Dokumen - Pub - Housing and Belonging in Latin America 9781782387411

Housing and Belonging in Latin America
Cedla Latin America Studies (CLAS)

General Editor
Michiel Baud, Cedla
Series Editorial Board

Anthony Bebbington, Clark University
Edward F. Fischer, Vanderbilt University
Anthony L. Hall, London School of Economics and Political Science
Barbara Hogenboom, Cedla
Barbara Potthast, University of Cologne
Rachel Sieder, University of London
Eduardo Silva, Tulane University
Patricio Silva, Leiden University
Cedla
Centrum voor Studie en Documentatie van Latijns Amerika
Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latino-Americanos
Centro de Estudos e Documentação Latino-Americanos
Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation
Cedla conducts social science and history research, offers university courses, and has a specialized library for the
study of the region. The Centre also publishes monographs and a journal on Latin America.
Roetersstraat 33
1018 WB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
www.cedla.uva.nl
[For information on previous volumes published in this series, please contact Cedla at the above address.]
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Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz
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Urban Residence: Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador
Christien Klaufus
VOLUME 101
Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles
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VOLUME 102
Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy
Edited by Jennifer L. Burrell and Ellen Moodie
VOLUME 103
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Edited by Ton Salman, Salvador Martí i Puig and Gemma van der Haar
VOLUME 104
Enhancing Democracy: Public Policies and Citizen Participation in Chile
Gonzalo Delamaza
VOLUME 105
Housing and Belonging in Latin America
Edited by Christien Klaufus and Arij Ouweneel
Housing and
Belonging
in Latin America
Edited by
Christien Klaufus
and
Arij Ouweneel
berghahn
NEW YORK • OXFORD
www.berghahnbooks.com
Published in 2015 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2015 Christien Klaufus and Arij Ouweneel
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Housing and belonging in Latin America / edited by Christien Klaufus and Arij
Ouweneel. -- First Edition.
pages cm. -- (CEDLA Latin America studies; 105)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78238-740-4 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-
741-1 (ebook)
1. City planning--Latin America. 2. Housing--Latin America. 3. Urban
policy--Latin America. I. Klaufus, Christien, editor. II. Ouweneel, Arij,
1957- editor.
HT169.L3H68 2015
307.1’216098--dc23
2015003075
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78238-740-4 (hardback)

E-ISBN 978-1-78238-741-1 (ebook)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables viii

Prefacexi
Introduction. Taking up Residency: Spatial Reconfigurations and the

Struggle to Belong in Urban Latin America 1
Christien Klaufus
Part I: The Latin American Context
Chapter 1. The Consolidation of the Latin American City and the

Changing Bases for Social Order 23
Bryan R. Roberts
Chapter 2. Proximity, Crime, Politics and Design: Medellín’s Popular

Neighbourhoods and the Experience of Belonging 43
Gerard Martin and Marijke Martin
Part II: Family and Belonging in Consolidated Settlements
Chapter 3. Debe Ser Esfuerzo Propio: Aspirations and Belongings of

the Young Generation in the Old Barriadas of Southern Lima,
Peru81
Michaela Hordijk
Chapter 4. On Housing, Inheritance and Succession Among Pioneer

Squatters and Self Builders: A Mexican Case Study 104
Erika Denisse Grajeda
–v–
vi | Contents
Chapter 5. Favela Modelo: A Study on Housing, Belonging and

Civic Engagement in a ‘Pacified’ Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 123
Palloma Menezes
Part III: Spaces of the Urban Middle Class
Chapter 6. Housing Policy in the City of Buenos Aires: Some

Reflections on the Programa Federal 149
Fernando Ostuni and Jean-Louis Van Gelder
Chapter 7. The Boom of High-rise Apartment Buildings in Buenos

Aires: New Spaces of Residentiality or a Motor of Disintegration? 164
Jan Dohnke and Corinna Hölzl
Chapter 8. Living With Style in My Casa GEO: Large-scale Housing

Conjuntos in Urban Mexico 181
Cristina Inclán-Valadez
Part IV: Architectural and Spatial Representations
Chapter 9. Illiterate Modernists: Tracking the Dissemination of

Architectural Knowledge in Brazilian Favelas 209
Fernando Luiz Lara
Chapter 10. Towards Belonging: Informal Design and Dwelling

Practices in Northern Colombia 223
Peter Kellett
Chapter 11. (Re)Building the City of Medellín: Beyond State

Rhetoric vs. Personal Experience – A Call for Consolidated
Synergies241
Jota (José) Samper and Tamera Marko
Part V: Reflections
Chapter 12. Home and Belonging: Reflections From Urban Mexico 275
Ann Varley
C o n ten ts | vii
Chapter 13. One Block at a Time: Performing the Neighbourhood 294

Arij Ouweneel
List of Contributors 321

Index325
Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1 Mother with memorial for killed son 56
2.2 Medellín seen from the hills 65
3.1 Neighbourhood consolidation and new fences in Trebol

Azul – Pampas de San Juan (Lima) 87
3.2 Professional services now on offer in Trebol Azul – Pampas

de San Juan (Lima) 89
5.1 Pico residents in protest 134
5.2a & b The Morro Santa Marta tramway 138
5.3a & b The Morro Santa Marta as a tourist attraction 139
5.4 Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta Samba School crowded

with people from outside the favela 141
6.1 Location of housing projects developed by the Programa

Federal in the City of Buenos Aires’ neighbourhoods 156
8.1 Material objects 199
9.1 Diagram of the favela construction process 210
9.2 Favela da Serra, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 210
9.3 A middle-class modernist house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil 213
– viii –
Fi g u r es a n d T a b l es | ix
9.4 A construction worker drawing with a piece of ceramic

brick on the floor to explain his decision process 215
10.1a & b Olga, Jesus and their family outside their house in
1991 and 2008 224
10.2a & b Dwellings in the early stages are made from

temporary and recycled materials (left). A household
who have been unable to consolidate still live in a
dwelling of temporary materials (right) 228
10.3a, b & c Well-consolidated dwellings 232
10.4a & b Many recent facades are more colourful and use more
playful forms 234
10.5a, b & c The changing house of Nancy and Leopoldo: 1986,

1989 and 2008 237
11.1 Homicide rate in Colombia vs. Medellín from 1975 to

2012 247
12.1 Rental housing in San Mateo, Guadalajara 283
12.2 ‘Even under the bed’: Some of the plants in Maria’s

house in Los Encinos 287
12.3 Home and ilusión: Dreaming of a car in Los Encinos 290
13.1 Two models of urban development in Latin America

after Borsdorf et al. 305
Tables
3.1 Squatter settlement: Progressive development 83
3.2 Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010 90
3.3 Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010 94
3.4 Percentage of second generation and still living with

parents, in age classes (2010) 95
x | Figures a nd Ta ble s
4.1 Household structures and characteristics in

consolidated self-help settlements: The case of Mexico
City, Guadalajara and Monterrey 107
4.2 Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder

and marital status 110
4.3 Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about

will-making 111
Preface
This book addresses Latin American cities as places of residence in a contem-

porary context, in which the worldwide growth of urban populations, influ-
ences of globalization and the reinvention of social structures have put their
marks on urban lifeworlds. The book critically assesses social (dis)integration
processes in urban areas. While the book can be placed in a large tradition of
Latin American urban studies scholarship, it is innovative in its approach to
scrutinizing narratives and non-verbal communications of belonging within
rapidly transforming urban societies, in search of a balance between disin-
tegration examples and more positive spatial identifications. Overlooked in
several previous works, the case studies reveal new and sometimes paradoxical
issues with which urban citizens are faced, such as new forms of informality
induced by the legalization of housing and inheritance structures, or the
aspirations of comfort and progress projected onto standardized housing in
Mexico, which often result in self-help adaptations. The new forms of infor-
mality and self-reliance described here, as well as the unexpected positive
identifications of marginalized groups, connect this work to the old-school
works of the 1970s. Meanwhile those topics also project the future of urban
residence and belonging in what will soon be the most urbanized region in
the world: Latin America (almost 90 per cent of the population is expected
to live in urban areas by 2050 according to UN Habitat, State of the World
Cities 2010/2011).
Latin America has urbanized in an incomparably rapid way, resulting in
cities of incommensurable sizes and social constellations. Acknowledging
that social and spatial arrangements in Latin American urban space have
changed drastically over the last two decades, the contributions assess the
transformed social relations in connection with people’s attempts to ‘move
on in life’, whether literally by moving house, or figuratively by being socially
mobile. They explore citizens’ identifications with urban and trans-local ter-
ritories, and their achievements and struggles in the aspirations to belong to
the city. The shared focus of all chapters is on housing, and on experiences
with inhabiting urban space. Notions such as feeling at home, urban lifestyles
across the generations, gendered spaces and the role of material culture will be
discussed. The authors have used a broad range of approaches and techniques
– xi –
xii | Preface
from the social sciences and humanities. Social anthropological accounts

of urban citizenship are complemented with geographical accounts of the
spatialization of urbanity and cultural accounts of identification processes.
The volume offers an alternative perspective on urban change in contem-
porary Latin America. Since the second half of the twentieth century, many
studies on Latin American cities have stressed a situation of ‘urban crisis’, first
related to rural-urban migration, later to neo-liberal policies and consequent
social segregation, and nowadays to urban violence and assumed ‘cultures of
fear’. This volume attempts to demonstrate that increasing urbanization and
persistent social inequality in combination with new lifestyles have not only
resulted in social disintegration and misery, but also in new forms of iden-
tification and citizenship in urban space, albeit through symbolic struggles.
The meanings and values attached to houses, neighbourhoods and cities are
explored through the analysis of trajectories of social mobility, local (im)-
possibilities of the housing ladder and social constructions of rootedness. The
focus on housing and the home environment is therefore key to narratives of
urban belonging in a broader cultural and geographical sense. Because the
authors stem from the field of human geography, urban anthropology, archi-
tecture, sociology and history, a varied spectrum of research methodologies is
presented, from ethnographic approaches that study everyday life to research
methods from the field of arts and humanities, in which the corpus of histo-
ries and representations of daily life exists in films and literature.
This book has relevance to the international scholarly fields of Latin
American studies, social studies, cultural studies and, especially, urban stud-
ies. The search for a more balanced approach towards positive and negative
aspects of contemporary urban life in the Latin American region is rather
new. Only a few scholars have started to criticize the theoretical bias of the
Latin American ‘urban impasse’ that has dominated the field for a decade
now. While the chapters demonstrate that each step to improve life in urban
Latin America requires a considerable amount of creativity and self-help
solutions, the multiplicity of solutions to create a meaningful way of life in
the city abounds, even though each solution paradoxically seems to generate
new limitations, too. The empirical insights are used to build up an analytic
approach to interpret contemporary urban life in the region.
The book is thematically divided into five parts. Two contextual chapters
guide the reader through the field of study by scrutinizing the existing lit-
erature, describing the urban history of Latin America, and introducing the
notion of belonging on an urban micro level. The second part explores the
experiences of first-, second- and third-generation inhabitants of consolidated
informal settlements. It describes their attempts to get ahead in life and, at
the same time, feel at home in the city, both in a legal and emotional sense.
The third part assesses attempts of residents, authorities and professionals
P r ef a ce | xiii
to improve the overall quality of housing in cities. It re-considers the role

of neighbourhood reputations, lifestyles and the increase of urban middle
classes in Latin American cities. The fourth part discusses non-verbal forms
of communication as representations of status and identity through material
culture and visual design. It discusses the linkages between form, cultural
meanings and identifications. The fifth part offers reflections on the above
themes, connecting the notions of belonging and social integration on the
levels of the home, neighbourhood and city in a more theoretical way. Some
of the contributing authors have won their spurs with influential publications,
while others have carved out new areas of study. Overall, the book offers a
collection of urban case studies from different parts of the Latin American
region, including both prominent megacities and less familiar urban areas.
Introduction: Taking up Residency
Spatial Reconfigurations and the Struggle to Belong in
Urban Latin America
Christien Klaufus
‘All in one rhythm’ was the slogan of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
The tag line was assumed to be the ‘unifying message which represents the
unique flavour that Brazil will bring to the FIFA World Cup’.1 According
to the FIFA website, the slogan was chosen because it stressed social cohe-
sion, innovation, the different rhythms of Brazil’s rich culture and nature
and a general sense of happiness. The twelve cities that hosted the matches,
Belo Horizonte, Brasília, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto
Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo, have all been adorned
with new stadiums that represent the nation’s pride and a unifying love for
soccer. Not that apparent from FIFA’s rhetoric, however, is the fact that the
list of 2014 World Cup cities also represents centuries of urban living on the
Latin American and Caribbean continent. First founded along the coast and
later in the Amazon forests, the rhythms of those different urban spaces have
come to characterize the diversity of urban life in the region throughout
the centuries, thus offering convenient examples to start off this collection
of essays about housing, living and belonging. As is well known, during the
twentieth century Latin America was urbanized in an incomparably rapid way,
resulting in cities of incommensurable sizes and social constellations. Within
that context, Brazil offers some of the most problematic and also some of
the most successful examples of urban living in Latin America. Brazilian
cities have simultaneously become famous and infamous among scholars,
policymakers, urban experts and civic organizations inside and outside of the
region. Those cities are ‘good to think with’, because they encompass a broad
range of human knowledge on the city as a place of residency and belonging.
Brasília’s remarkable design and development has received ample inter-
national attention from architects and social scientists alike (Holston 1989;
M.E. Kohlsdorf, G. Kohlsdorf and de Holanda 2010). Situated at the cross-
roads of old trading routes in the vast inland areas, Manaus and Cuiabá
exemplify the explosively growing Amazon cities (Browder and Godfrey
1997). Natal, Fortaleza, Recife and Belo Horizonte are renowned for their
material and immaterial layers of colonial history, and for the social and racial
inequalities that characterize their urban identities today (Delson 1979; cf.
–1–
2 | Chris tien K l a u f u s
Linger 1992). Curitiba became famous among international urban designers

and planners in the last decades of the twentieth century because of Jaime
Lerner’s counter-current revitalization plans (Macedo 2004; Irazábal 2010).
Porto Alegre is probably the best-known example of municipal participatory
budgeting programmes (Baiocchi 2005). Finally, the two largest cities from
the FIFA list, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, are known as core cases of unbal-
anced urban development (Caldeira 2000; Kent 2006; Perlman 2010). As a
set, those cities represent urban Brazil and the broader gamut of urban Latin
America.
In an urban Brazilian context, the ‘one rhythm’ slogan was anything but
new. It resembled the slogan that President Juscelino Kubitschek (1902–76;
President: 1956–61) launched when he started building Brasília as the new
capital city. Even back then, he used the ‘rhythm of Brasília’ slogan to
motivate workers:
[T]he “rhythm of Brasília” [was] defined as “36 hours of work a day — 12

during the day, 12 at night, and 12 for enthusiasm”. This rhythm was an
expression of the new time consciousness of modernity, one which believed
in the possibility of accelerating history, of mobility in society, and of cre-
ating discontinuities in the class bound routines of daily life to generate a
new human solidarity. (Holston 1989: 215)
The utopian rhythm of modernity resulted in a sense of fellowship during the

tough construction years. In the end, however, it did not result in a less class-
based spatial organization of the capital city as was hoped.
The enthusiastic optimism phrased in the ‘rhythm of Brasília’ slogan
contrasts with the tense atmosphere captured by the anthropologist Linger
(1992) in his description of the north-eastern city São Luís. In the ‘rhythms
of city life’ he introduces the routes and routines of daily life on weekdays,
weekends and during the city’s great festivals. The ‘rhythms’ of those fes-
tivals are metaphors for the violent escalations in the city’s public spaces.
They express a dystopian view of urban Brazil. In turn, the ‘all in one
rhythm’ FIFA slogan follows the optimistic perspective again, emphasizing
the socially inclusive character with which Brazilian music, dance and festivals
are attributed. ‘All in one rhythm’ suggests a synchronization of experiences
along the different spaces, histories, time zones and cultures of the country.
The FIFA marketing campaign intended to spread a sense of proud identifi-
cation and belonging by stressing that ‘all’ Brazilians and visitors would be
stirred up in ‘one rhythm’ however unrealistic those expectations may be.
Alternative interpretations of Brazil’s urban rhythms express, in a nutshell,
the opposed perspectives on the Latin American city in international urban
studies. With this volume we aim to contribute to a more balanced analysis
I n tr o d u cti o n | 3
of Latin American urban life. To guide our thoughts, this chapter offers an
overview of the literature. Most attention will be paid to the urban transfor-
mations of the last two decades and to the dominant perspectives of the Latin
American city in urban studies.
Pendular Paradigms
Knowledge about Latin American cities and urbanization processes is histori-

cally intertwined with knowledge about urban design and planning (Almandoz
2006: 83). Throughout the twentieth century, the Latin American city has
proven a valuable ‘laboratory’ for urban analysis and intervention. In the
first half of the century, the urbanization of the Latin American region
was principally understood in evolutionary/development terms. Based on
French-European traditions in the academic discipline of urbanismo, with
its emphasis on urban forms and the articulation of monumental spaces,
Latin American professionals in city planning emphasized the significance
of the urban morphology. A utopian view on the role of the city ruled the
academies. Cities were regarded as living organisms that could become the
motor of national modernization, progress and pride. In order to become
that motor of progress, cities had to be ‘healthy’. If they had ‘ill-functioning’
parts, European (preferably French) experts together with a new generation
of locally trained professionals were hired to ‘cure’ the city with their sci-
entific knowledge about development and a profound Beaux-Arts training
(Rosenthal 2000; Outtes 2003; Almandoz 2006). When the evolutionary
model became obsolete, the functionalist CIAM (Congrès International
d’Architecture Moderne, 1928–59) model proved a viable alternative. It
enabled a continuation of the modernization agenda under different political
regimes: ‘functionalist modernism … was put, like developmentalism and
industrialization, at the service of the progressive goals of democracies and
dictatorships alike’ (Almandoz 2006: 97). Yet, excessive urban growth from
the 1940s onwards and its consequential social problems, especially in the
field of housing and employment, formed the onset of a paradigm change in
the second half of the century.
After the Second World War the urbanismo approach was set aside for
an approach of planificación based on North-American ideas about zoning,
master plans and other technocratic instruments (Hardoy 1992; Almandoz
2006). Still, the relatively optimistic conception of urbanization continued,
presupposing that the advantages of diversified urban economies would
eventually trickle down to the lower social strata and result in higher welfare
levels for everyone. This optimistic paradigm ruled until the 1960s. When
the growth of inner-city slums and peripheral squatter settlements became
symptomatic for larger social problems that affect urban societies, the short-
comings of the planificación thesis became an outright threat to the devel-
opment goals. Urban theories at that time started to become much more
dystopian in their outlooks (Angotti 1987; Kemper 2002; Kent 2006).
Explanations for the failure of the developmentalist agenda were found in
over-urbanization and in the cultural dispositions of the new citizens vis-à-
vis life in a modern industrialized city (Lewis 1966; Gugler 1982). Social
problems were attributed to the maladjusted behaviour of rural migrants
and other new urbanites. In social theories, they were categorically separated
from the urban middle and upper-middle classes: the model of the ‘dual
city’ reigned. Although several scholars shed fresh light on urban duality, for
example by negating the ‘marginality’ of the masses (Perlman 1976; Gilbert
and Ward 1985) or by highlighting the positive contributions of new urban-
ites to the city (Mangin 1967; Turner 1968a, 1968b; Lomnitz 1977),
the functionalist approaches continued to frame the debate in antagonistic
terms. The ‘slums of hope – slums of despair’ debate resulted in opposite yet
partial and sometimes disconnected micro-level views of the Latin American
city (see Eckstein 1990).
A critical macro-level perspective appeared during the 1970s and 1980s.
Neo-Marxists pointed to persistent inequalities in the larger structure of
society. They regarded historically grown social and economic inequalities
as the causes of hardship for the majority of the urban population in Latin
America. Moreover, the crises caused by a staggering model of import sub-
stitution industrialization, the international oil crisis of 1973, the debt crisis
and the consequences of internal guerrilla wars severely disrupted urban life
in the region. At the same time the region’s principle cities had grown at
unprecedented rates, establishing a pattern of urban primacy that was said to
result in ‘internal colonialism’. After decades of modernization and progress
projected onto urban areas, the effects of hyper-urbanization spearheaded
a more pessimistic reading of the Latin American city (Gilbert 1994; Pineo
and Bear 1998; Kemper 2002). At first, social inequality was linked to a
continuing monopoly of national and local elites over the principle means
of existence. The dichotomy between rural and urban areas and between
‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors in the city became a new anchor in the urban
development debate (Griffin and Ford 1980; Angotti 1987). Later, the eco-
nomic and social inequalities were viewed in a broader, global perspective,
in which Latin America was regarded as a ‘dependent’ region. If European
and North American cities formed the centre of the world’s economy, Latin
American cities were situated in the periphery (Castells 1973; Gilbert 1982;
see also Almandoz 2006). The lopsided urban hierarchy was repeated on a
global scale: hardly any of the Latin American capital cities could claim to be
a World-Class City (Roberts 2005; cf. Sassen 1991).
Urban Nostalgia
After two decades of structuralist, neo-Marxist and dependency approaches,

the regional economic landscape changed. When the debt crisis of the 1980s
was followed by a region-wide adoption of neo-liberal policies guided by
Washington-based institutions such as the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund (IMF), a wave of conservative sentiments engulfed the
region. Nations and cities were reformed by harsh policies. In 1990 over 70
per cent of the population in Latin America lived in cities, several of which
had grown into megacities. The liberal reforms and cutbacks that resulted
in unemployment were paralleled by an increase in poverty, social insecurity
and urban violence (Roberts and Portes 2006). The era of neo-liberalism
was paralleled by postmodern trends in urbanism, in which people clung
‘to old “truths” as well as to the reigning power structure, manifest in the
call to – re-everything – rehabilitate, revitalize, restore, renew, redevelop,
recycle …’ (Ellin 1996: 4). Whereas the Washington consensus enforced
economic adjustment plans upon the region’s economies, attention in Latin
American urban debates shifted towards the values of the centro histórico,
the marketing of urban histories and heritage preservation. The neo-liberal
habit to privatize public space combined with a scholarly trend to ques-
tion dominant North-American and European urban theories, such as those
regarding gentrification, resulted in a series of publications about the Latin
American inner-city (Ward 1993; Low 2000; Scarpaci 2005; Herzog 2006;
Inzulza-Contardo 2012). A gradual ‘return to the centre’ heralded a revival
of morphological, spatial and cultural perspectives in Latin American urban-
ism (Almandoz 2006).
Several historical city centres were by that time designated as United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
World Heritage Sites. The Quito Carta (an outcome of the Organization
of American States (OAS) conference in 1967) sent a message to all nations
to preserve the social histories of urban historic districts. Its publication in
1977 contained a formal definition of historic districts (ICOMOS 2005;
ICOMOS Chile 2007). However, as Scarpaci (2005: 121) notes, even
though heritage sites may be ‘badges of honour’, they rarely attract large
sums of money, and less so since neo-liberal policies – with their focus on
productive investments – started to dominate the region. Increasingly, the
flow of visitors and tourists became a new goal in urban policies. The overall
urban landscape changed when the growth rates of the large metropolises
diminished and medium-sized cities developed as the new poles of attrac-
tion and urban expansion. Aware of these shifting patterns, tourist cities like
Havana, Cartagena de Indias, Puebla and Cuzco presented urban regener-
ation plans to ‘revitalize’ the centre and protect its historical architecture.
The question of which policies were the most adequate formed the input
for heated local and international discussion. Several authors have pointed
to the challenge of conserving an historical consciousness of the city without
causing gentrification or converting the centre into an open-air museum
(Ward 1993; Bromley 1998; Scarpaci 2005; Herzog 2006; Crossa 2009).
As examples from Puebla, Quito, Cuzco and Cuenca show, however, a
forced displacement of lower-status users did indeed, as a rule, accompany the
beautification of the built environment (Hardoy and Dos Santos 1983; Jones
and Varley 1994, and 1999; Middleton 2003 and 2009; Swanson 2007;
Bromley and Mackie 2009; Crossa 2009; Klaufus 2012a). Revitalization
strategies often embraced a race- and class-based notion of visual cleanliness,
in which street vendors, indigenous people and beggars were regarded as
‘polluters’ of the cityscape (Swanson 2007). Several authors have argued that
gentrification theories therefore need to pay more attention to the moral
connotations of seemingly neutral policy terms such as ‘renovation’ and ‘revi-
talization’, especially in a Latin American context, where the notions of class,
race and territory are historically interconnected (Jones and Varley 1994, and
1999; Wade 1997; Colloredo-Mansfeld 1998; Whitten 2003; Wilson 2004).
The nostalgia for a visually coherent cityscape that orders society in otherwise
chaotic times formed a starting point for the academic and policy-oriented
perspectives that have characterized the 1990s. Neo-liberal urban policies
had a clear Janus face: ‘Gentrification, historic preservation, and other cul-
tural strategies to enhance the visual appeal of urban spaces developed as
major trends … Yet these years were also the watershed in the institutional-
ization of urban fear’ (Zukin 1995: 39).
Fragmented Spaces
While some urban policymakers and international scholars were dedicated

to protecting the Latin American urban architectural heritage, others were
particularly concerned with demonstrating how the Latin American dual city
was developing into a fragmented one. Parallel to an architectural focus on
city centres, a whole range of studies appeared about the increase of insecu-
rity, violence and misery in low-income areas, especially in megacities. Most
studies that appeared in this range were geographically based in Central
America, Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil, where everyday violence reached
unprecedented levels (Rolnik 2001; Moser and McIlwaine 2004; Koonings
and Kruijt 2007; Jones and Rodgers 2009). The neo-liberal wind that had
started to blow throughout the region resulted in a reduction of state insti-
tutions and a concomitant privatization of infrastructure, urban facilities and
spaces. With a long history of liberal legalism, individual property rights had
always been at the core of Latin American urban development (Fernandes

2007). The revitalization projects such as the famous Puerto Madero in
Buenos Aires and the Malecón 2000 in Guayaquil resulted in a visual coher-
ence that appealed to the middle class urban order, but also led to a reduction
of publicly accessible spaces (Pírez 2002; Andrade 2007; cf. Zukin 1995). As
described above, the aesthetical boost was paired with socially discriminatory
policies. Increased levels of policing and private security were needed in the
city centre to protect the visual coherence so neatly constructed in architec-
ture and space design. This implied that the users that made the city’s spaces
look ‘ugly’ were displaced from the streets. Formal commerce was also dis-
placed from the centre to the new malls (Ford 1996), and in the residential
areas gates and guards became the common characteristics of neighbourhood
entrances. Both in the centre itself as well as in residential areas, spatial trans-
formations gradually resulted in social segmentation (Borsdorf, Hidalgo and
Sánchez 2007).
The neo-liberal austerity and state-reduction measures soon resulted in
higher poverty levels. In more than ten countries, minimum wages in 1998
were lower than in 1980. At the same time, economic and cultural global-
ization made people familiar with modern consumer products, which further
increased the gap between aspirations and possibilities: ‘to the more traditional
shortcomings of life are now added the desire to acquire the new products
associated with the comfortable urban life and to display the outward signs of
distinction, transmitted by fashionable brands’ (Briceño-León and Zubillaga
2002: 23). Increased globalization also transformed the drug economy and
illicit flows of firearms. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the levels of
violence had risen all over the continent. With more than fifty homicides
per 100,000 inhabitants, Cali, San Salvador and other Central American and
Colombian cities were among the most violent ones on earth (Briceño-León
and Zubillaga 2002; Briceño-León, Camardiel and Ávila 2006). Not just
violence per se, but also the fear of becoming a victim of violence permeated
Latin American cities, which set in motion a downward spiral of insecurity and
protective measures. Not only in upper-class areas but also in informal neigh-
bourhoods did residents make efforts to close off the area. The socio-spatial
inequalities were reproduced in a geography of security, symbolized by walls
and fences (Caldeira 2000; Coy and Pöhler 2002; Borsdorf, Hidalgo and
Sánchez 2007; Borsdorf and Hidalgo 2010; Plöger 2010).
One aspect that is mentioned in most geographical and sociological stud-
ies is that of the young male inhabitants of poor neighbourhoods, who have
become actively involved in crime and violence. Violence and insecurity
are immensely difficult to understand, yet several explanations surface in all
works: the withdrawal of state and church institutions, which left an author-
ity void; the economic hardships in combination with increased consumer
aspirations, which made alternative, violent ‘careers’ more appealing; and the
dominant gender roles in Latin America, which tend to associate male roles
with protection and honour codes (Briceño-León and Zubillaga 2002; Moser
and McIlwaine 2004; Jones and Rodgers 2009). Case studies show that what
started out as ‘street-level politics’, with a solidaristic aim to establish regimes
of order and security, unravelled during the 1990s into ‘predatory regimes’
(Rodgers 2009: 40). It became clear to scholars and policymakers alike that
the conflation of profound social inequality, recent histories of state versus
guerrilla warfare and the neo-liberal restructuring measures resulted in prob-
lematic urban societies (Goldstein 2004; Koonings and Kruijt 2007). The
informal or marginalized settlements – the favelas and barriadas – were the
spaces most affected by this downward spiral:
It is in the neighbourhood public space that the subjective dimension of

urban segregation begins to endow it with a cultural dimension. Street cul-
ture arises out of the experience and perception of exclusion. In this privat-
ized or appropriated public space, young people construct an environment
with norms, values, practices and forms of behaviour that enable them to
cope with or avoid the frustration and exclusion represented for them by
the outside world. (Saraví 2004: 44)
This in turn reinforced the stigmatization of poor neighbourhoods as no-go

areas. Yet in many cities, for example São Paulo and San Salvador, the inner
cities had become known as dangerous places, too, leading Rodgers (2004)
to conclude that the fortified networks that connected the gated enclaves of
the urban middle class to the guarded central areas, such as malls and com-
mercial centres, had come to constitute a characteristic pattern of the Latin
American city.
Over the last two decades Latin American cities have become notorious
worldwide for their maras (criminal gangs) and for the excessive, almost
unexplainable orgies of violence guised as femicide or narco-related slaugh-
tering. The scholarly debate about the social exclusion of the majority has
redirected its focus towards the question of citizenship, and to the right-to-
the-city as the condition for urban reform. With the ‘right to habitation’ and
the ‘right to participation’ as the main constituents of citizenship, the activi-
ties and actions of socially excluded groups in urban space can be understood
as claims that express their desire to be respected as members of households,
neighbourhoods and cities. Yet, the acknowledgement that urban property
has a socio-environmental function, too, and that citizenship rights require
effective participation in planning, decision-making and management still
has to be accepted on a much broader scale in local governance (Fernandes
2007).
Room for Manoeuvre
The picture of the fractured city sketched above is not a rosy one. Yet, not all
urban development projects can be described in such defeatist terms. Brazil
and Colombia have demonstrated some promising pathways for reforming
legal systems for urban development since the mid 1980s. Progress has
been made with respect to participatory governance, especially in Brazilian
cities where the Constitution of 1998 introduced urban policy changes that
cleared the path for the City Statute of 2001 (Caldeira and Holston 2005;
Fernandes 2007). Over the last two decades, Brazil also stands out for
its massive urban upgrading programmes. The Favela-Bairro programme,
which was set up halfway through the 1990s in Rio de Janeiro, is regarded
internationally as a successful initiative that has improved the lives of favela
residents (Riley, Fiori and Ramirez 2001; Duarte and Magalhães 2010;
Handzic 2010). Although it did not effectively lead to more decisive powers
on a grassroots level (Riley, Fiori and Ramirez 2001), the emphasis put
on the improvement of public spaces was an effective means to tackle the
‘ghetto image’ that had led to the social stigmatization in the first place
(Segre 2010). In combination with the Bolsa Família, the country’s condi-
tional cash-transfer programme, poverty-driven problems concerning hous-
ing and education have been reduced. The ‘pacification’ operations that
have cleared the way for Brazil’s large events, however, seem to impose
many contradictory effects on neighbourhoods, as we will see in Menezes’s
contribution to this volume.
Bogotá has also experienced a remarkable and unexpected positive trans-
formation. With high murder rates and an almost bankrupt economic system
during the first years of the 1990s, a positive turn came after the ratification
of the Organic Statute of 1993. Several subsequent administrations, headed
by the ‘strong’ mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, established a
continuity of administration and reduced the levels of corruption and clien-
telism. They put well-qualified experts in crucial positions, who succeeded
in transforming urban public space and citizens’ behaviour in the public
sphere, and in increasing tax revenues. The levels of violence decreased,
although not for long, and people’s bond with the city grew. The remarkable
transformation earned the city some laudable qualifications, such as ‘good
governance’ and ‘best practice’ (Gilbert 2006). However, after the first sur-
prising ‘cultural turn’ provoked by Mockus’s mime players, ‘citizen cards’
and ‘vaccination against violence’, appropriate behaviour was later enforced
through policing and the appearance of security guards in public spaces. The
displacement of ‘unwanted space users’ became the bottom line of public
order again, because, as Berney (2011: 22) notes, ‘if one side of the coin in
Bogotá’s story is the making of citizens, the flip side is monitoring them’.
10 | Chris tien K la u f u s
What seems to be successful on the large scale of city transformation can

appear counterproductive on a micro level: low-income residents were hired
as volunteer caretakers to exclude other low-income people, such as street
vendors, from the city’s public spaces. All in all, public spaces in Bogotá have
been transformed in a successful way, which made the city more attractive,
even though its renewed moral order has perhaps exacerbated existing social
inequalities (Berney 2011). The positive turn experienced in Bogotá inspired
mayors of other cities, for example in Medellín (see the contributions by
Samper and Marko and by Martin and Martin in this volume) to start similar
programmes.
With such striking yet not widely known examples in mind, more
scholarly attention was requested for ‘ordinary cities’ and ‘ordinary cit-

izens’ at the start of the twenty-first century to balance out theories of
urban development (Robinson 2006; Lees 2012). This resulted in a general
plea for more c omprehensive and comparative scholarship in urban studies
worldwide (McFarlane 2010; Robinson 2011; Jaffe, Klaufus and Colombijn
2012; Lees 2012). For Latin American urban studies this implies that the
paramount attention to megacities should be accompanied by a propor-
tionate a ttention to smaller or lesser-known cities (Klaufus 2012a). Smaller
cities are said to offer a higher quality of life because of their human size
(Max-Neef 1992; Scarpaci 2005; Herzog 2006), and urbanization processes
in smaller cities tend to be more manageable for city planners (Satterthwaite
2007: 3; Bolay and Rabinovich 2004). However, nearly half the growth
of the urban p opulation worldwide until 2025 is expected to derive from
the growth of small and intermediate cities (UN 2008: 8). With respect to
smaller Latin American cities, it has already been noted that ‘their interme-
diate size does not, in and of itself, guarantee them a bright future’ (CEPAL
2000: 11).
The alternations between utopian and dystopian perspectives should be
succeeded by a more realistic outlook, in which Latin American urban soci-
eties are attributed with negative and positive features alike. Rodgers, Beall
and Kanbur (2012: 18) state that ‘the current vision of “fractured cities”
obscures the fact that cities are social, economic, political and cultural sys-
tems that bring different and often contradictory processes together, and
unless we focus our attention more on the interrelatedness of these different
processes within cities, our analyses – and concomitant policy initiatives – will
unavoidably remain inadequate’. A more varied scope needs to be accom-
panied by a methodology that allows comparisons of case studies based
on theoretical inquiries instead of on presupposed outcomes (Robinson
2011). Nuanced insights into the processes of imagination, empowerment
and meaning-giving, for example, request anthropological and micro-level
accounts of everyday life. Some interesting examples can be found in geogra-
phy and women’s studies. Different from usual findings, Salcedo and Torres
(2004) show in their study on gated communities in Santiago de Chile
that residents from a neighbouring informal settlement did not perceive
the arrival of the gated community as something entirely negative, while
residents of the gated community were not negative about the proximity of
the informal settlement either. The settlement residents acknowledged that
the arrival of the gated community had brought better urban facilities to the
formerly ignored area. The gated community residents had stronger nega-
tive associations with other residents in their own community than with res-
idents from the neighbouring settlement. Attention for such cross-current
accounts is also found in Hamilton’s (2010) analysis of housing problems
in Cuba. She describes how housing shortages increased during the ‘Special
Period’. Women in heterosexual relationships and homosexuals were in a
particularly disadvantaged position to fulfil their housing needs. Women
were ‘trapped’ in extended-family and male-dominated households, where
a poignant lack of privacy often resulted in divorce. Homosexuals’ right to
privacy was simply denied by their own relatives and by society at large. Yet,
Hamilton (2010: 167) shows examples of resistance and creativity in the
story of a woman’s arrangement with a prisoner, whose house she rents in
return for sex, and another story about a woman’s apartment that became
a queer home ‘created out of necessity but also friendship and solidarity’.
Such case studies improve our understanding of making home under diffi-
cult circumstances.
In our own accounts, Arij Ouweneel and I have explored when and
how domestic environments become sites of contestation and opportunity
for low-income families in the Andes. Ouweneel challenges the often pro-
claimed idea that second-generation migrants in Lima still suffer a trauma
from the political violence in the 1980s by demonstrating that grassroots
films show a more optimistic vision of life (Ouweneel 2012). I claim that
in Ecuador, transnational migration and the reverse flows of remittances
have offered migrant families some financial and cultural room for manoeu-
vre to demonstrate upward mobility or claim respect (Klaufus 2006; 2011;
2012b). At the same time, new opportunities for some imply new setbacks
for others, as I have also emphasized. As most publications on the neo-liberal
Latin American city have set forward a dystopian view, the time has come
to develop a more nuanced set of theories about the contemporary Latin
American urban imaginary. One attribute in that search is the careful micro-
level attention to the spatialization of behaviour, in combination with an
historical and a cultural analysis of space: ‘If social class, ethnicity, and power
are constructed by interpersonal relations of intimacy in [urban] space, we
should look very closely at how people behave. It is useless, however, to look
at behaviour without looking at individuals’ locations in society and without
considering the social and historical context of the space itself’ (Zukin 1995:
291). This volume attempts to strike a balance between macro-level examples
of spatial dynamics and power relations on the one hand, and micro-level
examples of creativity, empowerment and room for manoeuvre on the other.
Based on case studies from different cities in the region, the sections in this
book address the creation of home environments from different perspectives:
from the viewpoint of knowledgeable self-builders and middle-class custom-
ers to formal planning perspectives and private sector involvement. Without
stealing attention from the structural inequalities that continue to character-
ize Latin American urban life, the chapters explore each in their own ways
how contemporary urban residency is constructed around people’s claims to
belong to the city.
Taking up Residency
Latin American cities are, first of all, places of residence for the majority of the
region’s population. Depending on the theoretical approach taken, housing
can be considered a cause or a consequence of social inequality (Hamilton
2010: 158). Regardless of the theoretical explanation of housing insufficien-
cies, residents have to ‘make a living’ both in an economic and a philosophical
way. Making a living refers to the creative process of ‘remixing tomorrow out
of the raw materials of today’.2 Creating a meaningful existence in the city is
as much material and financial as it is social and cultural. The shared focus of
the chapters of this volume is therefore on the relationship between housing,
living and belonging in Latin American urban societies. The verbs ‘housing’,
‘living’ and ‘belonging’ are understood in a broad sense: building housing
units, constructing neighbourhoods, finding a (suitable) place to live and
making a home. Examples of people’s attempts to feel at home in the city and
of urban lifestyles across the generations are discussed within the geographi-
cal context of new and consolidated urban areas. Two of the Brazilian cities
mentioned in the beginning of this introduction, Belo Horizonte and Rio de
Janeiro, will be part of the chapters. Other case studies come from Mexico,
Colombia, Peru and Argentina. Methodologically, the authors use a broad
range of approaches and techniques from the social sciences and human-
ities: some chapters are based on empirical data, whereas other chapters are
organized around the interpretation of public manifestations of housing
and belonging in architecture and film. Social anthropological accounts of
citizenship are complemented with geographical accounts of spatial policies
and cultural accounts of identification processes. Apart from ethnographic
research, urban spatial policies, narratives and non-verbal communications of
belonging in urban societies are analysed. Although connections between the
‘dots’ formed by descriptions of different housing types (self-help housing,

middle-class apartments and gated communities) might be read as one line
structuring the book, the principle storyline concerns residential quality at
the various scales of home, neighbourhood and city.
The book is thematically divided into five parts, including a contextual
section. The two chapters of Part I ‘descend’ in scale from overviews of
urban study paradigms to micro-level reflections on dimensions of belong-
ing. In the next chapter, Roberts gives an overview of Latin American urban
development as compared to Chicago School urban theories. He examines
possible sources of urban disorder and their impact on social cohesion in two
time periods: that of the region’s rapid urbanization (ca. 1950–80) and the
current period of low urbanization rates. Concentrating on the intervening
factors that mediate the link between urban disorder and social cohesion, he
argues that the spatial and demographic sources of disorder seem to have a
positive impact on social cohesion in the first period relative to the second
period, when the impact is more negative. Martin and Martin analyse the
much-celebrated urban reform of Medellín and state that, while the reforms
translate into robust evidence of improved quality of life and public service
delivery, dwellers of the impacted neighbourhoods produce a more frag-
mented narrative of the impact of these reforms on their way of life than one
might expect. Their chapter can be read as a micro-level story about the social
construction of belonging to urban space.
The second part explores the experiences of first-, second- and third-
generation inhabitants of informal settlements with consolidation and prog-
ress. The authors describe the attempts of urban residents to ‘move on in
life’ and, at the same time, to feel at home in the city both in a legal and
an emotional sense. Situated in Lima, Hordijk describes why informal set-
tlement residents no longer aspire to collective action. She argues that they
put emphasis on individual efforts, on ‘ser professional’, which implies that
they feel less attached to the neighbourhood per se and more attached to the
city as a whole. Grajeda analyses the range of legal provisions that structure
housing inheritance and succession among low-income families in Mexico,
and how these are managed and adjudicated informally by family agreement
or formally under the law. She argues that new incidences of informalization
have occurred, which create new inequalities in otherwise formalized settle-
ments. Menezes explores how residents of the ‘pacified’ showcase favela of
Santa Marta Hill in Rio de Janeiro have organized themselves against removal
and the meanings they attach to their residency. These chapters all address
the dynamics between empowering activities at a grassroots level and the
contradictory effects of policy responses.
The third part assesses attempts of residents, authorities and profes-
sionals to improve the overall quality of housing in cities. It reconsiders
the role of neighbourhood reputations, lifestyles and the increase of urban

middle classes in Latin American cities. Ostuni and Van Gelder explore
the Argentinian paradox that, in spite of huge government expenditure on
social housing launched under the Programa Federal, informal settlement
in the city of Buenos Aires has increased significantly since 2004. They
argue that the programme bypasses the views and needs of its end users and
disregards the particularities of the areas in which it intervenes. Dohnke
and Hölzl address the increase of gated apartment buildings up to fifty
floors high, equipped with additional services, in Buenos Aires. About 200
complexes of this building type have been constructed since the real-estate
boom of the 1990s. They argue that the transformation of the urban mor-
phology results in fragmented senses of belonging. Inclán-Valadez analyses
the conjuntos urbanos (large-scale housing projects), which have become a
formula for ‘good city’ growth and a means of improving the housing con-
dition of millions of Mexican families over the last fifteen years. She claims
that a new cultural trend, ‘the GEO trend’, produces new forms of subur-
ban middle class belonging. These three chapters describe the troublesome
development of private and public formal housing production for social
coherence. Yet they also point to individual creativity in people’s activities
to get ahead.
The fourth part discusses non-verbal forms of communication as represen-
tations of status and identity through material culture and spatial design. It
discusses the linkages between form, cultural meanings and identifications.
Lara traces some of the ways in which modernist architectural knowledge
was disseminated in middle-class and favela housing in Brazil. He argues that
the appropriation of modernist technology and spatiality have been achieved
on such a large scale that it has become part of the popular building culture.
Kellett addresses the dynamics of housing design and display in Santa Marta,
Colombia, and concludes that, as dwellings consolidate, there appears to be
an increasing divergence between dwelling forms and domestic practices.
Samper and Marko analyse two competing narratives of belonging in the
city of Medellín: one is presented by community members of informal settle-
ments, and the other is presented by state actors who act like the ‘saviours’
of these same settlements. They assert that an overlooked value of these
competing narratives is found in the synergies between state and community
interventions. Together, the three chapters present bottom-up urbanism and
non-verbal narratives of belonging as an approach that, according to their
views, has to become more influential.
The fifth part offers reflections on the above themes, connecting the parts
and addressing the notions of belonging on the scale of homes and neigh-
bourhoods to contemporary urban societies in a theoretical way. Based on
research carried out in four different areas of the city of Guadalajara, Mexico,
Varley compares and contrasts the residents’ understandings of the meaning

of home. She theorizes the notion of ‘home’ and concludes that critiques of
home should take great care not to overlook the role that the material space
of home plays in providing support for individual and collective narratives
of identity. Ouweneel analyses the films produced by the JADAT (Jovenes
Adolescentes Decididos A Triunfar/Young Adolescents Determined to
Succeed) youth organization in Lima, whose initiator was a former gang
leader. The initiative proved successful, as gang violence ceased to exist in
the community and inhabitants could begin recreating neighbourhood life.
Ouweneel argues that Andean notions of space and time are used as cultural
resources in artistic productions, which reinforce a sense of belonging. His
reflection underscores the idea that urban studies are basically neighbour-
hood studies. All in all, the volume aims to shed fresh light on the meanings
of urban residency in the most urbanized region in the world. By describing
the various spaces and temporalities of belonging in urban Latin America,
the authors claim that if there is such a thing as a ‘rhythm’ that connects
Latin American urban residents, it is perhaps the pace of making home that
surpasses all others.
Notes
1. ‘Brazil 2014 Slogan Presented: All In One Rhythm/Juntos Num Só Ritmo.’ Retrieved 6
August 2012 from http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/media/newsid=1641290/index.html.
2. Foreman, J. 2011. ‘Making a Living’, Huffington Post. Retrieved 6 August 2012 from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-foreman/meaning-of-life_b_874934.html.
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Part I
The Latin American Context
The Consolidation of the Latin
1
American City and the Changing
Bases for Social Order
Bryan R. Roberts
This chapter examines urban social disorganization, its empirical referents

and its impact on social cohesion in two time periods in Latin American
cities. One is the period between 1950 and the 1980s of rapid urban growth
based on high levels of rural-urban migration, when cities were made as
much by the efforts of their inhabitants to create shelter and employment as
by government or private sector development strategies. The second is the
period after the 1980s when rural-urban migration ceases to be a significant
factor in urban growth; in which earlier irregular settlements are consolidated
through the granting of titles and the installation of basic infrastructure and
in which central cities lose population to their peripheries where poverty
increasingly concentrates. In the second period, government and the market
play a more important role than previously in shaping both employment and
housing. Both periods are seen by commentators and citizens alike as charac-
terized by urban disorder. The concepts used to identify the sources of disor-
ganization in the two time periods have changed. In the first period, disorder
was identified with explosive growth based on rural migrations, resulting in
marginal masses unable to adapt to urban culture or politics. In the second
period, organized crime and violence are seen as the major forms of disorder.
The forces of population mobility, social heterogeneity and poverty created
urban social disorganization in both periods; but they had a different impact
on social cohesion, stimulating community cooperation in the first period
and undermining it in the second period.
The challenges of social reorganization in the face of the disorganization
of traditional forms are basic themes in the earliest analyses of the character-
istics of the organization and disorganization of the modern city (Thomas
1966 [1927]: 8–10). Simmel’s (1971 [1903]) essay ‘Metropolis and Mental
Life’ posited the rise of a particular type of personality in face of the compet-
itive individualism and superficial relationships fostered by the metropolis.
To Simmel, social order in the metropolis depended on reconciling the
individuality it fostered with the objective rational order it imposed. Social
order could no longer be based as in the past on the moral supervision of
others and the suppression of individuality and privacy. Likewise, Louis
– 23 –
24 | B ryan R . R o be rt s
Wirth’s essay ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’ emphasized the impersonal order

of the city, symbolized by the traffic light and the tensions arising from a
city’s economic and ethnic heterogeneity. In both cases, reorganization
meant more impersonal and secondary forms of order. Thus, Wirth (1938:
23) argued that ‘social control should typically proceed through formally
organized groups’.
I argue that the Latin American urban experience of disorganization and
reorganization is different from that portrayed in the early twentieth-century
literature on urban social disorganization. In both periods in Latin America,
the same structural factors associated with social disorganization in the U.S.
literature – population mobility, poverty and social heterogeneity – were
present, but, I will argue, social disorganization in cities of Latin America
had a different significance for behaviour. Compared to the United States
where commentators argued that urban social reorganization entailed the
dominance of secondary over primary associations, urban reorganization in
Latin America created new personal and community level bases of order
and cohesion. One reason for the difference is the high degree of group and
individual competition entailed by urban growth in the United States as
compared to Latin American cities. Whereas migrants to cities like Chicago
had to compete for living space and jobs, in Latin America, migrants initially
provided their own housing through self-construction, and many found their
own jobs through self and family employment. A dynamic capitalist economy
ensured that both jobs and housing were created by the market in the U.S.
cities of the early twentieth century, with relatively little self-employment;
in Latin America the market limited itself to middle- and upper-class hous-
ing construction, a limited number of private sector and government jobs
and a large sector of self-employment. I begin by looking at Chicago in the
early twentieth century. The numerous studies carried out by researchers in
Chicago at this time became the empirical basis for analysing urban disorder
through the lens of theories of urban social disorganization.
Organization and Disorganization: The Chicago Case
The fast growing cities of nineteenth-century America evoked considerable

negative imaginaries. This was particularly the case for Chicago. Carl Smith
(2005) argues in his analysis of the Chicago fire, the Haymarket Bombing
and the Pullman Strike that disorganization was inherently associated in
the public eye with the new type of city that Chicago represented. Smith
(2005: 2) argues that to residents and outside commentators of the time
‘the social order of Chicago was inherently volatile, and it might burst into
flames at any moment’. There was a fear of chaos brought on by the waves
The C on soli d a t i on of t h e L a ti n A m er i ca n C i ty | 25
of immigration of an ethnically diverse population and by dense populations

living under poor material conditions. These concerns were to be reflected
in the empirical research of the Chicago School of Sociology, first laid out
in Robert Park’s (1915) research programme for the ‘The City’, and given
theoretical underpinning in Thomas’s (1966) writings on social disorgani-
zation and reorganization and Louis Wirth’s (1938) article ‘Urbanism as
a Way of Life’.1 A major research issue for Park was the study of the social
disorganization that arose from the breaking down of local attachments and
the weakening of the restraints of the primary group, which Park (1915:
595) saw as largely responsible for the increase of vice and crime in great
cities. Park described the challenge in terms not unlike those to be used by
commentators preoccupied with the rapid urban growth of Latin American
cities in the 1960s and 1970s, emphasizing the potential breakdown in
urban community brought by the influx of migrants of diverse cultural
backgrounds: ‘The great cities of the United States, for example, have
drawn from the isolation of their native villages great masses of the rural
populations of Europe and America. Under the shock of the new contacts
the latent energies of these primitive peoples have been released …’ (Park
1915: 607).
Park outlined a detailed research programme and called for extensive
empirical research. It also contained a preliminary outline of the concepts
that would become the hallmark of the Chicago School’s approach: neigh-
bourhood effects, market-based competition for living space, urban residen-
tial segregation by class and race, individual mobility and, as a consequence,
the breakdown of social control in the second immigrant generation. These
issues became standard themes in U.S. urban sociology. In Shaw and McKay’s
(1942) Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas, urban disorganization was
measured by low socio-economic status, residential mobility and ethnic
diversity. Subsequent studies added family disruption and urban/suburban
differences as factors associated with crime, and emphasized the importance
of neighbourhood through the mediating effects of local social networks and
membership of associations (Sampson and Groves 1989).
Part of Park’s research programme was field research into the characteristics
of the immigrant communities that populated Chicago in the 1920s. Robert
Redfield, Park’s son-in-law and best known for his subsequent research into
Mexican rural communities, carried out six months of field research into
Mexican immigrant communities between 1924 and 1925. Arias and Durand
(2008) provide Redfield’s field notes and an analysis of the characteristics of
Chicago in the 1920s, which brings to life some of the conditions that influ-
enced Park’s theoretical approach. The south side of Chicago was divided
into some ten different ethnic neighbourhoods, with several of the ethnic
groups, such as the Poles, Italians and Mexicans, having more than one
neighbourhood location (Arias and Durand 2008: 58). The Mexicans were
amongst the most recent arrivals brought in to work the railroads and to
labour in the stockyards and other industries. The Mexicans were perceived
by employers and other ethnic groups as cheap labour. They also displaced
other groups from their former neighbourhoods by tolerating very high
rental densities, which enabled landlords to charge higher rent per unit. As
Redfield walked the streets of south Chicago, he could observe the processes
of invasion and succession that the Chicago human ecologists identified with
urban spatial differentiation and population redistribution (Hawley 1950:
400–2; Arias and Durand 2008: 107–11). Redfield brings out the reality of
the competition that the Mexican arrivals brought to other ethnic groups in
both housing and jobs. He also brings out the difficulties that Mexican fam-
ilies faced in terms of very low income, step intercity migration, residential
mobility and in educating their children. But he found no evidence of family
breakdown amongst this essentially transitory group of Mexicans; they put up
with their conditions with little complaint, crime or desire to assimilate (Arias
and Durand 2008: 75–76).
Ethnic solidarity and culture enabled urban populations to find some
order within the impersonality and the economic and social segmentation of
the large U.S. metropolis. Inhabitants of urban ghettos developed their own
identity though their language culture and norms of behaviour (Hannerz
1969). Gerald Suttles’s (1974) Social Order of the Slum describes the way in
which youth groups develop a strong identity based on ethnicity and terri-
tory, often in opposition to other ethnic groups. The issue that these local
cultures posed for the overall order of the city was, however, whether the
types of cohesion that emerge in local cultures inhibit integration into the
opportunities and expectations of the wider urban society, and thus become
additional factors in urban social disorganization.
The debates over the relative weight to be given to structural and cultural
factors in explaining the negative consequences of urban social disorganiza-
tion have had a lasting impact on urban sociology. There have been important
disagreements in the U.S. literature over the weight to be given to structural
factors, such as labour market changes or racism, rather than local cultures
or group-specific patterns, such as single parent families or youth gangs, in
explaining the outcomes of social disorganization such as crime (Massey and
Sampson 2009; Sampson 2009; Wilson 2009; Small, Harding and Lamont
2010, in a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science). These debates had their echoes in the Latin American
urban literature in the controversies over Oscar Lewis’s (1968: xlii–lii) ‘The
Culture of Poverty’ thesis (Leacock 1971). To analyse the differences, par-
ticularly in the role of the market, between Latin American and U.S. cities
in their pattern of early growth, I consider the three disorganizing processes
that are the structural basis of urban social disorganization in the U.S. lit-
erature. The first is population mobility and concentration, and the extent
it poses a challenge to a city’s capacity to house its population and provide
them with employment. The second is the spatial reordering of the city as it
grows and consolidates through the settlement of diverse social groups and
the consequent pattern of residential segregation and competition. The third
is urban poverty resulting from dependence on the labour market combined
with a high degree of vulnerability to its fluctuations.
Population Mobility
The general change in urban population movements in Latin America is

from an urban growth that draws heavily on rural-urban migration to an
urban growth that is predominantly based on urban natural increase, with
urban to urban and intra-metropolitan migration replacing rural-urban
migration as the major sources of net population increase or decrease within
the city. Jaime Sobrino’s (2010) analysis of urban growth in Mexico from
1900 to 2000 shows clearly that cities grow mainly by in-migration in their
early periods of growth. Mexican cities have grown at different periods, so
their phases of being mainly cities of migrants differ, and some cities, such
as Tijuana, have been cities of migrants throughout the twentieth century
(Sobrino 2010: Cuadro 8). The metropolitan area of the city of Mexico grew
mainly by immigration up to the 1960s. Thereafter the migration component
declined until there was net outmigration by 2000, with immigration being
mainly from other urban areas (Sobrino 2010: Cuadro 8). Consider some
basic implications of this change in growth pattern. If a city grows mainly
through migration, then it grows through the addition of an economically
active population. Children may accompany their parents, but the migrat-
ing household will need shelter and employment. If a city grows mainly by
natural increase, then it grows through the addition of babies, who can be
incorporated into existing households and whose demands of housing and
employment comes not only later, but also when the children become adults
and will have the time and urban experience to search out, individually, new
accommodation or jobs.
The first type of migration-based growth is likely to be the more chal-
lenging one for both the perceptions and the empirical referents of urban
disorganization. Migrants are easily identified and stereotyped, particularly
when they come from rural areas and are illiterate or have low levels of edu-
cation. Incoming migrants who are economically active individuals have an
urgent need to find secure accommodation where they and their families can
live (Roberts 1973). Large numbers of migrants seeking cheap and secure
accommodation were to power the growth of irregular settlements in the

