Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
IN HUMAN SETTLEMENTS IN DEVELOPING CITIES
| WORKSHOP PAPERS |
|
|
ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001
COPING WITH INFORMALITY AND ILLEGALITY
|
| ||
| WORKSHOP: HOME PAGE - INDEX of WORKSHOP PAPERS |
Yvonne Riaño
- Download the draft paper in *.rtf format
- Download the draft paper in *.pdf format
Informal use of land in many peripheral settlements of Latin American cities is characterised by illegality, by the simultaneous use of land for living and for producing, and by the spatial concentration of kin-related households. Informal land use has been viewed from different perspectives. The modernisation perspective, which has influenced many planners in Latin American cities, has held that residential areas should be separate from areas of production. The mixed use of land in the barrios is considered backward and in conflict with modern planning standards. Modernism views such practices as a straightforward problem that needs to be corrected by means of an Urban Master Plan. The neoliberal perspective has concentrated principally on the legal aspects of informality. Using neoliberal economic concepts it has been argued that living in an illegal status has negative consequences for the inhabitants of informal settlements. Since they rarely have formal title to the land they inhabit, the residents lack the collateral to raise cash. In neoliberal terms, illegality is an obstacle to development. Property laws need to be changed to facilitate legalisation thus allowing the poor to realise their development potential. The grass-roots perspective has criticised modernisation-biased planning theory for ignoring the fact that multipurpose land-use is an essential survival strategy of the urban poor in their context of economic insecurity. Indeed, informal use of land is regarded as a means of poverty alleviation. Planning models based on the idea of specialised use of land are deemed irrelevant to the social, economic and cultural needs of low-income populations in informal settlements. To sum up, informal use of land is viewed by the modernisation perspective as a 'planning problem', by the neoliberal perspective as an 'obstacle to development', and by the grassroots perspective as a means of 'poverty alleviation'.
The aim of this paper is to evaluate these three perspectives for the case of the barrios of Quito, Ecuador. The evaluation is based on interviews and first-hand observations on land use evolution in barrio Mena del Hierro carried out over a ten-year period (1990-2000). The methods used for the study are land-use mapping and participatory research. Qualitative interviews were conducted with barrio residents to understand the legal, socio-economic and socio-cultural functions of informal land-use. Selected aspects of the results are given in the text boxes throughout this paper, and further details can be found in Riaņo (1999, 2000).
The following three questions are addressed in this paper: (a) what are the characteristics and benefits of informal land-use in the barrios? (b) How does Quito's Master Plan regulate land use in the barrios? (c) What are the socio-economic disadvantages of informality for the poor? The paper is concluded with a discussion of an integrated approach to land-use policies and research in informal settlements.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net