and the lack of urban planning strategies as national stability issues.
Among the architectural works in which he has contributed are the implementation of Line 6 of the Santiago Metro –and the extension of Line 3–, the Mapocho River Park in Vitacura, the redesign of the Vitacura avenue, the remodeling of the coastal promenade on La Marina Avenue in Viña del Mar, among others.
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Biography

Academic training

Iván Poduje was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1968. He is the son of Dinko Poduje, of Chilean-Croatian origin, and Laura Capdeville.
In 1985, he joined the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso School of Architecture in Viña del Mar. In the early 2000s, Poduje completed his master's degree in urban development at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he also served as a professor until 2020. He has also taught at Stanford University's Overseas Program.

Career path

During Sebastián Piñera's second government, Poduje advised Housing Minister Cristián Monckeberg of the National Renewal party, on a regeneration program for six historic neighborhoods, including Paseo Bulnes, the Las Cenizas neighborhood in Valparaíso or the Guacamayo Island in Valdivia.
He also participated in the revitalization of Chilean vulnerable areas in Quilicura, Cerro Navia, Talca, La Pintana and Puente Alto. In addition, he participated in the management of public spaces such in Lo Barnechea, Maipú and Conchalí.
In 2022, in an interview with Tomás Mosciatti on Radio Bío-Bío, he argued that a strategy for recovering vulnerable neighborhoods involves providing them with services that provide "territorial capillarity" to the surrounding areas, that is, establishing a sociability regulated by institutional functioning.

Political career

In 2016, he joined the campaign team for Ricardo Lagos's pre-candidacy, which was ultimately rejected by the Nueva Mayoría coalition in favor of Alejandro Guillier. Years later, in 2021, then-pre-candidate Evelyn Matthei hired Poduje to continue the regeneration of neighborhoods occupied by drug trafficking. However, Matthei was also rejected, in this case to the detriment of Joaquín Lavín.
Since 2022, Poduje has been a regular panelist on the political debate show program Sin filtros. In this context, he defended the rejection to replace the current Chilean Constitution of 1980 in the 2022 and 2023 referendums.
Poduje ran as an independent candidate, supported by Chile Vamos , to compete for mayor of Viña del Mar in the 2024 municipal elections, which he lost to Macarena Ripamonti.

Works

Books

Gran Valparaiso: Debates, ideas y propuestas de ciudad. Atisba Ediciones;.Siete Kabezas: Crónica Urbana del Estallido Social. UqbarChile Tomado. Editorial Uqbar

Papers

  • "Malles en Santiago. De centros comerciales a centros urbanos". Revista de Estudios Públicos.