cities of Latin America; settlements that were irregular either because they
were invaded or because the land was sold semi-legally without infrastructure.
These settlements made up between 30 and 60 per cent of housing in major
Latin American cities, with the exception of Buenos Aires where irregular
settlements were estimated at 10 per cent of housing (Gilbert 1996: Table
4.1). The migrations that powered the growth of cities in the early phases of
urbanization were centripetal. They mainly consisted in migrants coming to
the city, perhaps finding initial accommodation in the central city, but rela-
tively soon obtaining housing in irregular settlements (Turner 1968). Once
established, many migrants came directly to irregular settlements (Perlman
1976: 75–78). Once they arrived in these settlements, they stayed there. It
is only to be with the next generation that further residential movements
will occur in substantial numbers. The various surveys done as part of the
third generation housing project in the Latin American Housing Network
(LAHN) show that in most of the low-income irregular housing constructed
in the 1960s and 1970s2 the original families are still occupying the lot thirty
or forty years later. Most of the children may have moved on, leaving one and
his/her family behind in the lot, but lots have been subdivided to accommo-
date some of them and others will live in the same neighbourhood.
Migration is a source of perceived and real urban disorganization as land
is invaded; as settlements arise wherever cheap land can be found and as
residents collectively lobby governments for urban infrastructure. But it is
also a source of organization. Many migrants came as extended families and
originated from the same village or region of the country. As Lomnitz (1977)
describes in Mexico City, this gave them a basis for trust and solidarity in the
city and for coordinating their actions. In Lima, regional associations based
on villages of origin proliferated in the city, enabling migrants to find work
and shelter (Doughty 1995). Even where there are relatively few pre-existing
ties of solidarity, the coordinated efforts required to make irregular settle-
ments inhabitable created trust among neighbours and effective community
organizations, as I showed in my Guatemala City study (Roberts 1973).
Squatter and other irregular settlements were both a problem and a solution
(Mangin 1967); a problem because they represented unplanned and often
unsafe urban settlement, and a solution because they enabled rapidly grow-
ing urban populations to find shelter in the face of the inability of either the
state or market to provide any. Further, they were often innovative solutions
to housing needs, as households adapted housing to accommodate family
increase or as an economic enterprise (Turner 1976).
Consider, in contrast, the impact of the new types of migration. These
are essentially centrifugal. The central cities of many Latin American large
cities are losing population as densely populated lower-income inner-city
areas are redeveloped for commerce and higher-end housing. This, when
added to the new generations of family members who cannot be accommo-
dated in the original house, means a substantial movement out of the city.
The net loss of population from the inner city that these out-movements
imply is only part of the inner city’s population movement, since there is
also an inflow of migrants from other urban areas or rural areas. These will
often have different characteristics from those that move out – having, for
example, higher socio-economic status, as Duhau (2003) shows for Mexico
City metropolitan area. Movement out from the inner city is mostly to the
surrounding metropolitan area – in Guatemala City in 2002, 164,790 people
or some 20 per cent of the city’s 1994 population had left the municipality
for the municipalities of the surrounding metropolitan area. In Guatemala,
these outward migrations disperse among various municipalities. This new
type of urban migration poses new challenges to community cohesion, since
the moving out of children may leave the original settlers with ‘empty nests’
that they cannot afford to maintain. Since most irregular settlements are now
titled, the sale of housing is likely to increase, bringing newcomers to the
neighbourhood with different demographic characteristics to the original
settlers. This process along with the fact that most irregular settlements now
have a full range of services weakens what was previously a source of neigh-
bourhood cohesion – the need to work together to secure space. The chil-
dren and grandchildren that leave the older ‘third generation’ settlements do
so as individuals searching for housing. The act of finding housing is unlikely
to be as cooperative a venture as it was in the first period of urbanization. But
that is the subject of needed research.
Spatial Change
In the early period of urbanization, the provision of housing was through the
initiatives of land speculators, through the renting of rooms, apartments and
small houses by entrepreneurs who bought, remodelled or constructed hous-
ing on a small scale and through land invasion and self-construction. Only
recently has the state in Latin America intervened in a significant way to pro-
vide housing for the low-income population. Thus urban growth followed
the logic that Kowarick (1977) described as the ‘logic of disorder’, where
cities developed spatially by the rationale of an imperfect market. Inadequate
transport and the relative absence of a large middle class meant that there was
no market in Latin America for the kind of middle-class suburbanization that
developed in the United States. Instead, developers sold un-serviced lots very
cheaply to the low-income population, who had to construct their own hous-
ing and obtain their own services. When city governments provided s ervices
and roads to these settlements, developers could then develop tracts of mid-
dle-class housing along the transport and service axes. The consequence was
a high degree of social heterogeneity in the centres of the Latin American
cities, where levels of residential segregation were lower than in the United
States. Even the wealthy lived in relative proximity to the poor (Roberts and
Wilson 2009). On the periphery, there was, in contrast, a growing concen-
tration of low-income settlement, which created a socially homogeneous
pattern of residential segregation.
This pattern of settlement gave rise to the characteristic forms of urban
protest of the early period of urbanization – the urban social movements
that emerged in many Latin American cities between the 1960s and 1980s.
Although these movements were often supported by public and private
sector labour unions, their dynamic came from the common problems of
lack of basic urban infrastructure and insecure title to housing that affected
most urban inhabitants. In many cities, such as Lima, they became formida-
ble agents of change, gaining basic utilities, and in many cases gaining titles
for their members. They were an evident symbol of urban disorder, as seen
in the constant marches to public offices and protests in the main squares of
Lima that lasted well into the 1990s (Dosh 2010). Unlike the protests in late
nineteenth-century Britain, however, they did little to challenge the basic
economic and power structure of the city. They could be bought off by piece-
meal concessions. The clientelistic nature of urban politics in the early period
of urbanization did, however, create opportunities not just for individuals but
also for groups of residents seeking to obtain needed urban services or legal
recognition (Cornelius 1975).
In the contemporary period, urban space is being reorganized by market
forces to a greater extent than in the past. The major Latin American cities
have become targets for substantial foreign direct investments aimed at
commercial and service developments and high-end residential complexes.
Coupled with improvements in road and transport infrastructure, this has
made possible two new forms of spatial development. The first is a trans-
port- / road-centred development of shopping malls, such as those on the
periférico of Mexico City and Santiago de Chile’s new circular road system.
The second is the well-known phenomenon of gated communities. Some
of these emerged in the city centre in the shape of enclosed condominium
blocks, but most were built on the outer fringes of the city and in the metro-
politan area, which previously had been occupied by low-income settlements.
The gated communities, which at times are enclosed townships, protected
themselves from the poverty around them by their walls and gates, but made
use of the services of the low-income populations and had easy access via
the new transport routes to the mall complexes. This is the pattern of small-
scale segregation described by Sabatini, Cáceres and Cerda (2001), which
marginally dilutes the large-scale segregation of the peripheral settlements of

poverty. These settlements have grown rapidly, thereby extending the area of
the metropolitan area, and increasing the journey to work. During the day,
the neighbourhood is left to the elderly and the many unemployed youth.
The change in spatial segregation presents a new form of urban dis-
organization. Gated communities and malls are islands of privilege in the
urban landscape, which are unlikely to contribute to or be interested in
the overall security of the city. Private security abounds, and private rather
than public spaces are defended and enhanced. Increasingly, spatially mar-
ginal low-income settlements are populated piecemeal by those looking for
cheap accommodation. Administrative decentralization has placed more
decision-making power at the local level but without providing the resources
needed to meet the local demands encouraged by the emphasis on local
participation. In this context, politics are heavily local, and city-wide urban
movements now reflect citizens’ concern with rights, whether over the envi-
ronment, gender equality or security (Roberts and Portes 2006).
State action and planning combine with market forces to create new
potential forms of urban social disorganization. Urban planning and the
regulation of residential and commercial space remain weak in many Latin
American cities; but planning and regulation is now much stronger than it
was in the first period of urbanization. As Aliaga (2012) shows in her contrast
between Lima and Bogotá, planners at local and central government level
operate with visions of the modern city that have little tolerance for informal
activities such as street vending. They seek to locate vendors in fixed locations
and do not protect them from competition from malls and supermarkets.
There is also a widespread planning ideology opposed to informal settle-
ment and the rehabilitation of irregular settlements, seeing them as built to
unsafe standards and a blight on the environment. These policy preferences
combine with an emphasis on free market solutions to produce a subsidy to
demand approach to the provision of housing for the poor. In Chile, this has
led to the near elimination of the old irregular settlements, and in Mexico it
is fast providing the major source of available housing for the poor. In both
cases, prices of land and land speculation determine the location of the new
working-class settlements, which are usually located in peripheral locations at
distance from work and with inadequate access to transport and commercial
services.
The Labour Market Basis of Poverty
The spatial disorganization of the city was heightened in the early period by
the proliferation of informal economic activities in small workshops, domestic
production and street trade. There was a synergy between informal hous-
ing arrangements and informal economic activity – self-constructed housing
would be adapted to a workshop, petty commerce and other domestic eco-
nomic activities. Zoning was not usually applied, so neighbourhoods were
disordered by industrial noise and by the flow of industrial and commercial
activities. In the early period of urbanization, half or more of the economi-
cally active population worked informally, whether measured by the low pro-
ductivity of their activities in self-employment or small-scale enterprise, or by
the absence of state regulation (Portes, Castells and Benton 1989; Tokman
1991). The informal sector was a dynamic sector occupying the niches left
by the regulated formal sector. Small shops and street peddlers sold to formal
sector workers. Tailors, shoemakers, mechanics and other repair specialists
offered customized products and services for a low-income market; whereas
large-scale enterprises produced more standardized products on an assem-
bly line. Some large-scale enterprises put out work to small workshops.
Supermarkets had homeworkers assemble garments from packets delivered
by truck and picked up by truck. Building labourers might have formal jobs,
such as with the municipality, but also offered their services to help people
self-construct their houses. The early period of urbanization was, thus, one
in which there was considerable synergy between the formal and informal
sectors of the economy.
Earnings were less in the informal sector and informal-sector workers were
the poorest sector of the urban population; but the informal sector facilitated
family enterprise and family labour. It was common for households to con-
tain workers in both formal and informal sectors, and for all to benefit from
the social security coverage that came from formal employment. Perceptions
of the informal economy were, on the whole, positive. Economists and
international organizations stressed the need to improve the productivity
of small-scale enterprise and expressed concern about child labour, but the
informal economy was not seen as a ‘black’ economy. To most city dwellers,
the informal economy was perceived as a normal part of the urban economy,
despite its disorder. There were exceptions. Buenos Aires, Montevideo and
to a lesser extent Santiago de Chile had relatively small, informal economies
in the 1960s and 1970s, which were dominated by government and formal
unionized enterprises. This affected perceptions of employment. For workers
in Buenos Aires, the type of work associated elsewhere with the informal
economy, such as street peddling or fetching and carrying services, was not
regarded as employment, but as a changa (occasional or short-lived job).
Recorded unemployment could thus be high. In interviews that I conducted
in Buenos Aires at the end of the 1990s, people declared themselves unem-
ployed, and only with probing said that they maintained themselves and their
families through changas. In Mexico, recorded unemployment rates were
always very low in the 1970s and 1980s because for Mexicans any casual
job, even that of selling soft drinks in front of one’s house, was regarded as
employment.
In the second period of urbanization, there are important changes in eco-
nomic activity that affect both formal and informal economies. First there are
the changes in the economic sectors and occupations of the workforce that
consist in a shift from manufacturing and commerce to transport, commu-
nications and services, particularly producer services, such as finance, insur-
ance, real estate and professional services. Within sectors, there is a decline in
manual work and an increase in non-manual and technical and professional
occupations. These changes began during the period of Import Substitution
Industrialization (ISI) in Latin America, and intensified as Latin American
economies adopted free trade, privatized state-controlled industries and
deregulated capital and labour markets (CEPAL 1986). The overall impact of
these changes on the urban economy is to subject both formal and informal
sectors to competition from cheap imports from abroad, particularly Asia.
The small enterprises of the informal sector often could not compete with
the prices of imported shoes and clothing. Foreign direct investment in malls
and supermarkets began to displace street peddling. Consequently, many of
the key sectors of employment in the informal sector begin to disappear. At
the same time, labour market deregulation erodes the security and benefits
of formal sector workers, enabling enterprises to hire flexibly and at low cost,
diminishing the need to subcontract to the informal sector.
The formal sector also changes with increases in both intra- and inter-
sectoral pay inequality. In all sectors, and particularly producer services, high
value-added enterprises emerged paying significantly higher wages than in
low value-added enterprises and sectors. One result is an increase in income
inequality in the 1990s in the major cities of Latin America, such as Santiago,
São Paulo, Mexico City and Buenos Aires. This is to diminish in the early
years of the new century with the impact of anti-poverty policies such as Bolsa
Família in Brazil and Oportunidades in Mexico; with a decline in the earnings
of the financial sector with the crises of the late 2000s, and an improvement
in middle income jobs (López-Calva and Lustig 2010; Spagnolo 2011).
The decline was relatively small and left a polarized income distribution in
which only the top jobs in the formal sector rewarded educational achieve-
ment and then only for college education and above. One further change
in many countries was the relative decline in state employment. In our
resurvey of the two low-income neighbourhoods in Guatemala City, this
was particularly noticeable (Roberts 2010). Whereas in 1968, 19 per cent
of heads of household were employed by the state, usually as construction
workers with the municipality but also as teachers and policemen, in 2009, 7
per cent were so employed.
For our purposes, the overall impact of these changes results in two
linked phenomena. One is the weakening of the neighbourhood economy
as a means of providing a basic subsistence to low-income families. Local
activities including street selling and home industries are less viable than
they were. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, becomes a
visible phenomenon in many low-income settlements, particularly the spa-
tially more marginal ones. Youth unemployment has been linked in many
studies to gang formation and gang violence. Gangs are highly visible signs
of urban disorder, with their use of graffiti and tattoos to mark identity and
location. Not all gangs are violent, and gangs are more prevalent in some
cities than in others (Moser and McIlwaine 2004; Jones and Rodgers 2009).
However, gangs attract the attention of media, the public and officials. The
second is the criminalization of the informal economy. In the earlier period,
people perceived informal and formal sectors as distinct but legitimate ways
of earning income. In the contemporary period, people are less likely to
distinguish jobs by their level of protection, since the regulatory distinction
between formal and informal has been eroded (Pérez Sáinz 2005). Instead,
the perception of the informal economy is now more likely to be in terms of
its illegality.
The rise of drug consumption within Latin American cities has been con-
siderable since the 1980s, fuelled by rising incomes and as a side product of
the changes in drug trafficking. New routes have been opened up to Europe
and the United States that include countries, such as Brazil, that were pre-
viously not central to the drug distribution networks. Central America and
Mexico also became more central to drug distribution, as the Colombian
cartels sold drugs directly to the Mexican cartels instead of subcontracting
for their transport. The selling of drugs in Latin American cities is a labour-
intensive industry, involving large numbers of casual workers on street corners
or transporting drugs from one part of a city to another. Neighbourhoods
will have a small nucleus of permanent employees in the drug industry, but
the overall drug-related employment in a low-income neighbourhood can be
as high as 10 per cent of the economically active population.3 In the context
of high levels of youth unemployment, drugs become one of the main eco-
nomic activities of youth gangs. To pay for their own consumption of drugs,
unemployed youth also engage in other types of illegal activity, such as rob-
bery and protection rackets, often with violence. Drug money is also likely to
finance legitimate economic enterprises, but in terms of public perceptions,
drugs are becoming the visible symbols of the informal economy.
In the early period of urbanization, informal activities gained an economic
advantage by not paying social security or other taxes. This practice was seen
as legitimate and in most cases was not illegal, since the self-employed and
family enterprises were usually exempt from paying social security. Informal
enterprises today are more likely to become illegal enterprises in order to

survive. Contraband is an example. Contraband existed in the earlier period
as a means to avoid tariffs, but contraband in an era of free trade is likely to
be a highly organized enterprise, siphoning off parts of legal shipments or
engaging in pirate copies of DVDs and designer brands. Private security has
become a grey area bordering on illegality. Private security forces now out-
number regular police in several Latin American cities, such as Guatemala,
and a portion of them generate their business by protection rackets. Although
strictly illegal activities are in the minority within the contemporary informal
sector, they are the activities that get the attention of the media and other
observers. In the contemporary Latin American city, the informal economy is
more likely to be viewed as the black economy.
Social Cohesion
I shall use the concept of social cohesion to measure the nature of social
organization in the two time periods. Following Chan, To and Chan (2006),
I define social cohesion as a state not a process, and one based on both
subjective and objective components. My interest is in seeing how the dis-
organization and reorganization accompanying the three structural pro-
cesses described above impact peoples’ perceptions of whether others can be
trusted, share similar interests and have similar identities. Equally important
are the practical steps that they take on the basis of these perceptions, such
as joining associations. Horizontally, its subjective components include trust
in neighbours, willingness to cooperate with them and other city dwellers in
like situation and a sense of shared identity. Vertically, the subjective compo-
nents are trust in public figures and confidence in political and other major
social institutions. The objective components are participation in commu-
nity activities and social networks, organizing with others throughout the
city, and political participation in elections or national organizations. Both
horizontal social cohesion and vertical social cohesion involve the issue of
bridging between communities. Horizontal social cohesion is bridging at
the grassroots level, whereas vertical social cohesion is more likely to involve
bridging effected from above. At first sight it would seem as if disorgani-
zation is inherently antithetical to social cohesion, since it threatens stable
relations and creates an uncertainty that can weaken participation and limit
trust in others. But disorganization, as we have seen, can be a source of
reorganization, as when neighbours band together to obtain needed ser-
vices or when youth gangs help protect and keep order in a neighbourhood.
Thus, it is perhaps more useful to see how the axes of cohesion – its spatial
extent and its vertical/horizontal dimension – perform in our two periods of
rbanization. My spatial dimension is family, neighbourhood and city. The

u
horizontal dimension is identification with people in a broadly similar social
and economic position, and the vertical dimensions are the relations with
institutions external to the neighbourhood.
A centripetal migration pattern, the pressure on people to create their own
shelter and the close relations between workers in the formal and informal
sector meant that trust in proximate others and identification with others in
a like situation was relatively high in the first period of urbanization. Over
time, a certain pride developed in being pobladores (urban settlers) or fave-
lados (people who live in a favela). Their discrimination by the formal city
was keenly felt by my informants when they recounted their experiences of
rejection when applying for a job or a school for their children after they had
revealed where they lived. However, it also reinforced their pride in their
achievements in improving their neighbourhood. Participation in neighbour-
hood committees was high, and these were committees created by the resi-
dents, not by outside agencies. The number of gains that residents obtained
by their concerted action was considerable – building churches and chapels,
building community centres, installing a sewage system, installing running
water and electricity, garbage collection, title to land and so on (Dosh 2010).
The first period saw little progress on the vertical dimension of cohesion. In
many cities of Latin America, the state was relatively absent from low-income
settlements – without a police or administrative presence. Social agencies in
most cities did not reach down to low-income settlements. Indeed, ministries
of social development are recent creations in Latin America, dating from the
late 1980s in Mexico where the predecessor ministry was that of infrastruc-
ture and roads. The nearest that most low-income settlements came to rela-
tions with the state was through political parties and then mainly at election
time. In Mexico, it was not the Mexican government but the PRI (Partido
Revolucionario Institucional – Institutional Revolutionary Party) that dealt
clientelistically with low-income neighbourhoods, providing infrastructure or
handouts in return for political support at rallies and in elections. The same
was true of the Peronist party in Argentina, where such practices continue to
this day (Auyero 2001). In this context, it is to be expected that low-income
urban populations had little confidence in government or saw politics as irrel-
evant to people like themselves. In my 1968 survey of the two low-income
neighbourhoods, the majority of respondents said that they had no confi-
dence in politics as a means of improving the situation in Guatemala and also
said that the state was not relevant to them.
In the second period, horizontal cohesion is likely to have diminished.
There is no longer an ongoing need for neighbours to work together to
improve their living situation. Housing searches are more individualistic as
family members seek out accommodation to meet their needs and budgets.
It is also clear that the climate of insecurity is undermining trust in others

and the willingness to work with others. Insecurity was the overwhelming
response of respondents to the 2009 survey asking them to identify the major
problems of the neighbourhood – in the past it would have been improving
infrastructure, upgrading housing and so on. In interviews, residents talked
about their unwillingness to venture out at night to attend meetings or
even for recreation. Janice Perlman reports similar changes in her restudy
of four irregular settlements in Rio de Janeiro (2010). There are counter-
vailing trends. Neighbourhood watch committees are being formed in low-
income communities in Guatemala City. In our interviews, residents said that
although they feel insecure, at least in the neighbourhood people know them
and they are as safe there as anywhere in the city.
On the vertical dimension of cohesion, there have been substantial changes.
Opinion polls show that people continue to have low faith in the govern-
ment, parliaments, political parties and most institutions except churches
and, to a lesser extent, television.4 There is little respect for the police or the
judiciary. But low-income residents are now in more frequent contact with
external institutions than they were in the past. Non-governmental devel-
opment and social service organizations proliferate in most Latin American
low-income settlements. The squatter settlement in Guatemala City has
several religious and secular organizations actively working in the neigh-
bourhood, providing computer classes, preschool and elementary education,
sporting activities and so on. Also, government ministries now have social
programmes that bring them into direct and indirect contact with low-in-
come populations. Oportunidades in Mexico and Bolsa Familía in Brazil
are examples of programmes that directly transfer money to individual poor
families on the condition that they keep their children in school and pay
regular visits to health clinics. Most countries now have similar conditional
cash transfer programmes. These are not clientelistic, but are based on formal
procedures to ascertain eligibility and have automatic and impersonal means
of payment – in Mexico by sending bank drafts directly to the families. The
services provided by government often involve segmented access, with pro-
grammes for the poor being of lower quality than those for the middle classes
or those privately insured. Seguro popular (popular insurance) in Mexico is
an example, with the result that a clinic may offer different levels of service to
different types of clientele; but the poor are now in more direct contact with
government services than they were before.
The urban poor are enmeshed in a variety of external relations in the
modern Latin American city. These relations, however, are individual, not
collective. And they are not always to their advantage. Urban administration
has decentralized, often promoting local participation in schools and health
clinics, and, in some cases, in determining budgetary priorities. However,
these initiatives come mainly from above, rather than as a response to the
organized demand-making of low-income populations. In Guatemala City,
the elections for the neighbourhood committees are now organized by the
municipality, which even prints out the ballots. The neighbourhoods that
I studied in 1966 and 1968, like other low-income neighbourhoods in the
city, are no longer members of any city-wide association of low-income
neighbourhoods, as they were in 1968 (Roberts 2010). I would argue that
in the contemporary period, low-income city populations have very little felt
cohesion with external institutions – little confidence in government or pol-
itics and little faith in judicial institutions. However, there is a considerable,
but individual, participation in these institutions. Low-income residents are
aware of government and its programmes to an extent that they were not
previously. There is perhaps more of a sense of individual citizenship and
rights than in the past, but perhaps less community solidarity and capacity to
act collectively.
Conclusion
What then is the relation between imaginaries of urban disorganization and

its empirical referents in the Latin American case? In both periods, the rela-
tion is an inexact one. Some of the earlier images were very partial visions of
reality – of city culture being swamped by backward rural people or of the
political dangers of frustrated migrants, of cultures of poverty that fatalisti-
cally reproduced material poverty, inhibiting enterprise and collective orga-
nization, or of a marginality that meant that the poor were isolated from the
mainstream urban economy and society. They also served, to some extent,
to blame the victim, overlooking the energy and achieved social mobility of
most migrants and the overall improvement in a nation’s economy brought
by urbanization. The imaginaries of the second period are no less exact. Crime
and violence is one of these. It has become an obsession with the media, both
national and foreign, and among urban residents. Teresa Caldeira (1999),
for example, reports how in São Paulo fear of insecurity leads to demands for
more surveillance and to stereotyping of certain types of people and areas as
dangerous. Cities are, of course, more dangerous than they were in the past.
But not all cities and not all neighbourhoods are unsafe. Mexico is a case
in point. It contains very dangerous cities, particularly along the northern
border. But the incidence of crime and violence varies considerably between
states in Mexico and between cities. Many Mexican cities are safer than some
U.S. cities, such as Detroit or Washington DC.
Obsession with gang violence and the maras of Central America has
lumped all gang members together as inherently criminal. Under the Mano
Duro (hard hand) policy in Honduras, anyone with a tattoo was subject to
arrest. One consequence is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gang mem-
bers are imprisoned together in jails where they recruit new members and
reinforce the loyalties of old members (Wilson 2009). Crime and violence
imaginaries are not devoid of reality, but they emphasize its dramatic aspects
with a focus on drug cartels, the international connections of gangs such
as the Mara Salvatrucha and on individual victims and criminals (Monsiváis
2002). It means that less attention is paid by observers to the more complex
structural processes that are producing violence – youth unemployment and
the spatial marginality of many urban neighbourhoods. But even in the con-
temporary period, Latin American cities lack the competitive individualism
that the Chicago theories saw as characterizing the emerging city of their
day. Fear may make people loathe to cooperate, but even in the contempo-
rary period they are not competing with each other for space to live or over
the offer of cheap labour. New forms of reorganization and cohesion are
likely to occur. These are priorities for future research. Educational levels
and consumption standards have risen even in the poorest neighbourhoods.
Households possess a range of electronic goods and the capacity to manage
them, something unimaginable forty years ago. They are now closely inte-
grated into city-wide and international standards of consumption. This type
of integration may generate an individualistic view of rights, but it can
also lead to collective concerns with the quality of housing and the living
environment. The possibilities of cooperation at the local level remain, and
neighbours now have the means of communication, including Internet, to
better coordinate their actions and overcome the spatial fragmentation of
the city.
Notes
1. For Thomas’s writings on social organization and personality, see Thomas (1966). His major
work is the Polish Peasant with Florian Znaniecki (1918–20).
2. Latin American Housing Network (LAHN), retrieved 10 December 2012 from http://
www.lahn.utexas.org/.
3. Based on interview with official of Guatemalan Interior Ministry.
4. Information from the Latinobarómetro 2007, published online in Santiago de Chile at
http://der.oas.org/INFORME%20LB%202007.pdf. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
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2
Proximity, Crime, Politics and Design
Medellín’s Popular Neighbourhoods and the Experience
of Belonging
Gerard Martin and Marijke Martin
To explore the heuristic value of the concept of ‘belonging’, this chapter

reconstructs the experience of belonging in relation to housing conditions,
crime, citizenship and urban reform in popular neighbourhoods in Medellín
(Colombia) over the last fifty years. While Medellín shares such experiences
with other large Colombian cities, local conditions differ sufficiently so that
our findings and conclusions are context related and should not be overly
generalized. Today in Colombia, after a series of national reforms, urban
renewal policies increasingly share pro-poor objectives to decrease inequal-
ity, improve quality of life and create more attractive and safer popular
neighbourhoods.
The Medellín ‘social urbanism’ reform model (2004–12) operates under
a demand-driven, participatory and integrated approach, notably in some
of the city’s historically most violent neighbourhoods, many of them with
informal roots. Robust evidence shows that this has led to improved public
service delivery, quality of life and government legitimacy. However, dwell-
ers of popular neighbourhoods (70 per cent of Medellín) often produce a
more tempered narrative about the impact of these reforms. To make sense
of this paradox, we reflect on historical dynamics of belonging, as related to
transformations in the built environment, socio-economic developments,
the impact of violence and fear, urban reforms, and changes in proximity
between dwellers and the state. After introducing some relevant contexts and
notions, and a brief historic sketch of Medellín’s informal housing dynamics,
this chapter then traces aspects of belonging in these neighbourhoods at
three periods in time (the 1960s to the mid 1980s; the mid 1980s to the
1990s; and the 2004–12 period of social urbanism).
Medellín’s Popular Neighbourhoods
Medellín’s current popular neighbourhoods or barrios populares developed

from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century onwards, following
a mix of formal (public and private) and informal patterns. In 1910, eight
– 43 –
44 | Gera rd Ma rt i n a n d M a ri jke M a rt i n
informal settlements were said to exist (see F. Botero 1996: 353), but in the
1950s the city administration had already identified forty-one ‘pirate urban-
izations’ and in 1965 about a quarter of the city’s population lived there,
while three to five dwellings were added daily (Calvo and Parra 2013: 50).
Since then, the rhythm has slowed down somewhat, but even today about
25,000 primarily rural migrants (some forcefully displaced by violence) settle
each year on the city’s fringe and add to the city’s endogenous population
growth.
Today, Medellín has about 2.4 million inhabitants, versus 850,000 in
the mid 1960s, with an annual population growth of 1.3 per cent, com-
pared to a maximum of 6.4 per cent in the 1960s. Seventy per cent of the
current housing stock in the city has informal origins (Ramirez et al. 1991),
a proportion that is comparable to other large cities in the region (Perlman
2010). Ten other municipalities, some located inside and others just outside
of the Aburrá Valley, add another million people to the agglomeration, many
of them poor and living in a mix of formal and informal popular neigh-
bourhoods, similar to those in the city proper. (We use ‘informal’, ‘irregu-
lar’, ‘pirate’, ‘spontaneous’, ‘do-it-yourself ’ and ‘clandestine’ as synonyms
to describe dwellings or settlements that partially or fully disrespect formal
rules of planning, urbanization or construction; are (partly) self-built; and
where dwellers may or may not own a property title.) In the 1970s, the city’s
planning department introduced a special category for pirate settlements
originating from land invasions – as this method implied per definition that
the dwellers did not own property titles. It also started to differentiate among
stages of pirate settlement: incipient, under development or normalized.
Tugurio (slum) was reserved for the most precarious housing, mainly at the
incipient stage of settlement.
Irregular neighbourhoods typically rose up along creeks and on slopes
concentric to the city centre, business districts, commercial areas, and higher
income residential sectors that came to occupy the flatter parts at the bottom
of this Andean valley, at about 1,500 metres above sea level. The Aburrá
Valley is drained by the Rio Medellín (formerly the Aburrá) and some sixty
streams that descend from its slopes, which at some points reach over 3,000
metres. Some of the streams are significant while others are rather small, but
all swell dangerously in times of heavy rainfall and tend to provoke deadly
landslides in the neighbourhoods they traverse. In 2010, eighty-eight people
were killed in a landslide in the informal neighbourhood La Gabriela, in
Bello, immediately to the north of Medellín but still within the valley.
Today, the valley is nearly completely urbanized, except for the highest
parts of its slopes, but the urban fringe continues to creep up. As a gen-
eral rule of thumb: the higher on the edges, the steeper, the more recently
built, the poorer and the more tugurio-like. The better view, cleaner air
Proxi m i t y , C ri m e, P o l i ti cs a n d D es i g n | 45
and cooling breeze are mostly taken for granted. A few of the poorest
neighbourhoods like Moravia and La Iguana ended up at the bottom of
the valley, the former on the banks of the Iguana creek – where it confronts
permanent risks of inundation – and the latter on a landfill (inactive since
the mid 1980s). Significant parts of the historic downtown have experienced
physical and social degradation, affected by outward migration of the well-
to-do. Medellín’s urban district is divided into sixteen comunas (wards), and
each comuna into an average of fifteen barrios (neighbourhoods) (for an
official total of 249 barrios). From a distance, the dozens of popular hillside
neighbourhoods that form comunas 1 to 6, 8, 9 and 13 morph together in
an organic pattern of one- to four-storey, mostly self-built, housing struc-
tures, with churches as their only apparent landmarks. The 77 per cent of the
local population qualified by a national socio-economic rating system as the
low (bajo) and lower-middle (medio bajo) classes live here for the most part,
while none of the upper-middle (medio alto) or upper (alto) classes do so –
respectively 19 and 4 per cent of the population. In the 1980s and 1990s,
these neighbourhoods were commonly referred to as Las Comunas, a soon
contested generalization, given its connotation as dangerous and violent.
Today, without distinction of their formal or informal roots, they are most
commonly referred to as barrios populares.
Once inside these neighbourhoods, their most distinctive feature is bus-
tling life. Pharmacies, barber salons, butcher shops, bakeries, restaurants,
bars, hardware shops and informal vendors abound. Most people walk; cabs
and privately owned buses loaded with people manoeuvre through; kids in
uniform walk around as they come and go from school; many people are
at work, repairing, constructing, selling, carrying materials; others sit, eat,
drink, talk or just hang around. The primary and secondary public school
system, which caters mainly to the poor, has a double shift, with half the
students and teachers active from 6.00–12.30 p.m. and the other half from
12.30–7.00 p.m. In 2005, only 13 per cent of the households used private
cars, versus 34 per cent taking buses, 7 per cent using the metro, 6 per cent
taxis, and 5 per cent motorcycles. Thirty per cent walk as a primary form of
transportation; bicycles are hardly used for daily transport purposes. These
dynamic, populous places abound with ambiance and are radically distinct
from those in upper-middle class and high-income residential neighbour-
hoods (Comuna 14 and parts of Comunas 7, 11, 12, 15 and 16), where
hardly any cornershops exist and where few people are out in the street, and
when they are, they mainly move around in private cars.
Less obvious to the eye is the fear and distrust embedded in social life,
although fenced windows and doors provide an indication. Between 1975
and 2012 over 90,000 people were killed in Medellín, a situation so extreme
that it was unmatched to any other city in the region and possibly in the
world, excluding those that experience open warfare or genocide (G.Martin

2012). Medellín reached its paroxysm in 1991 with 6,439 murders and a
homicide rate of 381 per 100,000 inhabitants. Mexican cities such as Ciudad
Juárez and Tijuana have seen homicide rates of around 150 per 100,000;
Corsica, Europe’s most violent region, has a rate of 8 per 100,000, about 25
murders yearly. In 2012, after 8 years of social urbanism reforms, Medellín
still registered 1,251 murders; a homicide rate of 38 per 100,000. (Bogotá,
Colombia’s capital city, registered a similar amount, but with a population
three times larger.) Over the years, although the whole city was affected, the
popular neighbourhoods have been particularly vulnerable.
The fact that the same urban physiognomy can behold both dynamic life
and such deadly violence seems an enigma. Interpretations in which informal
urban fabric is qualified as ‘failed’, and its ‘structural’ problems thought to
be conducive to violence and crime, only add to the confusion. Influential
modernist ideology sustained early twentieth-century visions that regula-
tion and order should be imposed on these ‘deviations’,1 preferably through
large-scale ‘slum clearance’ or by replacing the informal fabric and relocating
residents to new housing estates under strict zoning and building codes
(Mumford 2000; see also Ghirardo 1996; Ellin 1999; Glazer 2007). Over
time, what has ‘failed’, at least in Medellín, is not the popular neighbour-
hoods but rather the modernist efforts to install their order, and for a variety
of reasons. Mainly, such ‘healing’ strategies were both highly ideologically
loaded and dramatically underfunded, and thus completely overwhelmed by
harsh realities, i.e. the urgent need for housing and the ‘efficiency’ of infor-
mal solutions in answering their needs. Also, the informal and illegal housing
practices offered great opportunities for speculators and political middlemen,
who obstructed reform and actively promoted the non- or only partially reg-
ulated settlements for their own interests. From the 1960s onwards, guerrilla
organizations, drug lords and even churches in search of popular legitimacy
would also come to promote or ‘support’ informal dynamics.
Romancing the Irregular
The anthropological and also architectural interest in the dynamics of

non-Western, organically grown urban landscapes and in ‘vernacular’ archi-
tecture actually arose as early as the 1920s, meaning that medinas (irregular
historic quarters) in cities such as Casablanca and Algiers and favelas (slums)
in Rio de Janeiro were studied and referred to in a rather ‘romanticized’
way. European architects started working as ‘expats’ in developing coun-
tries, including Colombia (Liernur 1998; Hofer 2003). Immediately after
the Second World War, and in the context of interest in large-scale urban
reconstruction in war-damaged Europe, modernist ideas rapidly spread to

the region, resulting in – among other venues – regulatory plans and archi-
tectural projects (Arango 2012). In Medellín and other Colombian cities, as
we will explain later in more detail, these plans and projects mainly offered
guidelines for infrastructural and zoning policies, considered the regular
parts of the cities only (and thus also and never suggested large-scale slum
clearance operations or urban renovation operations), and were only partly
implemented anyway. American-based urban planning firms would increas-
ingly take the lead in this field, but sticking to the modernist dogma – with
central notions such as multi-housing super blocks and strict separation of
urban functions – as Wiener and Sert did in their plans for Medellín, Cali,
Barranquilla, Bogotá and Tumaco (as far as Colombia is concerned).
At the same time, however, as the informal tendencies seemed unstoppa-
ble and uncontrollable in many developing countries, the modernist tabula
rasa approach encountered increasing academic criticism in Europe and the
United States as well, but for other reasons than those encountered in the
developing countries. In a number of Western countries, historic city centres
as well as newly built mass social housing projects had morphed into problem
neighbourhoods, defined by issues of poverty, ethnicity, decay, crime and
disaffection (Duivesteijn 1994; Wagenaar 2011: 472–80). Urban sociologists
and architects also began to study ‘architecture without architects’ practices
and informal popular housing typologies from the 1950s onwards (Rudolfsky
1964). These provided answers for the habitat-for-the-great-number ques-
tion to which the ‘angry young men’ of Team X dedicated themselves in
reaction to ‘outdated’ CIAM doctrines (Congrès Internationaux d’Architec-
ture Modern or International Congresses of Modern Architecture) (Risselada
and van den Heuvel 2005; Eleb 2010; Avermaete 2010). Architects like Aldo
van Eyck, George Candilis and Alison and Peter Smithson studied informal
urban patterns and everyday habits in non-Western regions as references for
the design of more human and associative housing estates and city quarters in
their own countries. In tune with growing awareness of the ‘right to the city’
and neo-Marxist orientations in the social sciences, the attention switched
to the squatter organizations, which in the 1980s were seen as exemplary
of ‘new social movements’ with potential to translate into political actors,
compensating for the lack of an ‘urban proletariat’. Many acknowledged the
importance of active citizen involvement with the built environment and of a
certain individual freedom to produce the city (Rudofsky 1964; Oliver 1969;
Scott 2000). In its most radical form, this produced manifests on the future
futility of architects, and the need to have citizens take full charge of their
built environment. The Dutch architect Carel Weeber’s 1998 call to ‘wild
housing’ (wild wonen) was an expression of it, later reformulated as ‘willed
housing’ (gewild wonen). It offered, and still offers, inspiration and a lifeline
for a supposedly over-regulated European and American planning practice,

where hope and reinterpretation have been invested in DIY practices to pro-
mote citizen involvement and belonging through deregulation (Deslandes
2013).2 This may explain why the informal housing dynamics of Medellín
and other Latin American cities have regained widespread attention recently.
Reflecting on favelas, Jean-Francois Lejeune argued in 2003 that ‘behind
the ugliness, the cruelty, and the violence, one can discover extraordinary
cities within the city’ (Lejeune 2003: 48). In 2011, Daniel Biau, in relation
to new UN Habitat approaches, stated that ‘slums are the best way for less
developed countries to provide cheap housing for poor citizens [and] are
economically useful [while at the same time] the reflection of urban poverty’
(Biau 2011: 60–1). The ‘rediscovery’ of informal neighbourhoods as potential
urban laboratories now figures into research agendas of the broad interdisci-
plinary field of urban history (Hernández, Kellett and Allen 2010). Likewise,
the non-Western informal cities inspire alternatives for supposedly outdated
formal urban strategies in postmodern Europe and the United States.
This latest flirtation with the informal city reflects a more optimistic
vision than, for example, José Luis Romero’s in his influential 1976 book
Latinoamerica: Las Ciudades y las Ideas where he asserted that Latin America’s
largest cities were turning into ‘a juxtaposition of disconnected and anony-
mous ghettos’ (Romero 2001: 321–22). Nevertheless, Romero seems to have
underestimated not only the capacity of governments in progressively inserting
basic facilities and services in the ’ghettos’, but also people’s resourcefulness –
against all odds – to make these places ‘function’ and consider them their
own. At least some of the (Western) romanticists, at least, seem to have
misunderstood (and still misunderstand) to what extent the dwellers’ desire
towards democratic regulation and formalization has been present in these
neighbourhoods, and to what extent the irregular can exacerbate apparently
unrelated negative dynamics, as has been the case with gang violence in
Medellín. It is precisely because the much-lauded recent urban reform policies
in Medellín, known as social urbanism (2004–12) both explicitly acknowledge
these informal traditions and consciously insert new forms of physical, social
and legal regulation to (re)build bridges between the dwellers and the state,
that Medellín offers a compelling case to clarify these misunderstandings and
explore the dynamics of belonging (pertenecer), both as a concept and a sym-
bolic source of social regulation in these neighbourhoods.
We understand ‘belonging’ as an ‘emotionally-charged social location’
(Anthias 2006: 21). It implies historic dynamics of material and immaterial
boundedness to the physical and social environment, but also to processes
of formal and informal regulation. As such, it is a more comprehensive
notion than ‘sense of place’, which is mainly focused on spatial relations
(Leich 2002), and includes an institutional dimension. Most studies relate
‘belonging’ to a combination of spatial and mental bonds as associated to

the built environment only. Recently, the notion of belonging has been re-
actualized in a context in which the importance and relevance of places and
sites are severely questioned (see Reijndorp 2010 on Almere; Zukin 2010 for
a rethinking of Jane Jacobs’s ideas). If belonging can be studied and under-
stood as a symbolic source of social regulation, it also implies that urban
reform policies may want to try to source it for participatory approaches and
objectives of empowerment.
Of its psychiatric roots, our conceptualization retains that belonging can
positively contribute to mental health but in its more rigid or fanatic forms
can become a source for anti-social destructive and indeed violent logic of
social regulation as well. Examples are spontaneous lynch squads and more
organized forms of armed self-defence to control neighbourhood crime. In
Medellín, individual feelings and perceptions of belonging among dwellers
of informal neighbourhoods will most likely vary substantially, depending
on factors such as the family situation, the degree of informality and irreg-
ularity of their habitat,3 the amount of years lived in the city (about 40 per
cent is native to Medellín; Alcaldía de Medellín 2011), their degree of formal
or informal participation in the economy, and so on. However, given the
exploratory character of this chapter, we will pursue a broader argument on
how belonging of dwellers in the city’s informal neighbourhoods evolved
over time (1960s–2010s) in relation to the built environment, forms of
sociability, violence and fear, insecurity and institutional proximity.
Early Planning Efforts
The conquistadores discovered the lush Aburrá valley in 1541, but they
settled their town further north, and used the valley mostly to raise cattle.
Informal, low-intensive and dispersed settlements followed, while the indig-
enous population was concentrated in a so-called pueblo de indios in the
southern part of the valley. (On the pueblos, see Ouweneel, Chapter 13
below.) A more densely settled spot evolved around the Santa Helena creek,
in its central eastern part (now Comuna 10). Until canalization in the twen-
tieth century, the Aburrá flooded often, so settling on its banks was not
an option. Clay was dug and baked into bricks (still the dominant build-
ing material, especially for informal housing). A real cédula (royal decree)
(1675) formalized the Santa Helena settlements as Villa de la Candelaria de
Medellín, accompanied by some early forms of urban regulation. Further
regulations followed at the end of the eighteenth century. Other settlements
in the valley, like Envigado, were also formalized as municipal jurisdictions,
an unfortunate move as it would later hinder planning efforts for the valley
as a whole. (A metropolitan authority was created in 1980, but with lim-

ited power. It has picked up some steam lately.) Colombia’s independence
brought city status for Medellín (1823), and designation as capital of the
Department of Antioquia. Political instability resulted in domestic turmoil
during much of the nineteenth century, but around 1850 Medellín, with
about 10,000 inhabitants, was described as a charming cattle and agricultural
town (González 2007). Its gentle climate promptly designated it as ‘the city
of eternal spring’. Illegal gold mining and the spread of coffee production
south of Medellín partly contributed to its prosperity. In the early twentieth
century, textiles, tobacco, chocolates factories and breweries, among other
things, transformed Medellín into the prime industrial hub of the country.
Local elites and politicians had picked up on international trends of town
planning since the 1890s, resulting in sanitation projects, extension plan
competitions and ‘embellishment’ projects (González 2007). Engineering
schools and universities were founded, hospitals and schools created, public
infrastructures for water supply and electricity installed, railroads laid, a tram-
way introduced and a small airport built. Most of these were initiated and
realized by the elite-led civic group Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas (SMP),
which ‘imagined a modern, clean, orderly and beautiful city’, with strong
influence on the city council (Jaramillo 2006: 14).4 Basic public facilities
came to be managed by the Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) and
Empresas Varias de Medellín (EVM), semi-public municipal companies that
were able to steer clear of too much political influence, and that continue
to play an essential role today. Medellín’s first extension plan (1913; called
Medellín Futuro), product of a competition organized by the SMP, mirrored
international urban tendencies, but only partly transcended its paper status, as
private interests resisted ceding properties and abiding by stricter regulations.
In the 1920s, the Belgian architect Augustin Goovaerts (1885–1939) was
hired to direct Antioquia’s new department for engineering and architecture.
He spent most of his time designing public and governmental buildings,
hotels, private houses and churches, but also worked on urban extensions,
in a combination of rational and more organic urban typologies. Some were
realized but many only partly so, as the private investors who developed them
typically ran into financial problems, in particular at the end of the 1920s,
with the world economic crisis. No corporate housing associations came into
being, and hardly any public money was invested.
The well-intended visionaries of the SMP looked on in despair, as infor-
mal housing mushroomed. Various factors conspired against the implemen-
tation of more ‘progressive pillars of urban planning policy’.5 The 1886
Constitution dictated a highly centralized form of administration (main-
tained until 1991), with a very limited role for local government.6 Private
urban boosters, among them prominent city councillors and members of the
SMP, were often able to make their private interests prevail over the public
ones. Like other Colombian cities, Medellín did not buy or reserve land for
future urbanization, and, thus, instead of systematically anticipating planned
urban interventions, was left trying to regulate or co-fund private urbaniza-
tion efforts. The tens of thousands of migrants, who arrived from the coun-
tryside to the booming city, were too poor to rent. Poor regulation, corrupt
law enforcement and a host of intermediaries made informal settling on the
urban fringe a low-cost and low-risk alternative. As other cities confronted
similar problems, the Colombian government introduced a law (1947) that
forced urban areas to both create municipal planning departments and to
draw a directory plan, as effectively happened in the larger cities, including
Medellín. The national effort towards more regulated and institutionalized
urban planning reflected the consultancy work (1934–48) of the Austrian
architect Karl Brunner.7 In Medellín, at the Pontificia Bolivariana University,
he was effective in the creation of the first architecture faculty. Another at the
local chapter of the National University followed suit.
The city, which now had about 350,000 inhabitants, created a Master
Plan Bureau and hired Paul Lester-Wiener and Jose Luis Sert of the New
York based firm Town Planning Associates to help it develop the required
directory and regulatory Plan (i.e. Wiener and Sert Plan, 1948–50).8 The
Plan mostly followed recent international town planning tendencies (Sert
was president of CIAM between 1947 and 1956), separating functions by
green wedges and prioritizing a differentiated mobility as the principal back-
bone of the city’s organism (Schnitter Castellanos 2007). It centred much
of its attention on relocating government offices from the historic centre
to a high rise ‘civic centre’ (a key notion in the modernist discourse at that
time), and assigned Otrabanda – i.e. Comunas 11, 12 and 15, on the then
still mostly vacant western bank of the Medellín river – as the principle area
for new residential developments. As for the valley slopes, the Plan suggested
urbanization of only the lower part of the north-eastern slope, closest to the
city centre (i.e. current Comuna 4, and part of Comuna 2). It also forbade
urbanization above 1,600 metres, and promoted conservation and transfor-
mation of the tens of mountain runs in longitudinal parks.
Disjunctions
Various conditions severely limited effective implementation of the Wiener

and Sert Plan. First, national funding was not provided, and local authorities
were too weak to take the lead. Second, there was demographic growth.
Between 1951 and 1991, Colombia’s population tripled from 12 to 36
million, including an increase of the country’s rural population from 7 to
16 million. This translated into the rapid growth of smaller and mid-sized
cities with assorted social housing problems. Furthermore, a civil war between
liberals and conservatives, known as La Violencia, left an estimated 200,000
dead (1948–64) and pushed tens of thousands from rural areas into Medellín
and other large and mid-sized cities. Others were pulled into urban life
attracted by better opportunities to study or to work than in the country-
side. Hence, Medellín’s population increased over the 1950–90s with about
400,000 people per decade, a rate three times as fast as that foreseen by the
Wiener and Sert Plan, which was thus rapidly outdated. Informal neighbour-
hoods proliferated over the eastern slopes (current Comunas 1, 3, 8 and 9),
the western slopes (current Comunas 5, 6, 7 and 13) rapidly surpassing the
1,600 metre line.
Third, blind to the reality on the ground, the modernist vision on housing
insisted that informal settlements had to be eradicated and replaced with
formal housing structures. The mere idea that the informal settlements could
be ‘formalized’ was inconceivable.9 President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress
(1961–67) – a Latin-American version of the Marshall plan, meant to boost
socio-economic development and thus diminish the potential for communist
influence – was very active in Colombia, and included a strong social hous-
ing component. Inaugurated by Kennedy himself in Bogotá, it could not
answer the necessities either. Fourth, Colombian institutional modernization
and public policy in general were negatively affected by the civil war and its
consequences. A military regime (1953–58), put into place by the liberals
and conservatives to end their civil war, prioritized large-scale infrastructural
measures (new airports, large avenues and highways, new schools). During
the following sixteen years of rigid two-party coalition (the National Front;
1958–74), the central state morphed into a clientelized bureaucracy, rela-
tively inefficient in answering to the demands of a rapidly modernizing soci-
ety. It eventually came up with a series of policies and programmes for social
housing, and numerous planned urbanizations were realized in Medellín
(especially in Comuna 6), but were by and large insufficient to stem the infor-
mal dynamics or to bend the bipolar social-spatial development of the city.
Local government was chronically weak. Mayors were appointed by the
president and arbitrarily changed, for whatever reason, rendering long-term
planning a chimera. Precisely when its population was increasing rapidly and
the city needed strong leadership, Medellín went through forty-nine mayors
(1948–88), with an average time in office of nine months, (G. Martin 2012:
50–52, 283–85). In the meantime, the Roman Catholic Church and tradi-
tional elites continued to stress conservative values as the most promising
form of social control and regulation, but were also rapidly losing ground
to secular influences, among others the television (Bushnell 1993). The
striking intensity of population growth and its consequences – a jump, rather
than a linear incremental process – led some to argue that the migrants and
especially the Afro-Colombians (typically called Negros, Afros or Morenos),
arriving from the pacific lowlands, were lacking in civility and work spirit.
It became the main culprit of the city’s supposed downfall. In an effort to
regain territory, the Church sent priests to work in the slums, but more than
one radicalized, supported invasions and pirate practices, or even joined
revolutionary armed groups (Calvo and Parra 2012).
In 1977, when Sert came back to Medellín for a 25th anniversary evalua-
tion of the 1950 Plan, he was shocked to conclude that only 10 per cent of
the plan had been executed and that many opportunities had been missed
(Schnitter Castellanos 2007; González 2011). The Plan had only produced
a single master plan for Otrabanda, a territory that over time transformed
into an extensive, mostly low-density upper-middle class residential area with
generous public spaces and greenery and essentially without social housing.
The planned transformation of the historic downtown (Comuna 10) into
a modern civic centre was only partly realized, but managed to destroy a
great deal of its former charm and built heritage. Sert severely criticized the
disharmonizing impact of twenty-storey apartment buildings, put up in the
middle of older low-rise residential areas. Effectively, well-to-do residents
were leaving the old city centre en masse for Otrabanda, and for the southern
parts of the valley that were still lush, where El Poblado and Envigado would
evolve over the next decades into dense, luxury high-rise residential areas,
mixed in with upscale shopping facilities, fancy hotels and restaurants, mostly
designed by local architects. Other great deceptions for Sert were some of the
national government’s social housing projects (e.g. in Comuna 6). He called
them ‘monstrous’, given the tiny size of the dwellings and lack of future
opportunity for the owners to add extensions, a problem that today, 40 years
later, continues to plague nearly all social housing projects in Colombia. Sert
concluded that anno 1977 solutions had been much more difficult and com-
plex to implement than 25 years earlier. Local voices, too, started to criticize
an increasingly dual city, with the rich in the southern and the poor in the
northern parts of town. Medellín’s famous writer, Fernando Vallejo, in El
Fuego Secreto (1987) had this to say about his city: ‘Medellín are two in one:
from above they see us and from below we see them …, or [Medellín] is one,
but with a broken spirit’.
DIY Urbanism and Dimensions of Belonging:

1960s to the mid 1980s
Surprisingly, maybe, the city did not fall apart. There were no riots, no
massive protests and the poor neighbourhoods did not descend on the city
in rage or for revenge. Various factors may explain this. First, basic public
service provision was rather rapidly extended to the informal neighbour-
hoods by the EPM (sewers, water, electricity) and ESV (garbage collection,
among other things). The coverage and quality of these services distin-
guished Medellín favourably from many other cities in the country and the
region. (Most of Medellín’s suburbs have come under the auspices of EPM
as well.) In addition, the 1950 Plan did indeed provide guidance for major
infrastructural developments, including bus terminals, central market facili-
ties and road infrastructures, which were all put into place. Also, whatever
the delays and insufficiencies in coverage and quality, the national govern-
ment did progressively insert health and school facilities, and provided for
teachers. Moreover, in the 1950s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) chose Medellín as Latin America’s
pilot city for a large national public library, built in a modernist style in the
1950s, in the Otrabanda sector; a one-room satellite was opened in a vacant
pre-existing structure in Comuna 4. Further, while the weak forms of gov-
ernment intervention and regulation provided fertile ground for the complex
social and political dynamics of DIY urbanism (Do It Yourself) in the infor-
mal settlements, for the same reason it was not good breeding ground for
radicalization. Evictions of illegal dwellers were sometimes pursued by public
force, but mostly failed, because city council members and other politicians
were eager to enlist these dwellers, many newly arrived to the city, as voters
and political capital. The politicians catered to the dwellers’ most pressing
interests, intervening to prevent eradication and to provide basic public ser-
vices and other necessities while obtaining their votes. The dwellers, in turn,
learned how to play these clientelist games and to defend their interests
through formal and informal channels alike.
All this relied, to a significant extent, on auto-construcción, a specific
form of DIY urbanism. This concept has become quite familiar, recently,
in academic and non-governmental discourses, to defend alternative urban
strategies in which formal and informal initiatives are supposed to blur and
reinforce each other, as well as to deepen citizen involvement in urban affairs
(see Harvey 2008). However, DIY can take diverse forms, and be pursued
for different motives and goals. In cities such as Berlin, Prague or Amsterdam
the concept mainly refers to a limited number of practices in relatively small
urban spaces that are put to alternative and mostly temporary use (squat-
ting, urban farming, festivals, ‘occupy now’ manifestations, etc.). When it
comes to cities in the developing world, the concept refers to radically dif-
ferent processes – ones that are at once more substantial and less temporary.
In Medellín, DIY urbanism involves over half of the city’s population and
neighbourhoods. It is first and foremost motivated by solving essential basic
needs (housing, water, electricity, sewers), and thus defines dwellers’ qualities
of life and day-to-day practices and representations. Here, informal settling

and self-built housing practices become an inherent part of the built envi-
ronment and its representations (Brillembourg, Feireiss and Klempner 2005;
Hernández, Kellett and Allen 2010), while it also has wide-ranging physical,
social and political implications for the city as a whole.
In Medellín, during the most intensive period of informal urbanism from
the 1950s to the 1990s, physically, even within a single neighbourhood,
housing ranged from the most precarious wooden structures to durable and
generous houses.10 Depending on savings, some families would rapidly con-
solidate their structure with second, third and even fourth floors, but others
would proceed much slower, not evolve at all, rent to others or sell. In the
dwellers’ eyes, this implied significant heterogeneity on the same street and
block, let alone the neighbourhood as a whole. Also, as a result of the lack
of planning, the sloped terrain, the extreme densities and little if any public
investment, public space was scarce and of poor quality in these neighbour-
hoods, and even more so as they became denser. Originally, houses had
backyards (solares), in particular in the somewhat more formal developments,
but many were later filled in with informal additions, leaving only the street
for social gatherings in open air. The principal spots for children to play and
for juveniles to hang out were sidewalks (often also built by neighbours with
materials provided by a city council member or another political boss), streets
(progressively paved over), street corners (la esquina), or a sandy soccer field.
In the older, partially planned and more consolidated popular neighbour-
hoods (e.g. in Comunas 4 and 5), through donations and auto-construcción,
distinct Catholic churches were built, often with a well-designed adjacent
public square. They became the most iconic structures and spaces of these
neighbourhoods, and centres for community life. In invasion-originated
neighbourhoods, with lesser resources and without a formally established
parish, ambulant Catholic missionaries and evangelical sects competed for
influence, and used far less impressive structures as temples, which explains
why some are commonly referred to as iglesias de garaje or garage churches.
Neighbours respect them anyway.
Most social life played out in the neighbourhood; vacations were spent
at home. That said, and as hardly anybody owned a car in these neighbour-
hoods, ‘public’ transportation was fundamental for work, to visit family in
other neighbourhoods, go downtown to shop or to go to the stadium in
Otrabanda. Hastily put into place by savvy businessmen (among them city
council members) and poorly regulated by local and national authorities,
public transport was expensive and not very comfortable. Socio-economically,
these neighbourhoods were more heterogeneous than one might expect.
Social mobility had many obstacles, but was actively pursued. Many dwellers
worked in the informal sectors of the economy, but just as many worked
Figure 2.1 Mother with memorial for killed son. Photo by Gerard Martin.
in construction, shops, hotels and restaurants, and as bus or cab drivers.

Children went to school much more systematically than in the countryside;
quality was bad, and many dropped out. On the other hand, some went to
the rapidly-growing public universities and were often the first in their fam-
ilies to do so. This second generation, much more than their parents did,
explored the city and tried to make it their own. Fashion, sport, film, music
(in particular hard rock, beneath salsa), but also drugs, child prostitution and
juvenile delinquency made their inroads.
Dweller associations to obtain services and amenities were most effectively
organized at the beginning, when a neighbourhood was still in its early set-
tling phase. They lobbied city council members or other political leaders and
middlemen to obtain cement, bricks, and other construction materials as well
as certain amenities and services. In the early 1960s, a national reform pro-
vided these local neighbourhood associations with a legal framework in order
to establish a more formal funding channel for the Alliance for Progress and
government programmes more in general. These Juntas de Acción Comunal
(one per neighbourhood) with their elected boards became the principal
community-based counterparts for such programmes, but at the same time
they ‘politicized’ and lost some of their initial energy and spontaneous rep-
resentation. Parents organized through other platforms to press for schools,
equipment, teachers and playgrounds. Most took the form of small but active
minorities, rather than social movements, and many dwellers free-rode on
their efforts. All shared, to a certain extent, a common knowledge and savoir
faire in interacting layers of informal and formal rules. Thus institutional
penetration was low, but not inexistent. All these neighbourhoods includ-
ing the tugurios, were eventually connected by EPM and EVM services and
even a substantial proportion of the dwellers, excluding the ones who tapped
illegally, became formal clients and consumers. Proof of their systematic pay-
ment of these services established rights that were used to prevent eviction,
negotiate alternative solutions or obtain property titles. Ownership continu-
ously increased – from 51 per cent (early 1950s) to 65 per cent at the end of
the 1980s (Gilbert 1994).
For all these reasons, the physical precariousness, poverty and institutional
neglect did not imply that the dwellers did not construct a sense of belong-
ing. Many were proud of the improvements they were making. A sidewalk or
contention wall, built during weekends of collective auto-construcción was
understood as progress, as was the arrival of basic services like water, electric-
ity or sewers, even though many tapped them illegally. However, the political
ideologies that dominated urban cultural and social housing studies in the
1970s and early 1980s often qualified popular neighbourhoods and their
habitants as excluded by the state, exploited by capitalism, and corrupted by
clientelist practices. Supposedly, this had guided the dwellers into a carry-on
pragmatism inspired by false hope and a lack of class consciousness. The
communist guerrilla organizations, increasingly active since the late 1970s,
attributed the absence of resistance and revolt in these neighbourhoods to
the dwellers being lumpen, and not proletariat.11 To stir them into action,
it was decided, revolutionary violence would be inserted in their world.
At about the same time, violence related to cocaine trafficking was also
penetrating the neighbourhoods.
The Impact of Crime and Violence on Belonging:

mid 1980s to 1990s
Even in the 1960s and 1970s when Medellín was not seen as a particularly
violent city, it did have its security problems (G. Martin 2012). Gangs,
often consisting of adolescents and young adults from popular neighbour-
hoods, were involved in armed assaults, drug dealing and extortion of small
businesses. Within the sprawling local contraband economy, various groups
hardened into organized crime around tobacco smuggling, with deadly turf
wars breaking out in the early 1970s. Guerrilla militias – small but violent –
robbed banks, kidnapped and perpetrated terrorist attacks. The national
police and municipal security departments reacted, but didn’t have the tools,
capacity, personnel or strategies for substantial opposition, and also suffered
from corruption. In the popular neighbourhoods, insecurity was one of the
areas in which DIY practices and ‘belonging’ manifested their darker sides.
Rich and poor alike showed low tolerance for beggars, the homeless, drug
addicts and other desechables (literarily meaning garbage or waste), who
were seen as profiteers and unproductive folks – threats to ‘progress’ and
property. Property might seem precarious in the poor neighbourhoods, but
dwellers’ investments in time and economies had been significant. Fences
(rejas) went up, but not as sophisticated as in the rich neighbourhoods and
so additional measures had to be taken. This led to permissiveness of ‘social
cleansing’ (limpieza social), perpetrated by corrupt public forces (hired, or
by their own initiative), vigilantes, neighbourhood gangs or guerrilla mili-
tias. Confronted with particularly heinous crimes, such as the rape of a
minor – sometimes based on nothing more than a rumour – neighbours
would even take the law into their own hands. All this was understood as
rather ‘normal’, and remained largely unobserved. Reporting and analytical
studies were scarce. But the impunity, the lawlessness and the permissiveness
of illegality it implied did provide a facilitating context for the type of crime
that would come next, various expressions of which would translate into a
dramatic assault on the social, economic and institutional fabric of the city.
Much more lethal forms of crime and violence took central stage during
the 1980s, which dramatically transformed feelings of boundedness and
forms of social regulation in the popular neighbourhoods and the city at
large. Medellín’s geographic location contributed to making it Colombia’s
principle drug trafficking hub, similar to what happened with South Florida,
the Bahamas, Rotterdam and certain other locations. Organized crime dra-
matically hardened and professionalized a series of clans, one of them led
by Pablo Escobar (1949–93), once they moved into the highly lucrative
cocaine business. With their stunning profits, the rest of the local crime
market was now worth peanuts, and also rapidly under control of these
clans (often referred to as the Medellín cartel). Their money, ruthlessness,
corruption, threats and systematic use of murder and other forms of vio-
lence further paralysed the justice and security apparatus and corrupted local
society. The drug money also transformed the existing guerrilla groups into
well-armed and well-funded fighting machines. Although mainly active in
rural areas, in Medellín, urban militias infiltrated and radicalized student
organizations, unions, neighbourhood associations and other critical civil
society groups, overtaking existing leadership structures through threat and
murder. These militias consciously chose the poorest neighbourhoods – to
profit from the institutional void, recruit adolescents and young adults, orga-
nize military training, and impose their ‘order’ and ‘justice’ with threats and
terror. Pre-existing gangs, vigilantes, social cleansing and paramilitary groups

were enlisted by the drug lords and transformed into their security apparatus.
Together with this proliferation of organized violence, all kinds of disorga-
nized violence also thrived, notably youth gangs for hire. Juvenile hit-men
(sicarios) and their nihilistic subculture soon became, together with Escobar,
the poster children for Medellín’s descent into hell (Salazar 1990).12
This was urban violence on a scale and of a kind never seen before, any-
where. Common citizens, the media and analysts struggled to make sense of
it all. Some understood it as the reactivation of a culture of violence, in partic-
ular the intolerance, traumas and deep scars left by La Violencia. Others saw
it as the counterpart of corruption, impunity and widespread permissiveness
towards the illegal (as long as it was ‘productive’); still others regarded it as
expressions of rage and anomie stemming from poverty, inequality, social
disorganization and the aggressiveness of the built comuna environment;
more radical voices preferred to see it as a sign of social movement and civic
insurgency. Some of these factors certainly contributed to the situation, but
its defining character was the cocaine trade and its extraordinary cash inflow.
It produced criminal networks so powerful that they seriously challenged
Colombia’s regime stability, well before the guerrilla groups were able to
do so, and only after the latter had made their own descent into the cocaine
business. With thousands of murders per year in Medellín alone (compared
to a couple of hundred before), these criminal networks overloaded and
paralysed the already weak justice administration and were deeply disruptive
and destructive of existing forms of social life. Fear, anxiety, mistrust and
withdrawal spread through the city.
Medellín’s informal popular neighbourhoods in particular were deeply
affected, as the vulnerable and poor had fewer resources to protect them-
selves. The unregulated but well-understood built environment of informal
streets, alleys, houses, roof terraces, creeks, street corners and doorsteps now
turned into a no man’s land. Militia and gangs restricted physical mobility
by imposing frontiers, no-go zones, curfews and other arbitrary regulations,
one day enforced with deadly sanctions and another day celebrated with a
generous block party. Crossing a street or hanging out with friends on the
corner, in a staircase of a house, or on the soccer field, now became activ-
ities that involved risks and had to be handled with all kinds of precaution
and fear. Drugged and armed gang members imposed their arbitrary rules.
Shop owners ceded silently to ever harder extortion practices, or closed their
shops for fear of being killed. Neighbourhood committees were infiltrated,
threatened and blackmailed. Gangs paid off police agents. Those who dared
to denounce and provide testimony about criminal acts risked their lives.
Instead of bringing order to a weakly regulated environment, as militia and
gangs claimed, they displaced and destroyed the bonds and relations that an
active minority of mostly well-meaning dwellers had succeeded in building.

