The Rehabilitation of Consolidated Irregular Settlements in Latin American Cities: Towards a "Third Generation" of Public Policy Analysis and Development.

Download the draft paper in *.rtf format

Download the draft paper in *.pdf format

ABSTRACT

Against the 1980s-90s backdrop of democratic change, government decentralization and downsizing, the privatization of social policy and devolution to local government, there is an urgent need for a new phase of research and normative policy development. This "third generation" approach also stems from within a sustainable and local government implementation paradigm. The paper reports on proposed research that will begin to address the understudied arena of urban revitalization - specifically in this case the older irregular settlements that were established twenty or more years ago. These areas are relatively fully consolidated, comprising as they do all services, paved streets and brick-built often two-story dwellings, etc. However, while many of the original owner-settler households remain, these areas are mixed residential and tenure, offering an important housing niche for some of the most vulnerable families: female headed households, the elderly, and others who form part of the so-called "new poor" who are increasingly excluded from the urban economy as well as from public and private welfare supports.

Despite their apparent integration, these settlements are invariably in urgent need of attention and policy support for revitalization. If they were not the slums of the past, they could readily become the slums of the future, if they aren't already in some cases.

Part of the problem we now face is that these dwellings evolved by accretion - as families grew, and as resources allowed. Being self-built and low cost, they relied upon little or no formal building skills, they were rarely conceived according to a complete dwelling plan, and they made no effort to comply with safety norms and codes, etc. That worked fine at the time, but 20 years later is has led to severe deterioration of the built environment. Sometimes, -- as in Caracas or Mexico City in recent years - floods or earthquakes may lead tragedy when such poorly built or severely dilapidated structures collapse, in part because of inadequate maintenance or because of a lack of ex-post intervention to reconfigure existing dwellings. Additionally, the social composition of settlements and households has changed markedly. Densities are higher, land uses are more mixed, and while many of the pioneer households (or their families) still remain in their original residence, their structure and size is now out of synch with the dwelling environment that evolved many years earlier. As well as being distressed, the dwelling is anachronistic to the family's contemporary needs and space requirements.

By opening up an entirely new line of systematic enquiry, this research promises to make a substantial contribution to low-income housing theory. Its findings will also intersect with theoretical and empirical debates on household organization, survival strategies versus the "new poverty", and the impact of economic change upon housing investment. Concretely, too, it will offer insights that are designed to directly inform normative approaches that will facilitate in-situ housing rehabilitation in older irregular settlements.

ESF/N-AERUS: International workshop - Leuven and Brussels, Belgium, 23-26 May 2001

N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net