Institutional weakness was even stronger on the rural peripheries (G. Martin
1996, 2000). Contrary to Brazil and Mexico, Colombia did not provide a
state-regulated process of rural land occupation and instead permitted a free-
for-all, easily exploited by speculators and hardmen, and later by guerrilla,
paramilitary and drug lords. Although EPM and EVM continued their service
provision, officials, teachers, health workers, policemen and other officials
operated under increasingly difficult conditions. Opinion polls systematically
showed insecurity now to be the main concern of Medellín’s population.
For other Latin American cities suffering from crime and violence in the
1990s, it was also observed that ‘practices of insecurity redefined relation-
ships with power, fellow citizens and space [while] habits and geographies
are modified, tranquillity or faith is lost’ (Rotker 2002: 12–13; she speaks of
‘citizens of fear’ and ‘cities written by violence’). Research about the everyday
experience with crime and violence in general became more common (Das
et al. 2001; for Colombia, see Pécaut 1996 and 2001; and Sánchez 2008).
As the violence, terror and trauma in Medellín were even more severe than in
other cities, so was the individual and social suffering. There is no doubt that
feelings of belonging were much more severely threatened during this period
than at any other time period here considered.
Bringing the State (Back) in: the 1990s
Among a series of wide-ranging reforms to bring the country’s violence under

control, President Cesar Gaviria (in office: 1990–94) created a well-funded
and ambitious initiative to bring institutions (back) into play, which prior-
itized Medellín in particular. Maria Emma Mejia, a charismatic hands-on
manager, led the programme and built an interdisciplinary team around
local talent and public-private partnerships. In Medellín, some private sector
groups, researchers, non-governmental organizations, human rights groups,
artists, public school teachers, neighbourhood committees, victims and youth
groups had already started to speak out against the crisis. While the national
and international media were obsessed with Escobar, these local enlightened
voices insisted on overcoming ‘the absence of the state’, opening up oppor-
tunities for disadvantaged youth, and improving the relationship between
citizens and police; they pleaded for participation and proximity. They con-
tributed to the creation of the presidential programme, integrating its imple-
menting team. Territorially, efforts focused on some of Medellín’s poorest
and most violent neighbourhoods (particularly in Comunas 1–4), and demo-
graphically on youth. The central idea was to ‘include’ (or ‘to make belong’)
these areas in the formal city by extending coverage and quality of services, by
(re)establishing bridges with public and private agencies, and by working with
neighbourhood organizations, the private sector and local government in
down-to-earth projects such as school renovation, sports facilities, health facil-
ities and youth employment. An innovative comprehensive slum upgrading
effort – the Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales en
Medellín – was also part of the package (Dapena 2006), and was implemented
by the social housing department of the National University, but limited to
only a handful of neighbourhoods and relatively short-lived (1992–96).
Traditional neighbourhood leaders had not fully lost their savoir faire in
working with the clientelist networks, and they certainly tried to position
themselves first in line for the ‘handouts’ of this national project and other
initiatives. But neither the presidential programme nor the newer, younger
and more urban savvy generation of neighbourhood activists would give
them much room. The violence and trauma had, to a certain extent, worked
as an equalizer, and had done away with the respect for overly vertical and
hierarchical relationships; traditional leaders, at least in the neighbourhoods,
partly lost their leadership role. The new generation also had other needs and
ideas. They suggested murals, oral history projects, a youth club, more par-
ticipation and debate, and their requests were often positively rewarded. New
potential for belonging was thus operationalized both in relation to neigh-
bourhood issues and in relation to the new institutional provisions being put
into place under President Gaviria. After decades of keeping a low profile,
the local government also came back into view. National reforms led to the
direct election of mayors (1988); progressively longer periods of administra-
tion (1988) established at two years, then three years (1991) and finally four
years (since 2004); fiscal and administrative decentralization of education,
health and certain other services; and comparatively strong discretionary
power for Colombian mayors, at least on paper. Mandatory introduction of
city development plans (1991) and territorial plans (1997), citizen participa-
tion channels (1994), social control, and oversight of public contracting also
contributed to modernizing and democratizing local government. Another
major reform that contributed to re-establishing bridges between citizens
and the state was the forceful modernization of the National Police, during
the second part of the 1990s.
In Medellín, the first generation of elected mayors (1988–2003) came
from traditional political backgrounds. These six mayors were no visionar-
ies and did not implement an ambitious urban development strategy, con-
trary to what mayors Antanas Mockus and Enriqye Peñalosa did in Bogotá
between 1995 and 2003 (G. Martin and Ceballos 2004; G. Martin et al.
2007). Nevertheless, citizens gave them very positive evaluations overall.
First, although Medellín continued to be extremely violent, homicides were
diminishing and many people considered that the city had turned a corner.
Second, basic public services continued to be run rather smoothly and to

penetrate deeply in the informal and pirate settlements, thanks to the tech-
nocrat management of EPM and EPV. Third, the mayors realized a couple
of high profile public works. The metro, inaugurated in 1995 after ten years
of construction, was the first of its kind – and still the only one – in the
country. It fulfilled the demand for more efficient public transportation,
added a strong structuring element to the city and became immediately an
object of local pride, although it left the city with a crippling debt burden
(Leyva Botero 2010). Other public works meant to counter the decay and
insecurity of the historic centre (Comuna 10) and to restore the 1950s ideal
of a modern and recognizable civic centre, with the construction of five new
public squares, a public library, a music hall, and a convention centre (1997–
2002).13 Mayor Luis Pérez (2001–03) distinguished himself by building a
public transportation system in the form of a cable car line, connecting the
informal neighbourhoods of Comuna 1 and 2 with the metro system down in
the valley. It dignified and shortened transportation time, but was particularly
welcomed by the dwellers, as the first major public infrastructure work ever
brought to their neighbourhoods. Although territorially scattered and lack-
ing a comprehensive city development strategy, these efforts to strengthen
local government services did somewhat diminish the distance and disaffec-
tion between citizens and state that had come to characterize the situation at
the height of the violence and institutional dislocation a decade earlier (Rave
2008; Leyva Botero 2010; G. Martin 2012). While this may have helped to
re-anchor feelings of belonging, fear, violence and terror continued to hinder
the establishment of belonging as a meaningful source of social regulation for
these neighbourhoods and to the city in general.
Social Urbanism: 2004–12
The 1990s urban projects came under criticism by a group of young local
architects and city planners – some with fresh Ph.D. dissertations from techni-
cal universities in Barcelona. They were mainly based at the local Universidad
Pontificia Bolivariana, where they ran urban workshops, including El Taller
del Norte (Atelier of the Northern neighbourhoods) on pressing urban chal-
lenges. They argued that the new projects were mostly located in the formal
city, except for the cable car, and thus neglected the pressing problems of the
poor and violent northern neighbourhoods. The cable line had serious short-
comings, they argued, as it was connecting the informal city with the formal
one, but through the air only and not in terms of the urban fabric. What was
needed, according to these voices, was a vision and integrated approach to
remaking the city as a whole – to decrease the socio-spatial segregation gap,
to pull the informal city into the formal one, and to make Medellín a more
just and equitable metropolis (Arango, Orsini, and Echeverri 2011: 312–15).
The think tank also stressed the importance of a metropolitan policy for
agglomeration as a whole, not limited to Medellín only. Medellín’s Plan de
Ordenamiento Territorial (1999) was already partly influenced by the idea.
The city was confronting a resurgence of violence. Murders had been down
by 50 per cent over the 1991–97 period (although still hovering around a
stunning 3,000 per year). Analysts had proclaimed that with the death of
Escobar in 1993 closure had come to a dramatic period. Many hoped that
the city might just go back to its ‘normal self’. However, the special presi-
dential programme for Medellín was not continued after 1994, when a new
president was elected. Also, polarization between narco-paramilitary organi-
zations (many led by Medellín-based drug lords such as the brothers Castaño
and Diego Fernando Murillo, alias ‘Don Berna’) and the guerrilla led to a
new wave of terror and violence, in particular in the countryside, and resulted
in massive forced displacement towards cities such as Medellín. The clash also
led to a resurgence of killings in the city (1998–2002).14 This was particularly
evident in informal neighbourhoods within more recently ‘urbanized’ sectors
of town (Comunas 8, 9, 13), where many migrants were settling and where
the armed groups were trying to establish control.
Elected on his security agenda, President Álvaro Uribe (2002–10) imme-
diately ordered large-scale military operations against guerrilla militia in
Medellín’s Comuna 13. At the same time, he opened peace negotiations with
the narco-paramilitaries – as the guerrilla refused to negotiate. Following a
ceasefire with the paramilitary (2002), homicides in Medellín dropped 40 per
cent in 2003 alone (from 3721 murders to 2012). At the end of that year, a
polemic national process of paramilitary demobilization started, with the first
group of about a thousand fighters disarming in December 2003 in Medellín
(52 more groups and over 30,000 fighters would follow over the next two
years, including another 3,500 in the city). Also at the end of 2003, the local
elections were won by the politically independent and reform-oriented can-
didate Sergio Fajardo. He was known as a U.S. schooled mathematician and
professor at the elitist Los Andes University in Bogotá, but also as an opinion-
ated commentator on local affairs. Fajardo appointed civil society activists to
prominent local government positions. He provided the local administration
with a more transparent, participatory and rationalist bearing. As the son of
Raul Fajardo (1928–2012) – a prominent member of the first generation of
locally schooled, modernist architects – the new mayor was well positioned
to invite the critical group of architects and planners of El Taller del Norte, to
join his team and help to define an innovative urban development strategy,
now generally referred to as social urbanism. Fajardo also reorganized and
strengthened critical city agencies such as the Department of Planning and the
urban development firm Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (EDU). His succes-

sor and political ally Alonso Salazar (2008–11) followed up with the creation
of the Social Institute for Housing and Habitat of Medellín (ISVIMED).15
During Fajardo’s and Salazar’s mayorships, the city’s investment priorities
were reoriented towards territories and populations with the lowest quality of
life indicators – i.e. the popular neighbourhoods – to help them rebuild their
spatial and social fabric and overcome the city’s ‘historic social debt’ towards
them (Fajardo 2008). Even though urban design and architecture were
put forward as important means to attain some of the goals, the approach
did not concentrate on mere physical interventions. Also, instead of sector
approaches (such as housing or infrastructure) or a top-down approach, it
engaged in thorough surveying of the spatial and social dynamics of the most
critical neighbourhoods, as a respectful basis and first step for any further
interventions. Neighbourhood scenarios were worked out in close concor-
dance with the citizens and so were the mayor’s central priorities for the city
(equality, quality of life, civic culture, overcoming the social debt and trans-
forming Medellín into ‘the best educated city’ (‘la ciudad más educada’)).
Subsequently, these scenarios were translated into multidisciplinary projects
led by working groups and accompanied by strong civic communication to
explain the politics, projects and interventions.16
The strategy of Proyetos Urbanos Integrales (PUI, Integral Urban
Projects) was designed and applied during the 2004–12 period to some
of the most critical areas of the city.17 A PUI typically covers about twenty
neighbourhoods and directly or indirectly impacts an average of 150,000
people. In 2012, two had been fully implemented, and four others were
underway or in their planning and consultation phase. For each PUI, citizens
participate in the assessment of material and immaterial contexts (including
citizen perceptions of space as related to insecurity) to develop a master plan
that covers physical interventions and social programmes. One of the most
important physical aspects of a PUI typically includes improving access to
public transportation, including the construction of cable cars, tramways,
new bus lines and pedestrian routes. A new 4.2 kilometre tramway, con-
tracted with funding and technical assistance from the Agence Française
de Développement (AFD) and Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR), is
currently being inserted on an historic thoroughfare to connect the popular
neighbourhood of Comuna 8 with the metro downtown and with two new
cable cars, and will form a central structural element of the PUI for these
areas of town. Another central physical aspect of a PUI entails the upgrading
of public spaces, including the following: the recovery of the linear parks
among the often-invaded banks of the hillside creeks; the improvement
of street lighting, formalization of property titles and connections to the
public service grid; consolidation of habitat; removal of at-risk habitat (and
formal housing solutions, often inside the same neighbourhood, for those
who are obliged to move); strategic insertion of six- to eight-storey social
housing units; integral renovation of sports facilities to formal competition
standards; upgrading and construction of school facilities (from early child-
hood to higher education); and iconic new cultural facilities (libraries, a
cultural centre, etc.) designed in Medellín’s collectively esteemed tradition
of high-quality architecture.
The PUI strategy is not about just implementing amenities or public
space, but about trying to generate new opportunities and feelings of belong-
ing in their specific social context. Its aim of respectful spatial insertion puts
architecture at the service of urbanism (and not the other way round), not
only with the PUIs, but also with other less ambitious interventions around
the city. Architectural design and building materials are consciously chosen –
although not always through competitions – to guarantee that the new and
renovated schools, libraries and cultural centres will be aesthetically attractive
and that they will contribute to dignifying the poor neighbourhoods, inside
or close to which they were systematically built.18
Under Medellín’s social urbanism approach, all these physical interven-
tions are understood as vehicles to improve the coverage and quality of
municipal as well as national services: cultural programming, sports, family
Figure 2.2 Medellín seen from the hills. Photo by Gerard Martin.
protection, after-school programmes, access to justice, and policing. Also

to guarantee that a PUI will not get stuck in the planning phase, and will
be fully implemented within five years, selected components are initiated
as soon as possible while others continue in the design phase. This is also
meant to prevent loss of momentum and support among residents, whose
expectations of government are systematically low, based on their historic
experiences. Often, however, the residents – while extensively briefed on
the interventions – mainly limit their interest to those built closest to their
habitat, as well as to the most iconic ones (cable cars, libraries). They also do
not necessarily perceive how such interventions relate to the master plan, let
alone the city-wide reform agenda. On a more general level, however, most
dwellers are aware that the city is involved in some kind of a reform process
and that many public works are being undertaken.
Social Urbanism and Belonging
The social urbanism approach can hardly fail, given that the pre-existing
do-it-yourself dynamics of the popular neighbourhoods submitted to its
treatment are systematically taken into account and no top-down ‘solutions’
are imposed. Beyond any doubt, certain interventions – like recuperating the
creeks and transforming them in linear neighbourhood parks – are socially
conflictive operations, given the relocation of residents and removal of at-risk
habitat that they imply. Also, the insertion of a specific square, pedestrian
crossing or other intervention may, unsurprisingly, not work out precisely
as foreseen. The idea of open schools, to be used by neighbours after school
hours, had to be partly abandoned due to security concerns. However, given
that the PUI methodology includes a conscious effort to understand and
respect significant parts of the (pre-)existing neighbourhood logics, senti-
ments of place, mental maps and auto-construcción traditions, the approach
is one of context-sensitive urban repair rather than of radical renewal. While
social urbanism is certainly partly about introducing rationality and f ormality,
flexibility is maintained in explicit recognition of historical processes of largely
informal appropriations. An inherent part of this is to provide incentives to
dwellers to further improve their own houses, shops and businesses in the
context of the PUI or other projects.
When the new ‘city-makers’ speak about ‘dignifying’ habitat and neigh-
bourhoods, and the need to eliminate at-risk habitat, it implies recognition
of the vernacular, of the improvised aesthetics of these neighbourhoods,
and of their inherent logic of constant creation and re-creation. For exam-
ple, although national environmental laws require that both sides of a 10
metre stroke should be left free of private constructions, the reform-oriented
administration – when consolidating informal housing – often decided to

apply this rule with reason in order to accommodate the historically grown
situation.19 Such working methods, which pair formal choreographies with
micro-scale citizens’ concerns and interests, fit well with the traditional char-
acter of belonging in these neighbourhoods, as this always mirrored a hybrid
mix of formal and informal practices, be it in the spatial, social or institutional
realm. The PUI may be part of a strong political and professional framework
(managers, architects, quality teams, all covered by the mayor himself), fit
within institutionalized urban policies that impose more rules (sidewalks,
street signs, alignments, building regulations) and leave less occasion for spon-
taneous interventions; still, however, all sorts of margins are left (on purpose
or by accident) for the non-formal practices. This means that the acupunctural
approach inserts new layers of physical structuring and social regulation, with-
out fully eliminating the pre-existing ones, which helps to steer the incom-
plete historic urbanization process towards completion, thus enhancing the
individual and social processes of belonging, at least in a spatial dimension.
The fact that Medellín’s social urbanism (since 2004) has received so
much national and international interest and expert analysis goes beyond
fascination in contrast to the city’s struggle to overcome its traumatic vio-
lence.20 Many try to understand the methodologies behind the model. If
social urbanism was an easy trick, why did it take so long for the city to
get its act together? And why are so many other Colombian cities – which
confront the same national reforms and constraints – unwilling or incapable
to do their part? Some other large cities, like Barranquilla, and mid-sized
ones, like Monteria and Neiva, have been making progress, but theirs is still
more a series of projects than an integrated city-wide development strat-
egy. Social urbanism is, on the contrary, a highly sophisticated mixture of
political will and rigorous but creative processes. On a substantive level, it
reflects thorough rethinking and understanding of the city’s problems (e.g.
the contributions of academia and civic society from the 1990s onwards);
the political will to give systematic priority to the poor and disadvantaged;
and the capacity to lay this down in a clear vision for the future as well as to
translate the vision into a city development strategy with precise projects and
programmes. On a more procedural level, the model shows commitment to
a rational result-oriented city administration, including the introduction of
measurable benchmarks; a restructuring of its debt, professional accounting
and transparent public contracting;21 mobilizing of the appropriate technical
and human resources; the building of partnerships; and finally, the capability
to link the plans and policies with the three dimensions (and various aspects
of each) on which people construct their belonging (i.e. spatial, social and
civic). Obviously, all this presupposes democratic regime conditions, and
sufficient decentralization and resources to mobilize the necessary technical
and human assets. As a result, it is now evident that the PUI-consolidated

neighbourhoods and others with less ambitious but rather similarly styled
interventions, like Moravia, are increasingly assuming roles as sub-centres,
with supermarkets, bank branches, shops and other commercial services. At
the same time, through their functional aspects and symbolic meaning – and
thanks to improved policing and other forms of formal regulation – new
public spaces, cultural centres, libraries, schools, job-training centres and
other facilities are taking on aspects of public domain, where positive social
relations that go beyond mere family and friends are constructed (Hajer and
Reijndorp 2001: 11–12). Civic pride is often evident from the eagerness with
which residents talk about the functions and aesthetics of the new amenities.
The way in which all this contributes to new forms of sociability does
not only spring from its spatial dimensions. The new libraries and cultural
centres, for instance, are often most heavily used and appreciated for the
free Internet on dozens (sometimes hundreds) of online computers made
available, which are primarily consulted for Facebook and to play games.
Social and mental appropriations of these new amenities create the potential
for new social bonds. (It is also true, however, that residents become rapidly
used to new facilities and services, and criticism of waiting times, or broken
computers, is sometimes more easy to detect than appreciation.) New forms
of sociability result also from the explicit efforts to promote citizen partici-
pation, although these too do have their limits. Not unlike elsewhere in the
world, civic participation seems to be rather low in Medellín,22 although a
bit higher in the popular neighbourhoods. Due to various constraints (time,
knowledge, efficiency), it is also clear that it is impossible for residents to con-
tribute to all requests for participation that come their way. Nor does the fact
that venues for participation exist guarantee that the most relevant topics are
being discussed. In certain neighbourhoods, for instance, people may offer
their suggestions for the redesign of a small public square, but at the same
time silently consider that getting rid of the gang members that linger around
the square, and of the dealers that sell their wares there, may well be more
important. Even interdisciplinary teams, such as those put into place under
the PUI methodology, may have difficulty in revealing such issues, for fear
among the residents of retaliation by gangs or others.
Proximity and Belonging
Medellín’s social urbanism efforts to (re-)engage citizens and promote live-

ability cannot be cynically dismissed as an alibi to impose a top-down urban
renewal through technocratic procedures. Its constant references to common
sense, pragmatism, democratic procedure and context differ from the ideology
of strict modernist or functionalist approaches, as well as from paternalis-

tic miserabilism.23 Strong guidance and direction is evident, of course, but
was voted into place three subsequent times under transparent local elec-
tions, with mayors Alonso Salazar (2008–11) and to a lesser extent Aníbal
Gaviria (since 2012), continuing the reform process. Central ideas of social
urbanism are themselves a product of civil society demands, formulated since
the 1990s. On an everyday basis, the administration is also overseen by a
city council, whatever its shortcomings may be; socially controlled by well-
established forms of citizen participation; backed by a reform-oriented group
of local entrepreneurs, who play an important role as somewhat ‘hidden’ but
constructive city-boosters; critically followed by a dozen well-established non-
governmental organizations and academic research centres with interest in the
city; and technically assisted by various international donor agencies. Due to
a particular set of conditions, all these protagonists seemed to articulate their
work in the same direction, i.e. the priorities initially defined by Fajardo (for a
counter example, see the classic study on Mexico City by Davis 1994).
Not to forget the dwellers. In the past, they did not undergo poverty,
informality and clientelism passively, and neither do they with the current
reforms. Since 2004, the local administration has also developed strong com-
munication strategies to inform its citizens on how the city is moving forward
and what its main priorities are. Local television programmes, municipal
publications and the city’s website, fairs and festivities, exhibitions, local
newspapers as well as popular and more academic publications. Being better
informed about the city’s policies may have increased the credibility of the
public administration among citizens. Residents are also proud that the inter-
ventions in their neighbourhoods have received prestigious architecture and
urbanism awards, as has been the case with the habitat consolidation oper-
ation in the Juan Bobo creek, the PUI approach, some of the new public
libraries, some of the schools, and the social urbanism strategy as a whole.
The rationale for these awards has often been the manner in which these proj-
ects and policies have been respectfully contextualized, in physical, social and
political contexts, to improve and dignify quality of life. An interesting para-
dox is, of course, that this social and physical fabric sourced for and invested
in these new buildings and innovative approaches – is the product of DIY
informal building practices and auto-construcción. The dweller-builders,
however, have yet to receive their first architecture and urbanism award. The
Venezuelan architect Teolinda Bolívar, a student of Paul-Henry Chombart
de Lauwe, was one of the first to recognize the dwellers as constructores de
barrios y de ciudad or ‘builders of the wards and the city’ (Pedrazzini, Bolay
and Bassand 1996).
Another paradox is that although the social urbanism approach recognizes
and respects the DIY practices as intrinsic to the urban fabric, it inevitably
aims at progressively phasing out the most blatant forms of illegality and
informality. Regulations will increase with the arrival of new and better public
services. It seems increasingly unlikely that neighbours will be permitted to
add, on their own initiative, contention walls or sidewalks, as they would
have been in the past. Informal dweller-builders evolve into citizen-builders
and citizen-clients, given that they operate increasingly within formal rules. If
this is true, the illegal and informal voids will thus progressively be filled by
rules and relations between citizens and the state. This process of deepening
citizenship contributes in a fundamental way to feelings of belonging, at least
as long as these relations are democratically shaped. It is no coincidence that
in Medellín, too, citizens seem to request more proximity in their interaction
with public services and authorities, under influences that are global (the
Internet, mobile phones), national (the rights-oriented 1991 Constitution)
and local (the social urbanism reforms). This aspiration of proximity is coher-
ent with the idea of the citizen as a client, and goes beyond the idea of
enhancing participation and deliberation (as advocated in the 1990s) to that
of procedural impartiality and justice (Rosanvallon 2008). The latter refers to
the perception of being taken into account and not feeling that decisions are
simply being vertically imposed; of being treated equally; and of being con-
sidered with respect (on the role of respect in political relations in a popular
neighbourhood in Recife, see Vidal 2000). Being respected and recognized
in one’s particularity seems to have a positive impact on people’s self-esteem,
the legitimacy awarded to institutions, and the intention to obey their rules
(Tyler 2006 [1990]). It is also consistent with a larger role for sub-national
governments in social regulation and service provision. It may explain the
large support given to visionary mayors, such as Antanas Mockus in Bogotá
and Sergio Fajardo in Medellín, when they propose not only physical inter-
ventions, but systematically invoke the necessity of transparent, equal and
respectful forms of social regulation.
In Medellín, the quality of democracy has been changing since 2004 as
a result of the deeper penetration of institutions, and the way the residents
of these popular neighbourhoods relate to them. Both the national and the
local reforms have played a fundamental role in advancing formal and sub-
stantive aspects of equality. Electoral participation is likely to increase with
improvements in education. In Medellín, only 41 per cent of those with the
lowest education levels vote, against 77 per cent of those with the highest
education levels. It may come as a surprise that a 2008 survey shows that
72 per cent of those living in Comunas 1–4 (among the poorest of the city)
do not consider themselves ‘excluded’. Popular neighbourhoods still have
the highest concentrations of poverty and lowest quality of life indicators, but
in 2008 only Comunas 1 and 2 formally qualified as homogenously ‘low’ in
terms of socio-economic strata; Comunas 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 13 and 15 qualified as
mixed ‘low’ and ‘medium’; the others as mixed ‘low’, ‘medium’ and ‘high’.
In the ‘low’ strata, 56 per cent had cable television, 19 per cent owned a
computer and 11 per cent had the Internet (versus 70 per cent for ‘medium’
and 92 per cent for ‘high’ social strata).
Social belonging certainly also develops better in a less violent and further
democratically regulated situation. The fact that both the Colombian regime
and its way of governing are democratic does not mean that all spheres of
society are democratically regulated. The porous boundaries between the
legal and the illegal may have diminished somewhat, but they continue to
be an inherent part of the everyday experiences in these neighbourhoods.
Dwellers still have to manage a lot of ‘grey areas’ of social regulation, although
degrees differ among neighbourhoods, depending on the role specific legal
and illegal agencies play there, and the style and quality of neighbourhood
leadership. Somewhat paradoxically, this may also explain ongoing distrust
towards (reform) politics. Dwellers have been able to use a mix of legal and
illegal practices to advance their interests, as elites did in their own way. In
the informal neighbourhoods of Medellín, deepening citizenship in its politi-
cal, social and civic dimensions is not a linear process, but rather is expanding
and eroding under the influence of a variety of aspects, including crime, inse-
curity and fear (Holston 2008: 317; but ‘insurgence of a new formulation of
citizenship’ would overstate our case). The historically complex ‘regulating’
role played by violence in this context continues to pose challenges. After
the collective extradition in March 2008 of a dozen of the country’s most
prominent narco-paramilitary crime lords, including Medellín’s Don Berna,
turmoil in the underworld for control over cocaine trafficking and other
criminal markets provoked a new cycle of violence in the city (2008–11).
Murders tripled from 804 (2007) to 2187 (2010). It brought the homicide
rate back to where it was in 2003 – before social urbanism took off – and
stunned local authorities, because among the most impacted neighbour-
hoods were some that had already completed a PUI treatment, or other
ambitious interventions (G. Martin 2012).
Contrary to the reductionist and absurd (but not seldom repeated) inter-
pretation that qualifies Fajardo’s reform policies as ‘paramilitary modern-
ization’ – a term coined by F. Hylton (2010), who contrary to all evidence
considers that Fajardo and Salazar plotted the city’s pacification with Don
Berna – the new crime spike revealed that organized crime and criminal gangs
continue to have great capacity to operate in the city. It also made it clear
that some social urbanism apologetics had slipped into overly simplistic inter-
pretations (‘Medellín fights crime with architecture’). Mayor Salazar rightly
concluded that while the responsibility for the new crisis was mostly national
– he identified a corrupt and malfunctioning criminal justice system as the
main culprit – the city should develop its own anti-organized crime agenda
and lobby harder for national support. The newly elected President Juan
Manuel Santos (since 2010), Uribe’s former Secretary of Defence, has taken
such requests seriously and defined a series of measures after a thorough
assessment of the situation on the ground.
Today, more than at any time before in the last fifty years, public tolerance
of the use of violence seems to be withering. National and local victim-ori-
ented reparation and reconciliation policies and programmes (since 2005),
including the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation
(CNRR), have been fundamental to this. Medellín’s Museo Casa de la
Memoria (Memory House Museum), inaugurated in 2014, plays a critical
role in this field. Increased institutional proximity and respect, especially as
related to victims, does not imply that social, income or wealth distances
have been shortened. Neither have traditional politicians given up hope to
regain control of the city administration. (The case of Bogotá, where reform
has lost momentum since 2004, reminds us that periods of spectacular urban
innovation can rather abruptly come to an end.) Another risk factor is that
Colombia has experienced, over the last decade, a period of very healthy
macro-economic growth that has facilitated, under slowing demographic
growth, a widening of the middle class and a wide range of social support
programmes. Therefore, the quality of life improvement in Medellín over
the last decade cannot be exclusively attributed to the impact of the social
urbanism. Economically more challenging times may arrive. Only then will
we know how resilient the city has become.
Final Considerations
This chapter reconstructed the dynamics of belonging, as experienced in

popular neighbourhoods in Medellín, under complex conditions of both vio-
lence and reform. While other cities in Colombia and elsewhere in the region
sometimes seem to pursue similar types of reform, the Medellín experience
differs because strong criminal networks have played an extremely violent and
destructive part in the city’s social regulation over three decades. Its experi-
ence is also different from a series of European cities, where hope has been
invested in deregulation and DIY practices to promote citizen involvement
and belonging. However, while Medellín shares these latter ideals, social
urbanism is not about deregulation; on the contrary it’s about introducing
new forms of regulation and formality in a city where 70 per cent of the
existing constructions are of informal origin and not by choice, but by sheer
necessity.24
We have shown that the concept of belonging has an evidently heuris-
tic value in exploring the multidimensional implications of urban reform
processes for those who live them most intensively. Belonging steers away
from false dichotomies as inclusion-exclusion, and has a more dynamic con-
notation than identity, a concept that is not well suited to apply in these
neighbourhoods, where less than collective identity we find sentiments
of identification and feelings of belonging. It permits us to explore how
urban reform can strengthen belonging in certain directions and weaken it
in others, or do nothing at all. In the case of Medellín, the concept helps to
explain why residents of neighbourhoods affected by the reforms frequently
offer a much more fragmented narrative of the impact on their way of life
than one might expect, given the robust evidence of improved quality of
life and better public service delivery.25 Further empirical research on the
physical, social and political dimensions of belonging is needed, and could be
best performed by interdisciplinary teams, including historians of urbanism,
political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists (for
a good example, see Crimson Architecture Historians and Rottenberg 2007).
Longitudinal research that follows a series of families over time, and through
reform processes, would also be particularly insightful.26
Notes
1. The word ‘modernist’ here refers to modern planning methods and design practices as (to a
large extent) imported from the West, more specifically from the United States since 1945.
2. For example, Almere, the Dutch top-down new town par excellence, built in the 1970s, is
now a testing ground for deregulation and ‘informalization’ tendencies, with citizen input
in urban planning as an integral part of urban policies (cf. INTI [eds], 2012).
3. Even within a single ‘informal’ neighbourhood, one can find partially planned, invasion-based
or mixed forms.
4. Some of these local advocates of modern city planning, in particular Ricardo Olano, were
well informed about the ideas of Camillo Sitte, Ebenezer Howard and the International
Town Planning Conference in London (1910), where architects – including some from
Latin America, but none from Colombia, as far as we know – met and discussed the future
of the city.
5. According to De Solà Morales the motivation of ‘clear distinction of the public domain with
regard to the private one [in order to] increase and to improve the public as superior to the
private’ is rooted in twentieth-century ideal models of a balanced city as target) and munic-
ipalisation as instrument. He describes the latter as ‘the ideological pillars of all progressive
city-planning policy’ (2009: 85–92).
6. State modernization stalled for mainly political reasons; see Bushnell 1993, and Pécaut 2012
[1987].
7. Karl Brunner (1887–1960) worked for several Latin American governments and cities,
including Bogotá and Medellín; cf. Hofer 2003.
8. Brunner, with his respect for context, was sidelined in the 1940s by local acolytes of CIAM
and by Le Corbusier, who was asked to make a plan for Bogotá (1947) and proposed
Wiener and Sert for the Medellín job. At that time, the Catalan Sert was general secretary
of the CIAM movement and, with the well-connected Wiener, he worked on city plans for
Bogotá, Chimbote, Lima and Havana, among others, and designed the Brazilian new town
Cidade dos Motores.
9. This discourse only changed from the mid 1990s onwards, partly as a result of the Habitat
II conference in Istanbul (1996); cf. Segre 2010: 165.
10. All empirical observations throughout this chapter derive from fieldwork by Gerard Martin
in Medellín (1985; 1991–93; 1998; 2002; 2008–12), and by Marijke Martin in 2008. See
G. Martin (2012) and G. Martin and Corrales (2009).
11. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels defined lumpen (from the German for ‘rag’) as a class of
unemployed that gains its subsistence mainly from crime, lacking class-consciousness and to
be ‘distrusted’ as ‘social scum’.
12. No Nacimos Pa’Semilla (published in English as Born to Die in Medellín, with an introduc-
tion by Colin Harding. London: Latin American Bureau, 1990) revealed the day-to-day
lifestyle of these gangs, and shocked the country into awareness. It was written by a young
journalist, Alonso Salazar, who would go on to become the second ‘social urbanism’ mayor
of Medellín (2008–11), after Sergio Fajardo.
13. Plaza de las Luces (with the new EPM library), Plaza de los Pies Descalzos, Parque San
Antonio and Plaza de los Deseos (with the new music hall). The latter square, built on
the imaginary frontier between the north (poor) and the south (rich), was an immedi-
ate hit with neighbouring families of the poor Moravia and Manrique neighbourhoods
(Comuna 4).
14. Presidents were Ernesto Samper (1994–98) and Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002); the latter’s
peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) failed, but he was
successful in creating Plan Colombia with the U.S. Bill Clinton administration.
15. ISVIMED was created in 2008 by the second reform-oriented mayor Alonso Salazar. From
1990 to 2007, the city co-funded about 11,000 public housing solutions, versus 16,500 over
the 2008–11 period (including 2,800 for the families who were removed from the landfill in
Moravia). About 70 per cent were built directly by the city, and the rest under arrangements
with thirteen private construction firms, all working either within the various PUI, or within
the master plan for the Nuevo Occidente on the periphery of the city (just above the frontier
between Comunas 7 and 13), with some 15,000 low income housing units built (2004–11).
16. Rotterdam-based Crimson Architecture Historians, from a similar starting point of respect
for existing urban life in the suburb Hoogvliet – where they were invited to intervene –
applied a social survey to assess its various layers of reality, instead of simply returning to
the original planned idea. Feelings of belonging and identity were stimulated by the inter-
vention strategy ‘Welcome In My Backyard’ (WIMBY) (Crimson 2007). The labelling of
Medellín as ‘la más educada’ can be understood as a similar effort to promote belonging.
17. In Europe and the United States, an ‘integrated’ or ‘holistic’ approach to urban issues –
comprising the physical, economic and social dimensions of urban development – was
developed at the beginning of the 1990s. Stakeholders in the Medellín resurrection
process, however, point to the lessons learned from post-Franco Barcelona’s urban revival,
in direct personal contact with influential thinkers and architects such as Oriol Bohigas,
Joan Busquets and Manuel de Solà-Morales. More generally speaking, they also refer to the
effects of the ‘rediscovery’ of the city as a long-term physical and mental construct (with
influential key players such as Aldo Rossi, Kevin Lynch and Joseph Paul Kleihues).The
Bogotá revival (1995–2003) mirrored similar influences (M. Martin 2006 and 2007).
18. Alejandro Echeverri, in an interview with Marijke Martin, Medellín, June 2008.
20. Reijndorp’s (2004: 205) use of informal ‘anti-structure’ and formal ‘structure’, pro-
viding double meaning, does not apply in this case, given the historic dependency and
intermingling of formal and informal. Recently, it is exactly this mingling of the formal and
non-formal (both as a tradition and a strategy) that has been put forward as a lesson to be
learned from (mostly) non-Western urban practices (Brillembourg, Feireiss and Klempner
2005; Hernández, Kellett and Allen 2010).
21. Prestigious institutions, such as UN Habitat, The World Bank, The Inter-American
Development Bank, United States Agency for International Development (USAID),
Agence Française de Développement (AFD), international biennales for architecture and
urbanism, as well as mayors and experts from Rio de Janeiro, Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana,
Johannesburg and others who identify with Medellín’s struggle, have in various ways all
lauded the Medellín model.
22. This also includes long-term, more general visions; e.g. the new Directory Plan for Medellín
2030 wants to make it a fair city (in terms of equality), a city of well-being (‘providing the
basics for good living’), a city of knowledge (education as the most expeditious way to
open doors to equal opportunities), a city of gathering (in terms of enhancing trust and
coexistence) and a safe city (as well as a green, entrepreneurial and global city) (Valencia and
Rodríguez 2011: 18–36).
23. ‘Canales formales de participación no sirven, según el 73 por ciento de los residentes’
(Alvarez et al. 2010).
24. The influence of Barcelona’s school of urbanism (Oriol Bohigas, Manuel de Solà-Morales,
etc.) is evident.
25. Promoting moral, social and civic regulation was the cornerstone of the civic culture
approach pursued by mayor Antanas Mockus of Bogotá (1995–97; 2001–03) in order to
get the city back under control.
26. Evaluations of neighbours’ experiences with the reforms have overly focused on their spatial
dimension.
27. Here, Perlman (2010) can serve as an example.
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Part II
Family and Belonging in
Consolidated Settlements
3
Debe Ser Esfuerzo Propio
Aspirations and Belongings of the Young Generation in
the Old Barriadas of Southern Lima, Peru
Michaela Hordijk
Because the architecture of the barriada is built on a system, it can

respond to changing demands and it places itself in the hand of the user
– it is a vehicle that he can drive in many alternative and unforeseeable
directions … and offers the owners an excellent anchor for hope.
— J. Turner 1967
The squatter settlement is a ‘process of social reconstruction through

popular initiative’.
— W. Mangin 1967
For decades, access to housing through self-help (aided or not) has been
the norm for many poor urban households in Latin America, resulting in 10 to
60 per cent of the built-up area in Latin American cities being constructed
in this manner through the 1980s (Gilbert 1996, cited in Ward 2011: 467).
Whether the resulting settlements were a problem or a solution, or both,
has been a topic of intense debate for numerous years. One of the most
famous examples of the low-income neighbourhood as a problem is cited
in Oscar Lewis’s ‘Culture of Poverty’ (1959, 1966), in which he depicts
Mexican and Puerto Rican inner-city tenements as ‘slums of despair’, where
development stagnates because of the reproduction of multiple deprivations
over generations. The squatter settlement as a process of social reconstruc-
tion, as the American anthropologist William Mangin (1967) defined it,
would thus reproduce this culture of poverty and its material consequences
according to Lewis. The title of Mangin’s 1967 essay, however, already indi-
cates a more nuanced view: ‘Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem
and a Solution’ (emphasis mine). A number of scholars who responded to
Lewis casting squatter settlements as ‘slums of hope’ did so based on the
analysis of the peripheral squatter settlements in Peru.
The most famous promoter of ‘aided self-help’ – the English archi-
tect John Turner – based his faith in its potential on his experi-
ences in Peru, working together with, inter alia, the Peruvian scholar
– 81 –
82 | Micha el a Hord i jk
José Matos Mar and Mangin. This led to a series of publications docu-
menting the first phases of a consolidation process, with clear elements
of gradual improvement over time (Turner 1967 and 1977; Turner and
Fichter 1972; Matos Mar 1977; Lloyd 1980; Lobo 1981; Skinner 1982).
The title of one of Turner’s most well-known articles on the subject, ‘The
Squatter Settlement: Architecture That Works’ (Turner 1967), exemplifies
this positive tone. In this article he presents a model for progressive develop-
ment of these settlements, in which he predicted that it would take a squatter
settlement – or barriada as they are normally called in Peru – an average of
ten to twelve years to develop from ‘incipient’ to ‘completing’ (see Table
3.1).1 Turner described the strength and potential of the social environment
in the squatter settlements as being determined by ‘the homogeneity of pur-
pose’ (all have moved to the periphery to build a home of their own), paired
with ‘maintaining the social heterogeneity vital for cultural stimulation and
growth’ (Turner 1967: 357).
Table 3.1 summarizes the major physical changes in houses and
settlements, which at the same time are a reflection of economic and

social diversification. There is a clear improvement in the quality of both
housing and basic infrastructure. In his model of progressive development,
Turner also already predicts a densification (through subdivisions of the plots
and subdivisions and/or subletting of the dwellings) and a diversification of
economic a ctivities (see column 3 in Table 3.1). In his view, the densification
is the result of the barriada’s capacity ‘to adapt to the barriada owners’ chang-
ing housing demands’. He considers the diversification to be positive because
‘the wider the range of its members, the better served the community, and
the greater the opportunities of those who most need them’ (Turner 1967:
357).2 Turner thus expected positive social effects from social heterogeneity.
It is the ‘homogeneity of purpose’ that converts the sum of self-help builders
in a certain neighbourhood into a community, simply defined as ‘a set of
people with some kind of shared element’ (Obst and White 2007: 77). A
community can be bound by a ‘sense of community’.
Drawing on McMillan and Chavis’s classic study (1986), Obst and White
define the (psychological) sense of community as:
– the feeling of belonging and identification, of being a part of a

community;
– a shared emotional connection that is based on a sense of shared history
and identification with the community; refers to the bonds developed
over time;
– integration and fulfilment of both individual and community needs;
– this assumes some commonality in needs, goals and values; it is the par-
allel satisfaction of both individual and collective needs that permits an
D eb e S er E s f u er z o P r o p i o | 83
Table 3.1 Squatter settlement: Progressive development

Incipient (1–2 years) Developing (4–5 years) Completing
(10–12 years)
Layout 60m2–400m2 plots per Subdivision of
family. Land reserved plots, increased
for community facilities densities.
Development
of fringes of
settlements on less
suitable sites
Houses Straw huts, some Ground floor with shell Ground floor
permanent structures of permanent material, complete with
temporary roof permanent roof,
second floor
started, subdivision
or subletting
Public utilities Water drums, kerosene Stand pipes, local Mains water, mains
candles electricity generators electricity, sewers
Community Market, stalls, bars, Artisan workshops, TV- Banks, cinemas,
facilities primary schools, cinemas, parish centres, restaurants,
chapels medical facilities for specialty stores,
visiting doctors and small industries:
dentists furniture, shoes,
tricycles, ironwork,
clinics
Communications Public buses, Consolidated roads, Better buses,
communal taxis, thus better bus services public telephones,
dust roads post office,
surfaced roads
Source: Turner 1967: 358 as summarized in Chambers 2005: 211
individual to experience his or her own relationship with the collective

process (García, Giuliani and Wiesenfeld 1999: 731);
– a mutual influence of the individual members over the community and
vice versa – the mobilization of this process must be done through the
participation that people have in community life (Garcia et al. 1999:
731; Obst and White 2007: 78).
Given that the first wave of land invasions and self-help housing in Latin
American cities took place in the 1950s and 1960s, many of these squatter
settlements have now developed well beyond Turner’s ‘completing’ phase.
Since the mid 2000s, a number of studies describing the situation in the con-
solidated slums of Latin American cities have appeared, of which the study
by Perlman (2010) is probably the most well known. Both Perlman (2010)
and Moser – in her longitudinal studies (2009) – document the trajectories
of settlements in Rio de Janeiro and Guayaquil, respectively, from their early
invasion until what Turner labelled ‘completing’ (Turner 1967). They docu-
ment similar trends: a gradual improvement of material wealth paralleled with
deterioration of the social environment.
The second and third generations in Rio’s favelas are better
educated, healthier and live in better material circumstances than their

parents and g randparents did when they started their families thirty years
ago. Yet, in terms of mental health and future prospects, the younger
generation in Rio de Janeiro is worse off. Perlman documents unem-

ployment, level of education and the (lack of) perspective of accessing
jobs that meet their aspirations, which leads to anger and frustration.
Escalating violence – often drug related – seriously disrupts social relation-
ships in the settlements and adds to the sense of insecurity and hopeless-
ness (Perlman 2003, and 2010). Ward (2001) described similar trends, as
follows:
The “stock” of self-help settlements that were created between the mid-
1950s and the middle 1970s, and which were successfully “consolidated”
[improved] are now under intense pressure socially, and have become
severely distressed physically. If these were rarely the slums of which they
were often falsely accused in the past, today they are in danger of fast
becoming the slums of the future. (Ward 2001: 2)
One of the reasons for this decay is that the dwellings constructed gradually
through self-help and at low costs never respected any building or safety
regulations, especially when second or third floors were built – this can lead
to unsafe buildings that are also insufficiently maintained. Ward observed the
densification that Turner had envisaged, accompanied by social stratification,
increasing heterogeneity in terms of owners, sharers and renters, and an
increasing mix in land use. These substantial changes in the former squatter
settlements call for a third generation of housing policies, Ward argues, fol-
lowing a first generation of support for self-help through urban projects and
support for the installation of services (instead of evictions), and a second
wave of supportive policies that focus on strengthening land markets and
local institutional capacity (Ward 2001; Ward et al. 2011).3 Ward and his
research team hypothesized that the second and third generations living in
(former) squatter settlements are less inclined to invade than their parents
were, yet are more likely to search for housing opportunities in the neigh-
bourhood where they grew up, to stay close to family and friends. Most often
they will stay on the plot of their parents, because other housing option are
unaffordable. Only the better-off children are expected to move out (Ward
et al. 2015: 295).
This chapter wishes to contribute to this debate with a specific focus on
the housing needs of the second generation in consolidated squatter settle-
ments in Lima. Similar to the studies by Perlman (2010) and Moser (2009),
the Limeñan second generation is also better educated and has more access
to health care than their parents had in their family-forming phase (Olthoff
2006; Hordijk 2010). But more importantly, this second generation has
grown up in a fundamentally different world. Anderson goes so far as to
state that, as a result of the confluence of modernization and globalization
processes, it is as if the first and second generations – physically living in the
same settlement – mentally live in ‘two totally different worlds, where chil-
dren do not recognise themselves in their parents’ struggle’ (Anderson cited
in Olthoff 2006: 98). Thus whereas this second generation certainly shares
the history of the settlement with their parents (mentioned as an element
that constitutes community belonging), there are good reasons to question
whether or not they still share the original purpose (commonality of needs,
goals) and values. This leads to the question: to what extent does the con-
solidated barriada meet the individual and collective needs of the first and
second generations, and how does the interaction with their direct living
environment shape their sense of community?
Methodology
This chapter is based on a longitudinal study comparing household assets and

neighbourhood dynamics in Pampas de San Juan in 1997, with the situation
encountered in 2010. Pampas de San Juan is situated quite centrally in Lima’s
so-called Southern Cone, an assembly of peripheral settlements that is home
to approximately 1.3 million inhabitants, or 15 per cent of Lima’s population.
The district San Juan de Miraflores had 362,643 inhabitants according to the
2007 census. Around 60,000 of them live in Pampas de San Juan. The centre
of the district, Ciudad de Dios, was the result of the first substantial land inva-
sion in peripheral Lima, and figured prominently in Matos Mar’s historical
account of Lima’s barriadas (Matos Mar 1977). In 1971, a second massive
invasion took place adjacent to Ciudad de Dios, known as El Pamplonazo
(Rodriguez, Riofrío and Welsh 1973). The area of Pampas de San Juan filled
in more gradually from the mid 1970s onwards, mainly with young couples
in their family-forming phase. In 1997 a survey was held among 400 house-
holds,4 representative of neighbourhoods of varying levels of consolidation.
These surveys were complemented with numerous interviews and a series of
participatory workshops on neighbourhood improvement (Hordijk 1999,
2000). One series of these workshops was conducted with a youth group
called La Nueva Generación, and resulted in the construction of a park. In
2010, 224 of the households surveyed in 1997 were willing to participate in
a retake of the original survey.5 The survey was complemented with a series
of interviews with residents (both founding members and their adult chil-
dren) and neighbourhood leaders; two workshops with founding members
of the settlements; and two workshops with the second generation pobladores
(barriada inhabitants) (one with teenagers, the second with young adults in
the family-forming phase). This chapter furthermore draws on the work of
Plyushteva (2009), who interviewed forty-six young adults from the second
generation in Pampas, explicitly contrasting their situation with the situa-
tion of their parents (Plyushteva 2009, 2012),6 and on the work of Arends
(2012), who studied a group of youngsters in one of the neighbourhoods in
Pampas in greater depth. In contrast to the studies by Moser, Perlman and
Ward and his team, this study covers only two generations, namely the orig-
inal invaders and their children. Many of this second generation have their
own families by now, but most of their children – the third generation – are
still very young.
In the 1996 to 2010 period, Peru witnessed a number of important
changes. The first years, 1996–2000, more or less covered the period of
President Alberto Fujimori’s second term, which was the most authoritar-
ian period of his demo-dictadura (illiberal democracy). Although macro-
economic growth rates were already improving, the consequences of the
1980s economic crisis and the ‘Fuji shock’ (one of the most severe stabi-
lization programmes on the continent) were strongly felt in the peripheral
settlements. After the return to democracy in 2000, the Peruvian economy
entered a phase of dynamic growth at an average of 6 to 7 per cent per
annum, ending 2010 with a growth rate of 8.7 per cent. Although much of
this growth is attributed to escalating profits of the mining sector (jobless
growth), unemployment rates in Peru are at an all-time low of 7.1 per cent7
and average real incomes have grown substantially (Baduel and Quenan
2011). Pampas’s inhabitants profited from the boom in the construction
sector. Poverty has dropped considerably for Peru as a whole, but the most
significant drop in poverty levels was reported in Lima Metropolitana (World
Bank 2008). In the same decade, however, the Gini coefficient rose from
0.462 in 1996 to 0.505 in 2007 (Baduel and Quenan 2011), although it was
reported to have returned at 0.46 in 2010.8 Poverty levels in the district as a
whole were estimated at 19.7 per cent in 2009, San Juan therefore fared best
among its peers in the Cono Sur, with Villa El Salvador at 25.9 per cent and
Villa Maria del Triunfo at 21.1 per cent.9 We can thus conclude that, in terms
of economic and employment opportunities, it was a favourable environment
for Pampas inhabitants and their children.
From Incipient to Completing: Barriada Consolidation

1996–2010
For many years Pampas de San Juan had remained untouched, since the land
was known to be privately owned. But when rumours started to spread in the
1980s that ownership of the land had reverted to the state, the area rapidly
filled up. Five years on, and under a lucky star, more than 8,000 families
had established themselves on a plot. In 1984, Alfonso Barrantes became
the first left-wing mayor ever elected in Latin America. To bring the massive
land speculations in the mushrooming barriadas to a halt, he launched four
programmes to regularize land tenure, followed by the installation of basic
services. One of the programmes comprising first and second generation
housing policies targeted and benefited Pampas de San Juan. Whereas nor-
mally it could easily take a decade or more to regularize land tenure, and
even with the entitlement to start negotiations with all entities responsible
for basic service provision, it took the invaders of Pampas de San Juan of that
era on average of ‘only’ four years. Nevertheless, the first decade was harsh.
As one of the invaders remembered:
Figure 3.1 Neighbourhood consolidation and new fences in Trebol Azul – Pampas
de San Juan (Lima). Photo by the author.
In the first years the water vendors did not come to our outskirts. They
could not come, even if they wanted to, because there was no road. There
just was a trail in the loose sand – that was all. So, I had to go all the way to
Ciudad de Dios, to fetch water at my father’s house. I constructed a barrow
with wooden wheels; you could always hear me coming with the buckets of
water, thumping over the stony road – four/five kilometres up and down.
We all had to find our own way to get water. It took a very long time until
we got even public taps installed here. And it was dangerous here. There
were fights over the boundaries of our settlement, other settlements felt
threatened. So they started to throw stones at us. Things got worse week
after week, and they finally came to burn down our shacks. Our eldest son
had just been born; I could not leave my wife alone, not even during the
day. (Interview with Alfredo in 1997)
Most invaders arriving in Pampas in the 1980s came from other parts of
Lima. The majority had been born outside Lima, but had moved with their
parents when still in their childhood and had grown up in the city. They
invaded land to obtain a house for themselves and for their children. By
the end of the 1980s, the more convenient, relatively flat areas of Pampas
had filled up. The first part of the 1990s was characterized by a set of much
smaller invasions on the steep slopes, which were unsuitable for urbanization.
The granting of the individual land titles in 1985 had boosted develop-
ment in Pampas, neatly in line with Turner’s model and a realization of what
the right-wing politician Pedro Gerardo Beltran had envisaged as ‘the cheap
house that grows’ (‘la casa barata que crece’) (Hordijk 2000). By 1997,
most settlements could be classified as ‘developing but reaching completion’.
More than 40 per cent of the households had built their first floor from dura-
ble materials, although still with a temporary roof. Another third had already
completed their concrete roof, and 10 per cent even had a second floor of
durable materials. Over 80 per cent had a domestic drinking water connec-
tion, and over 70 per cent had a private toilet. The scarcity and the quality
of drinking water were nevertheless considered the most pressing problem in
the sector at that time. Water ran from the tap only twice a week for around
six hours, and had to be stored in water tanks whose quality had rapidly
deteriorated. The major roads were paved, and the area was packed with
innumerable small shops (many with public phones), services and restaurants.
There were also a number of informal markets, some of which offered cloth-
ing and household utensils. Along the major road many small workshops
were established. One of the distinguishing functions of Turner’s classifica-
tion, however, was saliently missing: the banks. In those days banks required
an initial deposit of U.S. $500 to open a bank account, a sum out of reach for
most inhabitants. For cinemas, the pobladores had to go to Ciudad de Dios,
a few bus stops down the main road. Only the small new settlements founded
Figure 3.2 Professional services now on offer in Trebol Azul – Pampas de San Juan
(Lima). Photo by the author.
after 1990 – some of them in the fringes or open spaces of older settlements,
as Turner predicted – were still in their ‘incipient phase’, with precarious
buildings and unpaved, unofficial roads. For their water they depended on
private trucks, public tap points or a water tank from SEDAPAL (Servicio de
Agua Potable y Alcantarillado). What most people had in common was that
they considered themselves owners of their plots and their houses, including
those without legal tenure. An important detail for the subject of this study
was the following: in 1997 80 per cent of the families in Pampas were nuclear
families, the majority of which comprised children under sixteen years of age.
Around two thirds of the male breadwinners worked in the informal sector;
over 60 per cent of their spouses stayed at home.
Many of the households revisited in 2010 have been able to realize at least
part of the potential Turner predicted for them. Almost two thirds of the
respondents in 1997 indicated that they expected to be able to improve their
houses in the near future; in 2010 more than 70 per cent of the respondents
had improved their houses, and more than half of them did so to be able to
house their children. Consequently, half of the households were extended
families in 2010, most of them consisting of three generations (original
invaders, their children and grandchildren). In Peru one can subdivide the
Table 3.2 Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010

1997 2010
Straw or wood 32.5 % 8.8 %
Brick, one floor, no concrete roof 36.1 % 16.1 %
Brick, one floor, concrete roof 22.9 % 22.6 %
Brick, two floors, no concrete roof 8.5 % 25.8 %
Brick, two floors, concrete roof or more n.a. 26.7 %
Domestic water connection 71.6 % 98.6 %
(n=388) (n=217)
Source: author’s surveys 1997 and 2010
plot, but also opt to formalize the subdivision of the different floors; only
11 per cent of the respondents indicated that they had subdivided (either
horizontally or vertically) and that there were now two or more owners on
the original plot. This implies that, in most cases, the households of differ-
ent generations shared the original dwelling, where additional rooms had
been constructed. This is very much in line with census data for a similar
period. Comparing the data of the 1993 and 2007 national censuses shows
an overall population increase of 40 per cent in Pampas, and an increase of
24 per cent of the number of dwellings (from 9,235 to 11,488 dwellings).
Average household size in the intercensal period has grown from to 4.6 to
7.6 persons per dwelling; consequently, densities increased from an average
of 279 per hectare in 1993 to 449 in 2007.10 The quality of these houses
had improved (less than 10 per cent were still made from straw or wood)
and almost all had a domestic water connection, now with regular service
(see Table 3.2).
Although only 2 per cent of the respondents in 2010 reported that they
had constructed to create a workspace or shop, we registered economic
activities in almost 20 per cent of the houses. Over half of these were based
on either renting out spaces to tenants or renting for economic activities or
storage.11 This has also led to the economic diversification Turner predicted,
but in this respect it went even beyond what he had foreseen. One of the
mushrooming new home-based, small-scale economic enterprises were the
Internet cabins, of which there were one or two in almost every ‘completing’
settlement. Another omnipresent building was the small-scale private pri-
mary school. An interesting phenomenon was that Peru’s most conservative
Bank – Banco de Crédito – had opened service points in many small shops
across Pampas. The bank no longer required an initial deposit to open an
account, bringing the service into the reach of the pobladores. Most special
services Turner mentioned for the ‘completing’ barriada (small industries,
restaurants, ironwork, etc.) were already there in the mid 1990s, but the
economy grew and economic diversity increased in the years thereafter. In
2010, the so-called ‘hostels’ (where rooms can be rented per hour) had
proliferated and now also offered fitness facilities and a Jacuzzi. A number
of professionals such as bookkeepers, notaries and lawyers had opened their
offices in Pampas de San Juan as well. The settlements thus offered much
more now than only the daily basics.
The younger settlements on the slopes had also reached Turner’s phase of
‘completion’: most houses were built with durable materials, many already
with a second floor, and with a connection to basic services. The main roads
were paved, and formerly inaccessible hills now had concrete staircases thanks
to a recent government programme. There was one small new invasion (24
houses) on a former community landfill, which remained in the incipient
phase. Six of the shacks belonged to the second generation from Pampas;
all others were inhabited by people coming from other parts of Lima. This
exemplified the general trend in invasions becoming smaller and smaller, on
evermore inaccessible and inadequate lands (Barreda and Ramírez 2004).
While there was low-value desert land in abundance in Turner’s times, land
suitable for invasion has become increasingly scarce nowadays. The topogra-
phy of the steep Andean foothills form a natural barrier to further horizontal
growth, so there is literally little land left to invade. Also the legal framework
has been tightened – since 2004, ‘invasion’ is considered a criminal offence.12
Although invading lands had always been prohibited de jure (each new law
on the barriadas regulated the situation in the old ones, but prohibited new
ones), this was a rupture with the earlier ‘laissez-faire’ or even supportive
policies of the Peruvian state. The changing climate was echoed by many of
the respondents I revisited in 2010, who told me that ‘invasion was no longer
allowed’, and violent evictions do indeed take place nowadays.13
Collective Action and the Sense of Community

Among the Invaders From 1996 to 2010
The dire need for collective action in Peruvian barriada consolidation

strongly fosters the ‘sense of community’. Forty years of barriada forma-
tion had resulted in an institutionalized interaction between the invaders
and the state. To be successful as invaders, new settlers had to organize
and form a neighbourhood organization. All households had to register as
members of this organization and elect their neighbourhood leaders, who
then had to register the organization and their leadership at the municipal-
ity. In the early years of invasion, neighbourhood assemblies were held every
fortnight or month, households were obliged to send a member (the plot
owner or spouse) to the assemblies, and the assemblies had to send members
to the faenas (communal work days) that were organized to open up roads,
dig the ditches for the waterworks or clean up the neighbourhood (Hordijk
2000).
Neighbourhood consolidation thus inevitably required a phase of col-
lective action or, in the words of Riofrio, there is a collective phase prior
to individual activities and necessary for individual initiatives.14 Thus in the
survey held in 1996 over half of the respondents indicated that at least one
household member had participated in opening up and levelling the roads in
the early years after the invasion, a quarter participated in the construction of
the w aterworks, over three quarters had participated in clean up campaigns,
and most of them had done so even recently (Hordijk 2000). Through this
phase of collective action they created a sense of shared history, which they
were proud to share with me as a researcher.
The incremental success in improving the neighbourhood did serve indi-
vidual needs and community needs (for security of tenure and basic ser-
vices) simultaneously. Through their participation in the neighbourhood
assemblies, people were able to influence decisions about their direct living
environment. A set of informal and formal rules developed and guided com-
munity life, and there certainly was quite a level of social control in the early
days of barriada formation. People could thus influence the community and
vice versa. This resulted is a strong feeling of belonging to the house and the
neighbourhood – over three quarters of the respondents indicated that they
would never move.
You know, I have worked so hard for this plot, it is really mine now. My
husband suggested that we should move; it seems if we will never get our
title to the plot, but I refused. He did not work on the plot as I did – so
many afternoons hacking the rocks. Now that I have made it my own, I
want to stay. (Graciela, in an interview in 1996)
Yet, already in the mid 1990s changes in this feeling of belonging could be
noticed. In the more consolidated settlements the direct need for collective
action was less pressing, since the title was secured and the major infrastruc-
ture was installed. After years of collective action, people now started to
concentrate on individual home improvement. This resulted in construction
waste lying everywhere, which in turn rendered the regularly held clean-up
campaigns a useless effort. What once had been public space reserved for
parks now turned in to no man’s land.
We once had a park here, a park we made ourselves. We thought we would

make a real green settlement … But now it is a horrible spot. They come
here at night and smoke. People lost interest. When they first started to
dump their waste, we still protested. We were able to defend the park. But
when more and more people start to dump their waste in the park, what
can you do. We lost social control, and it is very difficult to defend a park
on your own. (Aurelia [in her mid 30s], in 1997)
This experience of losing social control surfaced in quite a few interviews in

the mid 1990s. People had romantic memories of the past, when there was
more togetherness, and blamed the neighbourhood councils for inactivity.
Indeed, in the consolidated settlements many lay dormant, and were even
considered inactive by their own leaders. Yet they were still in existence
and could be activated at any time, and were present in the minds of the
inhabitants (Hordijk 2000).
These tendencies had become much stronger in 2010. The neighbour-
hood organizations still existed in name, and half of the respondents still
knew the name of the neighbourhood leader. More surprisingly, three quar-
ters said that it had been less than two years since they last participated in
a neighbourhood assembly, suggesting some kind of collective activity. An
astonishing 60 per cent claimed that there were still active committees in the
neighbourhood – committees ‘for roads’, for ‘parks’, etc. – but less than 10
per cent indicated that they participated in these committees. In 2010 almost
everyone complained about the lack of activity: ‘they don’t do anything any-
more’, ‘they only fight’. Some respondents even indicated the lack of unity,
the lack of cohesion or the lack of collective activity as the major negative
change over the last decade. Or as Carlos expressed: ‘There is less togeth-
erness now. Before, for fundraisings, for celebrations, if someone was ill, all
the neighbours used to work together to help. We used to be more social.
This community was much more united. As time passed, we became more
individualistic’ (Carlos [27], 2009 in an interview with AP).
Growing Up Urban: Sense of Community Among the

Second Generation
There are a number of strong differences between the first and the second
generation in Pampas. A defining one is that most of the original invaders
migrated to the city in their childhood. Therefore, although they partially
grew up in the city, they still remember the rural villages where they were
born (Hordijk 2000). The second generation was born in the barriadas and
knows no other life than that. A second important difference is the level of
education achieved. Whereas more than a third of the invaders had only
primary education or were even illiterate (3 per cent) and less than 10 per
cent entered tertiary education, more than 20 per cent of the second gener-
ation had followed vocational training and 10 per cent had even studied at
university level. The invaders thus managed to offer their children educational
Table 3.3 Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010

Artefacts 1997 2010
(percentages) (percentages)
TV black and white 64.7 26.9
TV colour 36.2 88.4
Video 8.2 19.5
Cable n.d. 22.8
Telephone, landline 18.7 58.6
Mobile Phone n.d. 81.4
Fridge 44.9 73.0
Car 5.6 16.3
Washing machine n.d. 30.2
Computer n.d. 28.8
Internet at home n.d. 18.3
Source: author’s surveys 1997 and 2010
opportunities. In 2010, almost three quarters of this second generation had

work and 30 per cent of those even received some kind of social benefit.15
There were also clear signs of asset accumulation. A third of the households
in Pampas today own a washing machine and a computer, and almost 20 per
cent even have Internet access (see Table 3.3).
A third distinguishing factor is that, whereas the first generation invaded
to be able to build a home of their own, the second generation mainly stays
with their parents or in-laws (75 per cent). Sixty per cent of the second
generation over sixteen-years-old already had a family of their own. But
even of this group, almost half stayed with their parents and another 30 per
cent stayed with their in-laws. Staying with the parents or in-laws most of
the time meant having a room for their family, sharing the bills and sharing
many of the household assets. The increase in household wealth can there-
fore be partially attributed to the pooling of financial resources, especially
in the case of extended families. Seventy per cent of the respondents indi-
cated that their children financially supported the household. Or as Nora
explained: ‘It has become much easier now, now the children support the
household income. We have more financial leeway now’ (Nora [53], in an
interview in 2010).
This sharing is not always harmonious. Of the younger generation, many
indicated that they had regular fights – an (especially souring) electricity bill
could lead to conflicts, but also (mis)use of washing machines or fridges.
There are two clear correlations: the older the second generation becomes,
the more likely they are to be living away from their parents (in other parts of
Lima, different cities in Peru or even abroad).16 It is also interesting to note
that, although it is true that the older the children get the more likely they are
to move out of their parents’ houses, more than half of the 35–44 age class
Table 3.4 Percentage of second generation and still living with parents, in age
classes (2010)
Age class second generation still living with parents
(percentages) (percentages)
0–16 17.4 (n=108) 95 (n=102)
16–24 38.1 (n=236) 91.1 (n=215)
25–34 32.4 (n=201) 62.2 (n=125)
35–44 10.3 (n=64) 53.1 (n=34)
45–54 1.6 (n=10) 20.0 (n=2)
>55 0.2 (n=1) 0 (n=0)
100 (n=620) 77.5 (n=478)
Source: author’s survey 2010
still live with their parents. Among the 25 per cent of the second generation
that no longer lived with their parents, we see some interesting trends. First
of all, only 7 per cent of them lived on an invaded plot. Most of them were
renting, but 26 per cent even managed to buy a house. When probed, very
few of the second generation could see themselves invading:
Invade? No! No, I do not want that. I can make my own money. It should
stem from your own efforts, you know. (Clara [29], interview 2010)
I feel that if I want something I should work for it. I know there are people
who need to do it, because they will never manage to earn the money to
buy their own piece of land. Yet, for example, in the invasion that took
place here recently,17 those people had houses right next door. It’s not a
necessity. (Carlos [27], 2009 interview with AP)
Invasion, oh no! Way too risky! And you have to work for your house, you
know. You have to save money. If you put all your efforts in, you can, you
know. (José [22], interview in 2010)
Most of the invasions nowadays are very, very far away. In the desert, sand,
sand, heat. There is no water, no light, there is nothing. And to go there,
when I have so much already installed here … I do not think that would
be good for me. If I would go there, I would have to start from scratch
again … I can now work to study… My parents support me at the moment;
I do not work to eat. (Ricardo [20], interview with AP in 2009)
Invasions were not only considered risky and inconvenient, but also an
improper manner to acquire housing. The expression ‘debe ser esfuerzo propio’
(‘it should stem from your own efforts’) was a recurring expression in many
conversations.
For the majority of the second generation the ideal is to buy or rent:
Within a year I will have the initial deposit of U.S. $5000 to buy us a
house. I will buy here in Pinos. This is where all my family lives; I do not
want to move from here. But I definitely want to have a home of my own,
where I feel free to do what I want. I now always have to adjust to my
mother in-law; they never stop complaining about us. That is why we will
move as soon as we can. With a U.S. $5000 deposit and my salary I can get
a loan for around ca. U.S. $50,000, therewith we can buy a good house
here. (Clara [29], interview in 2010)
Some young people indicated they wanted to move to a better place, to

better their lives and that of their children (salir adelante or superar). But of
those aspiring to leave Pampas, many did so because they wanted to live in
a safer neighbourhood. Yet more than half of the young people interviewed
indicated that they wanted to stay in their neighbourhoods, even when
buying or renting. They therefore confirm Ward’s expectation that a substan-
tial part of the second generation wants to stay with their family and friends,
in the familiar environment (Ward et al 2015): ‘I will stay, here is my life, I
was born here’ (Maria [19], interview with AP in 2010). Other respondents
more explicitly expressed their feeling of belonging to Pampas: ‘Here, I will
stay here. This is my place, I feel good, I feel comfortable. I have my space
here, I feel part of this’ (Andrea [28], interview with AP in 2009). ‘I identify
myself with this all, here’ (Silvia [25], interview with AP in 2009).
A feeling of shared history and an emotional connection certainly played
an important role. Many referred to what their parents had gone through to
realize their aspirations; the difficult circumstances they had encountered. ‘I
remember that when I was eight-years-old, my mother carried the water barrels
from downhill. We had light, but in the night it was sometimes completely dark.
Nowadays we have roads’ (Martha [23], interview with AP in 2009). And:
When we started all were poles and straw mats. Little by little, with hard
work, this house has been constructed by my father, mother, my siblings.
We brought the stones from uphill, for example, we all helped. It was a
long process, and we still continue … The best part for me is having my his-
tory here. Seeing the evolution of the place, of a society. It is an emotional
connection. (Carlos [27], interview with AP in 2009)
Plyushteva (2009) labels this cherishing of the heroic past ‘symbolic collec-
tivity’. Collective action has been a formative discourse in their upbringing;
being an offspring of an invader is part of the identity of the second gener-
ation (Plyushteva 2009: 21). The second generation idealizes the past in a
similar manner to their parents: ‘There is less togetherness now. We used
to be more social. This community was much more united. As time passed,
we became more individualistic’ (Carlos [27], interview with AP in 2009).
‘People are more individualistic now. Before people would gather and work
together, even for helping with the construction of each other’s houses’
(Eduardo [22], interview with AP in 2009). But they did not engage in
collective action as their parents did.
There seem to be four main reasons for this lack of interest in join-
ing efforts to further improve their living environment. First of all, it is a
general pattern that collective action diminishes considerably once basic
services have been installed (Schönwälder 2002; Hordijk 2000). As men-
tioned, also among the first generation, participation in collective action
had already declined in the mid 1990s because the major services had been
put into place, despite the fact that there were still committees active in
the settlements (to get the internal roads paved or to construct sidewalks,
for instance). Whereas 10 per cent of the first generation still participated
in these committees, less than 1 per cent indicated that their offspring was
active in them. It was thus quite d ifficult to find young people active in
communal o rganizations. They were very sceptical about the ‘old’ com-
munal organizations. Among the community institutions, the prevailing
opinion among young adults – who witnessed all the troubles and conflicts
of communal action that their parents lived through – gravitated towards
scepticism and indifference: ‘There is a neighbourhood council here, but
it’s not really important. It doesn’t do a nything for the development of the
community’ (Luciano [18], interview with AP in 2009). ‘No, I am not part
of that participatory mood. The first thing I always ask is: okay, how are they
going to share the profits’ (José [22], interview in 2010). ‘To be honest,
being a neighbourhood leader implies a lot of work. And what I don’t like
is that people come with their personal ideas when they are leaders. Here,
in Imperio [a settlement] we have a lot of problems. There are people who
have been elected leaders to look for their personal benefit’ (Gloria [27],
interview with AP in 2009).
But mistrust was not the only reason. Their participation in formal
neighbourhood affairs is also barred by the formal procedures. Quite a number
of neighbourhood organizations have an article in their regulations limiting
the right to vote to the owners of the plot, therewith excluding all members of
the second generation who live with their parents. But even more important
than the lack of the formal vote was the lack of voice they experienced:
Leaders are always older people. If a young person goes to suggest

something, they cut you off straight away. “We are the leaders and we
can decide what to do”… A very important aspect for young people who
organize and take initiative is to feel that what they do works out, is
endorsed, is valued. If not, they will not do it. (Carlos [27], interview with
AP in 2009)
And the classical issues for collective action do not match the needs of the
second generation: ‘The people who take part in the neighbourhood council
are still a bit too focused on things like streets, sidewalks, parks. But this is
not the only thing we need. Nowadays, we are thinking more about culture,
about the community’ (Merly [19], interview with AP in 2009). The integra-
tion and fulfilment of both individual and community needs has simultane-
ously vanished on par with the consolidation process. One of the young adult
respondents even explicitly mentioned this: ‘I think that at a certain moment
all had the same necessity, and all collaborated. But when the needs begin to
vary, individualism starts’ (Carlos [27], interview with AP in 2009).
Among many young people of the second generation, therefore, the feel-
ing of belonging and identification with the settlement in which they grew
up is still there. They romanticize the collective past, and the struggle of their
parents in which they have participated as a child is part of their identity.
Some aspire to a better life elsewhere or to a safer living environment, but
more than half indicated they want to stay in the neighbourhood where they
were born. The shared emotional connection and a sense of shared history
certainly play an important role in this, as do the bonds with family and
friends. As such, the first two dimensions of a sense of community, as defined
by Obst and White (2007), are still present in the second generation. Many
of the second generation have a commonality in their needs and goals: they
aspire to a dwelling of their own, rented or bought. This differs from the
aspirations of the first generation, who aspired to ‘a cheap house that grows’.
The strong emphasis put on the fact that it should be realized through indi-
vidual instead of collective efforts also seems to imply a change in values.
We furthermore concluded that the second generation is both formally and
informally excluded from decision making on neighbourhood affairs. This
undermines the third and fourth dimension of a sense of community as
discussed in this chapter.
Conclusion
The barriadas in Pampas have clearly realized a number of important ambi-

tions of the first generation invaders. They have been able to gradually
improve their houses and living environment, and were able to offer their chil-
dren a better future. In general, this process of gradual improvement neatly
followed Turner’s model. Since most of the neighbourhoods in Pampas are
now more than 25-years-old, they have developed well beyond what Turner
predicted, offering more varied products, services and opportunities than he
foresaw. The collective action required for neighbourhood consolidation led
to a strong sense of community throughout the first two phases of Turner’s
‘progressive development’. In the first decade of barriada formation, all four

factors said to foster the sense of community were present among the invad-
ers. This strong sense of community was, however, already on the decline by
the mid1990s, mainly because people experienced less social control than
in the first strongly collective phase. To a certain extent the ‘system of the
barriada’ has been able to respond to the changing demands of this first gen-
eration. It is too optimistic to say, however, that the barriada ‘is a vehicle he
[the invader] can drive … in alternative directions’, as Turner posited, even
for the first generation. This suggests that people feel a higher level of control
over their direct living environment than they actually have. Mangin’s charac-
terization of the barriada as both a problem and a solution more adequately
captures the reality than Turner’s unrestrained optimism.
My revisit to Pampas took place at a specific moment in the life cycle of
the neighbourhoods in Pampas de San Juan. Not only had almost all neigh-
bourhoods reached Turner’s phase of completing, two thirds of the children
of the invaders were aged between 16 and 35 when I surveyed my original
respondents again. Although almost two thirds of the second generation aged
over sixteen already had family of their own, they still lived with their parents
or in-laws. The vast majority rejected the idea to invade a piece of land as their
parents had done, and expected to acquire their future housing through the
market. This changing orientation coincides with two external developments:
land has become increasingly scarce in Lima, and invasions are nowadays sanc-
tioned. It is thus likely that this second generation will not repeat Turner’s
model of progressive development to meet their housing demands.
It is too early to tell to what extent the barriada their parents have built can
fulfil the housing needs of this second generation. Parents have to construct
to house their children, but the children aspire to a dwelling of their own.
So far, only a quarter of this second generation has realized these aspirations.
The other 75 per cent either stays with their parents, or lives with their
in-laws, although many of them already have a family of their own. As Ward
et.al (2015) also found in other Latin American cities, most of them cannot
afford the houses in their own barriadas. At this specific moment in time,
with the majority of the second generation still relatively young, many still
believe they will be able to reach this in the near future. They have the hope
for a better life in common with their parents. More than half of the respon-
dents of the second generation indicated they wanted to stay in Pampas de
San Juan, most often in the neighbourhood where they had grown up. They
cherish the memories of the heroic past; being the offspring of an invader is
part of their identity. The first two factors fostering a sense of community
as identified by Obst and White (2007) are still present among this second
generation. The fact that they are formally and informally excluded from
decision-making in neighbourhood affairs undermines the second two factors
1 00 | Michael a H ord i jk
mentioned (the individual experience as part of the collective process and

the influence of the individual member over the community, respectively)
(Obst and White 2007). It is, however, important to raise the question as
to whether this is problematic. Given that most of the improvements that
require collective action have been reached, should the sense of commu-
nity then still be directed at the spatial unit of the neighbourhood? Or are
there other communities, with other spatial (or virtual) boundaries to which
this second generation wishes to belong? Does the territorial unit, which
has shaped collective action for neighbourhood improvement for so many
decades, become a less relevant unit for the second generation that has been
raised with a mentality of individual progress?
This study confirmed a number of trends signalled in the study by Ward
and his team (Ward 2001, and Ward et al. 2015), especially with respect to
the housing needs and possibilities of the second generation. The situation in
Pampas de San Juan is certainly not as grim as Ward depicted, foretelling that
the slums of hopes of the past could become the slums of despair of the future.
The third generation housing policies he calls for, however, is as urgent in
Lima’s barriadas as it is as elsewhere. These third generation housing policies
should build on the housing aspirations of the young families in Lima’s old
barriadas. Instead of focusing on ‘the cheap house that grows’ – as the first
generation housing policies did – or on the strengthening of the land market,
this policy should focus on improving the accessibility of the housing market.
Given Peru’s current legal framework – already allowing for both vertical and
horizontal subdivision of property – densification policies based on subdivi-
sion can be explored,18 especially when this gives the second generation access
to independent dwellings.
Notes
1. Note the label of the last column of Table 3.1: after twelve years the barriada is still in the
process of ‘completing’, hence still unfinished, adapting to changing demands.
2. In his article Turner contrasts the inflexibility in the homogeneous low-cost housing
blocks (‘moulds’) with the freedom and flexibility of self-help housing in the barriadas (a
system).
3. Peter Ward has recently completed a six-country, thirteen-city comparative research project
in Latin America to analyse these trends. For more information, see http://www.lahn.
utexas.org/ (retrieved 19 November 2014).
4. The Ph.D. research did not only cover Pampas de San Juan, but also three control settle-
ments in another part of the district, called Pamplona Alta, bringing the total number of
households surveyed to 496. In the retake of the survey, the settlements in Pamplona Alta
were also included. Since all qualitative data gathering was concentrated in Pampas de San
Juan, the findings of Pamplona Alta are not considered in this chapter.
5. For the section of the survey soliciting data on the situation of the children, it is a limitation
that we questioned the original respondents (i.e. the parents of these children) and therefore
do not have quantitative data on how the second and third generation themselves judge
their situation and progress.
6. I herewith would like to thank Anna Plyushteva for handing in all her research materials to
me. The thoughts expressed in this chapter would not have been developed without her
input. Whenever I use her materials (dated 2009), I refer to this with her initials AP.
7. It should be noted that the definition of ‘being employed’ as applied in the national census –
namely having undertaken paid worked in the past week for at least one hour – leads to a
serious underestimation of both unemployment and underemployment.
8. Index Mundi. (2012). Retrieved 6 August 2012 from http://www.indexmundi.com/
peru/economy_profile.html.
9. Peru. Ministerio De Desarrollo e Inclusion Social (MIDIS). Dirección General De
Seguimiento y Evaluación. Indicadores Socio-Economicos, INEI 2009. ‘San Juan De
Miraflores’, ‘Villa El Salvador’ and ‘VillaMaria Del Triunfo’, retrieved 19 November 2014
from INFOMIDIS http://www.midis.gob.pe/mapas/infomidis/.
10. In many cases the densities will not meet the UN criterion of overcrowding of ‘not more
than three persons per habitable room’, as defined in the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). But quite often inhabitants experience over-crowdedness.
11. According to the census data from 2007, 13 per cent of the households in Pampas de San
Juan rent their accommodation. That is probably an under-representation, as not all infor-
mal tenants will be included.
12. In the new penal code from 2004, article 311 incorporated invasions as a criminal offence.
This was further specified in changes in the code (Proyectos de Ley 288 y 568), adopted in
May 2012. See http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/Sicr/TraDocEstProc/Contdoc01_2011.
nsf/0/aff085325c9d06b3052579e60000479d/$FILE/00288DC15MAY190412.pdf,
retrieved 19 November 2014.
13. In July 2012, two thousand pobladores in Ventanilla were evicted. Ventanilla is one of the
few districts where somewhat larger invasions still take place. See http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=8bxoPq_IAyc (retrieved 19 November 2014).
14. ‘Ese tarea publica es PREVIA a la privada y NECESARIA para la privada.’ Riofrio (1996),
personal communication, cited in Hordijk 2000: 95.
15. Peru is currently developing a differentiated social security system, in which there are various
forms of health insurance. Receiving social benefits does not necessarily imply a fully-fledged
formal contract that includes retirement pay, paid sick leave and severance pay. In many
cases, it refers to a form of health insurance only. Health insurance coverage can, however,
be very important to protect against a relapse into poverty.
16. A significant correlation, Gamma = 0,451 – N = 482.
17. The very small invasion mentioned earlier. For an account of this invasion, see
Hordijk 2010.
18. The urban programme of the Peruvian non-governmental organization (NGO) Centre
for Development Research and Promotion (DESCO) has been working on densification
programmes since the early 1990s, especially in the well-known barriada Villa El Salvador.
Technical assistance to address the consequences of self-help building (not respecting build-
ing and safety regulations), as also mentioned by Ward (2001), was at the core of their work.
For more information, see DESCO 2005.
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On Housing, Inheritance and
Succession Among Pioneer Squatters
4
and Self Builders
A Mexican Case Study
Erika Denisse Grajeda
Despite the revived interest in poverty in the Americas, particularly on the

so-called new challenges facing the urban poor, an important feature of
low-income households’ survival strategies has been greatly overlooked:
housing inheritance among the urban poor. As I will show here, inheri-
tance and succession is an increasingly salient issue among pioneer squat-
ters and self-builders in Latin America. Indeed, Latin American urban areas
often contain sizeable former shanty town areas that have been consolidated
through self-build over a period of more than thirty years. Still, the idea of
property inheritance – a critical means of transferring wealth from one gen-
eration to the next – is often an overlooked dimension of the family strat-
egies of the urban poor. Many low-income families now own property that
they acquired informally (or illegally) through land subdivision or squatting,
making housing one of the most widespread material assets held by house-
holds in Latin America today (Gilbert and Ward 1981; Solimano 2006).
So while a substantial segment of the population (69 per cent) owns their
home – in a region where homeownership is relatively uniform across various
socio-economic sectors – for many of the urban poor housing is an asset of
considerable importance, one that is now of considerable economic worth.
This is particularly the case for the first generation of pioneer squatters and
self-builders in Mexico, who over a period of more than thirty years have cre-
ated consolidated working-class settlements and built an important asset base
for themselves and their families (Ward 2005; Grajeda and Ward 2012).
Since these housing assets are now in the process of being transferred or
bequeathed to their heirs, as this chapter illustrates, I argue that self-help
housing represents more than a path that once freed the urban poor from
onerous rent payments and provided a much needed space in which to raise
a family (Turner 1968; Gilbert 1999). Today, that housing asset also forms
part of the residential ‘calculus’ for homeownership among second and third
generations of low-income urban residents. Indeed, this chapter demon-
strates that many of the second and third generation are already de facto
enjoying that patrimony, often alongside parents and other kin. Yet little is
known about how lot and dwelling sharing and the use of residential space
– 104 –
On H ou si n g, In he r i ta n ce a n d S u cces s i o n | 105
shape the expectancies that adult children (and grandchildren) have in the
parental home. Nor do we know much about how succession and inheritance
of these properties in the lower end of the housing market are managed and
adjudicated, either informally by family (oral) agreement or formally under
the law. Finally, a key emerging theme in this study is the nexus between
the sense of belonging and homeownership, particularly when we know that
different household members exert different levels of control and decision-
making power over the ‘family’ patrimony and property. This chapter sug-
gests that there are two different and often conflicting aspects of belonging at
play in these households; one that stems from the standard legal definition of
property ownership that shapes socio-legal relations between subject-object,
and another which posits belonging as a relationship of connection – that is,
the social embeddedness of property. These are important considerations,
since they speak of how property interests and relationships are organized in
the household and who gets to enjoy, access, use, control and take pleasure
in it (Cooper 2007).
The contemporary emergence of such a sizable low-income property
market throughout Latin America, and the clearly expressed intention of
homeowners to be able to leave something to their children – or expressed in
their words: ‘tener un patrimonio para los hijos’ – are the point of departure
from this chapter, in which I have three main aims. First, since the nature of
asset building embedded within the first generation of self-help consolidation
dating back to the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America has been discussed else-
where (see Ward et al. 2011), here I focus specifically on the emergence of
living arrangements and future expectancies of the second and third genera-
tions, who were raised on those lots. While we know that urban development
and informal housing practices have created masses of new homeowners in
the region (Varley and Blasco 2000; Solimano 2006; Ward et al. 2011),
there has been little discussion about how property ownership, inheritance
and living arrangements are being negotiated between different stakeholders,
who ultimately have different housing needs, trajectories and expectancies.
Second, I briefly explore the nature of marital and inheritance regimes in
contemporary Latin America as a backdrop to a more detailed analysis of
the processes and patterns of property inheritance as these are unfolding in
Mexico today. Third, and in this context, I present two cases that illustrate
property relations in practice, highlighting the actual and potential intra-fam-
ily conflicts that emerge as members of the second and third generations
assert their inheritance rights. While there is a general lack of empirical data
on urban housing inheritance in the academic literature, particularly in the
so-called developing world, here I present these inheritance scenarios to
illustrate how inheritance is actually unfolding today. Ultimately, the chapter
suggests that a socio-legal perspective can and should inform how we think
1 06 | E rika Denisse G ra je d a
about property inheritance by redirecting our attention to property as a

social practice of ‘routine and iteration’ and the everyday ways in which it is
inhabited, imagined and fought over (Blomley 1998).
Living Arrangements and the Emergence of Future

Expectancies of Second and Third Generations
The data analysed below form part of a broader multi-site study and housing
network concerned with the rehabilitation of older squatter and self-help
settlements located in the ‘innerburbs’ (former suburbs) of major Latin
American cities.1 These peripheral self-help settlements began as shanty
towns in the then suburbs, but with city expansion and growth many are
now situated in the inner or intermediate rings of city development. After
decades of intensive use, these areas and dwellings have heavily deteriorated,
have high population and lot densities, and are the locale of intense social
problems born of a ‘new poverty’ (Ward et al. 2011). Working to a common
methodological framework, major surveys were conducted from 2007 to
2010 in a number of consolidated settlements in twelve Latin American cities
across nine different countries. A second phase of analysis in some of these
cities comprised intensive studies of a small number of illustrative cases drawn
from the original survey, from which we sought to gain greater insights about
physical dwelling and household expansion over time and across generations.
These were the basis for some of the specific family inheritance scenarios
discussed later.
Included here are data from a 2007 restudy of Mexico City that was con-
ducted of 253 low-income owner self-builder households across five settle-
ments or colonias populares in Mexico City. These are households that were
first interviewed in the 1970s as part of a major housing study conducted
by Gilbert and Ward (1985). Although not strictly following a longitudi-
nal panel study methodology (Moser 2009; Perlman 2010), the idea was
to return to the same dwellings and lots that were interviewed more than
thirty years ago when these colonias or self-help settlements were incipient
or beginning to consolidate physically, and test a series of hypotheses related
to residential mobility. It was during the process of undertaking the first
round of research in 2007 that the trans-generation nature of sharing, and
the stakeholder expectations (and conflicts) of adult children and grandchil-
dren, began to emerge, and eventually became an important element in the
wider multi-site research project that now encompasses twelve cities in nine
countries of the region.
Ward et al. (2011) found that in older, now consolidated self-help settle-
ments in three Mexican cities – Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey –
Table 4.1 Household structures and characteristics in consolidated self-help

settlements: The case of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey
Dimension of analysis Mexico Guadalajara Monterrey
City 2009 2009
2007 3 colonias 2 colonias
5 colonias (N=243) (N=129)
(N=253)
1a. Original family still living on lot in
2007
Confirmed – still the original 81.8%
family
1b. Lot land use change since 1978
No change – owner residential 89.4%
Residential but now rental 7.3%
residence
1c. Age of owner
Mean age of owner 68.1* 58.2 51.9
% over age 60 77 46.4 55.2
1d. Lot details
Average yrs living on the lot 35.2 25.2 29.8
Average yr of occupancy of lot 1972 1985 1977
1e. Households on lot
Average # of households 1.4
on lot in 1978
Average # of separate households 2.4 1.5 1.3
in 2007 & families in 2009
1f. Separate households on lot
Single family 35% 67.8% 73.8%
2 families 25% 21.5% 20.6%
3 families 15% 8.3% 5.6%
4+ families 25% 2.5% 0
1g. Densities on lot – persons
Average # of people arrived to lot 5.5** 5.0 4.8
Average # of people on lot today 9.2 5.9 5.1
Median # people per lot 7.5 5 5
Average # persons in household 3.6 4.7 3.9
1h. Household structure 2007
Me and my spouse 4.0%
Me and my siblings (or in-laws) 15.2%
A mix of parents/in-laws and 60.6%
siblings (children of the parents)
Parents and other kin 15.2%
A mixture of parents/ children 3.0%
and (unrelated) renters
Others (unclassified) 2.0%
Table 4.1 (Continued)

City 2009 2009
2007 3 colonias 2 colonias
5 colonias (N=243) (N=129)
(N=253)
1i. Household structure 2009
Nuclear household 68.3% 64%
Extended 31.4% 33%
Singleton (non-family) 2.4%
1j. Property values 2007 (in thousands
of dollars)
Trimmed mean self-assessed $101.8 $47.1 $24.9
Self-assessed (median) $90.9 $37.7 $22.6
Trimmed mean tax assessed $66.7 $39.8 $16.8
(average) all settlements
Source: Latin American Housing Network Project; Mexico City Restudy 2007 Survey,
Guadalajara and Monterrey 2009 Survey Data
Note: Percentages may not sum exactly because of rounding.

*Age of owner for Mexico City is an estimated value when owner was not the respondent.
**Household size for Mexico City reflects household size in 1979.
there appears to be a low level of residential mobility among owners,

confirming Gilbert’s early work that for low-income self-builders of the 1960s
and 1970s ‘a home is forever’ (Gilbert 1999). Gilbert argued that while we
know little about the residential trajectories of people residing in these older
settlements, there does appear to be a high level of residential stability in these
communities. In the restudy of five settlements or colonias in Mexico City,
for instance, well over 80 per cent of the original householders were found to
be still living on their lots some thirty-five years later, even where the original
pioneer parent(s) had since died (Table 4.1:[a]). In the case of Guadalajara
and Monterrey, owner households reported living on their lots for well over
twenty-five years (see Table 4.1:[d]). The authors also found relatively high
property values (Table 4.1:[1j]). In Mexico City the median value was almost
U.S. $91,000, while in Guadalajara the median was almost $38,000, and
$22,600 for Monterrey. The evidence from these and other cities in Latin
America clearly demonstrates that over thirty years the first generation of
irregular settlement owners have been quite successful in creating a signifi-
cant asset from their self-help housing endeavours. Although such findings
point to the existence of substantial property wealth among the urban poor in
México, many of the pioneer self-builder families emphasize the use value (for
raising kids, family patrimony, etc.), rather than exchange or market value.
The authors also found high (in the case of Mexico City) or at least
sustained (Monterrey and Guadalajara) household densities (Table 4.1:
[1e–1g]). These significant densities are due in part to the dynamic and
changing household composition and living arrangements in these commu-
nities, as it is often the case that adult children (second generation) share
the family dwelling with their parents, generally in independent units on the
same lot and often with their own young children (third generation). So,
whereas the average number of families living on each lot in Mexico City
was 2.4, the results for Guadalajara (1.5) and Monterrey (1.3) are consid-
erable lower (Table 4.1:[1e]), with an average of 9.2, 5.9 and 5.1 persons
living on the lot in each city, respectively (Table 4.1: [1g]). In the case of
Mexico City, this is almost double that of thirty years ago when these were
mostly nuclear families. Here subdivision of the lot as well as of second
and third stories was commonplace. While only about a third of all lots
recorded a s ingle-family residence in Mexico City (35%), Guadalajara (68%)
and Monterrey (74%) reported significantly higher levels of single-family
residence. When we c ompare these data to data from other cities in Latin
America, it is a pparent that Mexico City has considerably higher densities
and a much greater degree of lot sharing (Table 4.1:[i]). It appears that
housing competition and the operation of the land market is considerably
greater in the case of Mexico City – a point described by Gilbert and Ward
(1985) in their study of Mexico City and Bogotá. As for Monterrey and
Guadalajara, the data suggest that there has been greater on-going access to
informal s elf-help settlements, such that the need to remain living with kin
is lessened.
Another important finding noted by Ward et al. (2011) has to do with
a new form of informality resulting from ‘clouded’ titles in regularized set-
tlements. A clouded title refers to an encumbered land title or one with an
outstanding claim; heir property,2 which is property held in common by
descendants of someone who has died without a valid will, or whose estate
was not offered for probate, is a case in point. In Mexico a clouded title
results when there is a mismatch between who the legal titleholder is (the de
jure owner), and who the de facto owner is, often because the titleholder dies
intestate or without a will. For instance, in the three cities the vast majority
of titles were reported to be in the name of the original owner, dating to the
time of the regularization, which in most cases occurred sometime during the
1980s (Table 4.2:[a]). In the case of Mexico City, where the same family had
lived on the lot for many years and the title was in the name of a deceased
or permanently absent spouse, there was little evidence that the name on
the title had been changed. This is also true for Guadalajara and Monterrey
where roughly 95 and 90 per cent of titles remain in the name of the original
owner, dating back to the time of regularization.
Table 4.2 Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder and marital status
Dimension of analysis Mexico City Guadalajara Monterrey
2007 2009 2009
5 colonias 3 colonias 2 colonias
(N=253) (N=243) (N=129)
2a. Sought to change name
on title?
Title change 10.8%
No title change 83.8%
In process of changing the title 2.7%
Not know how to change the 2.7%
title
Year of title regularization 1989 1988
(median)
No change of title since 83.8% 95% 89.5%
regularization
2b. Title in name of one or both
spouses
One spouse 74.5% 50.4%
Both spouses 19.8% 43%
Don’t know 5% 7%
2c. Titleholder by gender
Male 36.9% 52.5% 34.4%
Female 13.5% 35% 20.4%
Both 4.5% 10.7% 45.2%
2d. Couple was married or lived 79.3% 81.7%
together when acquired home?
2e. Owner’s marital status
Married 72.9% 80.8% 74.1%
Widow(er) 6.6% 9.3% 16.4%
Divorced / separated 7.4% 2.9% 3.4%
Single 10% 5.2% 5.2%
De facto union 3.1% 1.7% 0.9%
Source: Latin American Housing Network Project; Mexico City Restudy 2007, Guadalajara
and Monterrey 2009
As noted in Table 4.3(a), very few people in Mexico execute a will because
there is no perceived need to execute one or because they fear ‘tempting
fate’ in doing so. Instead, titleholders often bypass the probate process, at
least temporarily, by relying on a host of informal arrangements, such as
leaving spouses and/or adult children informally in possession of the family
house (i.e. without legally transferring the title) after they die. So while the
first generation of squatters and homebuilders in Mexico managed to secure
Table 4.3 Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about will-making

City 2007 2009 2009
5 colonias 3 colonias 2 colonias
3a. Inheritance and wills
% of households with wills 13.8 (31) 8.(9)
Who is the beneficiary?
Spouse 6.9 (2) 8.(1)
Children 69.(20) 8.(6)
Spouse and children 20.7 (6)
Other 3.4 (1) 8.(1)
3b. Households w/o wills
% with informal arrangement 44.(84) 35.(35)
Who will be the beneficiary?
Spouse 3.8 (3) 6.1 (2)
Children 65.8 (52) 84.8 (28)
Spouse and children 22.8 (18) 3.(1)
Other 7.6 (6) 6.1 (2)
3c. Reasons for not executing a will
Cultural reasons and/or “desidia” 61.8 (123) 68.2 (58)
[apathy]
Causes conflict with family members 18.6 (37) 17.6 (15)
We are poor, not much to leave 10.1 (20) 3.5 (3)
Vulnerability in old age 7.5 (15) 2.4 (2)
Don’t know how 2.(4) 8.2 (7)
Source: Latin American Housing Network Project; Mexico City Restudy 2007, Guadalajara
and Monterrey 2009
a
significant housing asset for their families through their own self-help
endeavours and government intervention, in the form of tenure regular-
ization and infrastructure provision, many of these now consolidated and
legalized properties are returning to a state of informality. As Ann Varley
argues with respect to conventional regularization efforts in the region, ‘for-
malization produces a freeze-frame image of property holdings at a particular
time but cannot prevent life, death, and property relations [from] moving
on’, and thus may not provide the definitive resolution of tenure that some
had expected (2010: 92). The new informality due to clouded titles, as
Varley also notes, results from failing to conceptualize property rights in
the home as embedded in social relations ‘based on a principle of belonging
and [comprising] a web of overlapping entitlements that are to some extent
negotiable’ and in flux. As such, inheritance of ‘family property’ should be
understood as immersed in a much deeper complexity of property relations
and practices in the household. In the next section I briefly explore the nature
of marital and inheritance regimes in contemporary Latin America, and then

return to a more detailed analysis of the processes and patterns of property
inheritance as these are unfolding in Mexico today.
Property and the Regulatory Environment: Marital and

Inheritance Regimes in Mexico
Latin American family law and civil codes are derived from the Luso-
Hispanic legal tradition and colonial rule (Deere and León 2005).3
Despite an initial continuity with the corpus of Hispanic law and colo-
nial legal traditions, Latin American countries began to assert their own
legal personalities and embark on increasingly divergent paths with respect
to marital and inheritance laws in two key areas. First, while all South
American countries preserved their colonial martial regime – partial com-
munity property in the case of Spanish America and full common property
in Brazil – Mexico and Central America departed from this convention
by establishing a separation of property regime, either as another option
for couples or as the default regime in cases where a deliberate preference
was not declared. During the colonial period, the default marital regime in
Spanish America was that which is referred to today as gananciales (participa-
tion-in-profits or partial community property), which consisted of all jointly
held property, excluding any inheritances or donations acquired before or
during the marriage (Korth and Flusche 1987). Second, whereas South
American countries for the most part maintained the colonial inheritance
regime of restricted testamentary freedom (i.e., forced heirship), Mexico
and Central America opted for full testamentary freedom, where a compe-
tent testator, as opposed to a court or legislature, by way of a will decides
who should be the beneficiary of his or her estate. While the question of
why Latin American societies took such divergent paths with respect to
family law is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Deere and León 2005),
the point here is that such regional variation in relation to marital and
inheritance laws continues today and will inevitably come to bear upon the
property ownership prospects of both men and women in the region, either
through marriage and/or inheritance.
While historians and legal scholars tend to credit the Mexican Revolution
(1910) with initiating the ‘modernization’ of Mexican family law, major
innovations with respect to marriage and inheritance date back to the repub-
lican private law of the nineteenth century (Arrom 1985). One of the earliest
changes was the creation of a new option in marital regime, that of the
separation-of-property. This provision, embodied in the 1870 and 1884

civil codes, for the first time allowed couples to choose between marrying
under separate property (requiring a prenuptial agreement or capitulaciones

matrimoniales with an inventory of individual and jointly held assets) or
partial community property (Arrom 1985). Previously under colonial private
law, couples were only allowed to marry under partial community prop-
erty in which their assets were pooled. Separation of property thus allowed
(property-holding) married women to administer and retain an interest in
their own property and in exchange forego their half share of the community
property.
Another important change was the abolition of colonial restrictions on
the right of individuals to dispose of their property (Deere 2007).4 Under
colonial inheritance law, legitimate heirs automatically inherited four fifths
of their parents’ estate (legítima or reserved inheritance), since the latter
were only allowed to freely dispose of one fifth (quinto) of their property
(Arrom 1985). Under Spanish private law, children – irrespective of gender
– inherited equal shares from both parents.5 Widows could also inherit from
their spouse’s estate if they proved to be destitute (Lavrin and Courturier
1979; Korth and Flusche 1987).6 By 1884, however, the civil code did
away with the forced heirship provision of the legítima by introducing full
testamentary freedom (Arrom 1985). In fact, many Mexican legal scholars
and lawmakers at the time believed that colonial inheritance provisions – i.e.,
mandating the subdivision of property among legal heirs – contributed to
the country’s economic ‘backwardness’ (Dore 2000). This change was seen
as one of the most radical reforms of the 1884 civil code, as not only were
children rendered more vulnerable but, ultimately, so was the very institution
of family (Dore 2000: 314).
In sum, the nineteenth century brought about important changes and
produced two rather distinct legal paths in Latin America with respect to
martial and inheritance regimes. The 1870 and 1884 Mexican civil codes
not only adopted the separation of property regime as an option for soon to
be married couples, but also eradicated the principle of equal partition and
inheritance dating back to Hispanic and colonial private law of the legítima
by introducing unrestricted testamentary freedom. As such, some argue that
provisions such as that of full testamentary freedom, which ended obligatory
partible inheritance, reduced the legal protection that women had histori-
cally enjoyed during the colonial period, particularly the right to a share of
family property (Dore 2000). South American countries, for the most part,
maintained the system of reserved portion and limited freedom of testation
dating back to the quinto or unrestricted fifth of the estate during the colo-
nial period.7
Today, Mexico’s thirty-one states and the federal district all have their
own legislation with respect to marital property and inheritance. Generally
speaking, marital property regimes tend to follow three main patterns: (1) full
community property where all assets acquired prior to and during marriage
are pooled; (2) partial community property where individual assets that are
acquired prior to marriage, as well as any subsequent inheritances and dona-
tions (or the product of these), are excluded from the joint marital property;
and (3) separation of property, which allows spouses to retain individual
ownership of all individual assets regardless of when they were acquired.
The default regime in Mexico – i.e., when spouses do not explicitly choose
one – is that of partial community property, which has two variants: sociedad
conyugal (conjugal partnership) and sociedad legal,8 both of which are more
akin to a participation-in-profits regime than a full community property
regime (Deere and León 2005; Varley 2010). The partial community prop-
erty regime holds that any proceeds that derive from individually and jointly
held properties (excluding gifts, bequests, and donations, and the products of
these), as well as any goods acquired by either spouse or both spouses during
the marriage, are pooled in a joint marital fund. This means that upon parti-
tion, in the case of divorce or widowhood, each spouse has the right to half
of the marital property. About a quarter of Mexican states establish separate
property as an alternative default option.9
As with marital regimes, laws of inheritance and testation are enacted at
the state level, but with little variation across the different states. Inheritance
rights are generally secured through two legal channels: intestate or unwilled
legal succession, and testate (willed) succession. As noted earlier, while the
principle of unrestricted testamentary freedom allows individuals to decide
how their estate is to be disposed of post-mortem through the execution of a
will, laws of intestacy systematize inheritance transfers at death when a will is
not executed. When individuals bypass executing a will, compulsory intestacy
statutes are designed to ‘approximate’ the deceased’s intentions regarding
the disposition of their property and thus in effect create a statutory will
(Sussman Cates and Smith 1970). In such cases, it is the state that determines
the dispositive terms – i.e., who gets what by naming the legal heirs (by order
of succession) and in what proportion. In most states the succession line is
as follows: descendants, spouses and ascendants, collateral kin (up to fourth
degree), and cohabitating partners. The most proximate exclude the rest, and
those within the same ‘degree’ inherit in equal shares.10 Descendants are first
in line in the intestate succession formula and inherit equally irrespective of
gender. Surviving spouses and ascendants share the second order of inheri-
tance; here the widowed spouse shares half of the estate with the parents of
the deceased if the couple did not have children. However, although tech-
nically second in the succession line, the widowed spouse is entitled only to
the share of the decedent’s estate (equivalent to a child’s inheritance share)
if he or she lacks assets altogether or if the sum of those assets is less than
what a child is entitled to according to the laws of intestacy. This means that
if a couple married under the partial community property regime and one
of them dies, the surviving spouse is automatically entitled to half of the
community property in the martial partnership (by way of marital law) and
therefore may not be eligible for an additional share (by way of inheritance)
if it surpasses what a child is entitled to through laws of intestacy. What is key
here is that only in the absence of express choice does the state determine
what the default marital property and succession regime will be. Also, despite
the fact that the unrestricted freedom to will is enshrined in the Mexican
federal and state civil codes, most Mexicans will die intestate.
Inheritance and Succession in Practice
As mentioned earlier, thinking about property and housing arrangements

in former squatter settlements requires a broader conceptualization of
property – it is not a static, predetermined entity, but one requiring a con-
tinual and active ‘doing’. Part of this ‘doing’ or constant enactment or per-
formance is what Carol M. Rose (2004) refers to as ‘persuasion’ – that is,
making communicative claims to others of our entitlement to things. Here
it is useful to think about property as a practice produced not only through
performance, but simultaneously as a means of disciplining the performances
that are possible within it (Gregson and Rose 2000). Rose argues that narra-
tives, stories and rhetorical devices are essential in the way people think about
property. While we often think of property as some form of legal entitlement
to things, a more complex version of property sees it as a way of defining our
relationships with other people. Property rights, in this light, are not solely
about controlling the ‘thing’ in question but also about our relationship
with others. For Rose then, a claim of ownership is to be understood as an
assertion or story told and understood within a shared culture that shapes the
overall story’s content and meaning. Storytelling then is one way property
claims are successfully communicated in practice as these become naturalized
and perpetuated, as our case studies illustrate. Our respondents often resorted
to recounting stories of squatting, settlement formation and collective strug-
gle over basic infrastructure provision and titling. They offered complicated
accounts of how they constructed their homes over the years in accordance
to the changing spatial needs of their growing families, often by pooling the
little resources that were available at any given time. Even when household
members could not contribute financially, they often offered countless hours
of their labour to the construction process. These property ‘histories’ are
powerful discursive devices because as they are repeatedly told and invoked,
they become dominant narratives that naturalize some claims to possession
and entitlement over others.
Take the case of the Ortega Family, one of the original settlers of the
Isidro Fabela Colonia in Mexico City. When asked to describe their arrival
to the Colonia and the settlement process, Señora Ortega (now a widow in
her early eighties) and her eldest daughter María Elena walked us through
the different stages of construction and the additional family members these
new spaces were to accommodate. Señora Ortega was particularly proud of
the sixteen children she had borne and cared for in that property, and the
adult children and their families that reside there today (a total of seventeen
people). Her daughter María Elena, on the other hand, focused her property
narrative on the ten years that it took to build the home, the physical work
it entailed, and the money her and her father invested in building it from
beginning to end. In María Elena’s account of the ‘family’ property, there
was particular emphasis on her financial contributions and her role as the
eldest child in managing and protecting the family’s only asset now that her
father had passed away. She pointed out that while her mother is intent on
selling the property, giving each of her children a share of the money, and
returning to her native state of Hidalgo, María Elena refuses to sell because
her father would not have allowed it. For María Elena, the property encapsu-
lates her father’s entire life’s work (as well as hers). As a result, over the years
María Elena has been establishing her claim to what she considers to be her
father’s home (as opposed to her mother’s) by creating and perpetuating a
narrative that puts her at the centre of her family’s housing struggle. Despite
her father leaving her as the de facto administrator of ‘his’ asset (even if it
is often referred to as patrimonio familiar or family property), having died
intestate – without a valid written will – the property technically belongs to
Señora Ortega (as part of marital property) and all of the couple’s surviving
children in equal shares (seven living today), and their grandchildren by right
of representation (of those who are deceased).
María Elena explained that since her mother did not work out-
side the home, she rarely made financial contributions to household
expenses, which often included buying construction materials for the
home. Similarly, her siblings, particularly the men, rarely make financial
contributions and she is solely responsible for paying property taxes and
services on the lot. In the words of María Elena: ‘aquí todo está prestado’
(‘here everything is borrowed’ as in, everything is on lease). According to
María Elena, although her siblings and their spouses and children live on the
lot and make use of its different spaces, they have no rights to the property.
Señora Ortega, however, considers herself sole owner, at least while she is
still alive. In these complex cases where de facto arrangements do not align
neatly with legal statutes, critical legal scholars urge us to think of the home
as a site of struggle fraught with internal tensions. These tensions often
have to do with the different ‘histories of properties’ that are invoked by the
different stakeholders, as well as the multiple and often conflicting claims

to possession and entitlement in Mexican colonias and households. María
Elena’s case illustrates the complexities now that there are four generations
and over seventeen people residing on the lot (not to mention the total
number of heirs that have a stake in the property per inheritance and marital
law in Mexico).
However, despite María Elena making perhaps the most forceful com-
municative claim over the ‘family property’, it is clear that there are multiple
and competing claims: by her mother on the one hand, but also her siblings
and their spouses and children on the other. While the different household
members rely on different strategies and narratives to persuade others about
the primacy of their claims, the force and effectiveness of these also speak to
broader issues of power and inequality in the domestic realm, particularly
on the basis of gender. Ironically, despite these competing and conflicting
claims, household members constantly invoke the narrative of their home
being a form of patrimonio familiar or family property – a collectively held
and managed asset – to conjure images of cohesion, cooperation and soli-
darity. In doing so, they downplay the existence of intense infighting and
contention, particularly with respect to inheritance and succession. Another
way property claims are commonly communicated in practice is through
visual cues and embodied practices. Rose reminds us that place sustains dif-
ference and hierarchy both by routinizing daily rounds in ways that exclude
and segregate categories of people, and by embodying in visible and tangible
ways the cultural meanings variously ascribed to them. When we initially
approached María Elena’s family, she immediately made it known that she
was the dueña (housekeeper) of the home, and embodied the role of family
patriarch in taking on the responsibility of ‘protecting’ the family’s only
economic asset.
In addition to discursive enactments or communicative claims, property is
also enacted in more material ways. This is particularly true with respect to
the distribution and use of space as a way to signal possession and ultimately,
exclusion. The case of the Molina family is illustrative in this regard. While
the Molina family arrived in the Isidro Fabela neighbourhood more than
thirty years ago, much of the property is still under construction and remains
unfinished. Although the Molina couple shares the lot with their two adult
grandchildren and their spouses and children, the property is legally willed
to two of their children residing in the United States. As their two adult
children helped finance the construction of the home, mainly through remit-
tances from the United States, over the years, the couple decided to execute
a will each and name them their universal heirs. Furthermore, this (future)
ownership arrangement is inscribed in very real and visible ways, mainly
through the allocation of entire spaces – rooms, closets and living areas – for
their absent sons’ personal belongings, despite the fact that they have lived
in the United States for over twenty years, and their legal status does not
allow them to travel to Mexico. The Molina couple is thus intent on ‘holding
their place’ and, at the same time, excluding the rest of the family, including
their two grandchildren currently living there, from creating any expectations
with respect to future ownership. As Señor Molina put it: ‘el que ayudó tiene
derechos, él que no, pues no’ (‘those who helped have rights [to the property],
those who did not, have no rights’). For Señor Molina such spaces are the
physical embodiment of the relations and struggles that went into building
them.
When thinking about the meanings and rights attached to property, Rose
reminds us of the importance of thinking not only about the contesting ‘sto-
ries’ that are told, but also the ways in which a particular place is represented
and used. For Rose, such representations and uses also signal hierarchies
with respect to space, particularly gendered segregations in the geography
and architecture of built places. With regards to the Molina property, who is
considered the owner today, or at least the owner with greater authority, is
another matter altogether. In spatial terms, Señor and Señora Molina occupy
different spaces on the lot because they are now separated. While Señor
Molina occupies the entire third level of the property – one of the few sec-
tions of the home that is completely finished, painted, fully equipped, bright
and comfortable – Señora Molina’s room is small, cluttered, windowless and
unfinished. Similarly, their grandchildren’s living quarters (on the second
level) are for the most part unpainted, bare and unfinished. Señor Molina
contends that since his grandsons are arrimados (spongers or freeloaders)
living there rent-free, they are responsible for fixing their living quarters. The
same could be said of Señora Molina, despite the fact that she is co-owner of
the property per marital law in Mexico.
These two cases provide examples of many of the key issues that we expect
will become commonplace in the future: popular (gender) stereotypes in
combination with a poor understanding of the inheritance process; conflicts
between heirs, especially those who have an equal and legitimate claim but
who do not wish to live on the property; and different stakeholders’ own-
ership expectancies. This chapter suggests that it is safe to assume that in
the near future a sizeable portion of low-income Mexicans residing in now
consolidated (self-help) settlements will die intestate, and hence their fami-
lies will be faced with decisions over the ‘family’ home. Still, some families
will forgo the formal probate process altogether by resorting to informal
arrangements.
Oral agreements or promises of ownership, for instance, are not uncom-
mon, particularly when ageing parents are attempting to negotiate care for
future ownership. These oral ‘contracts’ may be accompanied by a series of
conditions in anticipation of future assistance. Such informal inheritance

ultimately may create ownership expectations that, if tested legally, could
be found to be groundless. Although such practices are not uncommon,
some respondents did say that they were uncomfortable with the idea of
prematurely transferring their property to one heir or more for fear of being
driven out or losing the leverage over sons and daughters (especially) to
look after them in their old age. Given the relatively advanced age of many
of these owners, and the complicated living arrangements that have evolved,
it seems likely that further research will reveal many more scenarios (see
Varley 2003). Also, once the final parent dies it seems inevitable that there
will be an increasing number of conflicts between would-be heirs and claim-
ants, not least because the spirit of the civil code is that of equal partition in
adjudicating between siblings in cases of intestacy (as was shown here).
Conclusion
This chapter has shown that the large majority of low-income households
who acquired land and self-built their homes in irregular settlements some
twenty or more years ago are today bequeathing those homes to their adult
children and grandchildren with whom they live. And while not all children
benefit or expect to benefit in this way, many do. Throughout this chap-
ter I have also suggested that in the context of succession and inheritance
in Mexico today it is important to consider the social embeddedness of
property – the particular ways people understand property relations, and the
different ways they make their property claims known to others through the
way they communicate. These are important considerations, since they speak
of how property interests are organized in the home and the conflicting
claims that may surface over ‘family property’ in Mexico. I suggest that a
socio-legal perspective can and should inform how we think about property
by redirecting our attention to property as a social practice and the every-
day ways in which it inhabited, imagined and fought over (Blomley 1998).
This is particularly relevant in Mexico, where low-income families residing
in consolidated colonias are now having to make decisions about housing
succession and inheritance. Very few people in Mexico execute a will and
often bypass the probate process by relying on informal arrangements, such
as leaving adult children or spouses informally in possession of the family
property. Property arrangements here, as Varley has noted, comprise a ‘web
of overlapping entitlements’ that are to some extent negotiable and in flux –
and not always entirely backed by legal statutes. Critical legal scholars have
long argued that ‘property relations that are endowed with the protection of
legal rights and duties are only a subset of the universe of property relations’
(Razzaz 1993: 341). Property relations, in other words, do not necessarily

require state sanction in order to have popular purchase. Thus, while laws of
intestacy in Mexico are relatively unproblematic in theory, in that they estab-
lish a rather straightforward formula of succession as shown here, in practice
they are often difficult to operationalize when there are multiple stakeholders
with competing interests and ownership expectancies.
As this chapter has illustrated, owning and disbursing property will bring
an ever increasing proportion of Mexican society into the succession process –
usually as beneficiaries or as claimants. Thus it will be important to have a
deeper and broader understanding of inheritance processes and practices,
particularly among low-income populations, who after many years of hard
work have managed to achieve homeownership and now risk falling back into
informality. Hopefully further research will better inform our understanding
about sensitive policy-making for cross-generational transfer of family homes
among the urban poor.
Notes
1. See the Latin American Housing Network at www.lahn.utexas.org for more details regard-
ing the multi-site research project and definition of ‘innerburbs’ as proposed by Peter M.
Ward.
2. Heir property is often pointed out as a major cause of land loss among African Americans in
the United States, particularly in southern states (see J.F. Dyer, e.g. Dyer and Bailey 2008).
In Latin America, clouded titles also refer to outstanding claims that result from property
not being offered for probate, often as a result of the owner having died intestate (without
a will).
3. Peninsular legislation, particularly Castilian private law, derived primarily from Germanic,
Roman and canonical precepts, and in some instances, from Jewish and Arabic-Islamic influ-
ences. Since the Indian law (Derecho indiano) developed for Spain’s American colonies did
not touch on family matters such as marriage and inheritance, Spanish private law filled this
void (see Korth and Flusche 1987, and Arrom 1985.)
4. Spanish rules of inheritance are to be found in the Leyes de Toro which stipulates that if a
person dies intestate or without a formal will, his or her legal heirs include: (1) children (or
their descendants through rights of representation); (2) parents (or other ascendants in their
absence); and (3) siblings and other collateral kin; see Deere and León 2003.
5. Testators could reward a particular child or their spouse through the use of the mejora
(improvement), which represents the one-third share that can be left by will to legitimate
heirs.
6. Upon death, widows automatically received half of the community property (gananciales).
However, if a man died intestate and lacked other heirs, his widow inherited the entire
estate.
7. The quinto or unrestricted fifth that the share testators were free to bequest was later
increased in the Bello codes from the colonial one fifth to one quarter of the estate; see
Deere and León 2005.
8. The main difference between the two variants of partial community property in Mexico
is that with sociedad conyugal spouses are required to execute a prenuptial agreement or
capitulaciones to establish the management and ownership arrangement of their assets,

whereas with sociedad legal a prenuptial contract is not necessary.
9. Campeche, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Estado de México, San Luis Potosí,
Tlaxcala, Yucatán and Zacatecas. In the case of the federal district and the State of Nuevo
León (Monterrey), their civil codes allow couples to pick between sociedad conyugal and
separation-of-property, with a possible third option of a mixed property regime by way of
capitulaciones or prenuptial agreement (Civil Code for the Federal District 1928(CCDF),
Article 178; Civil Code for the State of Nuevo León (CCNL), Articles 178 and 179). In
Jalisco (Guadalajara) couples can choose between three marital regimes, mainly sociedad
conyugal o voluntaria, sociedad legal, and separation-of-property (Civil Code for the State
of Jalisco (CCJ) Article 282). When spouses do not explicitly declare a preference, the
default regime is sociedad legal, which does not require a prenuptial agreement. In the
three cities, unless otherwise stated in the capitulaciones, upon marital dissolution spouses
marrying under partial community property – be it conjugal partnership or sociedad legal
– are entitled to half of the marital property.
10. CCDF, Article 1604; CCJ, Article 2911.1; CCNL, Article 1499.1.
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5
Favela Modelo
A Study on Housing, Belonging and Civic Engagement
in a ‘Pacified’ Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Palloma Menezes
Informal settlements surround principal urban centres in almost all Latin

American countries. They are usually described as ‘unplanned illegal or
semi-formal areas in the urban periphery, within or outside the city’s
jurisdiction, with low-cost forms of self-help housing for the urban poor,
founded over the past decades as a consequence of rural-urban migration’
(Klaufus 2012: 150). These territories where the urban poor live are fre-
quently associated with a lack of basic services, tenure insecurity and envi-
ronmental hazards. The notion of informal settlement, as Klaufus (2012)
suggests, is a container notion where academic definitions of informality,
illegality and autonomy tend to overlap. Every Latin American country
has its own name for the shanty towns or slums ringing its principal urban
centres: pueblos jovenes in Peru, villas miserias in Argentina and callampas
in Chile, among others. In Brazil, favela is the generic name given to the
agglomerations of substandard housing that emerged, initially in Rio de
Janeiro, in the early twentieth century. The term is now broadly used, with
some regional variations, to define highly populated illegal squatter set-
tlements where there is a lack of essential public infrastructure services. In
2010, it was estimated by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística
(IBGE) that 22.6 per cent of Rio’s population lived in one of the 763 favelas
that existed in the city.
The favelas that cloak many of the steep slopes in and around Rio de
Janeiro were marginal settlements for many decades. By the turn of the mil-
lennium, those territories were becoming increasingly heterogeneous. On
the one hand, municipal authorities and international lending agencies began
programmes to provide basic services to many favelas. But, on the other
hand, the heavy social stigma and the police brutality faced by favela inhabi-
tants still persisted. As many sociologists and anthropologists attest (Burgos
1998; Zaluar and Alvito 1998; Misse 2006; Machado da Silva 2008), favelas
are usually associated with a powerful drug and crime culture. This associa-
tion feeds the idea that favelas are violent areas (Zaluar 2004; Leite 2008)
and, consequently, allows arbitrary measures to be considered as legitimate
by the population of Rio de Janeiro (Machado da Silva 2008).
– 123 –
1 24 | Pal l oma Me n e ze s
An often-used starting point is the convergence of poverty and violence.

Indeed, poverty can breed violence, the poor are disproportionally affected
by violence, and the poor are often seen and feared as inherently violent
and dangerous (mostly by the well-to-do, of course). Violence, through the
notions of vulnerability and insecurity, has been incorporated into main-
stream objective and subjective notions of poverty and social exclusion.
(Koonings and Kruijt 2007: 2)
The dominating public discourse has apprehended and explained urban vio-
lence by resorting to the ‘metaphor of war’ and its attendant ‘myths’: the
lawful city versus the city of crime, the state within the state, the banality
of violence, etc. These myths have supplied the interpretive toolkit that
currently structures the ‘problem of violence’, biasing the perspective for
proposals and measures to control and reduce crime in Rio de Janeiro.
Among the proposals addressing public security, one of the highest-profile
projects to date is that of the Pacifying Police Units (Unidades de Polícia
Pacificadora, hereafter: UPPs). UPPs are considered ‘a new model of public
security’,1 in which the state reassumes the monopoly of physical force,
restoring control over areas that were occupied for decades by factions con-
nected to drug traffickers. It is a ‘community policing’ project that intends
to foster a closer relationship between the police and the population, and
also strengthen social policies inside favelas. The UPP project has become
a huge policy motivator in Rio de Janeiro, as it is considered an innovative
way to suppress crime in the city. The thirty-eight UPPs installed in the city
have produced positive results. Although far from being eliminated, acts of
arbitrary police violence are lower where the UPPs are operating, and their
presence has significantly improved the feeling of security among residents
directly and indirectly affected by the UPPs (Machado da Silva 2010). The
UPP project began in 2008 with the implementation of its first unit in Morro
Santa Marta (Santa Marta Hill) – a favela located in the city’s more upscale,
middle class South Zone.
The ‘pacification’ process is comprised not only of the permanent presence
of community police in the favelas, but also of the implementation of social
programmes in these areas. Other measures adopted in these favelas include
the installation of surveillance systems with several cameras and the construc-
tion of walls with the alleged intention of preventing new houses from being
built in the green areas that surround the favela. Despite the controversy
generated by these so-called ‘eco-barriers’ or ‘eco-limits’, a wall three metres
high and 650 metres long was built in Morro Santa Marta.
Since the beginning of the ‘pacification’ process, Santa Marta has received
various labels, such as ‘model favela’ (because it was the first favela where a
UPP was installed); ‘scenic favela’ (because it has been chosen as the stage
Fa v el a M o d el o | 125
for many movies, documentaries, television soap operas, and news reports
for national and international television); and ‘Disneyland favela’ (due to its
many tourist attractions, such as its beautiful views and its statue of Michael
Jackson, which was built because the singer filmed his 1996 music video ‘They
Don’t Care About Us’ in Santa Marta). Currently, almost every important
public figure or international celebrity visiting Rio de Janeiro makes sure to
visit Morro Santa Marta and take the tram to the top of the hill – known as
the steepest in Rio.
Since 2010, public authorities have been trying to transform ‘pacified’
favelas into tourist attractions. The City Hall in Rio, as well as the state and
federal governments, developed a project called ‘Rio Top Tour – Rio de
Janeiro from a new perspective’. The objective of the project is to create tour-
ist itineraries in favelas with a UPP presence, and encourage tourists to sign
up for favela tours led by residents. In the launching ceremony for Rio Top
Tour, in September 2010, one of the most important leaders of Morro Santa
Marta gave then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010) a letter
stating that favela residents were proud to host the president for his second
visit to the favela. However, the letter also included residents’ opinions that
the president’s visit should be an opportunity for them to ‘exercise their citi-
zenship and consolidate their rights’. To this end, Itamar Silva used the letter
to describe the urbanization process of Morro Santa Marta:
We recognize that a lot of things have been done since 2003, when the
recent urbanization of the favela began. However, there is much more to
do and … there are two points that we consider fundamental to the success
of current public intervention in this favela: 1. Failure to remove residents
from Pico … 2. The second point connects with the first: … Santa Marta
has been cited as a model of coordinated intervention of three spheres of
government (the federal, state and municipal levels). We would like to
create a space for participation, with representatives of the three spheres of
government, to discuss the continuing urbanization process in the favela
of Morro Santa Marta. (Excerpt from the letter written by Itamar Silva to
ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on August 30, 2010)
This chapter looks at the experience of housing and belonging in a ‘paci-

fied’ favela in Rio de Janeiro. I focus, particularly, on the situations of those
living in the Pico area of Morro Santa Marta – the oldest and highest part of
the favela. The government of the state of Rio de Janeiro plans to remove
the fifty-two families that live there and to demolish the Pico neighbourhood
because they consider it an ‘area at environmental risk’. The owners of the
houses, who do not want to leave the area, have been organizing themselves
to resist the removal process promoted by the government. In this chap-
ter, I examine what this threat of removal actually means from the point of
view of the people who live in the Pico area, and how they justify their right
to continue living there. I highlight my informants’ own verbal and active
understanding of their experience of living in this area and belonging to a
‘pacified’ favela. Empirical material for this analysis is based on ethnographic
studies that I have conducted over the course of three years in the Morro
Santa Marta favela. During this period, I engaged in participant observation as
well as individual and group interviews with favela dwellers, police officers and
other actors in the favela, such as students and researchers, public authorities,
tourists and other ‘outsiders’ who move around the favela for various reasons.2
The structure of this chapter is as follows: the next section will provide
a brief history of Morro Santa Marta’s urbanization process. In the third
section, we ‘set the scene’ by describing the context of the Pico area. In the
fourth section, I analyse how residents are organizing themselves in their
effort to resist removal and to remain in the same place they have been living
for more than seven decades. I also investigate the critical operations of social
actors, looking at the normative principles that underpin the critical activity of
Pico’s residents within this specific situation of ‘dispute’. Section five explores
Pico residents’ demands and arguments against removal. The chapter ends
with a discussion on how Morro Santa Marta dwellers have (re)-appropriated
the term ‘model favela’ to discuss the different meanings inherent in living
in a ‘pacified’ favela. Ultimately, my objective is to contribute to the larger
body of knowledge concerned with housing, neighbourhood consolidation
and belonging in Latin America.
Urbanization Process in Morro Santa Marta
Located in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, the Morro Santa Marta favela
is situated on an extremely steep hillside of the Botafogo neighbourhood.
The occupation of the hill began in the late 1930s. Contrary to the usual
direction of favela settlement, Morro Santa Marta’s population expanded
from the middle of the hill to the bottom (Rocha 2005). The hill was occu-
pied essentially because of its easy access to labour markets in South Zone
neighbourhoods that, at the time, were experiencing booming real-estate
development and building construction, especially in Copacabana. There
was a great demand for people to work on construction sites, and those
who came to work in the South Zone ended up settling in what had pre-
viously been the sparsely populated hills surrounding the more expensive
neighbourhoods.
It is impossible to know who originally owned the fifty thousand square
metres that make up Morro Santa Marta, now home to approximately five
thousand people. Some older favela dwellers talk about generous donations
given by owners of the region’s historic estates. However, even before the
eradication of favelas became a systematic policy, conflicts with landowners
led to threats of removal. Those events gave rise to negotiations involv-
ing allies of favelados (favela dwellers), political and religious authorities
(Catholics) and leaders of left-wing parties.
Many scholars take interest in the process by which settlements consolidate
over time and, likewise, in the social progress of generations of inhabitants.
An increasing number of studies have documented the phases and changes
that characterize the maturing of informal settlements in Latin American
cities. Some scholars have paid more attention to the importance of individual
building activities than to overall neighbourhood consolidation, while others
emphasize the importance of collective facilities and solidarity networks within
neighbourhoods (Klaufus 2012: 151). In the case of Morro Santa Marta,
the consolidation process was the result of solidarity networks within the
neighbourhood as well as individual building activities. Both were important,
as they were mutually motivating. The process was such that, first, people
invested what little money they had into building their houses. Then, they
began to fight collectively to improve the infrastructure of the neighbour-
hood. The arrival of basic services (such as electricity and a water supply) that
resulted from the first collective actions was seen as a sign by the people that
there would be no more threats of removal from the favela. They then felt safe
to invest increasingly more time and money into the improvements of their
houses in the favela.
It is interesting to highlight how the Santa Marta case study complicates
the current view of favelas as spaces dominated by homogeneous poverty. If
favelas have always known considerable internal complexity in their physical
and social space (Lopes 1955; Machado da Silva 1967; Leeds 1969), such
diversity has become more pronounced today. As Preteceille and Valladares
argue, ‘there are “favelas” within favelas and they differ from each other in
terms of the profile of their residents as well as urban conditions’ (quoted
in Freire-Medeiros 2012: 177). ‘Informality is a framework for understand-
ing the encroachment of informal activities and settlements within formally
planned cities … There are, however, many kinds of informal settlements …
and many degrees and kinds of formality within them’ (Freire-Medeiros
2009). At the same time that Morro Santa Marta has developed and consoli-
dated, the internal differentiation between the different regions of the hill has
increased. The bottom of the hill has become the ‘South Zone of the favela’ –
the richest area – because services and infrastructure arrive there faster than in
the other areas of the neighbourhood. The highest part of the hill, especially
Pico, has become the poorest area due to a lack of infrastructure and services.
It is also known as the most violent area, located next to the street used by
police to access the hill or shoot dealers from outside the favela.
The first urbanization project in the favela began between 1985 and
1986, when City Hall installed pipes, opened streets and improved sanita-
tion, among other endeavours. Residents’ organization and mobilization
were essential to the improvement of living conditions in Morro Santa Marta,
and one of the most significant occurrences of popular organization in the
favela happened in the mid 1980s. At that time, residents gathered in a large
assembly to unanimously reject the proposal made by City Hall and the gov-
ernment of the state of Rio de Janeiro to build large buildings (espigões) in
the favela. ‘Vertical buildings would take the community away from ground
constructions so that, according to the mayor, it would be possible to accom-
modate more people in a smaller area’ (Rocha 2005: 36). Residents reacted
to the proposal as a kind of removal effort and rejected the idea:
They immediately realized that it meant an introduction or a transfer of

the urban model used in the asphalt of the favela. Although an apartment,
with the infrastructure that enables its proper working, was the dream
of many residents, the culture and the community life established there
weighted more than the possibility of subjectivity and intimacy offered by
an apartment, although those are also important factors. (Rocha 2005: 36)
Although the urbanization project of Santa Marta was one of the first
experiences in which the state government and City Hall acted together in
a favela in Rio de Janeiro, the initiative failed due to political divergences
between authorities from the two spheres of power. As a result, the urbaniza-
tion project in Morro Santa Marta was discontinued. Later, the state govern-
ment restarted the initiative, contracting the Institute of Architects of Brazil
(IBA) to create an urbanization project in the favela. The project was voted
on by a committee – which included one Morro Santa Marta resident – and
was approved. However, over many years the initial project was modified
numerous times.
In 2000, the territory was considered an area of social interest and the
urban regularization was initiated, defining boundaries between private and
public spaces, as well as establishing specific rules of use and occupation
of land (Araujo and Lopes 2007). Between 2003 and 2004, infrastructure
works began in Morro Santa Marta. In order to construct a plan for an
inclined-plane tramway and new buildings, some houses had to be demol-
ished. The infrastructure projects were coupled with proposals for housing
improvements. However, in 2008 – the year in which the UPP was installed –
urbanization works were put on hold until 2012.
Since the arrival of the UPP, the formalization of services in the favela has
intensified. In early 2009, a free wireless Internet connection was provided
in Morro Santa Marta, and a regularization process of services like water
supply, electricity and cable television began, thereby significantly affecting

the informality of pirate cable television and illegal energy transfers, which
had traditionally been a common practice. The first service to be regularized
in the favela was the energy supply, in 2009. Morro Santa Marta received
public lighting – lampposts installed in all public spaces – and street signs
were posted on every street and alley in the favela. The electricity connections
also reached buildings according to their numbers so that energy bills would
be delivered directly to each residence. As a consequence, residents acquired
official addresses.3 However, the formalization process and recognition of
formal addresses still depends on the fulfilment of certain procedures, as
shown by Cunha and Mello:
This process began in April 2009, when the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro
created its Urban and Social Orientation Program (POUSO). Since then,
officials have been mapping and regularizing buildings in the favela. They
are recognizing public areas and inspecting constructions and house num-
bers – everything with the aim to create official licenses declaring that the
buildings are in habitable condition. All these actions have allowed the
government to grant official licenses of habitability to those buildings that
fit defined criteria, certifying that the buildings are up to code. However,
they do not grant the final title of property, which is necessary for land
regularization. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the buildings in the Santa
Marta favela will face difficulties in receiving official licenses of habitability,
because they do not fulfil the criteria established by City Hall. (Cunha and
Mello 2011)
In the past, residents paid a small fee to Morro Santa Marta Residents’
Association for monthly water consumption. Today, water supply has been
‘formalized’ and residents must pay a more substantial monthly fee. People
complain because they pay this fee for sewage services too, yet there are still
many ditches and open sewers in the favela. After the ‘pacification’ process,
commercial shops in Morro Santa Marta also had to be formalized and
were made to subscribe to the National Registry of Legal Entities (CNPJ).
This formalization happened through a partnership with City Hall, the state
government and the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service
(SEBRAE). The Empresa Bacana project (a government project to remove
illegal street vendors from Rio’s streets) announced that ‘it has never been
easier to legalize business’, noting that ‘it is time for those who are self-
employed or have an informal business to achieve their rights and opportu-
nities’. But this formalization opportunity had come with the implicit threat
that those who did not want to settle their shop would most likely have
future problems with the Shock of Order regime, which was created in 2009
to combat disorder in Rio de Janeiro’s public spaces.4
The consolidation of informal settlements is seen as a fluctuating process

with periods of increasing and declining participation (Fisher 1984; Gilbert
and Ward 1985). Nevertheless, historically, Morro Santa Marta is considered
to be one of the favelas that generally shows more collective participation and
political organization than elsewhere in Rio de Janeiro. The urbanization
process is seen by its residents as the result of many struggles. In 2004, the
construction of a new urbanization project began but was discontinued in
2008 because the state contractor terminated the contract. Today, urban-
ization projects are threatening to remove residents from the top of the
hill. Since the arrival of the UPP and the shutdown of urbanization works,
dwellers complain that the government and the media do not recognize their
struggles. They ascribe all changes in the favela to the arrival of the UPP.
In order to discuss the impacts of the arrival of the ‘pacifying police’ on
the hill, Grupo Eco organized a series of meetings that resulted in a demon-
stration on November 19 2009 (almost one year after the arrival of police in
Morro Santa Marta).5 At this first public post-UPP demonstration, residents
sought to show their dissatisfaction and to pressure the government into dia-
logue with local leaders. By that point, the removal from Pico was already an
important issue on the agenda. Despite the difficulty in mobilizing residents
to discuss changes happening on the hill, meetings continued to be held by
Grupo Eco. Besides this, other associations and social movements, such as
Visão da Favela, also focused on urbanization as an issue in their discussions
and productions. This debate gained ground in 2011 with the emergence
of Santa Marta Community Radio. Urbanization on the hill became a daily
topic on various radio programmes, with an increasing emphasis on the dis-
cussion about the Pico removal process.
Contesting the Pico Neighbourhood Removal
The urbanization process of Pico did not happen in the same way that it
happened in the other areas of the favela. Alleys and stairways in this part of
the hill were not paved. Moreover, regular water supply in Pico was not intro-
duced by the State Company for Water and Sewage (CEDAE) but instead by
a local resident, who provided ‘a connection that looked illegal’ (with a hose
and pump) to transport water up to the top of the hill. In addition, the state
government did not construct a sewage system in Pico, nor did Light (the
energy supply company in Rio de Janeiro State) install lampposts as they did
in other parts of Morro Santa Marta.
We have electricity inside our homes and we pay for it. But there are no
lampposts here [in Pico], as there are down in the hill. We also pay a rate
for public lighting. ‘Light’ itself said that there was no need to install
lampposts up here; that they would not install public lighting here. I asked,
and they answered: “No, we are not going to install public lighting there.
We won’t do it, because we were told that you all are going to leave.” …
So, this here [installation of lamps to light streets] is done by us. It was
their [Light’s] job to do it – like the lampposts that are down there …
Here, there are none. Yet we are charged on our bills. Even if it is not too
expensive, we should not pay, because this money we pay them, we could
use to buy some bread or butter for our kids or we could buy other things.
Because they have money, they do not need this small amount they are
charging us. They do not need it because they have a lot, but we need it.
(F.A. [30], female, resident of Pico)
Some residents claim that their decision to install public lighting by them-
selves in the area was for safety reasons. Although Morro Santa Marta has
been ‘pacified’ and a UPP unit was installed close to Pico, residents say
that in certain situations they have felt they were under surveillance by the
police – police officers assuming that residents were doing something wrong
just because they were in the dark. Residents have also been concerned about
thieves and rapists, who were previously kept in check by the drug dealers
who had control over the territory, but were now able to act more freely and
frequently.
Beyond the lack of public lighting, residents also note uncleanliness as
one of Pico’s problems. Garbage collectors and street sweepers responsible
for cleaning the area do not go up to Pico. Residents complain about this sit-
uation and some of them say that before the arrival of the UPP the area was
much cleaner because drug dealers ‘forced’ street sweepers to take good care
of the area. Pico residents confirm that authorities of the state government
told them it would be unnecessary to develop Pico, as all the houses in the
area would be demolished. Supposedly, fifty-two families living in the area
would be relocated to new buildings that the government is constructing on
another part of the hill. The first consequence of this possible removal is the
fact that Pico has not been receiving the same basic infrastructure as other
parts of the favela. Another significant impact is POUSO’s refusal to allow
residents to make any kind of improvement to buildings located on that area
of the hill.
So we already have funds to improve the structure of the church, we already

have everything to rebuild it. But I went down there, to POUSO, and they
told me to not do any restoration to the church, because it would be torn
down anyway. But they did not tell me where they are going to relocate the
church … We already have money to improve the church … but we cannot
do it yet. (W.S. [36], male, resident of Pico)
Most Pico residents are against removal and would prefer to stay in their
homes than move to an apartment building. But why do they want to stay
on this part of the hill if they complain about the fact that they are ‘forgot-
ten’? To answer this question, we must look at the rhetorical strategies of
Pico residents. Residents complain especially about the negligence of the
government.
The downside of living in Pico is that we are forgotten, that is it. We are
forgotten in many ways, with regards to pavement, risky areas, energy and
water supply … There is also no sewer system. Sewage goes down the hill,
making its own way in open air, and it stops down in the public square …
We did not have water supply for a long time … Down on the hill there
was regular water supply coming from a ‘Campinho’ water tank. But in
places above Campinho, we stayed three years without water. It was a hard
time using hoses! A hose goes to one, and after, it goes to another! It was a
damn fight: “I will use it first!” (F.A. [30], female, resident of Pico)
Secondly, Pico residents also complain that they are forgotten by residents
of other parts of the hill and by the Residents’ Association – which, accord-
ing to them, did not install speakers for the Residents’ Association Radio
on lampposts in Pico. According to Boltanski (1999), in order to make a
complaint, denouncers must convince other people to join their protest and
to mobilize with them. So, in order to publicize the removal issue, residents
know they need support from residents of other parts of the hill who do not
feel themselves directly affected by this problem. Therefore, during meet-
ings about favela urbanization, community leaders spend most of the time
emphasizing the need of all Morro Santa Marta residents to support Pico’s
plight.
After three years, work will restart this month, November 2011, on the
proposal to remove Pico’s residents. In our meeting we realized that it
is not only our neighbours’ problem, but it is a problem for all residents.
What kind of family home do you dream of? Our rights will be guaranteed
by our organization and participation. At this point there are no personal
problems; we will solve all of our problems by thinking collectively … This
must be a fight for all of us, because now they have messed with people
from Pico, but other things in the project may involve other residents of
the hill. So if we do not show some resistance early on, we will not have
strength to discuss this project. So this is the first point – which is not
easy, because everyone wants to deal only with their problems: “Oh, if
they are not messing with me, then that is a problem for the people being
removed.” We have to try to not think like that. (I.S [56], male, resi-
dent of Santa Marta – speech made during a meeting about Urbanization
organized by Grupo Eco)
Alongside meetings and debates, Pico residents have organized demonstra-

tions and public events to gain the support of residents in other areas of Santa
Marta, stressing the removal issue. On December 10, 2011, the political-
cultural event Raiz do Santa – also called SOS Pico – brought together
various cultural attractions and called attention to the fact that people ‘are
suffering a removal threat, because the same state that talks with us about
peace and democracy is trying to do something that will result in social dis-
integration. We disagree … Pacification has its positive and negative aspects,
but in fact our rights are not being respected in many ways’ (V.L. [29], male,
resident of Pico).
The social movements demand that the state revise its project and arrange
resident participation in the design and construction of projects. Residents
have tried for months to arrange a public meeting with government authori-
ties to get informed about the new urbanization project, yet no meeting has
been scheduled to date.
This is the reality: you must know somebody. This is the way things happen
here. If you do not know anyone, you arrive at the place, talk, talk, talk
and nothing, nothing happens. This is the reality; this is the way things
happen in Brazil, this happened here with João. They arrived at seven in
the morning, they destroyed his house, they did not say anything, they did
not bring along any expert opinion report, they just demolished it. If he
knew someone, this would not have happened. And the person who came
turned to him and said: “Oh, you can complain about it, but nothing will
happen.” Look at that! (W.S. [36], male, resident of Pico)
Contact with politicians is important for establishing a dialogue between

residents and the state and to legitimize the requests of Pico’s residents. The
support of politicians, according to Boltanski (1999), helps to ‘magnify’
denouncements. In order to create change, denouncers must pursue strate-
gies such as highlighting relationships that they keep with major characters.
Strategies such as these are used by Morro Santa Marta leaders. They sched-
uled a meeting with public defender Francisco Horta to debate the removal
issue. Similarly, dwellers who participate as members of the Morro Santa
Marta Urbanization Committee and people from Santa Marta Radio Station
invited the state representative, Marcelo Freixo, to visit Pico.
So we will find competent authorities to dialogue with the Committee for

Human Rights, and try to keep the people who constructed this commu-
nity here while also bringing investments to this place. The tramway already
arrives here. Great! What else? Access. Anyway, what kind of investment
can be made here? (Speech by Mr. Marcelo Freixo, State Assemblyman,
during his visit to Pico in Morro Santa Marta on March 12, 2012)6
Figure 5.1 Pico residents in protest. Photo by the author.
Favela residents seek support from politicians and the Public Prosecution
Service. Many residents complain that state authorities create ‘psychological
pressure’ to intimidate residents and undermine their collective organization.
Since 2012, this pressure has intensified as public works have restarted to
finalize the urbanization process of Santa Marta. Many believe that the people
in Pico will soon be removed. The lack of official communication stimulates
such rumours and causes great anxiety among Pico’s residents, who demand
more accurate information. Moreover, they demand the right to stay in Pico
and receive the public works necessary to improve the neighbourhood’s
infrastructure. In sum, the most urgent issues according to residents include:
First, the right to stay in the area (no removal); second, residents can make
improvements to their homes without an embargo from POUSO, which is
an official institution that came here with this proposal, telling us that they
would help with architectural and engineering aspects and, indeed, nothing
that was promised was fulfilled. In fact, they came here just to prevent us
from making improvements to our homes. I am going to raise some points
that we want to defend. First, paving roads and constructing retention
walls. Second, construction of a system for collecting rainwater in order
to have a regular water supply, because for many years we struggled with a
lack of water or interruptions to our water supply on the highest part of the
hill. Third, replacement of old street lampposts, which have been there for
decades in poor condition, infested with termites and falling down, because
‘Light’ removed lamps from the streets and never replaced them, so they left
us in the dark. We pay the public lighting tax included in our energy bill, but
this service is not provided for us there in Pico. Fourth, we must deal with
the public cleaning company COMLURB, which I think turns a blind eye,
pretending that there is no Santa Marta, because they have never reached
there to collect garbage. Fifth, a consideration for people who really cannot
afford to reconstruct their houses, because we know that a lot of people
have money to improve their homes, but are being prevented from making
improvements. (V.L. [29], male, resident of Pico – public speech made
during a meeting about urbanization organized by Grupo Eco)
In addition, those residents who are willing to move should be ensured

that the government-constructed apartments are an improvement in com-
parison to their favela homes. This is an important claim because there are
large families living in Pico, but without taking them into consideration, the
government offers small apartments to all families.
Arguments Against Pico’s Removal
Santa Marta dwellers present four points of critique against the removal of
Pico. The first point is linked to the discussion about housing, belonging and
identity. The area in which Pico sits is historically characterized as the most
poor and violent place in the favela. In order to defend their habitation in this
area, residents must create a rhetorical case for valuing this part of the hill,
which involves an image construction that is the opposite of the stereotype
to which Pico is linked.
Here it is peaceful. It is a calm place … When I arrive here everything is

quiet, there is nobody, there is no loud music, there is nothing. I turn on
music, a television, I cook my food and I lie here and sleep. I feel very calm.
I open the window and sit looking at the landscape and people; this makes
me forget everything … [laughs]. That is why I do not want to leave here.
I really do not want to leave here. The tranquillity here is a thousand per
cent! (M.M. [50], female, resident of Pico)
In the past, the houses in the favela, even small ones, used to have a back-
yard and an area around the building, sometimes surrounded by a fence.
Gradually, most of the favela houses lost these spaces, because other houses
were built on the empty land (Rocha 2005: 64). But in the Pico area, houses
still maintain that unique spaciousness. Pico residents view this as a great
advantage, because there is more ventilation and sunlight inside the homes,
which prevents respiratory health issues and other health problems caused by
the mould that is typical in favela houses due to excessive moisture. Besides,
residents enjoy more privacy because houses are more dispersed. ‘Houses are
not so close to one another, it is not like each one is stuck to another – where
you open the door and the neighbour can see if your underwear is black or
red, do you understand?’ (F.A. [30], female, resident of Pico).
Other features that Pico residents point out as different are a privileged
view and proximity to the forest. Many interviewees said that waking up with
a wonderful view and being in contact with nature improves their quality of
life.
First of all I like the privacy I have here. But I also like the landscape, the
fresh air that we breathe up here with constant contact with green areas.
Houses are more spread out, they are not stuck to each other as they are
down there in the hill, and each one has its own particularity in relation to
the experience here in Pico. It is the place where I have tranquillity to do
my landscaping projects. It is where I feel calm to muse, to read books,
to think about life, to get my future projects going. I hike here. I have
always done it since my childhood. I collect native seeds, seasonal fruits in
the woods; I have contact with many wild animals that live up here in the
woods. (V.L. [29], male, resident of Pico)
Although Pico has been characterized as a place difficult to access, residents

point out that the top of the hill is close to Laranjeiras road – an advantage
to residents who own a car or motorcycle. In addition, residents highlight
their feeling of belonging to the neighbourhood. Even if opportunities were
offered to move to lower areas, residents would refuse to move because they
like living in Pico, indicating that they would find it difficult to adapt to
another place with other types of housing.
I have history in Pico, I was born and raised here, many people in my family
were raised here as well. Most of my childhood friends still live here as
neighbours, although some of them have moved. People who live here in
Pico are more receptive and we have bonds, we have long friendships. If we
were removed from here, it would cause social disintegration, as we used
to say. It takes time to get acquainted with other people, with other neigh-
bours, to have a new way of life; it could even shake up family structures.
(V.L. [29], male, resident of Pico)
The second point of critique is linked to debates about urbanization,

UPPs and the changes that these processes have caused in favela life. Before
the arrival of the UPP, some residents moved from the area because they
could not bear the shootings. Pico was such a dangerous area that mothers
did not allow their children to stay in a nursery that had been built there.
After the arrival of the pacifying police, the nursery became the UPP
headquarters.
B: I never liked the guys [drug traffickers] firing shots here … Once the
police came here … But, it was very bad. I do not like the noise …
Ve: In fact, that over there used to be a nursery and residences … Nobody
gathered to bring the kids. They were too lazy to bring their kids to
daycare.
B: No, it was not laziness … At that time, nobody had the courage to
leave their children there. There were drug dealers firing shots from
here, policemen firing shots from there, who would have the courage
to leave their children there?
In addition to the violence, access to the neighbourhood was problematic.

In the words of Rapper Fiell: ‘Rio de Janeiro, South Zone, Botafogo, Santa
Marta Community, 73 years of residence, my fellows. Go up, go down, go
up, go down. 788 to arrive at Pico, 788 you must have faith in Christ, 788
to arrive home, 788 is the reality of Santa Marta!’ (Translation of part of the
lyrics from a song and short film called ‘788’ by Rapper Fiell). The title refers
to the 788 steps of the stairway that residents climbed every day before the
installation of the tramway to the hilltop. Before the tramway was installed,
most activities had to be done by foot, from garbage removal and the trans-
portation of construction materials to the transportation of children, the
elderly and people with handicaps. Life in Pico has improved considerably
since the tramway was installed and the road from the top of the hill to the
Laranjeiras was paved, but residents question what the improvements are for:
Five years ago Pico was a difficult place to reach. It is a beautiful place, but
it had no tramway or anything. People used to like to live there, but it was
difficult to get home with shopping bags, for example. Nowadays, there is
a tramway; life is easier, there are paved streets and a wonderful view. But
now, at this point, you have to move from there and to go live in another
place. You will not enjoy the improvements that are coming to this place.
This is another point that we have to defend. When there were shootings in
this place, and you suffered from the drug dealers’ ‘war’, you stayed here.
But now that it is a calm place, life is much better, there is a tramway and
cars reach here, now you have to give up living here, because the state is
going to construct a park for tourism and eco-tourism. (I.S. [56], male,
resident of Santa Marta – speech made during a meeting about urbaniza-
tion organized by Grupo Eco)
Figures 5.2a & b The Morro Santa Marta tramway.

Photos by the author.
The third point of critique is a counterargument opposing the govern-

ment’s claim that Pico must be demolished because it is an ‘area of risk’. The
primary risk comes in the form of landslides or heavy rains. In September
2012, Pico residents organized a demonstration to protest against their
removal. At this event, Pico leaders announced that a second evaluation was
made by an engineer, showing that people could continue living in Pico if the
government decided to invest resources to urbanize that part of the favela.
This report was presented to the government. It was said that specialists
would compare the divergent evaluations made by GEO-RIO (Geotechnical
Institute of the City of Rio de Janeiro) and the engineer hired by Pico’s
residents. But dwellers did not receive a response from the government.
Residents of Santa Marta state that any area can remain inhabited if there is
‘political will’. They point to the construction of a government building, as
well as the tramway. Until a few years ago, that area was also considered an
‘area at risk’ because of landslides that caused casualties. Containing walls
solved the problem.
What should we demand? First, they are going to say: “Oh, that place is
a risk area.” This is their argument. Why do they want to remove people
from there? “Because it’s a risk area”. What are our counterarguments?
What should we say in return? Well, there was a huge investment to build
the containing wall on the hill exactly in the place they say is a risk area,
in order to divert the water that falls in Santa Marta. That is true. If there
are problems, it is a consequence of poor work. Either the government
made a poorly constructed wall or they did not inspect the work. Is there a
chance of doing things right this time to make that area not risky anymore?
Another thing: “It is a risk area”. Okay, if you look at the hillside where
the buildings are, that area used to be a risk area. In 1988 the land of the
hill slid down with heavy rains and buried everything. They built a con-
taining wall on the hill and the state itself constructed new buildings. (I.S
[56], male, resident of Santa Marta – speech made during a meeting about
urbanization organized by Grupo Eco)
The president of the Santa Marta Neighbourhood Association, José Mario

Hilário, said he had information about an assumed investment of forty mil-
lion reais by the state government for the next stage of urbanization. ‘In
neighbouring districts, like Jardim Botânico and Santa Teresa, big houses
were constructed similar to the buildings here. So they know how to create
infrastructure here. But they must have political will (vontade política) to do
that, because they have the budget’ (J.H., resident of Santa Marta – speech
made during a meeting about urbanization organized by Grupo Eco). More
than a lack of resources, a lack of political will seemed to be the problem.
The fourth point of critique is linked to tourism and the beginning of
a gentrification process. Not knowing what will happen with their homes
creates great anxiety among residents, and makes room for speculation. A
rumour circulates that the government wants to remove families in Pico to
construct a lookout point for tourists, since that area has the best view in the
favela.
W.S: The community is “developing”, but our rights are the same as
before: In the community most parts are crime-ridden – that is the
reality – everyone is a criminal and does not have rights.
V.L.: We do not have a voice, we only have duties.
W.S.: Another thing: you cannot do anything to your home! Why is that?!
If they want any improvement, what can they do? “Look, Vitor,
your house is being renovated. I’ll send you an architect, an engi-
neer, somebody to help you.” They could do that, couldn’t they?
What is easier to do? It is easier to go there and say: “You cannot do
Figures 5.3a & b The Morro Santa Marta as a tourist attraction. Photos by the
author.
it, and that is it”. But, they do not give us the real reason. Why can’t
I improve my house?
V.L.: Do you know why? They want to build restaurants, hotels, tourist
spots up here. This is the real reason.
W.S.: I say: I do not want to leave here. I will fight for this. A funny thing:
this is an at-risk area, they cannot do anything. But why can they
build a structure for a restaurant? Can this be done?
V.L.: In my opinion, removal is a political and capitalistic move, since
there is a privileged 180-degree view of the South Zone here, from
Lagoa to the Rio-Niterói Bridge. In the future they will be able to
build facilities here, as we already said: hotels, guesthouses, restau-
rants, an observatory for visitors, and the publication of pictures and
photos saying that removing people who lived here was necessary
because it was an area at risk.
Favela tourism is not new. The paradigmatic case for favela tourism in
Rio de Janeiro is the Rocinha favela, which used to receive three thousand
visitors every month (before the pacification process), hosted by seven differ-
ent agencies in addition to individual guides and taxi drivers who regularly
hosted tours. As Freire-Medeiros (2012) points out, Rocinha residents are
not against tourism. Similarly, Morro Santa Marta residents do not regard
the presence of tourists as negative. Many residents encourage tourism, to
de-mystify the favela image as presented by the government and the media.
Some residents fear an increasing presence of tourists on the hill, as they
suspect that tourists are looking for houses to rent or buy. They fear that
property prices and cost of living on the hill, which have already increased
significantly since the arrival of the UPP, could rise even more with the arrival
of ‘tourists with a lot of money’.
He (a tourist guide) arrived there. He went down, and he asked if I knew

that tourists were on the hill to look for a house, especially in this area of
Pico, because of the beautiful landscape. He explained that [the tourists]
did not want to go to a hotel, because they did not want to keep going up
and down the hill. They (the tourists) just wanted to sleep, because during
the day they were going to do their own stuff and they were going to come
just to sleep. So he told me that one tourist wants to rent a house for one
month, the other one for six months … I told him: “If I hear about some-
thing, I’ll tell you”. He told me that he was really looking for something.
(F.A. [30], female, resident of Pico)
In this context, residents question who will benefit most from the planned
public works. Are those investments intended to improve housing and quality
of life for the residents or to improve the locale so that it becomes a govern-
ment showcase for middle-class people and ‘gringos’ (tourists)? An important
issue discussed by residents is the possible start of a gentrification process in

‘pacified’ favelas. Pacification has allowed for the implementation of urban
regularization, which may lead to gentrification in those favelas located in the
most valued areas of the city.
Two notable effects of favela ‘pacification’ are the rising costs of living and
rising property values. The costs of living increase due to the formalization of
services. The rise in property values is a result of pressure from tourists and
middle-class Brazilians who want to buy or rent houses in the favela. They are
eager to live in favelas or open businesses there, since they are now consid-
ered to be in peaceful, nice and fashionable areas of the city. Because of these
effects, dwellers in Santa Marta fear that they will be unable to continue living
there and will be forced to move to other favelas (likely more violent, and
distant from their current homes). In fact, Santa Marta dwellers have felt gen-
trification pressures in three different ways since the beginning of the favela’s
‘pacification’. The first is the threat of removal of Pico residents to make
room for tourist attractions. The second is the threat of expulsion caused by
the rising costs of living and property values. The third and more recent form
of gentrification is the massive introduction of events in Morro Santa Marta.
In recent years, the Santa Marta Samba School has been hosting weekly
parties organized by and for non-residents. Middle-class Brazilians – who
had never been in a favela before the launch of the UPP – now go to these
Figure 5.4 Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta Samba School crowded with people
from outside the favela. Photo by the author.
kinds of parties because they are considered trendy. Tickets for these par-
ties typically cost 80 reais, a price that is unusually expensive for residents
of Morro Santa Marta. For this reason, many residents complain that they
cannot enjoy the favela as a recreational space for themselves anymore. They
cannot afford to go to such parties, and the parties organized by dwellers are
controlled by the UPP.7 Therefore, dwellers complain that Santa Marta is
becoming a recreation site for outsiders, a commodity to be used by tourists
and upper-middle-class residents of the city. As a dweller once told me: ‘The
reality is that, one day, rich people will end up taking the hill and we will end
up going somewhere else …’.
Final Remarks
In June 2011, the Municipal Housing Department and Pereira Passos

Institute (IPP, also a city organization) hosted a debate on the conditions
that a place needs to have in order to be considered a favela. The institute
and department suggested that neighbourhoods ‘with pavement; lighting;
storm drainage; water and sewer systems; sports and recreation areas; and col-
lective systems of education, health and social assistance’ can be considered
‘ex-favelas’. They then released a list with forty-four locations that have offi-
cially become ‘ex-favelas’, or ‘urbanized communities’. Morro Santa Marta
was included in that list, although the government, dwellers and the media
still refer to it as a favela. The media frequently refers to Morro Santa Marta
as a laboratory in which the ‘pacification project’ is still being ‘tested’, and as
a showcase favela that the government has used internationally to promote
a new image of the city that hosted the 2014 World Cup and will host the
2016 Olympic Games. Recently, a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro published a
ranking of ‘pacified’ favelas and Morro Santa Marta received five stars:
The UPP Santa Marta, in Botafogo, is considered a model unit. The

community, which was dominated by drug trade, now has become one
of Rio’s tourist sights, with a five-star concept … The rating (one to five
stars) was made by the newspaper Extra, with data from the Institute of
Public Security (ISP) and the assessment made by the Peacemaker Police
Command (CPP). While Santa Marta receives carefree tourists, residents of
Fallet, Coroa and Fogueteiro live with the sound of gunfire between the
police and traffickers, as occurred just last week.8
The government tried to change Rio de Janeiro’s international image as a

violent city in anticipation of the upcoming mega events. The UPP project
was important, in this sense, because it reduced crime statistics and provided
a new image of Rio de Janeiro as a ‘pacified city’. This revitalized image of
Rio attracts more tourism and investment. The hypothesis I attempted to

advance in this chapter is that the government has used Morro Santa Marta
to promote Rio de Janeiro, on an international level, as a ‘pacified city’. The
government made an attempt to transform this favela into an official attrac-
tion of the ‘city-as-a-commodity’ when the favela was ‘pacified’ and the Rio
Top Tour project was created. We can point out several reasons behind this
initiative – to generate local development, to raise the ‘self-esteem’ of favela
residents – but the main objective was to create a landmark, proving that
favelas are part of the contours of a ‘pacified’ Rio de Janeiro.
It is possible to appreciate the creation of a ‘model favela’ and a tour-
istic favela according to the ‘synthesis-image’, which ‘conforms values and
beliefs, providing elements to those involved with marketing and technolog-
ical means of information and communication, trying to articulate elements
of the discourse of the city that coincide with social and economic activities’
(Sánchez 2003: 109). If this approximation makes any sense, it would be
possible to suggest that the government has created a ‘model favela’ as a
synthesis-image of social harmony and security that it wants to pitch in order
to add value to the city as a commodity. In doing so, the government has
‘demarginalized’ the favela and integrated it into the promoted image of the
‘Marvellous City’ (Menezes 2012).9
However, city marketing is a technology of convincing. In this sense, the
technology can be used for very different people with very different purposes.
Therefore, while public authorities try to create a better representation of
the city, there is always space for counteractions that do not obey the official
logic. This was made clear in an image posted on Facebook by a Santa Marta
resident, which shows how the expression ‘model favela’ has been incorpo-
rated into local discourse. Residents used the term to criticize the govern-
ment, ironically wondering ‘how Santa Marta can be a showcase if there is no
properly working tramway, no water supply and no public phones that work’.
When this image was posted on Facebook, several Santa Marta dwellers com-
mented on it: ‘It is a model for the shameful actions of the UPP!’ And: ‘Area
of special interest? … blah, blah, blah … Only an idiot would believe in this
discourse … It is a strategy. It is a mode of favela removal … We have always
lived in a favela, but now there is no benefit to living here … if you want to
live in Santa Marta, you have to pay very high bills …’. The expression ‘model
favela’ has been (re)appropriated to publicize the removal threat.
The “model favela” does not exist. Santa Marta is being designed for “grin-
gos” (tourists) see? … Saying that Santa Marta is a model favela is a joke
made by the Cabral government … Three million reais to build a wall, five
hundred thousand to install cameras, and people still suffer in the favela as
usual. (Santa Marta dweller)
We are not in the north-east of Brazil. We are in Santa Marta, Botafogo of

Rio de Janeiro. “Model” favela … It is absurd! … The question is: where
is this supposed “model favela”? Model of what? Is it a model of incompe-
tence, a failure model, a model of neglect? Because it is very easy to stop
outside the favela and take a look at the cable car and colourful houses, but
inside the favela it is different, much more complex. (Santa Marta dweller)
In July 2013, Santa Marta dwellers organized a demonstration in which

they claimed: ‘Queremos uma favela modelo de verdade e não de
maquiagem’; they wanted a real model favela, not a fake model favela cre-
ated by the government as a makeover – a model favela not only in theory
but also in practice. Similar demonstrations, debates and meetings have
occurred in other favelas throughout Rio de Janeiro. Although favelas now
have a less negative image, they are still being perceived as a problem for
Brazilian cities.
To sum up, we can state that government plans for urbanized and ‘paci-
fied’ favelas involve many forced displacements. The number of demolished
favelas has drastically increased in recent years (Magalhães 2013). The City
Hall and state government have removed parts of favelas located adjacent to
stadiums where the 2014 World Cup was held, and will continue to do this in
preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games, which illustrates that ‘pacification’
processes are quite disruptive. Therefore, even when living in a ‘pacified’
favela, favela dwellers still face a significant struggle to stay in Rio de Janeiro
and belong to the ‘Marvellous City’.
Notes
1. The official definition of the Pacifying Police Unit is: ‘a contingent of the Military Police
focused on one or more communities located in an urban area where territories are rec-
ognized by law. Each UPP has its own headquarter, constituted of one or more bases. It
also has a commander-in-chief and a force integrated by officials, sergeants, corporals and
soldiers, as well as its own operation equipment such as patrol cars and motorcycles. (…)
The UPPs are managed under the principles of Police of Proximity. This is a concept that
goes beyond the community police approach and has its strategy based on the partnership
between local residents and law enforcement institutions. The pacifying police approach,
which is guided by dialogue and respect to the culture and uniqueness of each community,
eases conversations and stimulates the growth of local leaders’. Retrieved 20 October 2014
from http://www.upprj.com/index.php/o_que_e_upp_us.
2. I am grateful to Emerson Fiell, Natalia Urbina, Vitor Lira, Fernanda de Abreu, Bahiano,
Emílio, Veronica Oliveira and all others who contributed to carrying out my research. I
want to thank especially the Grupo Memória do Pico (a group of residents who gathered
together to discuss local history) for the work we did in rescuing the memory of Pico and
conducting group interviews with residents in this area of the hill. I want to thank them also
for giving me permission to use this material to write this chapter. Moreover, I am grateful
to Yanne Menezes and Christopher, who helped to revise this chapter.
3. For the time being, this is the only mail delivered to homes, which is done by ‘Light’ itself.
All addresses have a single reference, which is 26 Marechal Francisco de Moura Street,
where people access the hill. Other mail is delivered by Correios (the postal service) to the
Residents’ Association, where it is separated and distributed in alphabetical order (Cunha and
Mello 2011).
4. ‘The Prefeitura created Choque de Ordem in 2009 to combat disorder in Rio’s public spaces,
and it has carried out operations all over the city. … The campaign targets unregulated activ-
ity in public spaces, cracking down especially hard on unlicensed street vendors … Choque de
Ordem has garnered comparisons to Rudy Giuliani’s zero-tolerance law-enforcement policy
as mayor of New York, based on the “broken windows theory” that attributes crime, in part,
to deteriorated public spaces. … The similarity is no coincidence: Giuliani Partners, Rudy
Giuliani’s firm, has a security consulting contract with Rio de Janeiro, to help prepare the
city for the 2016 Olympic Games.’ Retrieved 20 March 2012 from: http://riotimesonline.
com/brazil-news/rio-politics/zero-tolerance-shock-of-order-in-rios-centro/.
5. Grupo Eco is a non-profit educational and cultural entity that seeks to promote and sup-
port Santa Marta activities and initiatives that are integral to the development of the people
and the community. They give special attention to children, teenagers and youth, seeking
affirmation of human dignity; full citizenship; strengthening of participatory community
solidarity, and contributing to building a more just, free and participatory society.
6. Rapper Fiell has made a video that shows a visit to Pico by State Assemblyman Mr. Marcelo
Freixo. This video is available on YouTube retrieved 20 March 2012 from http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=F84SRCHYoWY.
7. Message posted on Facebook in February 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2012 from http://g1.globo.
com/brasil/noticia/2010/12/upp-impulsiona-samba-de-classe-media-e-restringe-bailes-
funk.html.
8. Source retrieved 20 March 2012 from http://extra.globo.com/casos-de-policia/as-
melhores-as-piores-upps-ranking-da-pacificacao-4462719.html#ixzz1rjNKaxd8.
10. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Rio de Janeiro has been represented as
the ‘Marvellous City’. This title was conferred on Rio from the book of poems La Ville
Merveilleuse, written by a French poet Jane Catulle, who fell in love with the city. Her visit to
Rio occurred shortly after the redevelopment of the city centre, undertaken by Pereira Passos
and guided by the aesthetic standards of the belle époque. The city was valued for the beauty
of its natural resources, the friendliness of its people and the diversity of its popular culture.
Today, being Carioca (someone who was born in Rio de Janeiro) means sharing the joyful,
innovative and democratic spirit of the city, promoting social integration while ignoring
differences of race or class. While effectively producing an image of Rio as tropical paradise,
however, it obviously underestimates the dynamics of social conflict in the city (Leite 2001).
References
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Janeiro’, in A.L. Cardoso (ed.), Habitação Social nas Metrópoles Brasileiras: Uma Avaliação
das Políticas Habitacionais em Belém, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro e
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Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
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pp. 25–60.
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Urbanização da Favela’, Dilemas: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 4: 371–401.
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———. 2012. ‘Favela Tourism: Listening to Local Voices’, in F. Frenzel, K. Koens and M.
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Gilbert, A. and P. Ward. 1985. Housing, the State, and the Poor: Policy and Practice in Three
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Violence’, in K. Koonings and D. Kruijt (eds), Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban
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America Latina 12: 44–86.
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IFCS.
———. 2008. ‘Violência, Sociabilidade e Risco nas Margens da Cidade: Percepções e Formas
de Ação de Moradores de Favelas Cariocas’, in: L.A. Machado da Silva (ed.), Vida Sob Cerco:
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———. 2010. ‘Afinal, Qual é a das UPPs?’ Observatorio das Metropoles. Retrieved 10 March
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Part III
Spaces of the Urban Middle Class
6
Housing Policy in the City
of Buenos Aires
Some Reflections on the Programa Federal
Fernando Ostuni and Jean-Louis Van Gelder
In 2004, the Argentinean government launched a social housing programme

that – in terms of budget and goals – was more than ten times the size of any
other government intervention in the preceding fifteen years. The Federal
Social Housing Programme, or ‘Programa Federal’, marked a significant
departure from more than a decade of neo-liberal policy in which social hous-
ing construction had come to a virtual standstill. However, despite the fact
that the Programa Federal is one of the largest social housing programmes in
the Latin American region, it is uncertain whether it can actually deliver on its
promise of providing an adequate housing solution for the low-income sec-
tors. Despite the enormous government expenditure, the housing situation
of low-income families has actually become more problematic in recent years,
as evidenced by ever-growing slums and increasing numbers of people living
in overcrowded tenement houses. This paradox – high government expen-
diture on social housing on the one hand, and increasing informality on the
other – raises important questions regarding the way housing programmes
are designed and how they are implemented.
In this chapter we argue that a large-scale social housing programme,
such as the Programa Federal, that does not simultaneously articulate a clear
land policy and take into account the social complexity and diversity on the
ground, is bound to fall short of reaching its goals. We do this by discussing
the design and implementation of the Programa Federal in the City of Buenos
Aires since it became operational in 2004. In particular, we examine how the
programme contributes to urban segregation in the city, how it generates a
‘product’ that disregards the views and needs of (future) residents, and how
it fails to consider the particularities of the areas in which it is implemented.
The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section, we present the
conceptual framework and relevant theoretical debates. In the second sec-
tion, we provide an historical overview of housing policy in Buenos Aires, and
in the third section, we discuss the main aspects of the implementation of the
Programa Federal in the city. We focus in particular on those dimensions that
directly impact the ability of the programme to reach its goals (i.e., the reg-
ulatory framework, the availability of land, and the roles of the construction
– 149 –
1 50 | Fernando O st u n i a n d J e a n - Lou i s V a n G e lder
sector and the state agencies involved in the implementation of the pro-
gramme). We also examine to what extent future residents are involved in
this process and present an exploratory analysis of the residents’ perspective
on the programme. The chapter concludes with a number of reflections on
the Programa Federal against the backdrop of the role public housing has
historically played in urban processes in the City of Buenos Aires.1
On the Relationship Between the State and

the Housing Market
According to Topalov (1979), the role of the state in urban planning cannot
be explained by simply conceiving it as a rational actor that aims to serve
the general interest of the population through a coherent strategy. Instead,
it operates more like a group of institutions that carries out policies that
ultimately serve the interests of the elite. Seen from this perspective, urban
policy cannot be reduced to mere technical planning, but instead forms part
of a general social process (see also Roy 2005). This process is intersected
by the social struggles of urban social movements, whose actions and strat-
egies are oriented towards the improvement of the living conditions of the
low-income sectors (e.g., Castells 1970; Borja 1974; Harvey 1977 [1973];
Topalov 1979; Eckstein 2001). Various authors (Turner 1977; Yujnovsky
1984; Fernández Wagner 2008) have argued that the persistence of self-help
housing attests to the incapacity of the private and public sectors to provide
an adequate housing supply to the low-income sectors. In Latin American
countries, auto-construction and ‘self-help housing’ have historically been
common non-mercantile ways of producing the city. The latter applies to the
City of Buenos Aires, where informal settlements such as ‘villas’ have been
one of the most common habitats for poor sectors (Cravino 2006).
To what does ‘access to housing’ refer, precisely? Both classic (Turner
1977, 1982; Pradilla 1980; Ward 1982; Burgess 1982; Yujnovsky 1984;
Gilbert and Ward 1985; Gilbert and Gugler 1992) and more recent studies
(Fernández Wagner 2008; Rodríguez and Di Virgilio 2007, 2011) empha-
size that access to housing is something more than having a housing unit or a
roof over one’s head. It also implies access to a set of services that meet basic
needs, such as infrastructure, a healthy living environment, access to medical
services and education, and recreational activities. The inaccessibility to these
services is intimately related to social inequality. Space is a central component
in the unequal distribution of resources and a ‘social product’, as it deter-
mines whether areas end up being inclusive or exclusive, and integrated or
segregated. Spatial and territorial questions are both a result of the problem
and co-constitutive of it. As Maldonado and Alcalá (1998) and Amérigo
H ou si n g Poli c y i n t h e C i ty o f B u en o s A i r es | 151
(1995) argue, this element has a direct impact on how end-users feel about
their new dwellings and on whether or not they believe their housing needs
have been addressed.
In sum, different perspectives in the literature on public policy tend to agree
with the fact that state programmes can be understood as complex processes
directed at addressing social issues (Oszlak and O’Donnell 1976; O’Donnell
1977; Pressman and Wildavsky 1984; Przeworski 1998; Aguilar Villanueva
2000a and 2000b). Focusing on the implementation of housing policy, and
drawing from actors responsible for putting it on the agenda, appears to be
a fertile point of departure for examining recent changes in public policy in
contemporary Argentina. In this chapter, we do this by examining the imple-
mentation of a national housing programme in the City of Buenos Aires,
conceiving it as a complex and dynamic process in which its goals and targets
are to materialize. This process, in turn, is permeated by tensions and conflicts
between the different actors involved and by economic and political trends
that influence its implementation. Also, we argue that the local context and
its characteristics (e.g. local government capacities, land markets) need to be
considered when analysing both the scenario in which policy implementation
is developed and its consequences in the shape of urban space. These are
key elements to understanding the shortcomings between national housing
policy goals and local scenarios, on the one hand, and the gaps between the
end product of housing programmes in terms of new dwellings against the
residents’ perspectives and housing needs, on the other.
Housing Policy in Buenos Aires
In Argentina, housing acquired importance at a national level with the cre-

ation of the National Housing Commission in 1955, which was followed
by the creation of the Federal Housing Fund in 1959, and the founda-
tion of the Housing State Secretary in 1965 (Yujnovsky 1984; Cravino,
Fernández Wagner and Varela 2002). In 1972, the National Housing Fund
(or FONAVI as per its Spanish acronym) was established, although its imple-
mentation did not start until 1977. FONAVI was a centralized agency with
nationwide operations. The National Undersecretary of Urban Development
and Housing was the authority in charge of designing and putting into place
the required legal frameworks, deciding the kind of projects that were to
be financed and setting the general criteria for eligibility. Meanwhile, the
provincial authorities were responsible for the implementation of FONAVI
housing in their own territory by following the rules and parameters deter-
mined by the national authorities (Cravino, Fernández Wagner and Varela
2002; Rodríguez and Di Virgilio 2007). Until 1992 FONAVI built an
a verage of 32,000 housing units per year. Gradually, however, social housing
was pushed towards the background as the private sector gained more influ-
ence and large-scale urban projects and infrastructural works started to dom-
inate the urban policy agenda (Cuenya 2004; Gorelik 2004; Cohen 2007). A
paradigmatic example of this is Puerto Madero, a former port in downtown
Buenos Aires, which was transformed following the model of London’s
docklands. Since the beginning of the 1990s, when Argentina embraced a
neo-liberal model, housing policies for the poor lost relevance in the policy
agenda. FONAVI ceased to have a significant impact on housing policies,
either in the City of Buenos Aires or the municipalities surrounding it, as the
fund failed to reach those social groups with problems entering the housing
market, for which it was initially created.
The impact of neo-liberal and structural adjustment policies increased the
burden on the poorer parts of the population, while protection decreased,
as the market-based policies resulted in a further retreat of the state in social
areas, such as education, health and social housing (Cravino, Fernández
Wagner and Varela 2002; Fidel 2004; Basualdo 2006; Cohen 2007). Social
policies were made subordinate to macroeconomic stability, and the changes
in economic ideology also pushed urban management further into the back-
ground. Fidel (2004) argues that the new policy orientation of the state
dissociated the economic sphere from the social sphere and, hence, also
disconnected it from the ‘habitat issue’. It is worth mentioning that, besides
the decentralization of FONAVI, the National Mortgage Bank – which has
played an important part in promoting housing access since the 1950s – was
privatized in 1999, which meant that mortgage loans also fell beyond the
reach of the middle and lower-middle classes (Fernández Wagner 2008).
Furthermore, population growth in the metropolitan area (which encom-
passes both the city and its surrounding municipalities) and the negative
impact of the economic downturn on formerly middle-class households, who
started to slip into poverty, were other key factors in the rise of the demand
for affordable housing.
Therefore, the neo-liberalist policies generated a two-sided effect: at the same
time that social housing policy evaporated, increasing u nemployment (and
informal employment) also took away essential conditions for obtaining credit
for housing and the possibility of accessing housing through the formal market.
Some researchers argue that, in this period, many lost their house as a conse-
quence of their inability to pay off the mortgage (Fernández Wagner 2008).
During the crisis that began to unfold in the late 1990s – and which eventu-
ally culminated in the 2001 collapse – unemployment and poverty acquired
notorious visibility and increased the demand for social emergency policies for
the poor sectors.2 It was not until 2003 that the state started to invest again in
habitat solutions and housing policy in general (COHRE 2005).
The Programa Federal
After the collapse of Argentina’s economy in 2001 and the two critical
years that followed it, a new impulse for public housing was generated by
the creation of the Federal Programme for the Construction of Housing
– commonly referred to as the Programa Federal I. The objective of the
programme was to build 120,000 dwellings nationwide between 2004 and
2006. A year later, the second phase of the programme, Programa Federal
II, was announced. Its goal was to provide for the construction of 300,000
dwellings countrywide. To the 5,000 units planned for the City of Buenos
Aires under the Programa Federal I, the second phase added an additional
6,000 units. Besides reducing the housing deficit and providing a housing
solution for the low-income sectors, the programme had two important sub-
sidiary goals: generating employment and boosting the construction sector.
For the first phase of the programme, the federal government was to pro-
vide the provinces and the City of Buenos Aires – which is politically and
administratively autonomous and therefore has a similar status to that of
the provinces – with the required financial resources to build the dwellings.
The resources included both the funds for the construction of dwellings and
funds for the necessary infrastructure. The total budget for both stages of
the programme was around U.S. $7 billion. The City of Buenos Aires was
assigned U.S. $200 million of the total budget (U.S. $67 million of which
for phase I and U.S. $133 million for phase II). According to the framework
agreement between the federal government and the provinces, the spatial
distribution of the dwellings over geographic areas and jurisdictions would
have a provisional character, to be adjusted according to the efficiency of the
programme and the local characteristics of the housing deficit and unemploy-
ment rates in each province. The possibility of complementary funding by
the provinces was explicitly allowed, for example, for situations in which land
needed to be acquired or additional infrastructural works were required, or
for adding improvements to the projects. The provision of the land on which
to build the dwellings was left to provincial and municipal governments.3
The Programa Federal implied a shift in housing policy in Argentina, also
compared to the main trends in the Latin American region over the past
two decades (Cuenya 2000). Basically, housing policies on the continent
during this period were market-oriented, included land regularization and
slum upgrading projects, and were aimed at financing mortgage credit for
the poor, making land use regulations less stringent, and discouraging public
agencies from promoting the construction of new dwellings (Cuenya 2000;
Rodríguez and Sugranyes 2005; Rodríguez and Di Virgilio 2011; Ward et al.
2011). Despite the fact that the Programa Federal is one of the largest social
housing programmes in the region, it has fallen short of reaching its goals.
Below, we discuss several problems that have plagued the programme in the
City of Buenos Aires since its inception.
Why Did the Programa Federal Fail to Reach its Goals?
To get an idea of the degree of success of the programme, we can look at the
figures announced in the project agreements worked out by the federal gov-
ernment and the City of Buenos Aires, as compared with the actual levels of
execution in the city. In June 2007, the Housing Institute of the City (IVC),
which is the local government agency responsible for the execution of the
programme in the City of Buenos Aires, assigned a total of U.S. $26 million
to public works under Programa Federal I. This figure was less than half of
the budget that was assigned to the city for this phase of the programme,
which was U.S. $67 million. Furthermore, of the thirty-one different housing
projects that were announced, only thirteen showed some kind of advance.
The same can be said with respect to the amount of units that were planned
and those that were actually built. According to the IVC, by 2007 a total of
2,487 units were built, which is less than 25 per cent of the 11,000 units it was
supposed to construct during both phases of the Programa Federal, and less
than half of the amount planned under the first phase of the programme only.
These figures raise several questions. Three critical issues emerge in par-
ticular: 1) the institutional and normative requisites for housing construction
in the City; 2) the structural requisites for the development of a habitat
policy (i.e. land markets and the construction sector in general), and 3) the
dynamics of the government body in charge of the implementation of the
programme, the IVC. Below, we deal with these points by drawing from
interviews with stakeholders and other key informants. The first issue is the
institutional and normative requisites for housing construction in the city.
Compared to other jurisdictions, the City of Buenos Aires has much stricter
regulations with respect to housing construction. The control mechanisms
specified in the city’s urban planning and construction codes, such as compul-
sory studies of environmental impact, public hearings and the intervention of
the judiciary power, are mentioned as intervening processes that slow down
housing construction. According to various interviewees, adjustments often
need to be made to the characteristics of dwellings constructed for public
housing due to strict legal requirements. In other cases, they emerge directly
as obstructions during the implementation process. As a staff member of the
Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development of the City observes:
The City is one of the oldest and most institutionalized districts [of
Argentina]. They do not allow you to build a dwelling without infrastructure
and other requirements. It is one of the few jurisdictions with a highly

developed normative body with respect to housing. In other provinces
everything is much more flexible and there you’ll find a “we’ll fix it and if
not, we’ll just arrange for an exception to the code” attitude … In the City
they won’t allow that … So we are just talking different time frames here.
It is interesting to note in this respect that, even though the requirements

and standards of quality increase the complexity of the implementation pro-
cess of the Programa Federal in the city, at the same time this regulatory body
of rules does guarantee that the work that is executed is of a higher quality
compared to other jurisdictions, most notably the other municipalities of the
metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.
The second issue consists of the structural requisites for the development
of habitat policy: land markets and the construction sector. This issue has
interfered with an efficient implementation of the Programa Federal. It con-
cerns some of the more structural elements of the Buenos Aires case. Two
issues in particular emerge in the discourse of the people that we interviewed:
the increased price of construction materials and the lack of land available for
housing construction. In the face of the enormous anticipated demand for
construction materials, companies providing these materials stepped up their
prices. Consequently, the prices that had been budgeted by the programme
were significantly lower than those that actually had to be paid. A former
employee of both the municipality of the city and the provincial government
in the field of housing and urban planning argues:
There were no construction firms that came out of the 2001 crisis without
going bankrupt or in adequate conditions to make a bid. … And while at
the time the supply of manual labour was abundant, the scale of the project
[the Programa Federal] led to problems with acquiring labour, construction
materials and bricks. Almost the entire production system was not ready to
produce on this scale. If there is a lot of demand for bricks, the producers
do not make an additional oven, but instead increase their price. And when
the price increases, brick producers and sellers start to reduce their supply.
The other issue concerns the lack of land and the failure to contemplate
its acquisition in the design of the programme. Because land cannot be
reproduced, land shortage and large increases in demand increase its cost,
which, in turn, contributes to new informality as the increased costs exceed
the financial means of the poorer sectors of society. The lack of a clear land
policy is likely to result in the acquisition of land in areas where land values
are low(est) and which are hence undesirable. In the City of Buenos Aires,
these neighbourhoods are traditionally the ones located in the southern
area, and that is precisely where the Programa Federal shows more presence
CHACARITA
HACARITA
MAGR
ALMAGRO
FLORES
PARQUE
E PATRICIOS
PATRIC BOCA Number of dwellings by “plan Federal”
PARQUE AVELLANEDA
E AVELLANE
NEDA 0
1 - 99
NUEVA
N POMPEYA
PO
OMP
100 - 299
SOLDATI
VILLA SOLDA 300 - 499
500 - 999
VILLA
V LUGANO
ANO
O
Informal settlements (”Villas”)
0 0 7 Kilometers
Figure 6.1 Location of housing projects developed by the Programa Federal in the
City of Buenos Aires’ neighbourhoods.
Source: Elaboration by the authors of data from IVC and Dsig
(see Figure 6.1). In general, this means unfavourable locations, not only
because of the distance from central areas, including the most important
informal neighbourhoods, but also because of the symbolic stigma these
places bear. Therefore, the new housing complexes have limited potential
for residents to generate livelihoods, and limited access to the city in terms
of services (e.g. public health and education facilities). This has also rein-
forced the social and spatial segregation in the city. In other words, a hous-
ing policy not coupled with a land policy can lead to market forces acting
as the ultimate regulator of the future locations of the ‘beneficiaries’ of the
programme. Besides reproducing urban segregation, it complicates the sus-
tainability of housing complexes themselves. The connection between the
newly built complexes and the city may affect the possibilities of families to
stay there in the long term.
The third issue that led to problems for the Programa Federal concerns
the dynamics of its executive body, the Housing Institute of the City (IVC).
According to various experts we interviewed, the IVC constitutes a set of char-
acteristics that make it a problem in itself. These characteristics include inter
alia chronic difficulties with respect to its functioning; slow administrative
procedures, and an excessive size in terms of the number of employees. A

staff member of the institute observes:
The way I see it, the IVC is a structure that should have been demolished
and rebuilt from the ground up again. The IVC has many employees and
much administrative weight and they have thought time and time again
about how to transform it. In the period we are talking about, there have
been two or three different governments and each of them has had serious
difficulties trying to deal with the structure [the IVC].
Several organizations that provide legal assistance to populations with hous-

ing problems agree with this observation. They observe a lack of clarity in
the delimitation of the mandate of the IVC (COHRE and ACIJ 2008).
Furthermore, these organizations note the reluctance of the IVC to provide
information to the public.
What Could Have Been Done Differently?
The setting of priorities by the IVC invites reflection about possible changes
in the general setup of the Programa Federal and its local application. We will
now describe three ways in which the functioning of the programme could
have been improved. First, the programme could have worked with the exist-
ing housing stock that suffers from some kind of deficit but that can be reha-
bilitated. This would do away with the need for new housing construction and
land acquisition altogether. According to a former director of the IVC, the
current housing deficit in the City of Buenos Aires can in large part be solved
in this way due to the enormous amount of vacant real estate in the city.
Second, the Programa Federal could have been improved by working with the
existing slums in the city and by using the funds of the programme to upgrade
and re-urbanize these settlements. It should be acknowledged that this is not
a straightforward issue to deal with, as this type of operation is highly compli-
cated due to the fact that land needs to be freed up to construct housing and
to widen up alleys and convert them into proper streets.4 The third issue con-
cerns the potential role that social organizations could have played. According
to the former director of the IVC, labour unions, besides their ability to orga-
nize demand, often have land of their own, which could have been used in the
implementation of the programme. Additionally, the participation of labour
unions would have ensured, at least, a large degree of cost recovery, because
the costs for a housing unit can be discounted from the beneficiaries’ wages.
We end this section with a few remarks on the beneficiaries of the pro-
gramme. The programme’s guidelines lack a clear understanding of the
future residents of the housing units. Some professionals we interviewed

note that the question as to who the beneficiaries actually are is a point that
should have been dealt with during the structuring of the first stage of the
programme, if not before. The lack of consideration of the ‘end-users’ of
the ‘housing product’ has led to a variety of problems, such as residents’
difficulties in putting down roots in their new environment, their inability
to appropriate the transferred housing unit and, consequently, the informal
sales and even the abandonment of the housing unit. The fact that most of
the beneficiaries are living in a proper building for the first time – instead of
in a self-help slum settlement – and have to deal with new aspects of collec-
tive housing (e.g. common expenses, resident assemblies to discuss how to
maintain public areas, etc.) are often mentioned as part of a disruptive change
in their lives and everyday routines. Interviews with residents in a housing
complex developed under the Programa Federal in the city also reveal other
sources of discontent. Proximity to slums, transportation problems and diffi-
culties accessing basic services (e.g. hospitals and schools) are mentioned by
residents as potential causes for wanting to move out of their new habitat.
These findings are in line with the results of recent research in Chile on social
housing (Rodríguez and Sugranyes 2005).
Another main problem in this area has to do with potential conflicts
between people coming from different habitational backgrounds. Living
together with people that have kept their ‘slum-dweller mentality’ is often
considered problematic by those who come from a formal housing back-
ground. As one resident observes: ‘The main problem I find living here is
with the people that come from across the street [referring to an informal
slum settlement located there]. Some of them still behave as villeros [slum
residents] playing music loud all night, and shouting and stuff’. Another
resident mentions:
Some people here, some of my new neighbours don’t like me because I

confront them with the fact that they need to behave now, that they are
in a new situation, with a new house, with a nice building. They don’t
understand that we have common areas, things to take care of and common
expenses to pay. I have to play the part of the “bad cop” but I don’t care, I
have fought too much to now feel like I am living in a slum. They are not
all like that – that wouldn’t be fair to say– but some of them … too many
of them if you ask me …
Taking into account the residents’ perspectives, two aspects emerge that
should be considered in detail in future research. Firstly, social differenti-
ation processes are potentially harmful in the long run as they pose a risk
to the sustainability of housing programmes. Besides the fact that specific
situations may create conflicts between residents, the reference to the ‘slum’
during interviews with residents works as a stigma that (re)produces differ-
ences between inhabitants of informal and state-produced neighbourhoods.
Furthermore, the cultural habits associated with the new housing need to
be studied. The common expenses dwellers have to pay when they live in a
building are new to most of them, as mentioned previously. Low payment
rates tend to be characteristic of social housing complexes. In these cases,
the difference between those people who do pay and those who do not
brings up another aspect that should be taken into account: promoting
participation processes between neighbours. Returning to the idea of ‘(re)
locating people’ in the territory, it is interesting to think of how the absence
of a serious definition and analysis of beneficiaries and their circumstances,
and the lack of an integral approach to the issue of land and its connection
to housing, come together when trying to see what kind of city is produced
by housing policy.
Final Considerations
In conclusion, it should first of all be noted that the Programa Federal implies
a 180-degree turn in the right direction if we compare it to housing policy
in Buenos Aires in the preceding decades. Whereas throughout the 1990s
policy was largely characterized by an absence of social housing construction,
the intention of building new housing units on a large scale in Buenos Aires
to deal with the needs of the low-income sectors should be applauded. The
decision of the public sector to undertake an intervention of this scale also
placed the housing problem squarely back on the agenda. However, having
said that, it is important to consider whether or not the ‘turn towards (re)
centralization’ embodied by the programme is a viable approach for address-
ing the housing deficit. Whereas the federal government develops the pro-
gramme, generates the necessary resources, sets targets and lays out a general
framework that determines its scope and reach, the possibilities for successful
implementation require criteria that are adapted to the local situation, which
is something that the programme has clearly failed to consider.
Furthermore, the experience of the Programa Federal requires a reconsid-
eration of the relationship between the national and local levels of govern-
ment. The programme stems from the federal level, which retains the right
to approve or disapprove each of the projects that are proposed and requires
the use of intensive manual labour. Independently of its potential to gen-
erate employment, it is important to consider the extent to which a public
policy intended to solve one social problem neglects certain aspects related to
others it also tries to solve. A notable example is the observation of one of the
interviewees of the sense that existing housing cooperatives and local habitat
policies are not considered by the programme. Instead, projects under the
programme are led and executed by private construction companies. It is
also worth noting that this reinforces the traditional relationship between
two actors: the construction firms’ lobby and the state (Cravino, Fernández
Wagner and Varela 2002).
These observations acquire a different connotation when we take into
account other issues related to the centralized character of the Programa
Federal. First, it speaks solely of the construction of ‘housing units’, thereby
disregarding the idea of housing ‘as a process’ that links it to the environ-
ment (work, access to the city, networks, etc.). Following Rodríguez and
Sugranyes (2005), the risk of thinking about housing in such a narrow way
and reducing it to the dwelling itself – instead of a perspective that includes
urban services such as education, health and transportation – is likely to
affect the sustainability of a policy and the eventual permanence of residents
in the new housing complexes. The problem of scarcity of land that was
described earlier is another important example of a strategic challenge for the
Programa Federal. The necessity to intervene in land markets in an equitable
and progressive manner that promotes inclusion, as opposed to reproducing
the existing patterns of socio-spatial segregation, requires a perspective that
contemplates the kind of city that is being produced. Together with prob-
lems related to different habits of residents, who in most cases come from an
informal and individual housing tradition, the difficulty also becomes visible
when residents attempt to organize their common expenses.
Finally, it is important to make an observation regarding the participation
of both the future inhabitants and community-based organizations. Their
perspectives were not considered in the design process of the Programa
Federal and their role in social housing was not taken into account in its
implementation. Maybe we should think – following Turner – that central-
ized planning goes against the possibility of incorporating local experiences
in policymaking, and perhaps we must focus on the particular aspects of the
scenario where housing policy is being carried out; it is important to examine
how the general political context affects the relationship between different
levels of government (nation-province-municipalities), and between these
levels and civil society (non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social
movements, etc.). With respect to this last point, it will be difficult to carry
out a sustainable housing policy that can promote effective access to housing
for low-income sectors without incorporating them as ‘real’ and relevant
subjects in the process. Only with the active participation and involvement of
actors from the community, and by taking into account their experiences and
practices, the flawed and risky logic of designing housing for passive subjects
can be brought to a halt.
Notes
1. In terms of method, we use both primary and secondary data sources. The former consist
of interviews with key informants related to the Federal Programme’s implementation and
with residents of housing units constructed by the programme in the City of Buenos Aires.
The interviews with public officers were done in 2009 and 2010 and those with residents
took place during 2011. We focus on the implementation of the ‘Programa Federal’ in
the city proper, and do not consider the greater Buenos Aires area – the latter comprising
twenty-four municipal districts. It should also be mentioned that our analysis and consid-
erations will be strictly tied to the Programa Federal, which is the most important national
housing programme implemented in the City of Buenos Aires, and the most important
programme in terms of budget and goals. Social housing initiatives – such as Programa
Techo y Trabajo – or urban upgrading programmes, such as PROMEBA, had no impact
on the city.
2. According to figures of the National Census (2010), the population of the City of Buenos
Aires reached 2,890,151 inhabitants, 1,150,134 households, showed a density of 14,308
hab/ km2 and had a housing deficit of 6.2 per cent (70,317 dwellings).
3. It is important to mention that, while the housing units built under the Programa Federal
are usually independent dwellings on individual lots of land (detached units), the high cost
of urban land in a city as dense as Buenos Aires makes this unfeasible. Instead, in the city, the
programme develops multi-unit buildings of three or more floors.
4. The process of building new dwellings in an informal settlement presents several difficulties that
both construction firms and the IVC try to avoid: determining which of the existing houses
are to be replaced with new ones and which will not, which streets will be widened and which
will not, etc. These examples show the complexity of developing a housing programme that
aims to re-urbanize an existing informal neighbourhood, and this cannot be realized without
the participation of the community that lives in the settlement.
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Roy, A. 2005. ‘Urban Informality: Towards an Epistemology of Planning’, Journal of the
American Planning Association 71: 147–58.
Topalov, C. 1979. La Urbanización Capitalista: Algunos Elementos para su Análisis. Mexico
City: Ed. Edicol.
Turner, J.F.C. 1977. Vivienda, Todo el Poder a los Usuarios: La Economía en la Construcción
del Entorno. Madrid: Ed. H. Blume; translation of Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in
Building Environments. New York: Pantheon Books.
———. 1982. ‘Issues in Self-help and Self-managed Housing’, in P.M. Ward (ed.), Self-help
Housing: A Critique. London: Mansell, pp. 99–113.
Yujnovsky, O. 1984. Claves Políticas del Problema Habitacional Argentino, 1955–1981. Buenos
Aires: Grupo Editor Latinamericano.
Ward, P.M. 1982. ‘Introduction and Purpose’, in P.M. Ward (ed.), Self-help Housing: A
Critique. London: Mansell, pp. 1–13.
The Boom of High-rise Apartment
7
Buildings in Buenos Aires
New Spaces of Residentiality or a Motor of Disintegration?
Jan Dohnke and Corinna Hölzl
In Buenos Aires the ‘neo-liberal wave’ has triggered a ‘metamorphosis’ in

the urban landscape, from the heart of the city to the outer fringes of the
metropolitan area (Welch Guerra 2004). The causes for these transforma-
tions are commonly understood as a combination of political, economic
and cultural factors. Strong emphasis is given to the weakening of the state
as an actor in urban development, caused by a change of policies, such as
the deregulation that occurred especially under ex-president Carlos Menem
(1989–99), as well as loss of revenue (Gorelik and Silvestri 2002). Another
important factor is seen in the introduction of new national and international
private stakeholders (see, among others, Llanos 2002). Due to privatization
and the opening up of the national economy to international capital, foreign
investment has been exerting an ever-stronger impact on the urban land-
scape, driving its reconfiguration. Finally, the introduction of new, especially
‘American’, lifestyles has promoted a suburban way of life, especially for
the more affluent. More weight has been given to car-based development
(Svampa 2001), thereby altering the demands – especially in housing – of the
middle class. In any event, the net effect has been the large-scale socio-eco-
nomic and spatial restructuring of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area over
the past two decades. In the City of Buenos Aires, which forms the core
of the metropolitan area, large areas along a so-called ‘northern corridor’
– which reaches out from the centre where the most affluent parts of soci-
ety are concentrated – as well as a more recent ‘western corridor’ crossing
middle-class neighbourhoods, are being transformed into an increasingly
dense ‘globalized pole’, which is linked via an extended highway network
to distinct centres of consumption and gated communities in the suburbs
(Ciccolella and Mignaqui 2008). While suburbanized areas have increased
extensively, the former compact character of the urban landscape in the City
of Buenos Aires is being increasingly replaced with a diffuse ‘urban mush’,
as the construction of residential high-rises, among other things, is gaining
momentum (Welch Guerra 2004).
Concerning the socio-spatial consequences of such development for
Latin American cities in general, a widely held view is that the city is being
– 164 –
The B oom of H i gh- ri se Apa rt m e n t Bu i l d i n g s i n B u en o s A i r es | 165
transformed into distinct urban fragments in the form of gated communi-

ties, luxury condominiums, office blocks and shopping centres, which can
only be accessed by those who are permitted to enter and can afford to do
so. Some scholars point out that these fragments introduce new, insuperable
barriers between the well-to-do and the rest of urban society, even though
they may be in close spatial proximity to each other. Others argue that the
emerging proximity of distinct social strata offers new opportunities of social
interaction, which might be especially beneficial for the urban poor (Sabatini
and Salcedo 2007). At the same time, it can be observed that the current
change is being increasingly contested by local residents (see for exam-
ple Sur Corporación 2009; Dohnke 2011a). What is evident is that Latin
American cities are experiencing a radical and open-ended transformation.
This change features aspects of the ‘fragmented city’ (Janoschka 2005),
which is marked by fierce socio-spatial divides and loosely connected ‘islands
of wealth’ (Caldeira 2000), but also by new opportunities for the urban
poor, a different means of social interaction across distinct social classes and
increasing urban conflict (see, for example, Lanz 2004; Becker et al. 2008;
Holston 2008; Scheinsohn and Cabrera 2009; Alfaro d’Alençon, Imilan and
Sánchez 2011).
In Buenos Aires, despite a remarkable economic recovery since the crisis
of 2001–02, the upper and middle classes have been retreating on a con-
tinuously growing scale to privatized residential enclaves that offer their
inhabitants exclusivity and security from the ‘urban chaos’. The attendant
loss of importance and even renunciation of public space as the site of social
interaction has led to new senses of belonging among the inhabitants of these
new urban fragments, which are not only more adherent to social class and
lifestyle but also have in common a rejection of other, poorer social groups
that are perceived as dangerous. While this phenomenon as well as other rel-
evant characteristics that can be observed in other Latin American cities have
already undergone extensive research in the framework of suburban gated
communities (Svampa 2001; Pirez 2002; Janoschka and Glasze 2003),1 with
a few exceptions, the findings of this research do not apply to the luxury
condominiums and other types of high-rises, which allow for self-segregation
and have become the dominant form of residential real-estate development
in more central locations (see for example Centner 2012).
In the City of Buenos Aires, the phenomenon of skyscrapers or towers
(torres), either in the form of luxury or upper-middle-class housing, is still
comparatively new, first gaining significant momentum in the early 1990s.
But even though their role in the further fragmentation of the city is rec-
ognized (Mignaqui and Szajnberg 2003; Carman 2006; Ciccolella and
Mignaqui 2008), they are usually perceived as a vertical counterpart to the
gated communities (barrios cerrados) on the urban periphery (Borsdorf
1 66 | Jan Dohnke a n d C ori n n a H ölzl
and Hidalgo 2008) and have thus received comparatively little attention.
Nevertheless, they are shaped by their very own structures and dynamics
(Thung 2011), a phenomenon ‘left almost completely disregarded’ (Welch
Guerra and Valentini 2005: 74).2 These developments are a source of a new
sense of belonging that is somewhat different from that of suburban gated
communities. Centner, for example, in his study of microcitizenships, refers
to a new form of belonging that combines the aspirations and demands of
the wealthy with the common rejection of lower-class ‘intrusions’ into the
respective neighbourhood as ‘excessive citizenship’, and which is based on
proprietary rights and a common globalized lifestyle (2012). Yet aside from
generating new forms of identity, these high-rise developments have been
triggering reactions ranging from strong approval to outright rejection in
the neighbourhoods in which they are constructed. Accordingly, this study
aims to shed light on the emergence of this more recent housing phenom-
enon, as well as to elucidate associated changes in the sense of belonging
held by residents of high-rises, especially in luxury gated high-rises and in the
surrounding neighbourhoods.
The analysis undertaken in this study is largely based on interviews con-
ducted between 2005 and 2009. Firstly, narrative interviews with residents
who live in high-rises were conducted in their homes in order to gather data
on their motivations and lifestyles. From their statements, as well as the fur-
nishing and appointment of their apartments and buildings, we could draw a
distinction between upper- and upper-middle-class residents. Furthermore,
this categorization more or less corresponded to the spatial distribution of
luxury high-rise housing along the northern and western corridors. Secondly,
problem-centred interviews with long-time neighbours who are opposed to
the construction of high-rises served to help us understand their motivations
in the struggle against these buildings. While interviews with tower residents
were gathered from all over the City of Buenos Aires, interviewed protesters
mostly lived in the district of Caballito, the first location in Buenos Aires where
protests against high-rises gained citywide attention. Additionally, expert
interviews with scientists as well as problem-centred interviews with real-
estate developers, planners and architects served to establish distinct points of
view from involved professionals. Further information on the development of
this mode of housing was gathered from three different sources: government
statistics; real-estate supplements in the two major daily newspapers, El Clarín
and La Nación; and promotional brochures for real-estate projects.
The chapter is organized as follows: in the next section, the genesis and
dimension of the construction of high-rises are described (section 2). This is
followed by an analysis of their spatial and cultural impact. In this regard, we
will describe our empirical findings concerning the physical transformation
of the affected neighbourhoods as well as the characteristics and divergent
belongings of the new residents in these residential high-rises (section 3).

Next, the reactions evoked by the construction of high-rises and their impacts
on neighbourhood identity are analysed (section 4). The chapter concludes
with a discussion of the high-rise construction phenomenon by evaluating
the distinct notions of belonging that prevail in the neighbourhoods among
new residents and older inhabitants alike, and by highlighting the conse-
quences of shifting identities in the context of the ongoing transformation
and fragmentation of Buenos Aires (section 5).
The Phenomenon of High-rise Residential Buildings:

Genesis, Dimension and Spatial Distribution in Buenos
Aires
Looking back on a history of successive deregulation and increases in

permitted building heights since 1945, two high-rise building types have
become the dominant type of residential construction in the city: edificio
entre medianeras (EEM) (building between walls) and edificio en perimetro
libre (EPL) (building within a free perimeter). Aside from the fact that con-
struction of high-rises in central locations tends to be the most profitable
form of construction (Thung 2011), both types of high-rise are essentially
derived from the same logic: the maximum exploitation of urban space
by means of maximization of what is allowed (i.e. construction volume)
and the minimization of what has to be provided (i.e. size of courtyards,
ventilation, non-constructed space). The EEM is constructed adjacent
to existing buildings, in line with existing perimeter block development.
Courtyard sizes tend to be minimized, with the corresponding minimal
building standards as the general norm in order to maximize the possible
surface constructed. In the City of Buenos Aires, the permitted building
height depends on the size of the plot according to a flexible ratio (FOT).
Therefore the common aim of developers is to join several adjacent plots
on the same block, which permits not only a further increase in construct-
ible space, but also the construction of an EPL (Diez 1996). The EPL is
constructed at a distance from the street perimeter and the adjacent build-
ings, leaving a single solitary structure. This way, the necessity for inner
courtyards is rendered obsolete, which allows for a further maximization
of constructed space. An adaption of this high-rise concept is the so-called
garden towers (torres jardín) model, which includes shared amenities, such
as a swimming pool or tennis court and a perimeter enclosed by fences –
the ‘garden’ – as well as individual ‘extras’ in the respective apartments,
such as a maid’s room. Such adaptations have become almost commonplace
in high-end EEMs as well. This way, garden towers as well as high-end
EEMs seem to guarantee status as well as shelter from the ‘urban chaos’
of the city. But even though garden towers have a history in Buenos Aires
dating back to the 1970s (Diez 1996), they have only come into the focus
of scholarly discussion more recently (Welch Guerra 2002), as they are
emblematic of Caldeira’s ‘fortified enclaves’ (Welch Guerra 2005).
Since the 1990s, similar to other cities in Latin America, high-rises have
become a citywide phenomenon, gaining further momentum since the eco-
nomic crisis of 2001–02. In 2000, a further flexibilization of urban planning
(law 449, Código de Planeamiento Urbano) was implemented in order to
stimulate the construction industry, the consequences of which became fully
visible in the course of recovery from the crisis. Over the past decade, the City
of Buenos Aires has experienced a construction boom, with figures in 2006
being the highest in thirty years (DGEyC 2008). Most of this construction is
residential, and highly concentrated on a spatial dimension, with more than
60 per cent situated in just six of the fifteen city districts (comunas). These
districts are located in the aforementioned affluent northern corridor of the
city, as well as in the western corridor. Nevertheless, it is claimed that this
construction boom is evidence of an emerging real-estate bubble, as a sig-
nificant number of the apartments are vacant, serving as capital investment,
while at the same time local residents are increasingly incapable of afford-
ing them because of increasing housing prices combined with more recent
economic developments and inflation (Baer 2011).
Because of high building densities and high real-estate prices in the
upper and upper middle-class neighbourhoods adjacent to the city centre,
affordable construction space is scarce. As a result, construction activity has
moved further outward. Along the northern corridor there has already been,
in large part, major transformation and densification with EEMs and EPLs,
and this corridor is now the favourable location for residential developments
that target the upper class. Along the western corridor, construction pro-
ceeds into more traditional porteño middle-class neighbourhoods, which are
still shaped by low-density housing. High-rises targeting the middle class
are increasingly prevalent here. In order to guarantee good accessibility,
a large proportion of these buildings are located close to the city’s main
thoroughfares, crossing the northern and western districts, thus underlining
the importance of good accessibility in a given location (Hölzl 2005). This
residential development is not only uneven spatially but also qualitatively.
Since 2005, the largest share of residential units has fallen under the highest
of four categories used to define building standards, namely the ‘sumptu-
ous’ (suntuosa) category (DGEyC 2008), which represents between 35 and
40 per cent of all new construction. To fall under this category, a building
must include the amenities usually associated with garden towers, such as
a swimming pool or a maid’s room.3 As a result, residential development
within the city is increasingly dominated by buildings resembling garden

towers or high-end EEMs.
An emblematic exception to this pattern is the waterfront development
project of Puerto Madero in direct proximity to the city centre, which in
its global design is reminiscent of many other waterfront developments in
Latin America and elsewhere (see for example Cuenya, Novais and Vainer
2012). While in other parts of the city new developments are inserted into
the existing urban fabric, Puerto Madero is made up almost entirely of new
high-rise apartment buildings. Given that all of these high-rises fit into the
‘sumptuous’ category, Puerto Madero is seen by some architects and market-
ing agents as a form of inner-city gated community made up of garden towers
(Hölzl 2005). The highest-selling prices in the city are achieved here (up to
U.S. $4,500 –$7,000 per m², 2011).4
Symbolic Value of the Garden Towers and

Their Location for New Residents
The spatial concentration of residential high-rises targeting the upper-

middle or upper classes in the western and northern corridors illustrates that
neighbourhood reputation is a crucial demand factor. This explains why
there are hardly any high-rises in the southern part of the City of Buenos
Aires, where larger construction plots at comparatively low land prices are
still available (interview Alejandro Aizersztein, architect). However, due
to its socio-economic structure, the southern part of the city tradition-
ally suffers from a rather negative reputation. In the districts and neigh-
bourhoods where garden towers are concentrated, the creation of specific
‘mythologies of place’ and ‘local brands’ has become very important. For
instance, in the 1990s, especially in the Palermo district, the creation of
new names was promoted in order to weaken the historical associations of
certain neighbourhoods. In addition to the already established collective
imaginaries of porteños (Buenos Aires residents), new evocative terms were
created to express the socio-economic restructuring and changing character
of the respective area and to support marketing and gentrification, includ-
ing Palermo Nuevo, Palermo Hollywood, Palermo Soho, and Las Cañitas
(see also González Bracco 2013). Marketing also focuses on status and
lifestyle aspects of high-rises and, especially in gentrifying areas, it high-
lights the new urban qualities in the neighbourhoods. It is striking that
advertisements and brochures compare living in a garden tower to subur-
ban gated communities, and market the former as a distinguished lifestyle.
Correspondingly, images of ‘exclusiveness’ and of living in green and family
friendly spaces are used.
The names of these high-rises are created to evoke associations with the
privilege of a landed aristocracy, and some real-estate providers have created
exclusive brands of garden towers (e.g. the Quartier high-rises, located in
different parts of Buenos Aires but also in Uruguay).5 As a matter of course,
existing exclusive (and extra high) towers create landmarks that serve as an
additional form of branding (Lupano 2004). It is also assumed that the
common Argentine term ‘country’ – as in, ‘country en altura’ or ‘torre
country’ (‘country club in a high-rise’) – originates from advertisements in
the print media (Lupano 2004: 5). Advertisements typically depict young
families, recreational infrastructure and green areas, with slogans like ‘Nunca
tanto estuvo tan cerca’ (‘Never was so much so close’). Living in a high-rise
is also intended to appeal to those who dream of a life in the country, but do
not want to leave the city. Thus, some architects claim that living in a high-
rise poses an equivalent if not better way of life, as compared to a house in
the countryside. Other high-rise projects seek to attract business people and
urbanites by selling a new urban lifestyle, a skyline view and distinction from
the ‘rest’: ‘Jerarquía, distinción, buen gusto’ (‘hierarchy, distinction, good
taste’) or ‘así nos verán’ (‘we will be seen this way’) are typical slogans.
In connection, interviews reveal that prestige is a central reason for living
in a garden tower. The symbolic capital of a building with such amenities,
combined with the location and the specific professional milieus, play an
important role. Moreover, living ‘aloft’ in a detached high-rise means a
comparatively greater exposure to light and a potentially greater view, but
the associated status of an apartment on, say, the thirtieth floor is even more
important for some residents. Prestige allows for closeness to economic and
cultural capital, and, moreover, residents benefit from the reputation of a
specific address. The interviewed residents seem to have internalized the
qualities of exclusivity and privilege purportedly characteristic of high-rises to
such an extent that conventional housing forms are no longer even consid-
ered. Many of the residents share in a globalized urban lifestyle; working for
multinational companies, dealing with international businesses or operating
in the tourism sector. For these extremely mobile residents, the strategic
location of many garden towers is a key factor. Buenos Aires’ most important
destinations – from their point of view – such as the central business district
(CBD), national airport and the ferry harbour, need to be reached easily by
car. Compared to the suburbs, living close to the city centre allows one to
combine professional life with opportunities for recreation and consumption.
Some of the interviewees might fit into Centner’s (2012) category of ‘exces-
sive citizens’, who are able to purchase certain cosmopolitan standards, such
as tranquillity, security and cleanliness.
Though it was generally not explicitly stated, the residents longed for
homogeneous social surroundings. Indeed, our analysis revealed strong
social and demographic homogeneity among high-rise residents, compara-

ble to that of gated communities on the urban outskirts (Svampa 2001):
‘You know, it is like a country [type of gated community] in the city. … It
is true; at least we made quite a lot of new friends here, other people with
children. We meet downstairs, like in a club, like in a country’ (Bernardo,
garden tower, Palermo).6 Although there is a general trend towards more
differentiated units, the major target groups are young couples, and families
with young children, as well as singles.7 Some interviewees expressed great
enthusiasm about meeting residents of a similar age with the same values,
interests and job profiles. For instance, one interviewee spoke enthusiastically
about the high concentration of residents working in show business and
other celebrities living in his garden tower: ‘One cultivates the same lifestyle
and feels good among one’s peers’ (José, garden tower, Palermo Nuevo).8
Additionally, the experienced status congruency in the garden towers appears
to strengthen an atmosphere of mutual trust; particularly after the economic
crisis in 2001, this has helped to establish inner feelings of security.
From the outside, living in a gated high-rise is generally associated with a
specific image of the nouveau riche, engaging in conspicuous consumption
and demonstrating status. The following remark demonstrates that even sub-
urban gated community residents, who share similar lifestyle characteristics,
entertain this view: ‘The target group that is normally living in a high-rise
is, I don’t know, perhaps before they did not have money and now every-
body is living there. Very much like this, I want to show myself, obviously
in a high-rise …’ (Carolina, gated community).9 To a certain extent, this
opinion is confirmed by the analysis of the social life in the garden tower. In
fact, some residents living in more middle-class high-rises – especially young
couples with little children and people who exhibit a more ‘extroverted way
of living’ – socialize well and do not feel disturbed by the restricted privacy, a
situation that is characteristic of many gated apartment high-rises. However,
despite the high homogeneity among residents, all in all, social life within
the high-rises remains rudimentary, and people make rather little use of the
provided leisure facilities; the residents who do make use of the services – the
swimming pool or the restaurant – tend to invite friends from the ‘outside’,
as opposed to showing interest in acquaintanceship within the complex. This
demonstrates the central function of these amenities as objects of prestige.
The Relationship Between High-rises and

Adjacent Neighbourhoods
The spatial mobility of garden tower residents in the city tends to be car-
based. This strengthens patterns of interaction with the urban environment
that are highly fragmented, and increases tendencies for residents to retreat
from communal spaces to their high-rise ‘enclaves’. High-income and politi-
cally influential residents, especially, expect a ‘complete package’ when select-
ing a residence – one which includes recreational and sports facilities, security
services, etc. This allows residents to avoid entering the public sphere in
order to obtain services or goods. Apart from its reputation, the actual qual-
ities of the surrounding neighbourhood seem to be of comparatively little
importance, particularly for the upper classes. Thus, local encounters are
often reduced to a minimum, as these residents lack interest or are afraid of
walking around the neighbourhood, as this quotation underlines: ‘Well, you
go outside and you already get into a bad mood, all of this, it is more, me and
many other people [from the high-rise] use small streets to see if we can avoid
some of the beggars … And everything is connected to everything: you end
up taking refuge at the tower’ (Diego, garden tower, Av. Del Libertador).10
However, not all high-rise residents share the same fragmented sense of
belonging. Residents more adherent to the middle class still walk around in
their neighbourhood and interact with their direct surroundings to a certain
extent – in the form of buying small things at the kiosk nearby, using public
transport occasionally or admiring the new green ‘gardens’ of the recently
constructed garden towers: ‘When I moved here, what I enjoyed most was
the endless view to all sides, and I used to walk on the street and see the
gardens and, that’s nice’ (Verónica, garden tower, Palermo).11 Regarding
security, the relationship between the high-rise and adjacent neighbour-
hood becomes even more ambivalent, as security is an important issue for
interviewed residents. Our research indicates that feelings of insecurity are
strongly shaped from the outside – e.g. by architects and developers, as well
as by the media – in order to drive demand for gated forms of housing.
Media companies themselves are partly involved in real-estate development
and, furthermore, strongly depend on advertising revenue from real-estate
companies, further substantiating the view that there are incentives at work
to promote the high-rise as a secure enclave.
Indeed, residents’ fears – particularly among upper income groups – appear
less attributed to real crime than by images transmitted by the media (see also
Janoschka and Glasze 2003). In this regard, we can identify different facets in
notions of security: on the one hand, concern was expressed about personal
security and the protection of material goods, and, on the other hand, resi-
dents voiced a desire for a safe environment for their children (e.g. a garden,
playground, swimming pool). Upper-class residents additionally emphasized
the importance of advanced security systems, pointing out the fear of kidnap-
ping, among other concerns. Interviewees living in mid-standard high-rises
generally vocalized security considerations to a lesser extent, instead empha-
sizing the convenience of not having to leave the enclosure. However, notions
of security were strongly related to the reputation of the urban surroundings;

for example, for high-rise residents in the lower middle-class Abasto neigh-
bourhood, security is considered a must (Hölzl 2005, see also Baer 2009). In
the collective memory of the interviewed residents, everyday life in the barrio
(neighbourhood) was related to a strong sense of belonging. For instance,
several interviewees mentioned a similar idealization of childhood: ‘When
we were children we were always playing in the street’.12 However, today
many perceive life outside the enclosed perimeter as dangerous. Thus, living
in a gated high-rise becomes ‘… a way to adjust to a life without security’
(José, garden tower, Palermo Nuevo).13 Living in inward-looking high-rises
fenced off by walls and gates, and barely interacting with residents in the
surrounding neighbourhood, might intensify this feeling, particularly in light
of ongoing urban transformation, which has slowly turned public space into
a residual ‘non-space’.
Considering this lifestyle of voluntary self-segregation from the commu-
nity, it comes as no surprise that the urban transformation of surrounding
neighbourhoods does not seem relevant to high-rise residents. However,
reactions towards the construction of high-rises in adjacent neighbourhoods
are more complex. In general, the construction of high-rises tends to lead to
their own reproduction, reinforcing urban densification that can ultimately
lead to the complete remaking of the respective neighbourhood. Often, a
domino effect is at work: the construction of the first high-rise causes other
adjacent buildings in the same block or – depending on the height of the
building – in numerous blocks to be in the shade for a significant part of
the day: ‘… a company … wanted to construct two high-rises of 35 stories
each … We complained that this would put 7 blocks into shade, which is
something that will affect you considerably’ (Mario, S.O.S Caballito, district
of Caballito).14
Another impact is the burden on local infrastructure, as sewer networks,
water utilities, and streets have to cope with a much higher number of
inhabitants and vehicles. The result is shortages in water supply, blockage in
the sewer system, heavily increased traffic, and a lack of parking space. This
burden on everyday life in formerly quiet neighbourhoods causes some resi-
dents to sell their property, making way for even more development. Other
neighbours may sell, too, but with a very different motive, as they approve
and sometimes decide to ‘buy into’ this new lifestyle by selling their former
homes with a profit. In both cases, this leads to an increase in high-rise
housing, until at a certain point most of the original residents, due to the
deterioration of their quality of life and the disappearance of their former
neighbourhood, are happy to sell and leave.
However, in some Buenos Aires neighbourhoods, local residents were
not willing to accept this kind of development. In the wake of the p ost-crisis
boom citizens’ initiatives began to form all over the city; one of the first,
S.O.S. Caballito, was formed in 2006, in the district of Caballito, an epi-
centre of high-rise construction in Buenos Aires along the western corri-
dor. Triggered by the start of construction of a ten-storey building, local
residents united around the demand for more sustainable and equitable
development in their neighbourhood. In this conflict, a clear distinction
was made between the residents of the neighbourhood on one side and the
residents of the high-rises on the other. The former were seen to represent
a quiet, tranquil, traditional way of life, shaped by social interaction on the
street and familiarity with one’s neighbours: ‘… on that same block, for
example, it happens to me that I know who is who, I’m already acquainted
with them, know what they’re about, know their story, and you feel like one
big family’ (Rodolfo, S.O.S Caballito, district of Caballito).15 The latter,
by contrast, are considered to represent an anonymous, new upper-class
lifestyle, which is often viewed as antithetical to life in the neighbourhood
(Cosacov 2009). In some cases, this notion might be aggravated further, as
some old residents not only feel that their privacy is disturbed by the new
residents looking into their backyard, but are disconcerted by the fact that
they themselves might not be financially capable of affording the new apart-
ments appearing in their immediate surroundings.
The new developments are perceived as not solving any of the city’s prob-
lems, such as the housing shortage for poor people, but rather are aimed at
serving the financial interests of political and international elites.16 In this
context, older residents emphasize that they chose the neighbourhood as
a place to live, to build a house and to grow old. They acknowledge the
many benefits of their neighbourhoods and understand that other people
would like to move there, too. But at the same time they strongly ques-
tion the notion that purchasing power should determine who can live in
the neighbourhood. ‘… let’s say the life of citizens is the market, where
you’re included if you can afford it, and if you can’t you remain outside …
Therefore, those who do not have the possibility must leave. Well, I put
that into question’ (Rodolfo, S.O.S Caballito, district of Caballito).17 Some
residents recognize that even though life in the neighbourhood is shaped
by a certain familiarity, this had changed or had grown weaker in the years
before the new high-rise developments. Interestingly, the resistance against
the new high-rises, which emphasizes the neighbourhood as a base for qual-
ity of life and source of identity, has encouraged greater social contact and
interaction between long-term residents. Their sense of identification with
the neighbourhood has thus increased significantly as a consequence of the
introduction of high-rise developments.
With the aim of ‘preserving the neighbourhood that we chose to live
in’, residents of Caballito demanded stronger regulation against the
‘indiscriminate’ construction and the perceived rule of market forces.

Instead of using the usual channels of complaint open to them via local
government, they decided to mobilize the neighbourhood by staging an
information campaign: by demonstrating and also targeting local authorities
by judicial means; by uncovering procedural errors concerning the alloca-
tion of building and demolition permits; and by publicly blaming architects,
developers and politicians. This strategy had a strong impact: after years of
laissez-faire policy, local building authorities and the construction sector
were suddenly forced to explain failures to comply with existing laws. Media
attention was high from the very beginning. Citizens from distinct barrios
adversely affected by construction started to cooperate, which generated
an almost citywide network. Consequently, members of the city parlia-
ment drafted a new law that foresaw an alteration of the building code in
several city districts, including parts of Caballito. Building heights were
reduced significantly and, after its implementation, high-rise construction
in the newly protected areas of Caballito was stopped almost completely
(Dohnke 2011b). Similar struggles and protests can be observed in other
Latin American countries (e.g. Canteros Gomarz 2011 or Sur Corporación
2009 for Santiago de Chile).
Conclusion: Old and New Belongings in the Barrios of

Buenos Aires
The high-rises, especially the garden towers, dovetail very well with the
model of urban development that is currently transforming the Argentinean
capital, and which is characterized by construction activity in the hands of
private actors who pursue profit maximization. In joining different features,
such as exclusivity, class distinction and consumers’ orientation, gated high-
rises cater to the needs of an urban upper and upper-middle class that seek
not only status but also refuge from the perceived ‘urban chaos’ outside. The
garden towers in particular have a strong symbolic value that is the manu-
factured product of marketing campaigns designed to foster ‘mythologies of
place’. Thus, while new buildings are promoted as being in a good location,
with amenities and security, the importance of the neighbourhood also plays
a decisive role, but in this connection, the neighbourhood is often reduced
to a mere symbolic carrier of status. The importance of the neighbourhood’s
actual physical attributes becomes tangential, as these are part of the danger-
ous world ‘outside’. As a result, the neighbourhoods themselves were of little
relevance to most interviewees, especially those from the upper class, who
typically live their lives in fragmented and privatized urban enclaves that are
connected by passenger cars.
The physical and functional attributes of gated high-rises correspond to

the new residents’ notion of belonging, especially concerning status and
security. This phenomenon is not new, but the proliferation of this housing
type has led to a spatial concentration and consolidation of a shared sense of
belonging among its residents. Although high-rise residents do not envision
themselves as residents of a gated community, they attach great importance
to a distinctive and secure way of living, to which other social classes do not
have access. Furthermore, when new residents actually interact with their
neighbourhood, a different perception between old and new residents is
striking: while old residents perceive the towers as a threat to their tradi-
tional neighbourhood and its heritage, new residents enjoy the ‘new’ and
extensive gardens around recently constructed high-rises. Social interaction is
among people of a similar social status or lifestyle only. The common spaces
inside the high-rises can function as places of encounter in this network, but
they seldom do. This fragmented and proprietary sense of belonging, which
is adopted by the upper classes in particular, is supported and channelled
by the manufactured mythologies and marketing campaigns of real-estate
developers.
Considering the foregoing, gated high-rises do represent fortified
enclaves, but they are not ‘islands of wealth’ amidst poverty. This is due to
the rather similar social status of neighbours and residents of the new high-
rises, which is often a product of the socio-economic legacies of individual
neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires. Therefore, ironically, while walls and gates
are erected against the ‘marginal’ and urban poor, their physical impact is
most felt by people of more or less similar social status. This underlines the
importance of prestige and distinction for these new residents. The limited
interest shown by high-rise residents in their local surroundings is mirrored
in the physical impact of the new buildings on their respective neighbour-
hoods. The construction of high-rises ultimately leads to the transformation
of the original neighbourhood, which has differing impacts on the sense of
belonging perceived by long-term residents. For some, the transformation of
the neighbourhood does not pose a serious problem, and is sometimes seen
as beneficial. These residents tend to sell their property and sometimes ‘buy
into’ the new lifestyle by acquiring apartments in the newly constructed high-
rises. For others, however, high-rises and their corresponding lifestyle are
perceived as antagonistic to the qualities of the neighbourhood as a place for
repose and social interaction among long-time neighbours. Interestingly, the
protests in Caballito as well as in other parts of Buenos Aires strengthened
older residents’ sense of belonging to the neighbourhood, spurring them on
to preserve and protect it.
In this way, physical separation between the gated high-rise and its
surrounding neighbourhood is mirrored by a correlate fissure in terms of
personal interests and affiliation, physically enforcing the growing social and
mental distance between the identities of the old residents in the neighbour-
hood and the identities of the new residents inside the high-rises. Alongside
the proliferation of the high-rises, the senses of belonging bound to neigh-
bourhood and comparatively traditional lifestyles are not only challenged
but increasingly replaced by new, fragmentary senses of belonging to which
place is of importance as a function of security, as a status symbol and as an
enabler of consumption. The proliferation of gated high-rises changes social
interaction in surrounding neighbourhoods. Thus, we find partly counter-
vailing senses of belonging in close physical proximity, which helps to explain
the increasing resistance that this specific kind of real-estate development has
called forth in Buenos Aires.
Notes
1. See also: ‘Historia con Tres Ciudades y un Jinete: Dialogo con Sonia Vidal, Arquitecta’,
Pagina12, 17 February 2010. Retrieved 14 June 2011 from http://www.pagina12.com.
ar/diario/ciencia/index-2010-02-17.html.
2. Quotation translated from Spanish by the authors.
3. Given the statistical data at hand, a distinction is possible among four qualities of residential
construction: simple – comfortable – luxurious – sumptuous (DGEyC 2008).
4. See the article by A. Sainz, ‘Puerto Madero se Consolida como Refugio para la
Inversión’, La Nación. Retrieved 3 April 2012 from http://www.lanacion.com.
ar/1407345-puerto-madero-se-consolida-como-refugio-para-la-inversion.
5. The development of Torre Quartier in San Telmo evoked enormous protests from local
neighbours. Although they were not able to hamper its construction, it affected the brand
quite significantly (interview Gerardo Gómez Coronado, Representative Defender of the
People).
6. ‘Viste, es como un country adentro de la ciudad. … Lo que sí, acá, nosotros por lo menos
hicimos bastantes amigos, dentro del edificio, que son los con chicos. … Nos juntamos
abajo, como en un club, como en un country.’
7. ‘El noventa por ciento de los compradores [en Palermo Nuevo] son jóvenes de hasta
35 años, con título universitario y que trabajaban en empresas multinacionales o en las
más importantes nacionales’. ‘No es habitual que en un edificio haya una preponderancia
de gente similar; y eso pasa en todos los condominios.’ See: J. Grazide. 2004. ‘Mercado
Inmobiliario: Diez Megaproyectos que Cambiarán Buenos Aires’, Revista Fortuna 2(79).
8. ‘Uno cultiva el mismo estilo de vida y se siente comodo con gente con imaginarios
parecidos.’
9. ‘Normalmente el target de la gente que vive en una torre es, no sé, a lo mejor antes
no tenían plata y ahora todos viven allí. Muy así, querer mostrarme, obvio en una
torre …’
10. ‘Entonces, salis y ya te genera mal humor, todo eso, es más, yo y mucha gente [de la torre]
vamos por calles para ver si evitas algunos mendigos … Y todo tiene que ver con todo: ter-
minás refugiendote en la torre.’
11. ‘Cuando me mudé por acá lo que mas disfrutaba era la vista interminada a todos lados, y
salía a caminar por la calle y ver los jardines y, está bueno.’
12. ‘Cuando nosotros éramos niños siempre jugábamos en la calle.’
13. ‘… una forma de adaptarnos a una vida sin seguridad.’

14. ‘… una empresa … intenta levantar dos torres de 35 pisos … Nosotros denunciamos que
esto va a dar sombra a 7 cuadras, esto en algún momento está afectando sensiblemente.’
15. ‘… a mí por ejemplo en la cuadra misma me pasa que sé quien es tal persona, ya lo conozco,
sé de quien se trata, sé lo que le ocurrió, y sentirte como en una familia grande.’
16. There are several reasons that explain the ‘boom’ in real-estate development as well as its
apparent one-sided orientation towards an affluent clientele: distrust in banks and general
insecurity regarding financial stability channels investments towards the real-estate sector,
fuelling real-estate speculation, which in turn has given considerable rise to vacancy rates
over the last decade (see Baer’s work). At the same time, there is a significant absence of
loans available for the middle class since the economic crisis of 2001–02, with correspond-
ing low construction rates of middle-class housing.
17. ‘Si … la vida de los ciudadanos es el Mercado, digamos donde el que puede comprar tiene
inclusive el que no queda afuera, … Por lo tanto, los que no tienen la posibilidad se tienen
que ir. Bueno yo lo cuestiono.’
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8
Living With Style in My Casa GEO
Large-scale Housing Conjuntos in Urban Mexico
Cristina Inclán-Valadez
In 2007, a group of residents in GEO Bosques decided that it was worth

listing their neighbourhood in the municipal project Las 20 Nuevas Joyas
de la Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera (The 20 New Jewels of the City of
Eternal Spring – Cuernavaca, Mexico). The initiative formed part of the
urban improvement programme, which sought to encourage local residents
to improve the appearance of their neighbourhoods by adding plants, paint-
ing house facades and cleaning the streets. What most attracted some of my
neighbours to this project was that if it was selected, the neighbourhood
could form part of the book Lifestyle and Real Estate in Cuernavaca tar-
geted at the foreign market, which could increase its commercial value and
recognize Bosques as a ‘distinctive’ place. In explaining the municipal initia-
tive and how the privada (a subsection of the complex) could be selected,
Memo mentioned that there was a narrative behind what I was looking at,
and referred to the front gardens, and the many purple bougainvilleas that
provided shade to the terraces of the upgraded houses. That story, he said,
‘started when we all decided to give our houses a better look, let’s say a
“Cuernavaca look”. This complex was sold as an “upmarket” area but there
was nothing upmarket about it. We converted a dry and rough place into
our refuge; into our oasis … From our point of view it deserves to be part of
the Initiative’ (Memo [46], entrepreneur – insurance company). The story I
heard from Memo and many others was of continuous alterations from what
had been planned by the developer, to what was sold by the estate agents.
Later, improvements were made by the residents so as to achieve the style and
comfort that they had initially dreamed of. There were many stories about
these alterations, but what linked them all was the desire to give to their
privada the status of beauty, sophistication and style that could make people
feel part of what in their view was the modern and ‘upgraded’ Cuernavaca
that the government was trying to inculcate, and that the developers had
emphasized not many years before.
This chapter investigates how a group of people who bought a house
in GEO Bosques, a planned low-cost housing project located in the city of
Cuernavaca, improved the site in accordance with their needs and desires,
– 181 –
1 82 | Cris tina In c lá n - V a la d e z
and remodelled and extended their homes with what they considered ‘dis-
tinct’ architectural styles. Specifically, it focuses on how residents play a
role as ‘co-producers’ or ‘partners’ of the Casas GEO firm, by improving
and altering the original house design on the basis of their own notions
of style, security and comfort. I argue that it is through these architectural
and aesthetic practices that people negotiate a middle-class cultural space to
belong, and hence shape their identity as new urban subjects. Upgraded and
extended homes allow ways for them to imagine, aspire to and experience
a modern middle-class urban life. In investigating the perspective of the
developer and home retailers, as well as that of the residents, I follow Pierre
Bourdieu’s notions of display of ‘taste’ (or similar expressions of a particular
lifestyle), here analysed through the aesthetics of the house and decorative
items. Tastes revealed are not individual choices but depend on larger social
structures that frame people’s position in society and also their ability to
remake their existence in everyday lives. It is through a wide range of prac-
tices: ‘pertinent’, ‘distinguished’ ‘vulgar’ or ‘pretentious’ (Bourdieu 1984:
176) that people are able to change the reality of their current lives and draw
a social differentiation with others who are ‘equals’ and from those in a social
class below. This idea of display of taste as a transformative action that works
within a given structure, points to important ways in which people at the
privada understand, use and reorganize the spaces and the ‘options’ they have
been given by the GEO company and other home retailers.
This chapter first gives a brief description of the Casas GEO developer,
and the selling and commercial strategies employed by the firm and partners
– a group of house retailers and home decorators – to finance and sell furni-
ture and services designed to help residents add the quality, comfort and style
that the houses lack. It then investigates peoples’ creative ways of improving
the original housing model on the basis of personal notions of good taste,
comfort and style in a way that seeks to radically change the original GEO
model. Next, it examines the different forms that upgraded houses can take,
and how the constant upgrading of people’s houses influences their aspira-
tions, and sense of identity. And, finally, it argues that the constant need for
improvement made people reconsider the notions of housing from ‘perma-
nent’ to a ‘transitory dwelling’, challenging their notions that a house is the
inheritance of a lifetime.
Becoming Middle Class Through Aesthetics and Class

Differentiation
In recent years, the task of capturing the lives of the new middle classes
in emerging societies has become increasingly significant in urban studies,
Li vi n g Wi t h S tyl e i n M y C a s a G E O | 183
especially anthropology. This new class requires us to abandon a view of

urbanities that is solely based on notions of poverty, marginality and social
exclusion, and instead observe the way people are confronting a changing
social order, through processes of inclusion, aspirations and ‘social differen-
tiation’. The ethnographic study of a non-Western new middle class, shaped
by the advent of the neo-liberal state and globalization, is still in its infancy.
These studies document how the recent trend towards liberalization has
given rise to a highly visible social group that is geared towards consumerism
and the display of new forms of social recognition, and give a comparative
perspective on the local specificities that have also shaped the presence of new
class subjects (Liechty 2003; Fernandes 2006; Koning 2009; Zhang 2010).
In attempting to provide a definition of what the new class or groups are,
following Barbara and John Ehrenreich (1977a and 1977b), Loïc Wacquant
argues that the new middle class consists of ‘educated wage-labourers [that]
cannot be viewed as proletarian’ (Wacquant 1991: 46). They are clerical
staff and the self-employed as well as bureaucrats and technical workers. The
‘Professional-Managerial Class’, as the Ehrenreichs call it, has evolved with its
own organizations (professional associations), its own ideology (technocratic
liberal), and its own centres for recruitment and indoctrination (universities,
and places of employment). Wacquant believes that the ‘newness’ of this
class is in its power base, which is essentially cultural. It consists of cultural
and symbolic capital and its decisive ‘middle ground’ existence is not linked
to the working class but rather to the ruling class. Consequently, Wacquant
argues that the new middle class is in a permanent dispute with the upper-
class groups (in this case large corporations, businessmen and a market-
oriented state), not because of economic level, but because of aspirations
and desires shaped by those who are socially above them. As a result, many
of the adopted values and beliefs of the new middle class can be seen as rep-
licas of the upper classes. Wacquant has summarized much of the qualitative
evidence gathered about an emerging middle class in non-Western societies.
Writers such as Fernandes (2006) and Koning (2009) have argued that
new consumer patterns geared towards a multi-centred global capitalist econ-
omy are leading to the emergence of new middle-class subjects. They claim
that the new middle class is a political or national ‘project’ that is endorsed
by different governments with the aim of using the new market economy as
a mode of transforming countries into modern middle-class societies. These
authors have added that the main assumption of the ‘new class project’ is that
a wide range of individuals from other, lower, social segments can poten-
tially join it. By emulating the lifestyles of upper-class groups, they reveal a
mindset, aspirations and a set of dispositions that can be associated with a
perceived upward mobility. Although providing stimulating ideas about new
urban lifestyles, these ethnographies only provide a restricted view of the
upper classes, who have mostly benefited from economic liberalization (cre-
dentials from elite schools, jobs in the new private economy and consumerist
patterns). One of the main problems of these ethnographies is their attempt
to define what class is, rather than exploring the nature of the new or distinct
symbolic and material conditions that sustain them as a group.
Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘taste’ as classificatory practices, a
second group of literature stated that, on the ground, the formation of class
in emerging economies is not a reality or a fact, but rather a national rhetoric
of an emerging ‘middle-classness’ that people aspire to and desire to reach
(Gerke 2000; Liechty 2003). These authors provide a comprehensive view of
the practices that make up the contemporary urban middle class in contexts
such as Nepal and Indonesia. According to this view, it is essential to under-
stand what class does as a cultural practice rather than trying to define what
class is by categorizing those individuals who formed it (Liechty 2003: 265).
Under this view, these authors believe that the making of the middle class is a
constant process that consists of a wide range of practices – the ultimate goal
of which is to obtain local recognition through specific symbols, claims and
class values. This group of ethnographies provide a diverse portrait of indi-
viduals ‘doing’ class. Examples range from teenagers wearing second-hand
clothes that are shared amongst friends, to housewives creating a local dress
code or house decoration based on the fashion they see in Hindi movies, to
socializing in modern cafes. Gerke (2000) argues that these are ‘lifestyle prac-
tices’ that symbolize style and introduce a middle-class ‘touch’. However,
being familiar with the local norms of moderation, as synonyms of decency
and traditional prestige, appears to be key in choosing the right ‘class’ prac-
tice. In sum, the suitability of modern middle class is about striking a balance
between foreign influences and local codes. Viewed as practice, the process of
‘doing’ class is a constant local construction that is perfectible over a period
of time, and the main goal is to gain a social differentiation in relation to the
others outside the group (Bourdieu 1984).
A third body of literature is concerned with the relationship between
housing, class identity and aesthetic sensibilities as mechanisms of class asser-
tion (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1994; Jones and Varley 1999; Klaufus 2000 and
2006; Humphrey 2002: 175–201; Zhang 2010). In the case of China,
Zhang (2010) shows that private housing is the main benchmark of a new
class membership. In Search of Paradise, as the title of Zhang’s ethnograph-
ical study indicates, stems from the desire of young professional Chinese
to live above and be differentiated from the ordinary poor(er) citizens, but
importantly within the old communist way of life. The author explains how
this ‘new’ class gain prestige by cultivating aesthetic principles; for instance,
by selecting the ‘right’ home to live in, which has to follow a certain archi-
tectural style. The author gives examples of how people attain a ‘Daoist
principle of living close to nature’ [a local high standard of living] (Zhang

2010: 95) by merging local and foreign elements: streets with foreign names
(Victoria Garden, Windsor Rose), Chinese gardens with artificial ponds and
swans to provide the ‘green’ element and houses with a ‘foreign flavour’
(Zhang 2010: 87). Along similar lines, Humphrey’s ethnography on the
villas of the ‘new Russians’ (2002) proposes that the making or regaining of
new class subjectivities is strongly aided by using the memories of an old or
distant home to establish social ties with the present. The author examines
the importance of reviving imperial Russian architecture and adapting it to fit
local notions of a new Western lifestyle. Consumerism and choice are key fea-
tures in creating this desired modern self-image in a ‘traditional’ landscape.
Humphrey supports Zhang by stating that the houses are not a finished
construction as in the old Soviet or communist times, but rather the clients
are encouraged to take part in the production of the desired home. Drawing
from a wide range of styles and decorations, and with the help of real-estate
agents, interior decorators, magazines and photographs from the past, the
people create an image of a modern, new class. The result is that their own
version of comfort and luxury amalgamates a pastiche of European styles and
times (eighteenth-century country estates, new pseudo-Russian Byzantine
styles and modern architect-designed houses). As well as making this range of
choices, this aspiring class must face the question of ‘non-choices’. These are
‘the outcomes that no one really wanted or consciously planned’ (Humphrey
2002: 185), which represent the underlying sociopolitical condition of the
houses, which in both contexts (Russia and China) are often built in remote
locations, have a lack of basic urban services, are of low quality and are built
in compliance with outdated planning laws – a sign of the fragile state of the
emerging new class identities.
In the Latin American context, Colloredo-Mansfeld (1994) and Klaufus
(2000) investigate the transnationality of the ‘migrant architecture’ that is
changing the landscape of medium- size cities in Ecuador. The focus of these
studies is on how people who have migrated abroad have introduced designs
and features that are reminiscent of American comfort and ‘modern’ and con-
temporary life, as a strategy for acquiring or asserting a higher social position
in their community of origin. However, the adopted styles are not simply
replicas of those encountered when they worked, for example, as maids,
builders and traders, but are styles adapted to their local circumstances,
producing a blend of more traditional construction materials and building
techniques. The blending of local and foreign styles and construction leads
to an ‘architectural metamorphosis’, comprising a constellation of opulent
houses (i.e. vertical constructions with elevators, polarized windows and flat-
topped roofs) that can be regarded locally as ‘distinctive’ (Klaufus 2000). For
Jones and Varley (1999), analysing the conservation of the Historic Centre
of Puebla, Mexico, shows an attempted revival of an imagined ‘colonial’

past as a symbolic reassertion of a ‘superior’ local middle-class authority over
an urban poor. The ‘Spanish’ appearance of the centre, represented by the
restored historical buildings of museums, private schools and retail services,
and ‘cleaned’ of their undesired uses for canteens, bus stations and street
vendors, can be viewed as a strong moral discourse that imposes a regained
middle-class ‘dignity’.
As these studies remind us, the assertion of middle-class identities is not
necessarily a progressive impulse but can just as often be driven by social and
cultural conservatism. Aesthetical practices that are planned to construct new
scenic beauty or to preserve the old are intertwined with issues of poverty,
dirt and cultural identity. There are parallels, then, with wider processes of
urban social change, often also involving the middle class as both a group and
a symbol. The literature coincides to highlight the ‘middle grounds’ where
different emerging social groups move. The symbolic struggle for identifica-
tion and communication through visible architecture are signs that new social
groups are claiming social recognition. This ‘middleness’ is the factor that is
the driving force behind this desired visibility. The flexible and imaginative
practices of ‘class-making’ developed by these authors give an account of
the production of the cultural and symbolic power that is needed, following
Bourdieu, for cultivating mentalities, perceptions and aspirations for social
mobility. In this chapter, I argue that a large part of the middle-class experi-
ence is a state of mind. Following Liechty, in the case of GEO Bosques, the
process of class-making entails ‘claiming and creating space for active expres-
sions and aspirations regarding class’ (Liechty 2003: 115–16); it recognizes
any attempt to try to find or keep a space in the middle ground. In taking
these ideas forward, I regard an emerging residential space in Mexico as the
arena where an aspired ‘middle-class’ lifestyle is produced and expressed in
the landscape, and assume that this is undertaken through specific claims,
values and symbols.
Casas GEO and the Studied Site
The largest private builder of houses in Mexico is a firm called Corporación

GEO, commonly known as Casas GEO, whose CEO and founder Luis
Orvañanos has been described in business circles as ‘a kind of Mexican
William Levitt’ (Palmeri 1995: 96). Like Levitt & Sons Company in the
past, Casas GEO has attracted attention because it is one of the few firms
in Mexico committed to building housing for the average Mexican: a two-
storey 750–100 square foot unit has an average price of U.S. $22,000.1
Like a Levitt house, a GEO house is modern, well planned and marketed to
fulfil the ‘dreams’ of thousands of families and improve their lives. From its
foundation as Orvi in 1974 through to its reincarnation as GEO, the firm
has produced more than 600,000 houses where over two million Mexican
families live (Corporación GEO 2010). The relative scale of this achievement
is enormous if we consider that in the period from 1970 to 1992 the gov-
ernment through its public housing institutions produced a little over one
million houses whereas Casas GEO, and a handful of other private develop-
ers, produced in the three years between 2003 and 2006 the same number
(CONAVI 2009). Actual and potential scale is possible because GEO does
not operate as a traditional homebuilder. Casas GEO is a corporate firm
working in a ‘vertically integrated system’ that includes every aspect of house
production from land acquisition, design and construction, mortgage alloca-
tion, marketing, sales and delivery and post-sale services. This construction
process is divided into more than sixty different stages, and involves subsid-
iaries in twenty of the thirty-two states of the country as well as international
financing partners and factories for the assembly of houses and furniture
(Corporación GEO 2010), enabling the company to offer house typologies
according to climate conditions, topography and local tastes.
The number of GEO-type complexes began to grow in the mid 1990s
after the government began modernizing the housing sector through a new
market-oriented housing finance system with the close involvement of private
developers (Puebla 2002). This reorientation of housing policies formed a
part of the wider restructuring policies begun in the 1980s as a response to
austerity, inefficient administration and what was termed ‘economic mod-
ernization’. An essential part of this new path to modernization was the
creation of an efficient and competitive housing sector, and a massive hous-
ing reform programme was undertaken. The most significant changes were
carried out in 1992 with the reform of INFONAVIT (the Institute of the
National Workers’ Housing Fund), a parastatal organization run by workers’
representatives, businesses and the government department responsible for
providing worker housing. The institution was changed in two fundamental
ways. First, INFONAVIT became a purely financial institution, and ceased to
have responsibility directly for housing (that is, in matters of land acquisition,
architecture, pricing and mortgages), which was transferred to private inter-
mediaries, such as mortgage agencies and housing developers (Siembieda and
López 1999; Puebla 2002). Second, the reform of INFONAVIT involved
drawing up agreements with private developers interested in producing
low-cost housing. The constitutional amendment of Article 27 (passed by
the government in 1992), enabled homebuilders to assemble through pur-
chased land controlled by ejido (agrarian) communities and implementing
what became a suburban model of low-cost housing (García Peralta and
Hofer 2006).2
The Casas GEO suburban model of low-cost housing resulted from

the firm’s extensive endeavour to devise a model of low-cost housing that
could be more efficiently produced and more attractive to clients. A first,
research was conducted in Egypt with Hassan Fathy, who was already
internationally renowned for his belief in the value of vernacular building
methods described in his book Architecture for the Poor (1976). Fathy’s
ideas motivated the GEO directors’ proposal to patent a house model, La
Geomorada, a low-cost unit produced on-site with local soil and prefab-
ricated materials (García-Velez n.d: 101). La Geomorada was created as a
house that could be progressively expanded or transformed by its residents.
The use of terracotta colours and wood and sloping roofs also made it
aesthetically appealing. The firm continued Fathy’s research at Harvard
University where together with a group of architects at the Graduate
School of Design and Architecture they formulated ideas about effective
construction and urban planning that could support his product. The
research resulted in a second product called Morada, which incorporated
more technology than the original version. The house mainly comprised
a set of pre-assembled parts. In the new version the house fronts were
made of hollow block with aesthetic features comprising clay and tiled
plastic roofs or a light ceramic.3 The Morada, moreover, was organized in
a micro-cell layout connected to a town pattern called Centros de Barrio.
This meant that the houses were arranged in groups called clusters or
privadas that were connected by street grids, footpaths and common areas,
leading to the main community plaza, which included an elevated water
tank or solar panel, and also served to give the site its social identification
and sense of community (García-Velez n.d: 7). The Morada was planned to
work as a town in itself, with schools, clinics, a main market or commercial
areas as main amenities that needed to be built in conjunction with the
local g
overnment and according to the needs of the inhabitants.
The aforementioned factors – namely, the housing structure reforms in
Mexico, the firm’s vertical integration approach and the patented urban
design – have allowed the company to develop what can be described as
the Mexican version of the aspiring middle-class suburbia. That is, identical
houses are arranged in gated clusters, forming large-scale developments of
no less than 800 houses, and sometimes reaching 15,000, built in remote
peripheries. Each house comes with a living room and small open kitchen
downstairs, and one or two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a patio at the
back and space for a front garden or parking lot. The houses can be extended
by adding an extra room. Although units look almost exactly the same, poten-
tial buyers can choose between five or six different styles that differ from each
other according to floor plan, dimension of construction and the potential
for adding an extension. For an extra cost, the houses can include some ‘plus’
elements, such as ceramic-tiled flooring, wooden doors or luxury bathroom

furniture. In some cases, complexes are landscaped, subsections are designed
to have a common garden, clubhouse or a swimming pool, all the utilities
connected, and either concrete or paved roads. According to the planning
specifications, complexes are zoned as a conjunto urbano (urban complex)
meaning that the project includes commercial areas, schools, churches and
a community or a sports centre.4 A project could be finished in approxi-
mately nine months. Located in semi-rural municipalities such as Temixco or
Tlatizapan de Zapata, the name of GEO complexes suggests fulfilment of a
suburban dream, with names like Valle de los Sauces (Willows Valley), Campo
Verde (Green Gulf) and Senderos del Lago (Lake Paths).
In contrast to scholars such as Castillo and García Peralta and Hoffer
(2006) who argue that it is exclusively the aesthetic level with which GEO
aims to sell the notions of social mobility and new forms of urban dwelling5
– as developments often lack zoning and planning for education, health,
transportation and job centres – I argue, however, that the GEO houses are
not only an architectural creation, but, in agreement with the parallels iden-
tified between GEO and William Levitt, can be compared to the American
Levittown: ‘Levittown houses were social creations – as they turned the
detached, single-family house from a distant dream to a real possibility for
thousands of middle-class American families’ (Jackson 1985: 236). Important
to my assumption of GEO houses as ‘social creations’ is the firm’s notion of
potential buyers and residents as co-producers of their own ‘dreams’ and
‘lifestyles’, as the slogan of the firm indicates: ‘Casas GEO – un estilo de
vida a tu alcance’ (Casas GEO – a lifestyle within your reach). That is, the
task of the company is to plan, pre-assemble and sell houses in pseudo gated
communities serviced to basic or ‘minimum standards’ specified by the con-
struction permits (in terms of size of the dwellings, finishes and services and
amenities provided). The residents are thus, at least in the developers’ rhet-
oric, encouraged to produce their own middle-class lifestyle through partici-
pating as self-builders, home decorators, active residents and neighbourhood
managers and community trainers. Thus, Casas GEO is actively involved in
creating a new ‘urbanite’ through a range of practices and encouragement
of lifestyle traits (especially via consumption); it is a resident’s responsibility
to fulfil the dream through different practices, amongst which stand the
improvement and personalization of houses, with different finishes, fitted
furniture and housing extensions.
The site under study, GEO Bosques, showed the typical characteristics
of any GEO complex. It is situated on the Cuernavaca’s southern outskirts.
Once crossing the informal periphery, the site can be identified by the
hoarding with the name of GEO Bosques stuck on a small and partially built
column, and next to it, a high water tank painted in yellow with the logo
of Casas GEO in large print. The layout of GEO Bosque is circular with a
U-turn at the end; the street grid leads to twelve independent gated clusters
spread out on its west and east sides. The privadas are sealed off by walled
gates. On average, each privada comprises forty units of houses, which are
usually arranged in two identical rows of twenty, facing each other and sep-
arated by a rectangular parking lot. Most of the privadas have a common
garden at the end. In some cases, these spaces have become impromptu
areas for mixing or storing cement and building materials, or provide storage
for old furniture and car parts, while others have just been abandoned as
wasteland. There is also a stark contrast between the privadas, with some of
them resembling a typical Mexican vecindad (slum tenement): a single row
of houses that lie exposed to the gaze of a passer-by through an enclosed
high gate. Here one can find a narrow concrete-paved patio, which acts as
an extension of the houses, and is shared by the residents as a place where
they can hang up their laundry or play football. The houses in this section
have undergone only minimal alterations. By contrast, other privadas are
protected by gated walls, a private guarded entrance and more extensive
common gardens. There are no cars secured with chains fixed to the trees
or lampposts and there seem to be no domestic activities being carried out
beyond the houses. However, countless housing extensions and improve-
ments can be seen, communicating not only the desire for refinement and
personal success, but possibly strong feelings of insecurity or clashes between
adjoining neighbours.
GEO Bosques, planned in 2000, was a deliberate attempt to raise planning
and design quality. The ‘improved’ model in Bosques on paper involved a
completely enclosed housing complex consisting of different housing clusters
divided from each other by gates and connected by a street grid and foot-
paths. Most of the houses were designed to have a front garden connecting
the common open areas. There were other innovations in the plan, such as
the inclusion of two house prototypes: a two-bedroom 55 m2 ‘standard’
construction and a three-bedroom 78 m2 ‘extended’ (referred to by GEO
staff and residents as ‘plus’) built to the same 39 m2 floor plan. The layouts
show no differences between the two prototypes, except for the third bed-
room added in the ‘extended’ model that faces the back of the house. The
dwellings were exclusively planned to be extended with an additional bed-
room that could be personalized by the client with particular finishes. The
‘improved’ Morada model in Bosques also involved a better supply of public
facilities, many more common areas for a football ground and sports centre
and space for a shopping area. A water supply system and two residual water
plants were to insure against drainage pollution.
The principal innovation (and probably the most attractive feature) of
GEO Bosques was the design of a ‘plus area’, or a subsection of one hundred
houses that represented a shift in the company towards a better and more
profitable housing model. The ‘plus area’ was planned specifically to offer
leisure facilities, such as a swimming pool, a clubhouse and three different
common areas. In comparison with other master plans, the smaller size of
the complex, the amount of green areas and the ‘plus area’ that gave the
impression of a potential gated community were all signs of the company’s
interest in improving the quality and ensuring the existence of security, exclu-
sivity and leisure. However, the master plan of Bosques was adjusted before
and during the sale proceedings. In the end, the plan omitted many of the
innovations that had initially been included. Amongst these were the gates to
each of the clusters and the commercial area (the five locales were put up for
sale). There was also no recreational centre; instead the land was left empty
with its use to be determined by the municipality at a later date. Regarding
the ‘plus area’, the projected clubhouse and the swimming pool were left out
of the final project.
The Selling of an ‘Attainable Lifestyle’
It can be said that the intentionally ‘planned’ aspect of the Bosques proj-
ect occurred in the marketing of the houses. As laid down in 2000, the
aims of the company, which were continuously focused on renewing its
image and improving projects, stressed that the housing complexes needed
to be advertised with potent strategies, concentrating on marketing not
only the ‘utility and affordability’ of the houses but also laying stress on the
stylish elements of a safe and exclusive community that was usually to be
found in middle- and upper-class neighbourhoods. These stylish elements
needed to be appealing for young couples buying their first homes, as well as
for a new clientele interested in buying a weekend house. In addition, the
company adopted a new sales slogan that focussed on the promotion of
a lifestyle – ‘Casas GEO: Un estilo de vida a tu alcance’ (Casas GEO: A
lifestyle within your reach). The new slogan announced a radical change
in the idea of what a low-cost house implied. The notion of house as a ben-
efit or social right, and designed with the needs of a family in mind, gave
way to marketing notions of ‘lifestyle’. This new idea not only fitted well
with ideas of investment that tend to be associated with middle-class prop-
erty, but, more importantly, it introduced the idea that style and good taste
were not incompatible with a low-price property, and that anyone – within
the wide spectrum of the middle sectors of society – could own a ‘stylish’
house.
In order to sell the world of style and comfort, the firm invested in
training its sales personnel potent selling techniques at temporary locations
set up in popular retail stores, supermarkets, outside banks or next to cash

machines. The company also introduced sales centres, which included show
houses, varying in size, that were already extended, furnished and deco-
rated, so that people could visualize the potentials. Marketing the new
face of Casas GEO proved to be so successful that many residents during
conversations made statements like ‘I bought blindly’, ‘I bought on paper’;
‘on a drawing made by the salesman’ or we bought from ‘what we saw on
television or on a billboard’. Some of my informants, for example, indicated
that the sales agents referred to many of the ‘plus’ design elements as if
these were standard, to secure the sale. These tactics generated confusion
about whether the clusters would include a swimming pool and clubhouse
or not, or if houses had front gardens, American-style kitchens or tiled
flooring. Similarly, one of my informants stated inconsistencies and mis-
understandings during the sale by showing me a layout of the ‘plus area’,
which included the swimming pool, and another layout where it was unclear
whether the original had been drawn over by the salesman, or by himself.
There were also narratives of houses that required major improvements in
order to be habitable. Residents said how the houses lacked flooring, kitchen
utilities, fitted wardrobes, internal doors; that walls were unsealed, and both
walls and ceilings had holes left by builders for the supposed installation of
bathroom accessories and electricity sockets. Outside, the conditions were
no better. There was an uneven and arid terrain in the common areas. The
walls surrounding the privadas were low, and none of them had a lock-up
gate or watch tower. In the case of the two ‘plus sections’, there was no
swimming pool or clubhouse and there were no signs of the individual front
gardens that people had expected. Many summed the work up as being obra
negra (unfinished).
Importantly, the group that bought the houses in Bosques – a heteroge-
neous group of official employees in long-term jobs or on temporary con-
tracts, businesses owners, informal workers, pensioners or migrants working
in the United States – portrayed themselves as having strong social aspira-
tion; as being ‘professionals’,6 ‘entrepreneurs’, or ‘independent workers’ and
‘decent people’. An ‘unfinished’ house was a symbol of their past in informal
settlements, but also implied a socio-economic space in the making, thus a
place that needed to be symbolically separated from their new realities and
aspirations. Indeed, I am left with the sense that many people knew that
the houses and facilities delivered by GEO would differ in dramatic ways
from what was advertised. Yet, GEO was itself complicit in this idea. The
Morada model had built in to it the suggestion that an ‘unfinished’ GEO
house, as some put it, would increase status and lead to a world of comfort
and style. During fieldwork it was evident that the most powerful form of
communicating the GEO ‘attainable lifestyle’ took place once the houses
were sold and people took up residence. Through a post-sale service, GEO
encouraged residents to improve their houses and purchase the extra features
that could give them the stylish homes that had been marketed months
before. Inhabiting Bosques was about understanding peoples’ roles in the
co-production of a GEO home.
Here are the seeds of what could be ways of imagining, and aspiring
to, new ways of urban life. I explore people’s interpretations on the mar-
keting of lifestyle through housing design in the next section, but for now
it is worth noting how new residents ‘bought into’ the GEO model. In
most cases, it was an image of a bigger, nicer and more exclusive place
that framed their ‘imagined futures’; a space of refinement and good taste
in line with the image the company sold. A large-scale project for houses
that are difficult to reach, fitted with minimal infrastructure, fairly monot-
onous in aesthetic appearance and lack many of the ‘plus’ elements of
exclusivity, leisure and lifestyle that were promised is held up as a marker of
‘middle-class’ achievement. As said, the aim of Casas GEO is not to build
houses but to sell lifestyles. An important part of its business model is to
communicate the ‘virtues’ of its products to its customers. A key marketing
component was to communicate that a GEO house is a flexible dwelling
designed to be extended and personalized as much as the owner requires,
by adapting interiors, adding rooms, finishes and attractive decoration. This
house planning and design can only work well if the residents are involved
in maintaining and organizing their living space; that is, by establishing a
partnership with Casas GEO. This partnership obliges people to carry out
a wide range of repairs, changes and alterations to their houses and nearby
areas, to achieve the notions of security and exclusivity that the model prom-
ises to provide. This is the phase when Casas GEO and the residents display
their real partnership by building together a middle-class lifestyle that was
planned months before. On the side of GEO, this means ‘assisting’ residents
to enter the world of style and comfort, by offering a variety of credit plans
and packages for house extensions or decorations, while on the side of the
residents it entails improving their homes by agreeing to decisions made
by the company and retailers. Although the elements of style and comfort
offered by the developer are visible when people see the show houses at the
selling locations, it takes many years, in most cases, for the dream to come
true.
The ‘GEO Partners’: ‘Buy Now and Pay Later’
A group comprising home retailers, supermarkets, house decorators and

money lenders, or what I call here ‘GEO partners’, played a crucial role in
forming peoples’ tastes and attitudes to their new life in GEO Bosques. The
‘GEO partners’ included had an extended geographical presence in Mexico
through firms such as Elektra, Wal-Mart and Carrefour that provide in-store
credit for different goods and services. Also included in the partnership were
two furniture and in-store credit stores (K-Be and Equipa-T) that sell, online,
furniture and decorative items specifically designed to fit the dimensions
of a GEO house. The term ‘GEO partners’ can also cover the many other
small retail stores and microlending banks that benefited from the explosion
of Casas GEO and similar large homebuilders. Similar to what Humphrey
(2002) argued about the Russian villas, together, these ‘partners’ formed a
portfolio of items and services, ranging from furnishings, home accessories
and gardening suggestions, from which to choose and adapt to individual
tastes.
According to the 2000 economic census, the number of department
stores and supermarkets in Mexico grew by 44 per cent between 1988 and
2008, with their growth tied to the emergence of new urban areas through-
out the country (De la Calle and Rubio 2010: 64). A natural consequence
of this relationship was that it increased access to in-store credit so that the
new city dwellers could afford to improve and furnish their new homes. It
is common knowledge in Mexico that the retail store Elektra, and more
recently Wal-Mart, is the largest company that offers payday loans to lower-
and middle-income groups.7 Since the mid 2000s, Elektra and multinational
supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour have operated aggressive
day-loans and microbanking finance schemes.8 These retailers worked with
microlending strategies such as the pagos chiquitos scheme (small payments)
or a fixed weekly instalment plan designed for buying home appliances and
furniture; chaz, chaz (cash, cash) where discounts are offered for up-front
cash payments,9 or cuenta a pagar (post-dated bill), which allowed clients to
hold the product for a certain period of time by charging them a percentage
of the total value of the item on the day of the purchase, leaving the rest of
the bill to be paid with small weekly payments. Clients can combine these
three basic credit schemes as much as they want to, and in case of need, they
might also be eligible for in-store debit cards that follow a similar repayment
plan. The pictures of items of furniture are accompanied by phrases such as
‘your family deserves it’ or ‘fulfil your dreams’, and these are regularly added
to the credit plan to make it look more appealing. The online catalogues of
Elektra or K-Be, for instance, allow people to combine items (i.e. contempo-
rary lamps, modern Scandinavian furniture and Mexican finishes) and create
a particular atmosphere: Zen, modern, classical or functional. People can
see different surroundings by using interactive digital house plans that allow
them to combine furniture, a decorative item and a wall colour from a list
that appears in the webpage. As a sales agent of K-Be argued, the interactive
digital house plans seek to work as an ‘online interior design course’ so

that people can understand how a choice of colour, illumination or space
left between items can have a positive effect on the style and function of
design.
In practice, none of these schemes worked in the way that Casas GEO,
its partners or residents anticipated. The residents’ partnership schemes
for the improvement and furnishing of homes proved to be less straight-
forward than expected. Since they are regarded as familiar ‘tactics’, these
schemes do not work as established systems for selling consumer products,
but rather are used, pooled or combined with other tactics that people
will choose for convenience or out of sheer necessity. Bourdieu (1984)
stated that people formulate a set of alternatives on the basis of what they
experience in their daily life, and that they improvise or contest the ‘systems’
that involve stability of practices and control. The attempts of home retailers
to impose stability through regular and punctual payments, as well as to
control the way people live and decorate their homes, were revised by the
residents. Apart from improvising in their daily lives, people kept altering
their tactics owing to a lack of money. For example, Rosa, a forty-year-old
housewife and fruit-seller found that it was easier, like many others, to buy
what she called semi-new furniture or housing appliances that had been
seized by Elektra or Famsa from those unable to cover credit costs. Like
Rosa, many residents argued that there was always a chance of buying seized
items by simply going to the Elektra second-hand stores. It should be added
that peoples’ tactics for improving their homes are evidence of how dis-
ruptive the increasing number of changes were. This was a central factor in
determining what people searched for and thought of the ‘GEO attainable
lifestyle’.
The Co-partnership: People’s Strategies to Gain Style and

Comfort
Although Casas GEO and its partners played a key role in shaping people’s
tastes by offering credit facilities and a wide range of decorative choices,
people were forced to make many house modifications, or what in their
words was called a means to ‘rescue’ their properties by sorting out the
problems and replacing what had been overlooked by the developers. In
finding their own means of making their homes secure for a short period,
or of making them less damp or fresher, people stated that it was unfeasible
to follow the company’s suggestions regarding house improvement with
elements of style and comfort. People normally started the process of upgrad-
ing their houses by adapting similar practices reported by scholars studying
informal settlements, but also by incorporating new aesthetic practices that

could fit into the new context.
The search for distinct ideas on taste and refinement were expressed,
for instance, by some neighbours who found that sealing the corners of
interior walls with a thin layer of concrete was not only a long-lasting

solution for preventing leaks, but also added a different style to the house –
what Marta, called ‘a Mediterranean look’: ‘… you will see in some houses
that the wall corners are rounded, as in the Mediterranean style. This is
not usually found in Mexican houses. We did not plan it … it was our
solution, and that of others, to repair a serious leak, but it looks very nice
when the walls are kept very white’ (Marta [28], housewife). There were
other cases where a measure brought about a series of alterations, and the
‘rescuing’ of homes seemed to have no real beginning, peak or end, but
was just a continuous process of house improvement. Many of the residents
said that their main goal was to make their houses look better, larger and
have a personal touch or style, even through small details such as painting
the floor and walls in bright colours, adding plants or furnishing the houses
with selected items from their previous homes. This was particularly the
case for families who could not afford to make big changes and concen-
trated instead on ‘simple things that you probably cannot notice’, as Rosa
expressed it, referring to the banana trees and a deckchair placed in her front
garden where her family spent most of the time (as well as a few decorative
items, such as a mirror and a painting that adorned the wall of the ground
floor, used to store the boxes of chewing gum and piles of mangoes that her
husband sold).
The collective story of GEO Bosques was that after nearly two years
it had considerably improved. The houses were ‘habitable’, which meant
that they were equipped with basic things such as protective grilles, tiled
flooring, improved kitchens and basic furniture. The main problems of
space, security, ventilation and shade were somehow solved with temporary
features or more sophisticated and ‘stylish’ ones, such as air-conditioning,
insulated outside walls, large windows and sloping roofs as porches over
the main doors. Some people like Joaquín ([28], coffee merchant) felt the
need ‘to slowly make a radical change … change it all along the years!
The doors and windows were too narrow, and everything looked cramped
in this house’. His modifications showed personal tastes and ideas of
distinction that precisely reflected the notion that a GEO home was not
simply a dwelling but a way of achieving a better lifestyle. As a whole,
these physical modifications showed a process of aspiring to a middle-class
lifestyle. For the weekenders, for instance, this meant adding inflatable
pools and Jacuzzis in substitution of swimming pools, privatized gardens
and terraces. Terraces or porches tended to be made of stone quarry and
terracotta colours that could blend with the original colours of the GEO
construction. Others got together to build terraces with sloping ceilings
made of wooden beams, or to adopt strategies for reproducing what they
call a ‘colonial look’. Some neighbours, however, take the housing exten-
sions a step further by building gardens twice the size of their houses or
fencing them with grilles, walls or tall trees to separate themselves from the
rest. Fabián ([59], engineer) extended his house to the front and right-
hand side with two terraced gardens, one with a fountain and the other one
with a place for an inflatable swimming pool. Instead of fencing his new
house and gardens with grilles, he planted trees; the house was practically
surrounded by green areas.
My everyday view in Geo Bosques was of a combination of houses that
showed the original Casas GEO construction, with finished or partly done
balconies, terraces with outdoor furniture, room extensions and plastic pools
in front gardens that were hardly used. Neighbours, on many occasions,
showed me new rooms or recently acquired garden furniture with enormous
pride, despite clues that these changes were sometimes far beyond their
economic means and had been bought by making great sacrifices elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the sacrifices of the present were seen as part of a lifestyle
attainment, and in contrast with the housing struggles of the past. Colloredo-
Mansfeld (1994) describes a similar phenomenon in his ethnography of
architectural styles in Ecuador. He discusses how styles that incorporated
ideas taken from foreign countries, and which were initially seen as extrav-
agant and at odds with the traditional local building standards, gradually
became the adapted norm and blended with traditional building techniques.
This fusion of techniques formed a constellation of different opulent styles
that gave status to the village. In Bosques, I realized that changes provided
residents with a certain visible language or what some called ‘a plus style’
that ‘became the symbol of a new group identity’ (Klaufus 2000: 343) and
belonging. It helped residents to acquire a social status and quality of life
that the original GEO construction had failed to provide. The new style
reflected peoples’ desire to remove any possible trace of what they saw as
GEO ‘unfinished’, homogeneous and low-cost housing by using architecture
as a powerful resource.
This practice has led to an uneven and patchy landscape that is formed of
the following: house extensions with square rooms that lack windows; rooms
on top or at the front of the building; narrow front gardens; small porches or
terraces sometimes shared with three or four neighbours; second-floor bal-
conies; new doors or windows; and entirely new facades. ‘Plus homes’ often
stand beside other houses with half-completed constructions or houses that
retain their original model but include a touch of ‘plus style’, for instance
on the front door. Improvements are made by different ‘experts’ or just the
owners themselves. A ‘plus’ house plan, for example, can be drawn up by

the owner with the help of an architecture student and built by a group of
construction workers. It can also be planned by a paid architect or a person
familiar with the Casas GEO construction (usually a builder or a house agent
who has worked for the company) and the work continued by the owners
with a couple of construction workers or else it might be solely planned and
managed by a paid architect. The result is a variable standard of quality and
originality. The greater the involvement of ‘experts’ (i.e. architects, students,
maestros and interior designers) the more residents feel that the projects
have originality, quality and style. The involvement of experts also coincides
with research by Klaufus (2006) in Cuenca, a medium-sized city in Ecuador,
largely transformed by remittances of migrants working abroad. The author
reports that the spread of an eclectic architecture has created a new niche for
young architects.
In the case of GEO Bosques, the desire for originality and inspiration for
the design of extensions, gardens or decoration does not prevent all improve-
ments from representing copies or adaptations of existing ideas. These are
often picked out from specialist magazines or from weekend houses seen in
upper-class residential areas in Cuernavaca. I saw similar house extensions
and decorations in the different housing complexes that I visited in the
region, which suggests there might be an exchange of ideas across the Casas
GEO and similar firms. There is undoubtedly a wide range of possible influ-
ences, some residents said they had taken ideas from U.S. TV series and soap
operas, others from constructions seen while working in the United States;
all of them provide examples of different domestic settings and lifestyles.
The merging of ideas of the people involved in construction, and their desire
to make Cuernavaca a weekend spot, made the residents build what people
regard as examples of a ‘Colonial house’, a ‘Quinta chalet’, a ‘type of bunga-
low’ or simply a ‘house in Cuerna’ (abbreviation, Cuernavaca). As explained
by Ignacio:
This is what we call a modernistic house … The outside is a simple square

box sustained by some sort of Greek balustrades – a type of bungalow, I
think. The principal design, or our particular taste, can be seen in the ground
floor. The stained-glass door and windows are unique. What we value the
most is our privacy and security. We gained space and privacy with the con-
struction. With this modern bungalow we do not need any kind of security
protections or even curtains. (Fabián [50s], civil engineer)
Residents adopt a wide variety of interpretations of what a Casa GEO should

look like as well as how these changes might reflect on the real value of
people’s lives.
Figure 8.1 Material objects. Photo by the author.
In contrast to Fabián’s ideas about creating a modern house that high-

lights privacy and security, some of the weekend homes tend to have fewer
alterations than the permanent ones. The owners mostly value the GEO
house for the weekend experience that it offers. These houses were only
improved with protective grilles and a very simple garden with terrace
chairs and a barbecue. Weekenders such as Milagros wanted a house that
could be considered both rustic and modern, but simple and with the bare
essentials.
The idea is to keep it as a weekend house, with no luxuries. Every time I

come, I automatically feel I am transported to a beach, to Cancún if you
like. This is my Cancún, or to the mountains of Canada when the evenings
are cold. This view reminds me of Canadian landscapes. Look, we have a
perfect view of the volcanoes. Here you feel a cool breeze blowing in your
face … I take a towel and lie down on the grass for hours to see the sunset.
This is our small paradise, our therapy for stress. Nothing more! We keep it
functioning with all the services running and pay the mortgage … we have
plans to remodel it, but my idea is to leave it like a hotel room, a suite in
a boutique hotel. My vision is of a large room all in white and with linen
curtains … downstairs all in white with a small kitchenette and sofas where
you can lie on the floor, and a hammock to see the sunset. (Milagros [55],
retired primary school teacher)
Milagros explained that the real value and added status of the house is in the
experience she gets from it every weekend.
My observations as well as conversations related to house aesthetics and
decoration revealed the importance that most residents attach to transform-
ing their GEO house. People revealed a desire for a house that can resemble
another space: a hotel, a foreign landscape, a Japanese garden, a spa, or just
a modern and functional home different from the intention of the GEO
original. Those with less space for alterations or fewer resources used material
objects as symbols of an aspired middle-class lifestyle, reflecting the process
of belonging to a new social group. These were homes that could be given
the illusion of spaciousness by following the advice of K-Be or Elektra with
regard to decoration and functional furniture, such as a flat-screen television
as a main decorative devise. To the owners, the adaptations form the com-
ponents of an ‘ideal house’. Linked to the prospect of transforming a house
‘into something else’ (Humphrey 2002) was people’s awareness that these
were changeable and temporary constructions. As a new house style added
emotional and material value to people’s homes, this often led to additional
problems, as after a certain number of years people were forced to fix and
alter again what had already been improved.
In their attempt to fulfil their dream of an ideal house, some residents
embarked on major extensions that included large-scale vertical construc-
tions. This was the last trend that I observed in GEO Bosques, where
such extensions were gaining popularity among the most affluent dwellers.
Despite these major building works, after living in their houses for seven
years they expressed that ‘it was time for a definite change or upgrade’
(Pablo [32], public accountant). The decision to embark on major house
extensions and renovations was crucial, particularly for young families, as
the widely held view was that GEO houses were like cars, ‘time limited
and easily replaced’. Major renovation, people argued, could give them
the opportunity to extend their stay in a GEO home. Moreover, these resi-
dents explained that more space meant more opportunities for innovation,
a fusion of styles and decoration. In addition, embarking on a major reno-
vation project could allow people to solve many of the structural problems
of the original construction. The benefits to be had from tiling a roof could
not be felt otherwise through small and isolated repairs, while the porosity
of the block that caused damp or leaks, and the poor electrical system that
was easily damaged during the rainy season involved major work. Vertical
constructions or so-called ‘second floors’ (in reality third floors) served for
larger bedrooms for the children, laundry rooms, roof gardens or patios for
laundry. A variation of the extended home was created by changing the orig-
inal design of the house as much as possible to replicate a ‘sea villa’, ‘German
chalet’ or a ‘minimalistic style’. The new styles required the drafting of new
mortgages, as well as the presence of ‘experts’, such as architects and interior
designers, who could supervise the project. The presence of experts not only
gave residents the guarantee of good quality construction, but also a degree
of certainty that the renewed houses complied with the regulations and
thus would not cause any problems to their closest neighbours. Although
a necessity, given the need to maintain structural integrity, having a house
plan designed and approved by an architect or an engineer was viewed as a
sign of quality.
The following example reflects the major renovation trend. Described by
its owners as ‘Casa estilo Americana’ (American-style house) it includes two
extra rooms built on top of the original construction, a front balcony and
major interior renovation. The casa belongs to the Alvarez family and stands
out as the most renovated in the privada. The Alvarezes spent years fixing
and renovating it, while living in situ, but at the end of my fieldwork they
argued that the construction, after five years, was nearing the end. The new
construction followed a plan bought by Carlos Alvarez from an American
contractor and was granted full planning permission. Pablo, Carlos’s brother,
explained the project as follows:
We built the third floor for my wife’s dressing room and a room for the
expected baby. It was not only to increase the size of the house. Thanks
to the renovations, we are solving the problems that kept on appearing …
the noises that can be heard from my neighbours’ house, and, the smells.
One night we could even smell the marihuana that the girls next door were
inhaling … Some people here in the privada openly expressed their opinion
that the building is quite flimsy and will not bear the massive construction
work. But no one puts his own family at risk so why should I? This [con-
struction] is more serious than what people think. My brother and I got
a plan from a gringo contractor who builds houses in Minnesota. Every
aspect of the construction was revised by the contractor … the quality,
which walls could act as pillars … the materials to be used – he followed
up every step … He is a professional … We renovated the kitchen includ-
ing the pipes … and stopped the water leaking by changing the plastic
tiles for a real ceramic tiled roof and reinforced the walls with cement, to
avoid the noise. You can see the wood of the staircase and the doors. You
can see that the kitchen is very American. We bought it on the other side
[of the border, in the US]. When people ask us about the style, my wife
says that this is a Californian house, a Casa estilo Americana. (Pablo [32],
public accountant)
Pablo is keen to stress the quality and scale of the work. But the alterations
reflect more closely the taste of his wife. For her, it was important that the
renovated house corresponded to those shown on Desperate Housewives, the
popular American television show. The originality was a copy of an imagined
suburban middle-class ideal.
This example stems from the desire of the most affluent residents at the
privada to live ‘above’ ordinary GEO residents and be differentiated from
them as well. The social distinction of the Alvarez family requires establish-
ing a life of material comfort, which can only be achieved by erasing the
Casas GEO seal and its corresponding lifestyle. Through the display of a
new architecture style, the Alvarez family expressed aesthetic sensibilities as
potent mechanisms of class assertion (Jones and Varley 1999; Humphrey
2002; Zhang 2010). For instance, the ‘American look’, lacking gates for
security, contests an extended aesthetic pattern in Bosques and different
GEO complexes of ‘caging’ houses as expressions of perceived insecurity.
The display of furniture and pricey items through windows and balconies
speak also of emulating the upper classes in Cuernavaca, expressing no
concerns for insecurity in their properties. In Bourdieu’s terms, the taste
displayed through the casa Americana are manifestations of ‘distinguished’
practices. More specifically, they express rarity, and the usage of the maxi-
mum economic and cultural capital that a GEO resident could hold while
working as new symbolic signs that have begun to shape the landscape in
GEO Bosques and take it in a new direction.
In my follow-up visits, I noticed that the trend of carrying out major
renovations had gradually extended, and not necessarily to the most affluent
residents in the complex. Although the major renovations gave some resi-
dents a feeling of having achieved a middle-class lifestyle, the changes also
imposed great sacrifices. Some people were paying an additional mortgage
for the remodelling, and others depended on remittances or family loans.
The difficulties were evident in the differing speeds of improvements and the
varied degrees of individual comfort and styles. Both the mega renovations
themselves as well as the unfinished nature of such large-scale works added
to the patchwork of the GEO Bosques landscape. Out of every four houses
that were altered, there was one that was left in the same condition as when
it was first built by GEO, while the construction of some of the ‘second
floors’ was held up and others were abandoned. Where changes were only
partly carried out the results were walls left roughly finished, uneven terraces
or shaky-looking pillars of a balcony that seemed to be about to fall down at
any moment. For all the dreams of a stylish house of high quality, following
the inspiration of a magazine or a television programme, and full of con-
sumer goods, residents had to tackle the seemingly endless shortcomings of
the original Casa GEO structures; the low-grade construction materials and
poor infrastructure, as well as the exploitative mortgage payments. People

were forced to narrow their choices and restrict their dreams to what was
possible. Walls were thinner than recommended, and would not support
the weight of forged-iron protective grills; water pressure was too low for
the power showers; frequent water shortages meant that new Jacuzzis and
bathtubs lay idle; fuses would trip; and the electricity supply was prone to
fail, and it often did.
Conclusions
This chapter has discussed a range of ways in which people invest time and
resources into transforming their houses. The purpose of these practices is to
acquire their idea of a middle-class lifestyle, the ‘attainable lifestyle’ promised
by GEO but left unfulfilled by the quality of the original project. The ‘GEO
partners’ play a role in fostering this lifestyle by the aggressive marketing
of furniture and decoration, the purchasing of which is enabled by money
lending through microcredit schemes. Although often caught up in these
schemes, people might discard them in time or combine their use with other
means (tactics) to gain finance or goods, services and conduct improvements.
Despite the financial risks, the practice of fixing, extending and improving a
house allowed the residents to obtain the aesthetic satisfaction of building a
‘plus home’. This was a major house renovation trend that intended to rad-
ically change the original Casas GEO model and with it solve once and for
all structural defects. The need, perceived by some, for major renovations,
however, made people question the permanency of their GEO residence: the
choice between major renovation and getting out. Therefore, the idea of an
upgraded GEO, or what people called a ‘plus home’, as ‘finished’ proved to
be illusory. A GEO house was not the end – a symbol of success achieved
– and neither was the ‘rescued’ version or the renovated house. The GEO
house might constitute a medium for expressing aspiration through the
adoption and display of aesthetic features but it also reflected or exposed the
countless flaws on which the housing model rests: materials of poor quality,
and a lack of basic amenities, or rules for housing extensions. The constant,
almost endless, process of improvement from the addition of Jacuzzis in the
front garden to whole new floors speak to a strategy for meeting through
practice the dream of a class position. But, with only some people achieving
the dream, it has given the complex an unfinished, uneven and even rather
fragile appearance, very much at odds with the image of a middle-class life-
style overall.
Despite the limitations of the eclectic model of upgraded houses, my
argument in this chapter has been that people did not resist or criticize the
GEO housing model per se, but on the contrary improved it by exploiting
its attributes of flexibility, temporality and its potential to become something
else. Similar to what Humphrey (2002) suggests about the new Russians and
their villas, it is through a wide range of alterations that the GEO residents
express how far their aspirations can go. A GEO house might be a house
arranged by feng shui with functional and modern furniture or, for week-
end houses, with a style that is designed to transport the owner to a foreign
country. A Casa GEO can also be affected by the transnationality of returning
immigrants and the aesthetics of international decoration magazines. It is the
extravagance of houses built by migrants in Ecuador and the summer villas
built by new rich Russians that reflect how social groups are pushing hard to
carve out a presence, and it is the ability to appeal to this kind of aspiration
that makes Casas GEO similar to other emerging construction firms that have
appeared in changing societies.
Notes
1. Prices at 2007 levels for the sales in the State of Morelos. Average exchange rate for 2007:
$10.94 pesos per U.S. dollar. Interview with the sales manager at GEO Morelos. October
17, 2007, Cuernavaca, Mexico.
2. Ejido is a land entitlement historically given to landless peasants upon application, under an
agrarian law enacted after the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the Constitution of 1917 (Azuela
1989).
3. My observation on-site (2007, 2008) and personal communication with Casas GEO person-
nel (2007, 2008, 2010) in the State of Morelos.
4. See: ‘Periódico Oficial del Estado de Morelos Tierra y Libertad 4071, 2000’, Ley de
Ordenamiento Territorial y Asentamientos Humanos del Estado de Morelos. Seccion Segunda.
Retrieved 19 June 2012 from http://periodico.morelos.gob.mx/periodicos/2000/4071.
pdf.
5. C. Brillembourg interview with José Castillo, ‘Urbanism of the Informal: Interview with José
Castillo’, BOMB 94, Winter 2006. Retrieved 24 June 2012 from http://bombsite.com/
issues/94/articles/2798.
6. Degree holder or college or university graduate. In Mexico a sign of social mobility is a
person who has qualified in a profession or someone who is not engaged in a specified pro-
fession but has passed through university.
7. Epstein, K. and Smith, G. 2010. The Ugly Side of Microlending. How big Mexican banks
profit as many poor borrowers get trapped in a maze of debt. Businessweek. Retrieved
14 November 2014 from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-12-12/
the-ugly-side-of-microlending.
8. Epstein, K. and Smith, G. 2010. The Ugly Side of Microlending. How big Mexican banks
profit as many poor borrowers get trapped in a maze of debt. Businessweek. Retrieved
14 November 2014 from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-12-12/
the-ugly-side-of-microlending.
9. Elektra Tiendas, Catálogos Impresos 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2014 from http://elektra.
com.mx/Home?gclid=CPSs_PzK_8ECFSbHtAodWC4AEA#.
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Part IV
Architectural and Spatial
Representations
9
Illiterate Modernists
Tracking the Dissemination of Architectural
Knowledge in Brazilian Favelas
Fernando Luiz Lara
This chapter analyses the dissemination of modern building technology in

Brazil – notably, reinforced concrete – to build the argument that modernism
has become the basic spatial typology of a large portion of the built envi-
ronment. Field research on middle-class modernist houses and low-income
favela neighbourhoods has allowed me to trace some of the ways in which
architectural knowledge was disseminated in Brazil. As a result, I shall argue
in this chapter that the appropriation of modernist technology and spati-
ality has been achieved on such a wide scale that it has become part of the
Brazilian building culture. Furthermore, the interviews with construction
workers allow me to discuss their (incomplete) insertion into the country’s
modernity. One need only look closely at any favela or barrio (neighbour-
hood) in Latin America to understand my departing point; hundreds of
thousands of structures share the same construction technology – a few col-
umns resting on block foundations and supporting a few beams that indeed
support a roof slab (Figure 9.1), and all cast in place with irregular wood
formwork and filled with walls of exposed ceramic bricks. The resulting aes-
thetic of this informal fabric is easily recognizable by anyone who has lived
or even visited the periphery of any large Latin American city (Figure 9.2).
The data collection that supports my analysis has been conducted since
1998 in the city of Belo Horizonte (Lara 2008). In fact, it precedes my focus
on the workers as vectors of dissemination as I will explain below. The initial
data collection consisted of photographing about 500 buildings as seen from
the streets, plus noting external formal characteristics of each building. In
addition, about thirty original plans were retrieved from city archives and
from this a sample of twenty-one original owners were interviewed – people
who built the houses themselves in the 1950s. Later between 2002 and
2003, a grant from the Brazilian Council of Research (CNPq) allowed me to
document more than 200 houses (exterior and interior), this time including
houses designed by prominent local architects for wealthy patrons that were
being used as models by the population at large. In 2008, a study run in part-
nership with the city administration allowed me to have access to extensive
documentation on the Acaba Mundo neighbourhood in Belo Horizonte,
– 209 –
2 10 | Fernando L u i z La ra
1. Terrain is occupied 2. A flat space is cut 3. Foundations are dug
4. Walls are built 5. Structure is fortified 6. Second floor expansion
Figure 9.1 Diagram of the favela construction process.

Source: created by the author
Figure 9.2 Favela da Serra, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Photo by the author.
an informal settlement of about 300 households and 1200 inhabitants. The

following year a grant from the vice president for research at the University
of Texas, Austin, allowed me to interview ten construction workers in a more
systematized way; the richness of information adding to anecdotes and stories
I had heard from other masons in the last twenty years.
I l l i ter a te M o d er n i s ts | 211
The Construction Process
Born from a process of illegal land occupation in the immediate vicinity of

formal neighbourhoods, favelas appeared in the first decades of the twen-
tieth century as a means by which workers migrating from the countryside
in search of jobs in the nascent industry could solve their housing problems
(Vaz 2002; Valladares 2005). One by one they built their temporary struc-
tures in the immediate periphery of the city on any piece of land available.
Dwellers were often removed by the police in a matter of days if the land was
of interest to private owners of state agencies. People were allowed to stay if
the land was deemed not worthy of developing for a number of reasons: legal
ownership disputes, absolute lack of infrastructure (abandoned farmland),
site incline beyond that which was permitted by city codes (often above 30
per cent). The occupied land of the favelas was gradually divided in an organic
manner; following the steep pathways in the case of hills or the elevated
walkways in the case of swamp areas. As a general rule, the structures were
built with the cheapest materials available; early in the twentieth century that
meant scrapped wood and a tin roof. By the mid twentieth century, Brazil
was producing cement and structures were being built with concrete. This
new construction technique provided an amazing cost-benefit ratio. Easy to
build, with plenty of flexibility for expansion, the combination of reinforced
concrete and brick walls is much more durable than wood in the tropical
humidity and safe too. Such improvement in construction is a p henomenon
that deserves further investigation, as this chapter tries to argue.
In the case of Brazil, it is important to point out that this construction
process is now pervasive in every social stratum. The wealthy houses of
all Brazilian cities are also built with the same structure (although richly
decorated with finishing materials), as are the majority of houses on the
peripheries – areas that are not exactly favelas, for the people own their land.
These peripheral subdivisions are called loteamentos (allotments), where
a developer lays down a street grid and sells small lots (usually around
10 × 30 metres or 30 × 90 feet) to the working class. The use of materials is
almost the same: exposed brick, concrete slabs, a metallic- or asbestos-based
roof. The inhabitants include house maids, unskilled construction workers,
supermarket clerks and janitors, with incomes between U.S. $200 and $300
a month. Their educational level is similar, with the poorest 40 per cent in
Brazil having an average of only five years of formal schooling. In summary,
favelas or loteamentos have different degrees of social vulnerability and
access to infrastructure but share precisely the same construction techniques
when it comes to individual buildings. The construction is what is called
a wet process, in which the work is done on-site with very little use of
prefabricated materials. Local stores deliver the materials on-site and from
then on the construction crew is responsible for mixing, cutting, bending,

welding and connecting everything. Very common nowadays is the use of
prefabricated beams for the slabs. These beams have an inverted T-shaped
section of about 10 × 10 cm and span over 3 to 5 metres (the most inex-
pensive being 3 to 3.5m long, coinciding with an observation about the
regular interval between columns and beams). Spaced every 25 cm, they
support a row of shallow ceramic blocks especially shaped for those slabs. A
3 cm coat of concrete is poured on top of the system of beams and ceramic
blocks, making it more affordable and easier to build than the old poured
concrete slabs.
Moving beyond the formal characteristics of the barracos (shacks) we shall
look at the daily life within and around those structures. Since the slab (laje)
became the main component of the favelas, a whole culture has developed
around it. The use of flat reinforced concrete slabs allowed the favela dweller
to incorporate more space for their daily activities. The process of claiming
land means departing from the enclosing four walls as the first act, but grad-
ual densification was making it harder and harder to expand horizontally. In
addition, favelas are mainly built on sloped terrain, which meant alleyways
and porches were always very narrow (sometimes only 90 cm or 3 feet wide)
and precariously hanging from cliffs and retaining walls. In such hard terrain,
occupied with high densities, the slab becomes the easiest path of future
growth. The use of the flat terrace provided by the reinforced concrete slab
practically doubles the amount of area available for activities. In opposition
to the private quarters inside the house, the slab terraces are semi-public, and
cultural life in the favelas and other informal settlements makes full use of
those spaces. Children play soccer there and run kites in the windy months of
spring; housewives hang clothes to dry and communicate with their neigh-
bours from slab to slab. On weekends, the slab is the site of barbecues, music
rounds and sun bathing. A complex culture of semi-private and semi-public
relationships developed on the slabs. The technology is so deeply intertwined
in the lifestyle that in Brazilian colloquial Portuguese the word ‘laje’ (slab) is
a synonym of open (albeit private) leisure space.
The Path of the Dissemination: The Middle Class as

Mediators
One question that arises from the observations described above refers to the
speed and the extent of the dissemination. A whole new materiality took over
the housing process of the working class in Brazil (and the wealthy also) in a
single generation, between 1940 and 1970. The challenge of understanding
the dissemination of information from famous architects to the precarious
favelas has necessarily to go through the middle class. Although it is possible

to hypothesize that architectural knowledge can flow directly from the con-
struction sites of paradigmatic buildings to the houses of the workers, it
becomes very hard to encompass the massive scale of such dissemination
without the middle class as mediators. The wide availability of simple materi-
als such as cement, steel rods or ready-made windows was only a reality after
the middle class embraced modernism and its architecture in the 1940s and
1950s (Forty 2005; Lara 2008). After the Second World War, architects in
Brazil were very busy designing and building – the country exploding into
a huge construction site. The urban-industrial consolidation after 1950 had
created a cultural market for architecture. Government offices had been
investing in a modern image, and architecture was a great tool or conveyor
for such an image. This had been happening since the government of Getúlio
Vargas (1882–1954; President: 1930–45 and 1951–54) in the 1930s, but
with the presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek (1902–76; President: 1956–61)
it achieved an intensity that it never had before, galvanizing the whole society
around the idea of ‘modernization’.
The architecture of those days left a huge impact on how Brazilian cities
look even today, over fifty years later. Walking around the residential neigh-
bourhoods in the major Brazilian cities, one cannot avoid noticing a rep-
etition of certain architectural elements employed on many facades. The
Figure 9.3 A middle-class modernist house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Photo by the author.
rooflines are often sloping inward. Innumerable concrete slabs float above
entrances supported by thin metal columns. Ceramic tiles in pastel colours
cover most of the front surfaces of the houses. Shadow and ventilation are
very often provided by brise-soleils or void blocks cast in ceramic or concrete.
The vast majority of the middle-class houses documented were not designed
by architects, but nevertheless presented modernist elements reused and
redesigned. Built by the owners themselves with the help of a contractor and
unskilled workers, the houses show an ingenious adaptation and application
of modernist vocabulary. Most of the houses of my analysis were built on
lots of 12 × 30 metres (3 × 90 feet), with a facade usually only nine or eight
metres wide (around 30 feet). Despite the narrow lots, these houses present
quite complex facade compositions, usually with one or two major volumes
defined by different roof slopes and other minor elements that complete
the facade.
The increase in the political and consumer power of the middle class
in 1950s Brazil brings up the issue of individualization. Not only did the
Brazilian middle class struggle to establish a new identity that represented its
new place in society, but it also wished to participate in the new universal and
modern culture that was being promoted by the media (Lara 2008: 176).
The poor followed in the same steps and found in slabs and columns of rein-
forced concrete its own strategy to enter modernity (García-Canclini 1995).
The intriguing part of the equation was to try to figure out how the knowl-
edge had been transmitted. It is clear that the middle class was imitating the
paradigmatic buildings by Oscar Niemeyer (Pampulha buildings, 1941–43)
and the low-income dwellers for their part were imitating the middle-class
houses they aspire to. As Peter Kellett found in Colombia, ‘[D]espite con-
trasting pedigrees and modes of production, the [middle-class] low-rise
formal houses share numerous design features with the squatter dwellings’
(Kellett 2005: 30). But to complete the puzzle I needed to go deeper into
how those composition strategies and construction techniques were being
transmitted and by which medium.
Interviews: Discovery Through a Failed Hypothesis
In 1999, I interviewed twenty-one senior citizens from different neighbour-

hoods in Belo Horizonte who built modernist houses back in the 1950s
(Lara 2006 and 2008). Before starting the in-depth interviews (about one
hour each), I had hypothesized that they were getting the idea of a modernist
house from the media, notably magazines and newspapers at that time. The
research included a systematic review of five magazines and two newspapers
throughout the 1950s, and the growing presence of modernism in their
pages had prompted me to think that they were major vectors of modern
architectural dissemination. What a surprise it was when almost every one
of the interviewees told me that they did not recall being influenced by the
magazines or newspapers at all. Instead, most of them still remembered the
impact of visiting for the first time this or that building fifty years ago. And
even more important, they recalled vividly how the ideas for this brise-soleil
or that thin metallic column supporting a flat canopy came from a relative
who had worked in such construction company, or the contractor had just
built one of those last year. As a result, while the hypothesis about the impact
of printed media was failing, another avenue of investigation was opening up
in front of me. The main vector of dissemination of architectural knowledge
is the people themselves, mainly those who work in the building sector in one
way or another.
With that idea in mind, I went to talk to experienced construction work-
ers. What I learned from them was how much they knew about reinforced
concrete structures, without any formal training. Although many could
barely read and write, they knew about slab loads, how to position the steel
rods, how the joints work and all the other rules-of-thumb of building with
reinforced concrete. While they all learned from just observing how it was
done in upper-class buildings, they were very proud to tell me that they used
this new kind of prefabricated slab or this lighter kind of roofing surface on
their own homes, and how much better it was after the additions or reno-
vations. Later in 2009, I conducted a second set of interviews focused on
Figure 9.4 A construction worker drawing with a piece of ceramic brick on the
floor to explain his decision process. Photo by the author.
their careers; what they learned and what they were able to apply to their
own homes and neighbourhoods. It therefore became clear to me that when
the cost allowed, about 1.2 million construction workers would immediately
transfer the technology that they were using in their jobs into the informal
buildings they built for themselves or others in their own neighbourhoods.1
Any attempt to understand the favela neighbourhoods involves deal-
ing with the fact that there is no design process as we know it; or at least
not what we would normally call a design process. There is little or no
representation before breaking ground, no anticipation of what the spaces
would be like after completion. Much to the contrary, the favela structures
are built right off the ground when a foundation is dug, concrete is poured
on concrete masonry unit (CMU) blocks and the walls follow those lines.
When any representation happens it is a very sketchy and undetailed plan;
never more than a few rectangles on a single piece of paper that is used
to calculate the costs of labour and materials. After an initial agreement
between the owners and the construction crew led by a more experienced
worker, this very rudimentary plan with basic measurements would be used
as guidelines for the foundations. This process was described by the majority
of the construction workers interviewed. Although they all reported to be
able to read drawings – for they do hold formal jobs on construction com-
panies – only two said they use drawings (with windows and doors located,
for instance) prior to breaking ground. From then on every construction
step follows the dimensions of what is already built, allowing for so much
flexibility that it seems as if no design is actually necessary. Design decisions
are reduced to those simple divisions of the spaces into rooms. Given the
standardization of cheap metallic windows around 100 × 120 cm and doors
around 70 × 210 cm, the main design decision is where to place those open-
ings (Figure 9.4). Little or no consideration is given to solar orientation
and/or ventilation strategies.
Moreover, in the absence of a design previous to breaking ground, the
main generator of those favela forms is the structural system: foundations on
reinforced concrete blocks, walls of ceramic brick, columns and beams on
poured-in reinforced concrete and a slab on top of everything. Many scholars,
however, would say that the favela structures cannot be related to modern
architecture since there is no architectural intention there. Others would
differentiate spatiality from technology to claim that the term ‘modern’ can
only be used towards the former, and what we have in the favelas is the dis-
semination of ‘just technology’. In my view, the technology is inseparable
from the spatiality, and what we would call modernism is the merging of all
(new technologies, new programmes, new clients, new aesthetics, new spatial
relations) into a set of multiple proposals towards a better built environment.
That parts of such a proposal reached the favelas I believe is beyond doubt.
The main question, then, is if we can still call the result of such dissemination
architecture.
The process of laying foundation blocks, building a formwork out of
wood, placing the steel reinforcement and pouring concrete is known by
every construction worker in Brazil. Data from the United Nations show that
the median house size in Brazilian cities like Rio de Janeiro is 62 m2 (Angel
2000). A grid of 3.5 × 3 metre bays would be the most common, allowing
me to think of a rough average of 7 × 9 metres for median structures. Those
dimensions are corroborated by our geographic information system (GIS)
maps of the Acaba Mundo favela. However, there is so much variation with
smaller bays where bathrooms and stairs are located that it is very hard to see
any logic besides the limits imposed by the equation structure/economy.
What is visually perceived is the cubic shape of those volumes, highlighted by
the walls of exposed ceramic void bricks, almost always following the planes
of the structural grid and carrying some of the load. Actually, although the
walls are not supposed to be load bearing, they are built before the upper
beams, which are poured on top of the last row of brick. Such practice makes
for a more economic and faster built structure but joins wall and beams inex-
orably and reduces the options and advantages of an independent structural
system (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). By intrinsically binding walls, columns and
beams together, the favela structures lose a lot of the qualities that modern
architecture was supposed to promote: efficient lighting with horizontal
windows, free plan, easier possibility for change and adaptation. All around
the favelas we see the overwhelmingly predominant choice of small windows
(glass being so much more expensive than bricks) that again do not take
advantage of the reinforced concrete structure.
Regarding the prevalence of the prefabricated slab, I recall a conversation
with José Antônio, a tall, skinny man in his mid-sixties with fifty years of
experience as a construction worker. His story represents very much the tech-
nological transformations that happened in the last decades in Brazil. José
Antônio told me that he started working in the 1950s at age fifteen, basically
carrying materials for the more experienced masons (servente de pedreiro or
the one who serves the mason). Having a middle school diploma (he did not
even start high school), his father, a mason, wanted him to learn carpentry
skills, because roof workers made more money than masons. But in the late
1950s the ceramic roofs supported by wooden trusses were being less and
less used in larger buildings, and José Antônio recalled that as much as he
wanted to learn to be a roofer, he kept getting temporary jobs to work with
concrete slabs. At that time, it was cheaper to mix the concrete at the site,
and José Antônio says he did that for years, mixing cement, sand, aggregate
and water in large wooden tanks using just a hoe, then carrying the concrete
mix – forty pounds at a time – many floors up on precarious ladders. Despite
the exhaustion of this very physical work, José Antônio says that he learned
so much about the different concrete mixes – the faster ones, the slower
ones, the thicker ones, the malleable ones – that he was quickly being called
to teach the right amounts of the mixture to his neighbours and relatives,
establishing himself as an authority on concrete, and making extra money.
Another senior mason called Ambrosio sadly recalled how he tried to advise
a family about the imminent collapse of their building when he observed
diagonal cracks on the walls. The head of the household, himself a young
construction worker, insisted that it was okay and that he had ‘patched’ those
kinds of cracks many times when working in fancy buildings for the wealthy.
Part of the house eventually collapsed and fortunately no one was injured,
but years of savings and hundreds of hours of his own work were lost with
the compromised structure. Being young and not yet experienced enough
the man could not differentiate between diagonal cracks, which usually mean
that the whole structure is receding, and vertical or horizontal cracks, which
are common occurrences, and just the result of expansion and contraction
where brick walls meet concrete columns and beams. Nevertheless, the epi-
sode tells us again that everything that is done in the wealthier buildings
(in this case the practice of patching to hide cracks created by poorly done
masonry) will be immediately transferred to the favelas. Another retired con-
struction worker and community leader called Seu Augusto told me about
his role as a consultant to many younger masons working in the community.
He called our attention to the fact that limited economic means force the
favela dwellers to buy the cheapest materials available, and how dangerous
it can be when people buy old sacks of cement, way past the expiration date
but nevertheless sold, at a ‘discount’, on the outskirts of the city. With the
chemical cure compromised, the resultant concrete can have its resistance
lowered to dangerous levels. As an experienced mason, Seu Augusto told
us that he can usually spot problems visually by the way that cured concrete
‘looks’ or by the way it ‘feels’ to touch. That kind of knowledge is invaluable
for a neighbourhood that cannot afford technical assistance.
In fact, despite a current fascination with the favelas as places of low
carbon footprint and high recyclability, we find quite the contrary when
talking to the construction workers that build them. Yes, the carbon foot-
print is small but only due to lack of money to consume more or the impos-
sibility for people to drive their own car. Even this is changing fast with the
recent economic growth and the success of governmental policies on income
distribution. As for recycling and a more parsimonious use of materials, it
is only in the very early stages of an invasion that the shacks are made of
scrapped wood and tin. As soon as some money is saved new materials are
bought (I never saw used bricks or debris being appropriated as aggregate in
the favelas), albeit the cheapest available, and the construction of brick walls
braced by concrete columns and beams begun. Indeed, given the inability of
its low-skilled labour force to perform any structural calculation, the columns
and beams in the favelas almost always use more steel or a larger section to
compensate for the risks. I clearly recall a conversation with a mason called
Geraldo, who was trying to convince me that a certain beam we were casting
in a renovation I designed back in the 1990s needed as much steel on top as
at the bottom. Unable to understand how flexion works in a beam he had
trouble understanding why we insisted on putting stronger pieces of rebar on
the bottom of the beam, where more tension will occur, rather than on the
top, which works mostly under compression. ‘In the favela’, he said, ‘I never
do this, to be safe I always use four pieces of half an inch rebar on a beam
like that, and I am sure it will never crack or sag’. Surely enough, our photo-
graphic documentation on Acaba Mundo found many beams with a square
section when the same distance could have been span with half the volume of
concrete, same height half the thickness.
Final Remarks
The question that follows is not so much about how modern technology
became the vernacular in Brazil and most of the developing world, but if it
implies changes in spatial arrangements. There seems to be no doubt that the
ferroconcrete technology disseminated fast in Brazil, but how much spatial-
ity was brought with it? Reinforced concrete transformed the construction
industry in Brazil after its introduction in the late nineteenth century, but
it was only after the unique success and dissemination of the modern move-
ment translated by the middle class that it became a household solution.
Adrian Forty reminds us that ‘in the Brazilian context, concrete was used to
signify modernity’ (Forty 2005: 144) being at the same time the means and
the symbolic outcome of modernization. The majority of the houses built
before the 1950s, even with professional assistance, had solid load-bearing
walls and wooden trusses supporting ceramic tile roofs. The dissemination of
the waterproof slab, the independent structural system and the thin columns
has to be credited to the modernist avant-garde of the early twentieth century
(Lara 2002). Initially an elite venture, modern vocabulary (first) and modern
spatiality (later) would eventually contaminate all social strata and become
the forms with which the informal cities were built upon. The various inter-
views with construction workers support that assumption, showing how the
economically and technically more efficient reinforced concrete rapidly dis-
placed the previous vernacular of load-bearing walls with wooden trusses.
As a result, one of the most singular characteristics of the built environ-
ment in contemporary Brazil is the prevalence of modernism in one way
or another. The country has grown fast and urbanized even faster from
the 1930s to the 1980s, which coincides with the hegemony of modern
architecture. On wholesale numbers, Brazil had something close to 2 mil-
lion urban household units in 1940 – the year considered to be the turning
point towards modernism.2 In 2010, census data estimated 42 million urban
households. Once the traditional methods of ceramic roof over wooden
trusses became too expensive vis-à-vis the new technologies it was abandoned
by the large majority of the Brazilian population, who could build more
square footage in concrete and with the same money. Given that 40 out of
42 million households were built between 1940 and 2010, we can say with
confidence that more than 90 per cent of the Brazilian built environment is
somehow affiliated to modern technology. But part of that dissemination
relates to aesthetics also. Ferroconcrete has always been associated with flat
roofs and cubic forms, for those are the most basic formal results of the
construction technique. Those images have been a synonym of modernity in
Brazil since the 1940s (Lara 2009) for all but a small elite who adopted the
gated communities and their neoclassic or neoconservative aesthetics in the
last twenty years.
If we believe that the image of modernity is part of the appeal of mod-
ernism then we should be prepared to see traces of such an image in the
favelas also. As Peter Kellett reminds us, ‘[T]here is an implicit assumption
underlying much academic writing on low-income housing that poverty and
the struggle for survival will mean that the dwellings of the urban poor …
respond essentially and only to the basic need for shelter’ (Kellett 2005: 22).
He goes on to say that despite huge economic constraints there is an idea of
the desired future (Holston 1991) guiding the decisions on the incremental
construction process. It is precisely in this idea of an imagined future that Le
Corbusier’s famous model of the Dom-ino house, the middle-class houses
and the favela structures come together in Brazil. The dissemination of tech-
nology and the pervasive presence of modernism as the collective image of a
‘desired future’ allows me to discuss modernism as becoming the Brazilian
building culture, ‘linking all buildings together, large and small, domestic
and public, architect-designed or not’ (Davis 1999: 8). In our case, what
is important to highlight is that the labour force that built the sensuous
mid-century Brazilian modernism is exactly the same that built the favelas
(Lara 2010). The same masons, plumbers, carpenters and unskilled hands
that were working Monday to Friday in the buildings downtown would work
after hours, weekends and holidays in their own favela dwellings or those
of their neighbours. Being the vectors of this dissemination, it is striking to
perceive how much they have been overlooked by the scholarship at large.
The historiography of twentieth-century Brazilian architecture has barely
started to study buildings not designed by architects. While sociologists,
anthropologists, economists and demographers have scrutinized the fave-

la’s social and economic foundations, architects have either ignored it or
attempted to ‘solve’ the issues with formal solutions that are foreign to
the inhabitants. Exceptions are the work of architect João Filgueiras Lima
with prefab elements, and scholar Paola Berenstein (2003) on the peculiar
aesthetic of the favelas. In fact, while the Brazilian government has invested
over U.S. $200 billion on infrastructure upgrades since 2004 there is no
similar effort to document the spatiality of the favelas. Other disciplines such
as sociology and anthropology have detailed research on the favelas but not
on architecture. It is hard to find a single drawing of a favela structure even
on the vast webs of the Internet. A few theses or dissertations that have doc-
umented those buildings never seem to go beyond the library shelves. If we
want to understand the spatial structure of the Brazilian informal cities and
of most of the developing world, we should document those structures and
give voice to the people who build them. In a certain way we might have a
unique case in front of us, for unlike earlier vernacular developments this one
happened fast (in less than a century) and has been very well documented in
photographs, films and social science scholarship. What seems to be missing
is the architectural scholarship trying to understand its spatiality and material-
ity. With one billion people living in urban informal communities around the
planet this seems like an urgent task if we are serious about advancing social
sustainability in parallel with environmental sustainability.
Notes
1. It is estimated that the formal construction sector in Brazil employs 1.5 million people, while
the informal sector employs another 1 million. From these numbers I estimate that at least
half or 1.2 million workers are unskilled, had no formal training, and being at the bottom of
the income pyramid (Barros et al. 2001) many would probably live in the informal loteamen-
tos or favelas. IPEA, IBGE and FGV-Consult. 2005. ‘Informalidade na Construção Civil’,
Conjuntura da Construção 3(3).
2. In 1940, Oscar Niemeyer designed the Ouro Preto Hotel, which is now perceived as the
coup-de-grace of modernism in Brazil. By building a modern structure blended with ele-
ments of traditional architecture in the heart of the main collection of colonial buildings in
Ouro Preto, the modernist group dismantled the argumentation of their opponents about
modernism not being Brazilian enough and established for themselves an authority over the
future and the past at the same time.
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Oiticic. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Davis, H. 1999. The Culture of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.
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(eds), Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America. Amsterdam and
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10
Towards Belonging
Informal Design and Dwelling Practices in
Northern Colombia
Peter Kellett
Although limited by economic constraints, builder-dwellers in informal, self-

made environments are free to choose housing forms and materials without
external constraint or control. This situation potentially offers considerable
freedom for expressive gestures, originality and individuality. Drawing on data
from a longitudinal ethnographic study in Colombia, this chapter explores
how dwelling forms and practices are characterized by imitative behaviours at
a range of scales, including settlement layouts, house plans, selection of mate-
rials and house furnishings. The main arena for competitive display and dis-
tinction is on the front facades of the dwellings where variations in colour and
form become increasingly evident as settlements consolidate. The chapter
utilizes Bourdieu’s concepts of distinction to explore the changing dynamics
of housing design and display, and to explain why as dwellings consolidate,
there appears to be an increasing divergence between dwelling forms and
domestic practices. It also interprets these intertwined processes of building
and habitation as essential components in the construction and consolidation
of a sense of belonging and recognition amongst informal dwellers.
In much of urban Latin America the barrios populares – literally neigh-
bourhoods of the people – are places of aspiration and change in which
the self-builders demonstrate considerable agency manifest in the ambition,
ingenuity and energy with which they attempt to realize their individual and
collective aspirations to transform their social position within society. The
construction of their owner-built dwellings is usually a decades-long project of
consolidation. It is a powerfully symbolic and transformative process in which
the physical construction of the dwelling – usually from a flimsy improvised
hut of recycled materials towards a solid dwelling of concrete blocks, paint
and railings – plays a fundamental role in transforming social r elationships and
personal identity in which imitation appears to play a key role.
Imitative practices take place in different ways. Imitation is a fundamen-
tal part of the processes of cultural transmission as social groups attempt
to reproduce themselves. Much of this appears to occur ‘unconsciously’ or
‘naturally’ and is embodied in everyday practices (Bourdieu 1977) as children
learn the social rules, behaviours and language of their parents and elders
– 223 –
2 24 | Peter K el l ett
through copying and repetition. Houses play a crucial role as the site of many
of these everyday social practices, which are continually reproducing and
reinforcing the social order. Other issues are overtly reinforced through for-
malized processes such as education, which historically has employed copy-
ing techniques and repetitive rote learning. In this case imitation is a part
of the process of change, as people are observing and apparently copying
the dwellings of others in clear attempts to raise their own social status. Are
these low-income dwellers merely imitating the forms of more prestigious
housing areas rather than adopting its norms and values? Can we distinguish
between superficial copying and ‘genuine appropriation’? What exactly is
being copied? Is it the form, the content, the image or the lifestyle? Can these
characteristics be separated?
To address these questions we need to explore the intentions, motivations
and logics that lie behind different practices. To do this, the chapter draws
on data from a longitudinal ethnographic study into the growth and devel-
opment of popular housing in the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta in
northern Colombia.1 I first collected data in 1986 and returned every few
years until the early 1990s, each time living with a family in one of the illegal
squatter settlements on the periphery of the city. Several short visits were
made in the late 1990s, and in 2008 I carried out a follow-up study where I
lived for another month with the same family. This was seventeen years since
the previous intensive fieldwork, and over twenty-two years since my first
visit. The core of the study is an analysis of the changing dwelling processes
and practices of forty households in two adjacent informal settlements (which
have not yet been regularized). From my vantage point as a participant
observer, I collected a range of ethnographic data, including long transcribed
interviews with householders and detailed plans of their changing dwellings,
accompanied by photographs (Kellett 2000, and 2012).
Figures 10.1a & b Olga, Jesus and their family outside their house in 1991 and
2008. Photos by the author.
T o w a r d s B el o n g i n g | 225
Constructing Order and Belonging
Many authors have emphasized the symbolic dimension of housing and iden-
tified the need to explore the meanings associated with the buildings, spaces
and objects that make up domestic environments (e.g. Bourdieu 1977;
Rapoport 1982; Lawrence 1987). Waterson (1997, xvii) clarifies that houses
and settlements are full of encoded meanings and that the house can be seen
a microcosm that reflects ‘in its layout, structure, and ornamentation the
concept of an ideal natural and social order’. Similarly, Bourdieu’s concept of
habitus can be interpreted as a way ‘of knowing the world, a set of divisions of
space and time, of people and things, which structure social practice. It is at
once a division of the world and a vision of the world’ (Dovey 2010: 32). In
this sense, dwellings play a central role in the reproduction of social order and
practices. In Santa Marta we can interpret the land invasion,2 settlement and
consolidation processes as one of ordering. In this case, the spatial order that
is created by the informal dwellers is highly visible and identifiable at various
scales. The most obvious is the formal, geometric layout of the settlement,
but we also find a similar consistency in the house plans and even in the posi-
tion of furniture within the dwelling. Let us look more closely at some of the
elements, firstly the settlement layouts.
Since colonial times urban areas in Latin America have been planned
using orthogonal principles based on gridiron layouts of standard blocks
(Hardoy 1982; García Fernández 1989). This can be interpreted as the
imposition of an ‘ideal’ social order through rigid planning, which makes
tangible in built form and space the power and value system of those in
authority (Hernández and Kellett 2010). Perhaps ironically, then, informal
settlers aim to achieve just such a standard layout, sometimes overriding
the logic of topography. The most vital aspect of the grid layout is that it
will be read as conventional, and have the potential to develop and become
the same as other parts of the city. The expressed aim of many settlers is to
produce places that are as close as possible to the dominant formal housing
areas. Hence they adopt the rigid layout of blocks and plots – and signifi-
cantly they leave open spaces for squares, schools, clinics, etc. They aspire
to create conventional, legal, fully serviced neighbourhoods. Similarly, the
design of the dwellings themselves echoes the same underlying geometric
logics with minimal variation. Well-established patterns of development are
followed at different speeds, but the end products fall well within a rela-
tively narrow band of culturally prescribed characteristics. This means that
dwellers are attempting within the constraints of their resources to create
urban form and housing areas that are as close as possible to the dominant
conventions. The informal dwellings and settlements can therefore be inter-
preted as striving to achieve formal respectability, conventionality, order
and belonging. Such processes appear to be partly based on imitation and

copying of dominant referent models.
A distinctive characteristic of informal settlements is that the dwellings
are built by the inhabitants at the same time as the space is inhabited. This
finds immediate echo in the ideas of German philosopher Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976), who emphasized the inseparability of construction and habita-
tion, of building and dwelling. He argued that ‘building isn’t merely a means
and a way towards dwelling – to build is in itself already to dwell’ (Heidegger
1971: 146). According to Heidegger, in both German and English the
words have a shared etymology, which confirms the existential importance
of building to help ground and centre us in the world (Sharr 2007). Such
an approach also challenges the assumed ‘dichotomy between design and
execution’, as both emanate from a dwelling perspective (Ingold 2000: 186).
Hence the creation and construction of the dwellings is a lifetime project
of change and improvement that is highly responsive to changing domes-
tic circumstances, budgets and opportunities. This emphasizes the idea of
the house project as a process of change through time, a process in which
the changing dwelling can be seen as a symbolic vehicle of transformation
towards different circumstances. This can be interpreted as an aspirational life
journey from poverty towards prosperity, from the past towards the future,
from exclusion towards inclusion and from the margins towards the centre
(Kellett 2005). In other words, these are processes and practices that can lead
to an increased sense of belonging (Probyn 1996), both at the community
level and in a wider social sense whereby claims for recognition, respect and
civic identity are literally ‘constructed’ and reinforced through house build-
ing. Such an analysis sees the house and house project as a classic ‘model of
the world’ (cosmos), which is understood as an ongoing journey rather than
a static cultural model. It also reinforces the idea of the dwelling as never
complete but ‘continually under construction’, just as life itself is continually
moving forward (Ingold 2000: 172).
This can be clarified through an example. I first met Olga, Jesus and their
young children occupying a simple wooden hut high on the hillside above
one of the study settlements a week after a land invasion in 1991. The change
over seventeen years from their temporary dwelling of discarded planks to
their solidly built dwelling is a considerable achievement, and they have also
managed to consolidate their economic position and educate their three
children. Here is part of Olga’s story, which she recounted in an animated
way with both great pride in what had been achieved and also considerable
enthusiasm for what was still to be done:
Yes what an improvement! What happiness! To have your own house isn’t
wealth, but not to have a house is certainly poverty. … Ay, in the beginning
it was very hard for us, without electricity – we had to use simple paraffin
lamps and then what was it? – Bringing up the water – we carried it on our
shoulders and from right down there and each cantina holds 22 litres and
you had to put that on your shoulder. … Yes it was tough. We all made
such an effort, even the little ones. Everyone helped to carry up the stones
and sand. The little ones carried up the sand in little buckets. … Yes, when
you build your own house you feel real affection for it. Are we happy with
what we’ve achieved? Well yes, but we have to keep on improving it, of
course! That’s my intention, yes. Yes it’s necessary to improve, it’s still basic
construction (obra negra) – finish it, plaster it, paint it, the window in the
kitchen, tile the kitchen and bathroom, plaster everywhere until nothing
remains in obra negra. … We do it bit by bit. Apart from one room and the
bathroom, everything we did ourselves, and it’s work, work.
The front facade of the house is freshly painted and the living space is domi-
nated by numerous framed educational certificates and graduation-style pho-
tographs of the three children. Despite the elaborate academic garments in
some pictures, these achievements do not go beyond secondary education,
apart from some short technical courses. However, the message is clear. Their
children are successful in educational terms and the household has thereby
accumulated significant cultural capital of which they are proud. This mes-
sage of achievement is visible to all who come to the dwelling. The certificates
are distributed around the main living space and placed to ensure maximum
visibility.
A common thread in such stories is the dogged persistence required
to keep moving forward despite the hard work and hardships. The future
dimension is crucial. The long-term nature of the process demonstrates that,
in contrast to the common myth, dwellers are not present-time focused.
They adopt forward-looking strategies based on optimism and aspiration,
and their dwellings embody future aspirations with little time for nostal-
gia or a rural past, rather a fascination with ‘modern’, urban, progressive
images: a striving towards ‘imagined futures’ (Holston 1991). Despite daily
hardships and injustices, the world is seen as a place of opportunity where
effort and initiative can be rewarded. It is a world view in which change and
modernity are welcomed and attainable. Such values are directly reflected
in the aesthetics of building, in which models of success are sought from
‘beyond the neighbourhood in space and away from the past in time’
(Peattie 1992: 28).
What appear to be essentially physical changes not only symbolize prog-
ress and achievement but embody more fundamental social and economic
changes. The mass consumption of materials and consumer goods through
the construction and furnishing of dwellings draws dwellers intimately into
capitalist cycles of consumption, and parallel changes in social identity occur
as people’s role and position within society is redefined. Social positioning

plays a vital role in determining their actions. Informal settlers are conscious
of their relatively low social status, which is reflected in their physical condi-
tions. Hierarchies of forms and materials, which mirror economic and class
divisions, are a very visual and public barometer of relative social position and
hence are an obvious platform for all those with any means (however mini-
mal) and aspiration (however unrealistic) to influence perceptions of where
they fit, both on the larger macro scale of society and at the micro level of
neighbourhood relations. We can see these as performative acts – with the
aim, not necessarily conscious – of communicating to a range of possible
audiences, largely those nearby. Simultaneously, it can be argued that such
actions are also part of complex processes of self-realisation and identity
(re)construction (Cooper Marcus 1995; Wiesenfeld 2001). In other words,
communication is both inward and outward.
Therefore their construction efforts to transform their settlements can be
partly interpreted as a striving for dignity, respect and respectability through
appropriating images and attributes that signify aspects of ‘the modern’. From
her personal experience of living in an informal settlement in Venezuela,
the anthropologist Lisa Peattie (1992: 29) concluded that the improvised
wooden dwellings with minimal infrastructure ‘represent attributes which
are devalued and devaluing. People who live in this way are thought of as
people to be looked down on. That is why the energy that goes into hous-
ing improvement … is as much a drive for respect as it is for comfort’. Such
energy and values are manifest in the aesthetics of the built environment in
multiple ways, but underlying these values is the desire to transform their own
self-image as well as project a new identity to others. This is well expressed
by Holston with reference to his study of self-builders in Brazil where ‘the
underclasses are constructing images and identities to counter those that
subjugate. Not only are they transforming themselves as citizens … they are
Figures 10.2a & b Dwellings in the early stages are made from temporary and
recycled materials (left). A household who have been unable to consolidate still live
in a dwelling of temporary materials (right). Photos by the author.
also changing the images of disrespect [and] replacing [them] with new ones
of competence and knowledge in the production and consumption of what
modern society considers important’ (Holston 1991: 462).
Defining Difference, Reinforcing Similarity
What are the sources of these new images of competence and modernity?
In this study, the language of aspiration is expressed using a vocabulary that
appears to be borrowed from dominant groups to which the informal dwell-
ers aspire: a language of order, formality and affluence. Knowledge and imag-
ery of elite groups is easily accessible, not least through the media – especially
television. This is reinforced by local role models, which are clearly significant
influences on the design vocabulary, evident in the visual similarity between
well-consolidated popular dwellings and middle-class houses. However it is
not a direct appropriation, not least as lifestyles and housing preferences of
all groups are continually evolving and changing. The recent development
of new gated communities and apartments favoured by the aspiring middle
classes in Santa Marta can be seen as following the housing patterns of the
capital Bogotá – which is looked up to as a place of power and wealth. These
changes also help to define the social distance between the middle-classes
and the majority in the popular settlements in Santa Marta who are busy
constructing dwellings that appear to be increasingly similar to their own.
Therefore there is an apparent delay in the appropriation process: squatters
are appropriating somewhat dated models.
An additional point of reference in the city relates to the large influx of
internally displaced people (IDPs), fleeing the extreme violence of armed
groups in rural areas. In 2009 it was estimated that 30 per cent of the popula-
tion of the city were IDPs and the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) and Carrillo (2009) give a figure of over 140,000 registered IDPs,
making Santa Marta the second largest receiving city in the country. Many
are erecting new dwellings on previously untouched steep slopes – some
close to the city centre and on the hills surrounding existing settlements.
Conditions are usually very difficult, and 65 per cent are living in ‘extreme
poverty’ (ICRC 2007: 30). These new urban dwellers are changing the rel-
ative hierarchy of housing types and conditions in the city. Existing informal
dwellers are no longer at the bottom of the social pecking order and are keen
to ensure that they are clearly differentiated from those below them. They
do this not only through continuing to build in solid materials, but through
careful attention to style and detail.
Choice of building materials is fundamental to this. ‘Rural’ materials such
as wood, mud and thatch are replaced as soon as resources are available, with
concrete block walls, cement floors and fibre-cement roofs. The houses are
later rendered and painted. These materials and the accompanying construc-
tion knowledge are readily available and affordable in the city, and despite
increasing pressures to densify, second storeys are very rare. The tradition of
single-storey dwellings is in contrast to the multistorey, reinforced concrete
frame structures common in the larger cities of Colombia. Other differences
include the emphasis on single household living. This is reflected in the
typology of consolidated dwellings, which are not designed to accommodate
a second household or individuals living independently. This is confirmed by
the virtual absence of rented rooms within family dwellings in Santa Marta:
in a sample of 650 households in five settlements, only three owner-dwellers
rented out a room or a portion of the dwelling. However, there is a rental
market: 23 per cent of dwellings are rented, but in such cases the whole
dwelling is rented to a separate household.
Many dwellings accommodate economic functions. Approximately 20 per
cent of households in the settlements use the dwelling to generate income
through a range of home-based enterprises (HBEs), but renting of rooms is
not one of these (Gough and Kellett 2001). Such HBE activities take place
within the spaces of the dwelling or patio, and on occasions front bedrooms
are converted into shops – but there was no evidence that dwellings are
intentionally designed to accommodate specific income-generating activities.
Housing types and styles have clear symbolic functions (Miller 1987), and
in Santa Marta these dynamic processes of change and appropriation can be
interpreted as reflecting changing social ideals. Following Bourdieu (1984)
we can see how different social groups attempt to maintain distinction from
those ‘below’ them and simultaneously try to emulate those they consider
to be successful. Foster (1975: 180) suggests that the type of dwelling built
by the poor is ‘an economical copy of a more wealthy man’s house’. But
although they may appear similar they are much more than simple copies.
Drawing on data from Brazil, Holston (1991) argues that low-income dwell-
ers are not attempting to imitate, but rather to develop ‘original copies’ that
display both their origin as well as demonstrating sufficient uniqueness and
originality. This seems to be the case here.
We can interpret aspects of the visual appearance of the dwellings through
an appreciation of transient and transcendent values (Miller 1994) and an
understanding of the imagery associated with contrasting rural and urban
values.3 The barrio is on the edge of the city with hills and farmland close
by, and many older residents grew up in rural areas, but the countryside is
regarded as backward and lacking in opportunity and prestige. The pitched
roof is symbolic of the rural house and great effort and expense is expended in
disguising its presence. Most consolidated dwellings appear to have flat roofs,
which are associated with the urban houses of the rich and a key signifier of
modernity. This illusion of flatness is achieved by erecting a parapet or fascia

at the front eaves. Such ‘modern’ exteriors reflect transient, changing values
and are designed to demonstrate prestige and link the occupiers with urban-
based ideas of affluence and progress.
Once the front facade is sufficiently advanced it will be rendered and
painted. Bright colour is a recent addition to the armoury of those intent on
achieving distinction from their neighbours through expressing visible differ-
ence. However, a delicate balance is required between difference and simi-
larity: between uniqueness and conformity. A common, shared vocabulary is
frequently evident between neighbours and which also indicates its imitative
origins in the dwellings of the more affluent.
We can identify two levels of imitative behaviour. Firstly, copying from
the design models of the more affluent beyond the barrio for the generic
design patterns, and secondly copying within the barrio. Dwellers recog-
nize that they observe and appropriate selectively the designs and motifs of
neighbours which they believe express the values to which they themselves
aspire. Again sufficient uniqueness can be achieved by the careful use of
paired colours (rarely more than two colours are used). This is a self-
conscious design process with the intentional selection of ideas and patterns
(Ingold 2000: 175). Although some people were not especially forthcoming
when asked to explain their choices and preferences, it is clear that low-in-
come residents hold clear aesthetic preferences and participate with knowl-
edge and creativity in the design process. I devised a simple photo-elicitation
exercise to encourage people to discuss their preferences using a range of
images of different facade types, and found that invariably the same ones
were selected as being the most attractive and ‘better’. These all employed
a clear symmetrical geometry combined with decorative elements in the
fascia profile and railings. I included some older images and it was revealing
that facades that appeared to be prestigious in 1991 were not selected. In
recent years, styles are becoming more colourful, extravagant and playful –
as well as occasionally eccentric. There is a noticeable softening of the hard
modernist geometry and increasing use of floral-based decoration, and occa-
sional use of textured areas (e.g. pattern stones).4 This confirms that tastes
and trends are in a state of flux and suggests that a more popular aesthetic
is developing that appears less reliant on copying and places more emphasis
on originality. Increasing numbers of recent facades exude a confident and
playful exuberance.
Fashions and styles are inevitably changing but this new-found confidence
in popular architecture may be an indicator of more profound changes, and
suggests a more independent relationship with elite groups and practices. In a
study of cities in the highlands of Ecuador, Klaufus (2012: 263) explains how
the potency of dominant models is linked to underlying systems of power,
Figures 10.3a, b & c Well-consolidated dwellings. Photos by the author.
and illustrates how ‘the former elite architecture is losing its distinctive
quality; the barrier constructed by the elite between superior and popular cul-
ture is fading. The elite symbols have forfeited some of their strength’. This
reminds us that architecture is not independent of structures of power but is
fully implicated in configuring societies through the construction of realities
and symbolic meanings.
Front Railings: A Case Study
A very visible feature of more consolidated dwellings is the presence of high

front railings. They range in design from simple vertical bars to railings
that incorporate playful floral patterns. It appears their ‘function’ is one of
security – but in many cases the door and windows also have security bars.
Why then the need for outer railings? Here is an extract from an interview
with Nancy [N] and Leopoldo [L], whose house is well consolidated. The
interior is smart and in excellent condition (they redecorate each year)
with expensive shiny floor tiles and good quality furnishings. Nancy works
as a maid for a middle-class household, and Leopoldo works as a petrol
pump attendant. I [P] asked them what they were planning to do next on
the house:
L: We’re going to do the front terrace and the fascia. Yes a terrace in
‘material’.
P: Many people have done that I think, not least in this street.
N: Yes, yes, in this street. In this street lots of people have done it.
P : So that’s the next thing. It’s a bit difficult isn’t it?
L : Yes, yes it’s difficult, quite difficult.
N: And that’s because it costs such a lot. Yes, a lot because of all the
[building] materials.
L: And also we want to put in railings. Railings. I’ve always wanted to have
railings.
P: Why do you want railings ?
N: More security, to have more security.
L: For more security, at least to be more secure, at least …
P: But is there a problem of security here?
N: No, no, very little.
L: No, no problem, not really … but to have more security at least when
you go out.
N: Here it’s very tranquilo. At least in all the [24] years we have lived
here we’ve never had any problem. Here we even leave the house unat-
tended … we’ve left the house alone for several days. And we’ve never
had, never had any problem. We’ve never lost anything. Because here
it’s very safe. Here you don’t see [problems like] that.
P: But [with railings] you would feel better?
L: Yes you feel better, more secure.
N: More secure, yes but also it would make the house look much more
attractive (vistosidad). Because here you can get some railings which
are very pretty (bonita), and it would be like adding more luxury (lujo).
Then the facade of the house would look prettier. It’s like making it
more attractive and special.
L: … but more security too, for when you go out or anything …
There appear to be several levels of explanation. Firstly, the bars are part
of an aspirational language. They are emblematic of success and an essen-
tial final touch in the production of a completed house, one which will
demonstrate beyond doubt that the inhabitants have transformed them-
selves from homeless squatters into prosperous citizens. In addition to the
high cost of such railings, why have such security if you have nothing worth
stealing? Middle-class houses began to have railings (and other security
features) when burglary increased and are now regarded as essential design
features for those with money. They are outward symbols of inner wealth
(or ambition to become wealthy). This is reinforced in the final paragraph
where Nancy explains how they can be used not only to make the house
more v isually attractive but also to add ‘luxury’. Luxury is synonymous with
surplus.
Figures 10.4a & b Many recent facades are more colourful and use more playful
forms. Photos by the author.
Secondly, the vehicle chosen to express such aspirations is inevitably

related to what others are doing. Bourdieu’s ideas of distinction (1984) are
based on clarifying both difference from those ‘below’ and similarity with
those ‘above’. It is worth noting that Nancy and Leopoldo are at the end of
a row of four houses, all of which have elaborate facades with railings. Such
close juxtaposition makes comparison inevitable. Finally, the bars provide
a ‘sense’ of security. One of the most fundamental functions of the home
is to protect the occupants and offer a sense of calm, stability, refuge and
well-being – ‘a place of security in an insecure world’ (Dovey 1985: 46). This
security may be achievable through physical means, but more significantly it
is a state of mind to which various factors may contribute. Although Nancy
and Leopoldo have confirmed they have no need to protect their home
from thieves and burglars, there is a generalized climate of violence and fear
throughout the country, including the coastal region (Camargo Rodríguez
and Blanco Botero 2007). They may have no need of physical protection
but they appear be interpreting the tangible presence of the metal railings
as offering psychological reassurance from the violence and insecurity that
surrounds them. The greater the perceived insecurity, the more important
such mechanisms may be. We are seeing here how buildings and particular
objects play ‘an active role in the constitution of social [and] cultural iden-
tities, and vice versa’ (Vellinga 2007: 761). Just as social identities are in a
state of change and flux, so too material objects ‘acquire different, change-
able, contradictory, and often contested meanings, at different times and in
different contexts’.
Dual Value Systems
Although the streets remain unpaved, the majority of dwellings are now con-
structed in solid materials, many painted in lively colours. Such improvements
appear to be accounted for by a linear model of dwelling consolidation inti-

mately integrated with social aspiration. Predictably, some households are
more successful than others, and the differences become more evident over
a longer time frame. To the observer there is increasing evidence of ordered
layouts, and consistent house plans, furniture types and positions. If we were
to apply the functionalist logic of (physical and spatial) form following (social
and cultural) function then such consistency and order might suggest an
equally ordered and disciplined social world. The reality is very different. The
barrio is far from cohesive, with an absence of clear and effective commu-
nity organization. Although the majority of households in my sample have
been remarkably stable over the twenty-two year period of study, there are
others that reflect the pattern of unstable relationships and consensual unions,
which are frequently reported as distinctive throughout the Caribbean region
(Streicker 1993, 1995, 1997). Although there is some variation, behaviour
and lifestyles can be characterised as relaxed, informal and flexible. How can
we explain this persistent inconsistency between physical order and informal
social practices? Why is there such a strong contrast between the attempts at
creating a clear geometric order and the flexible, informal patterns of social
interaction? This apparent disconnect between the formal language of the
dwelling and its furnishings and the value systems and behaviour of the resi-
dents suggests we need to analyse further the actual usage of domestic space
and objects. The house can be interpreted as a microcosm of significant cog-
nitive categories (Bourdieu 1977), but the danger is that we read the dwelling
container and its interior furnishings and objects at face value. ‘It does not
suffice just to look at the objects: one must also study who uses them, and how
and when they are used. The meaning which materialises in the organisation
of objects in space can only be discovered through associated practices …
which may be expected to reveal the same cognitive schemes as the objects in
space’ (Gullestad 1993: 129–30).
On closer inspection of the dwelling practices in Santa Marta, it seems
there are two apparently contrasting systems of values and practices (habi-
tus) operating simultaneously: one which is flexible, moveable, informal and
closer to rural practices, while the other is more rigid, fixed and formalized
and fits within the aspirational model sketched out earlier. Each set of values
seems to have its own physical manifestations, spaces and attendant goods,
but they do not operate in isolation but rather in a state of ambivalence and
creative tension. This can be clearly seen with reference to furniture that sig-
nals activities and behaviours that do not take place. On entering most well-
consolidated dwellings you will find a suite of chairs, sofa and coffee table
near the front door, with dining table and matching chairs in a standard posi-
tion between the sitting area and the kitchen. Such furniture arrangements
appear to define clear activity settings (Rapoport 1982). We would expect
visitors to be received and entertained in the lounge area, and for meals to
take place as a household sitting around the dining table. But the reality is
very different. Lounge seats are rarely used – most visitors (including myself)
are entertained on the front terrace or in the rear patio, sitting on cheap
plastic chairs; and food consumption lacks any of the formality and domestic
ritual associated with shared meals and implied by the dining table and chairs.
Eating is not a collective activity. Food is consumed at different times and
in different places and is usually eaten quickly without much conversation. I
never witnessed a complete family sitting round the table for a meal together.
This is significant, because food choice, preparation and consumption are
fundamental indicators of cultural value and social categories (Levi-Strauss
1983; Mintz and Du Bois 2002).
There seems to be an increasingly clear divergence between forms and
everyday practices.5 The dwelling forms, spatial arrangements and many
domestic objects adopt a language from beyond the barrio, but it is a
language that offers a point of reference against which the dwellers define
their own practices. This is language from a world of power, influence,
affluence and order, and people aim to appropriate wherever possible such
tangible representations of this order. They are literally reconstructing
such an order, but not directly, for their own everyday habitation. Using
Goffman’s (1969) terms, it is rather like a play: the stage is set for a particu-
lar scene, but the actors are acting out a different performance – one which
comes more n aturally to the extent that they are no longer acting. These
everyday embodied practices (habitus) appear to belong to a more deep-
seated set of values that are closer to the sensual elements of the earth and
ground, the world of air and trees – the natural world from which it might
appear people are retreating: each time the house gets bigger the patio gets
smaller.
We can see this played out in the tension between the house and the rear
patio. The house appears to offer a visible and tangible representation of
control and order – the straight line culture of the house contrasting with
the subversive, ‘chaotic’ sensuality and fertility of the natural world: the
patio with its ripening fruits and birds – emblems of desire and freedom.
The dweller may attempt to impose a calm, cool, mechanical order within
the house, but for many the patio is irresistible, with its natural breeze and
infinitely flexible spatial arrangements. It is where chairs can be moved in and
out of the shade and a hammock can be strung between the trees.6 According
to Douglas (2006 [1966]: 3), the order for which people are striving and
which is enabled by the ‘positive re-ordering of the environment’ (in this
case through dwelling construction) is an attempt to make it ‘conform to
an idea. [I]t is a creative movement, an attempt to relate form to function,
to make unity of experience’.7 But in this case it is not the unity we might
Figures 10.5a, b & c The changing house of Nancy and Leopoldo: 1986, 1989
and 2008. Photos by the author.
imagine. The key value of the dwelling is as symbolic capital; as a material

manifestation of progress in the journey of social aspiration, recognition and
belonging. The unity may perhaps lie in a symbiotic inverse relationship with
everyday domestic practices in which the natural world of the patio and the
flexible characteristics of the plastic chair coexist with the hard, immoveable
presence of the house.
In Conclusion: Divergence of Forms and Practices
Such evidence confirms the central importance of the house as a dynamic

‘model of the world’ understood as an ongoing journey. This is a journey
in which imitation and appropriation play a key role in the formation of new
identities through construction practices. The imitative practices observed
appear to be related largely to visible spatial forms and physical objects: set-
tlement layout, dwelling plans, building materials, type and location of fur-
niture, etc. The meanings that are appropriated are vital for the construction
and consolidation of progressive identities for the informal dwellers – but
their everyday domestic practices appear to remain rooted to a deeper set of
values. Hence it is largely the forms but not the practices that are imitated or
borrowed. This suggests that the new, borrowed ‘language’ does not displace
the old, rather an uneasy bilingualism is constructed in which the different
languages are used by different speakers on different occasions, depending
on the audience(s).
Nothing is static; both languages are in a continual state of flux. Forms
and practices, and meanings and values, are intimately interrelated in
dynamic, unpredictable ways that are highly conscious of what others are
doing. Lifestyles and dwelling forms, external both in time and space to the
popular settlements, provide points of reference: sometimes copied directly,
frequently adjusted but rarely, it seems, adopted as a total package linking
forms to practices.8 We must be cautious of claims, common in the field
of architecture, of causal relationships between forms and behaviour; for
example, the space syntax ideas of Hillier and Hanson (1984). Such formal
determinism in which particular forms are believed to govern certain spatial
behaviours with implicit values can lead to erroneous and superficial conclu-
sions. As we have seen, dwelling practices are complex and do not necessarily
correspond to the specific forms and spaces to which we might assume they
are allocated. Such findings confirm the value of detailed ethnographic work
in teasing out the subtlety and complexity implicit in dwelling practices,
social values and meanings.
Notes
1. An early version of this chapter was presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists
Conference: Bristol, April 2009, and later included in Archnet-IJAR, 7(1) 2013: 151–61.
2. In Santa Marta the first stage in settlement formation is the illegal ‘invasion’ of public or
private land. In this case, the owner had defaulted on his land taxes. Smaller invasions often
take place on adjacent land later on. Processes and practices of informal settlement vary con-
siderably between places (Hernández, Kellett and Allen 2010).
3. According to Miller (1994), transient values are associated with the present time, the short
term, expressiveness and change; whereas transcendent values relate to long-term memory,
continuity and moral values handed down through the generations. He expands his critique
of modernity in Chapter 2 (‘Modernity as a General Property’, pp. 58–81).
4. This seems to contrast with trends in Brazil (Lara 2006, 2010, and Lara in this volume).
5. Fletcher (1999) offers a nuanced analysis of migrant-funded housing in Mexico where both
dwelling practices and built forms are in a state of transformation and adaption in a continu-
ing attempt to align living habits and dwellings.
6. This is likely to change in the future, as dwelling densities increase at the expense of open
spaces. In addition, the introduction of air conditioning is likely to impact significantly
on spatial practices. One household in my sample have an AC unit in one bedroom, which
has become the focus of most activities in the house. Other spaces are now relatively
neglected.
7. In this case Douglas was explaining the reordering involved in making places clean and free
from dirt.
8. External areas play a different role in middle-class dwellings. This is partly because dwellings
are usually air conditioned, allowing internal spaces to be used throughout the day. External
areas are commonly paved with limited planting.
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11
(Re)Building the City of Medellín
Beyond State Rhetoric vs. Personal Experience –
A Call for Consolidated Synergies
Jota (José) Samper and Tamera Marko
This chapter discusses competing stories about the building and rebuilding of
the city of Medellín. This competition is between the rhetoric and practices
of the state versus that of the self-settled community members. We focus on
what we might learn about housing and belonging in Latin American cities
from these two sets of perspectives. We analyse the rhetoric and practices
of dozens of community members, who built their own communities and
were then directly engaged in the state’s recent urban interventions. We also
analyse the rhetoric and practices emerging from the political and academic
discourse that support the process known as the ‘transformation of Medellín’.
We place their stories in the context of state policies and practices regarding
these interventions.
The stories of community members are part of our ‘Family Albums as
Alternative Feminist Archival Activism’ project. This archive includes doc-
umentary interviews with more than 650 families throughout the city of
Medellín over the last six years and is part of our larger project called ‘Medellín
Mi Hogar’ (Medellín My Home).1 We hope this project will complement
and make more inclusive the rhetorical landscape of the way we understand
the urban history of the city of Medellín. We especially seek to include the
perspectives of desplazados – people who are forced to flee their homes due
to violence and thus become internally displaced within their own country
of Colombia. Our archive project also seeks to emphasize that desplazados
are also self-settlers, having built their own homes and neighbourhoods
with their own hands. In Medellín, people have self-settled fifteen sprawling
neighbourhoods over the last sixty years and it is only in the last decade that
they have received massive official state support and resources. In the case of
desplazados, the idea of belonging to a specific spatial territory is even more
pressing than for other populations. Thus, at the heart of an inclusive rhetor-
ical landscape and competing stories of (re)building the city are questions of
‘who belongs where?’ and ‘who feels at home where?’
In contrast to much of the official state reports and scholarly academic
literature, the community members often frame themselves not as deter-
ritorialized individuals but instead as a collective that claims its rightful
– 241 –
2 42 | Jota (Jos é) Sa m pe r a n d Ta m e ra M a rko
place in the city in the context of the inequality and violence prevalent in
Colombia at large. This challenges the idea of displaced people lacking a
sense of belonging to the city. We also see in those narratives of conflict
how the multiplicity of armed actors plus the context of displacement at the
national scale creates important differences in the ‘insurgent citizenships’
that emerge out of the building as contestation with the state. Furthermore,
we argue that it might be possible to negotiate community and state syn-
ergies as leverage against violent non-state actors (such as drug-trafficking
leaders and gangs).
Finally, while this chapter focuses on the tension between storytellers
(from state and community perspectives), it concludes that the success of
urban practices in Medellín’s informal settlements does not reside only in
an either-or scenario of one story version versus the other. The success,
rather, depends on the synergies between these two sources of rhetoric and
practice. We argue that it is dangerous for state narratives to erase those
of the self-settled populations because, as a result, we cannot understand
why Medellín’s innovations are supposed successes or failures at improving
the overall quality of life. In addition to the dignity and quality of human
life, this analysis is also important because of the citywide and multi
billion dollar investment involved in these innovations, including building
more stable physical housing and other infrastructure, and integrating the
self-settled communities with official resources of the state. Success (or
failure) can also be measured by what narratives reveal about new rela-
tionships created between state and communities, which in turn have the
potential to lessen violence in neighbourhoods dominated by armed actors.
We posit that understanding synergies between community members and
the state narratives about violence and innovation might also meaning-
fully inform other cities across the world that have large populations of
informal settlements.
Historical Context: Violence and Innovation
People’s stories, processes and state policies cannot be fully understood

without a deeper sociopolitical, historical context of violence in the City of
Medellín and in Colombia as a whole. In the 1990s, at the same time that
the United States was bombing Baghdad, Medellín was deemed the most
dangerous city in the world. In Medellín, people have informally urbanized
about half of the Andes mountain range and lower lands that surround the
city. These communities are part of the phenomena of massive migrations
from rural to urban settings over the last six decades in Latin America
(Gilbert 1996). In Colombia, however, this rural-urban migration is more
(Re )Bu i ld i n g th e C i ty o f M ed el l í n | 243
intense than in the rest of Latin America, because this displacement is the
result of high levels of violence in rural areas. In Colombia, where four
million people are internally displaced, most of them are forced to flee their
homes in rural areas as a result of more than sixty years of undeclared civil
war throughout the nation (Gutiérrez Sanín et al. 2006). These national
and other local conflicts have made issues of informality in Colombia dis-
tinct from those in Latin America at large: Colombia is the country with the
largest number of internally displaced individuals in the world (Ibáñez and
Velásquez 2009).
This urbanization process and the national conflict have impacted the
urban fabric of the city of Medellín in two particular ways. Firstly, urban
informality now accounts for as much as 50 per cent of the city’s land-
scape. At least 10 per cent of the registered population in Medellín are
displaced.2 The comunas (districts) with the most displaced populations in
Medellín were those with larger numbers of informal settlements (Alcaldía
de Medellín 2011: 4). Secondly, throughout Medellín, residents live in
a context of ever-changing violent urban conflict (Moser and McIlwaine
2004). Though different neighbourhoods throughout the city experience
different intensities of violence, what makes Medellín a special case is the
fact that, regardless of socio-economic status, every city resident experiences
some kind of violence periodically or daily. This displacement, its intensi-
fication of urban informality and related ongoing violence are exacerbated
by unique tensions between state and non-state actors, who compete for
control over the coercive monopoly on violence in the city. Further compli-
cating matters, international and local drug trade fuels and helps sustain this
violence (Roldan 1999).
There is another reason for which issues of urban informality in Medellín
are distinct from those throughout Latin America. Since 2003, Medellín has
undergone an internationally renowned urban transformation (Kimmelman
2012), which itself has been part of a controversial nationwide peace process
(Bouvier 2009). The process was implemented under Sergio Fajardo’s term
as Medellín mayor (2003–07) and continued under the next two mayors,
Alonso Salazar (2008–11) and Anibal Gaviria (2012–15). Internationally
and locally, people perceive Medellín to be a totally different place from
that which is depicted by its most recent violent fame. Specifically, with a
homicide rate five times lower than that of the 1990s, the city of Medellín
is seen as an example of how to engage with conflict and violence as an
urban peace process. Within this success lies a grave tension fundamental
to understanding Medellín’s most recent transformation. We argue that
the transformation of Medellín needs to be understood through analysis
that includes, but also moves beyond, a narrow focus on what truly are
stunning feats of newly built environments there. We argue that Medellín’s
t ransformation also needs to be considered in the context of multiple actors

– state and non-state, elite and impoverished – who built and sustain the
city of Medellín. This tension surges from the discrepancies between two
groups’ practices and rhetoric about processes of urban informality and the
city’s transformation.
Medellín Mi Hogar: An Alternative Archive Project
Our ‘Medellín Mi Hogar’ archive project is not only important to denounce

the erasure of community members’ perspectives and experiences in the city
of Medellín’s narratives of urban transformation. We also believe the case of
Medellín might serve to re-evaluate similar urban projects in other places and
contexts and to shed light on how the state’s own publicity campaigns about
these projects demolish – literally and metaphorically – community histories.
The danger of this process is that, in the tension between these two com-
peting histories, the state histories win. This is thanks to the overwhelming
production of material that supports efforts to enhance the informal commu-
nities’ physical environment. However, we need to analyse both community
and state rhetoric. Failure to do so can prevent us from seeing and, thus, from
understanding the synergies between community building projects and state
building projects that made some of these strategies so successful in the first
place.
Our study is based on interviews with community members, urban plan-
ners, city government officials, and formerly armed and now demobilized
actors in Medellín. We focus on two sets of narratives and the nodes of
communication that mobilize their circulation: (1) the community members’
stories and family albums that document how they founded their neigh-
bourhoods as long as sixty years ago, and (2) the first systematic and massive
urban interventions of the municipality of Medellín in these neighbourhoods
from 2003 to the present (2014). We argue that the second narrative is eras-
ing the first one. These two narrators and narratives represent two spectrums
of Manuel Castells’s theory of global communication networks, in which
some cities are connected to global ‘nodes of communication’ while others
have ‘fallen off the grid’ (Castells 1989). In the case of Medellín, we see state
communication practices as connected to global ‘nodes of communication’
in an unequal competition against the city’s informal settlements that have
‘fallen off the grid’.
There are vast discrepancies between the resources of each storyteller (state
official and community member) to represent their perspectives and mobilize
them across borders (social, geographic, institutional, international). This
discrepancy undermines and further ‘marginalizes’ the communities that the
projects had intended to help (Perlman 1976, 2010). The discrepancy to tell
the story of Medellín is further complicated by a powerful web of local and
transnational images in Hollywood films, media and academic production
that largely focus on Colombia in general, and Medellín in particular, as
nothing more than violence, narcotraffic and poverty. There is a sustained
rhetoric, especially in U.S. entertainment media, that serves to keep alive – at
least in the public imagination – one of the world’s most powerful drug lords,
Pablo Escobar, which is quite a feat, considering he died more than twenty
years ago. As one of us, Tamera Marko, writes, ‘In a competition between
state officials, international media, Hollywood and community members
regarding who gets to tell the story of who built Medellín, displaced people
have the least access to resources to mobilize their experiences and perspec-
tives’ (Marko 2012a). It is in no small thing that, because of the power of the
state, media and Hollywood films in promoting their versions of Medellín,
those communities with the most intimate and violent experience with the
conflict in Colombia also risk the most and benefit the least from talking
about it. Marko writes:
In a tragic irony, while they are the most ‘mobile’ people in Medellín
– having moved from their hometowns to another one foreign to them –
desplazadas [displaced persons] have the least mobility to circulate their
stories. Colombians of all socioeconomic standing are among the most
denied international travel visa applicants in the world. In a competition of
who gets to tell the past, present and future story of Medellín, desplazadas
have the least access to circulating their perspectives in citywide, national,
and global arenas. So the desplazadas are displaced again, this time from
their own stories of displacement. This I call doble desplazamiento, double
displacement. (Marko 2012b; 2014)
The (Official) Transformation of Medellín
The recent state policies and practices in Medellín’s informal communi-

ties involved physical and programmatic interventions in violent neigh-
bourhoods through the planning and construction of new facilities. They
included the construction of more than two hundred library parks, public
plazas, health clinics, schools, public gardens and cultural centres, as well
as affordable public transportation to connect the socially, economically
and politically isolated parts of these informal communities with the rest
of the city. The first two hundred structures, all state-of-the-art and aes-
thetically beautiful (not just functional), were completed in a span of four
years and building has continued at the same pace ever since. On the other
hand, the city public relations campaign overshadows the stories of how the
c ommunities were built in the first place. The city’s campaign to tell the
story of the transformation of Medellín (Escobar Arango 2006) often posi-
tions itself as responsible for the ‘heroic rescue’ of the communities that the
marginalized populations had built with their own hands. Explicitly under
Fajardo’s mayoral term and implicitly under the subsequent two mayorships,
the urban transformation of impoverished communities has been framed
as ‘paying a social debt’ that the city had to the residents of these informal
communities (Samper Escobar 2010). After decades of ‘looking the other
way’, the city government – through its politics, practices and media pub-
licity – has been declaring that the thousands of informal settlers belong in
the city of Medellín.
The city public relations and media campaign about this stunning human-
itarian project is problematic not just because of its myth of ‘rescue’ but
because it renders invisible the labour, artistry and expertise of thousands
of community members in dozens of neighbourhoods surrounding the city
who – for six decades – had built their own communities, schools, roads,
drainpipes, electricity, community restaurants and churches without state
support. The ‘city as rescuer’ image also deprives us of what we might learn
– what needs to be learned – from the informal dwellers. The neighbour-
hood founders’ stories contradict a bifurcated one-dimensional image of the
state as either overarching saviour or evil invader of their neighbourhoods.
Instead, the settlers’ stories complicate the state’s public rhetoric of rescue
with another interpretation: they view what the city government terms ‘the
transformation of Medellín’ as one of the most recent (and largely welcome)
state interventions in a series of ongoing community collaborations that
these same men, women, their families and neighbours have been directing
for decades.
This chapter is divided into five sections. First, we give an overview of the
violence in Colombia and its effects on the city of Medellín’s urban form.
Next, we explore what we mean by ‘narrativity’ and the narratives emerging
from people who built the ‘invasiones ’, or informal communities in Medellín,
from the perspective of the community members. Their perspective moves
beyond reducing themselves to victims and frames them instead as colonizers
who, since the 1950s, have self-settled the informal city of Medellín. The
third section analyses the work and rhetoric of the City of Medellín’s new
urban projects, followed by an analysis of the tensions that emerge between
these two community and state narratives. We conclude with some final
thoughts about why analysing the relevant synergies between community
building and state projects is necessary to create and sustain a future for
formal and informal dwellers in Medellín, where both narratives do not have
to antagonistically coexist. Rather, in some instances, both narratives can and
should meaningfully reinforce each other.
Medellín Globalization, Surge in drug Drug gangs Peace process Failure of

Industrial protected traffic, war on incorporated into with peace
capital of the national drugs left wing urban paramilitary process
400 country industries 375 military groups groups
collapse 331
350
Homicides per 100,000 people
313 309
300 273
237
250 227
198 206
177
200 167 168 173
142 157 157
150 123
98
101
94 86
100 71 70
66
49 56 57 56 44 52
47
37 38 44 46 86 85 83 79 40 37 35
50 68 74 75 70 72 67 66 68 70
52 57 60 62 56 48
44 42 40 39 36 39 38
24 26 28 27 30 33 39 37 35 37 35 34
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Medellín Colombia
Figure 11.1 Homicide rate in Colombia vs. Medellín from 1975 to 2012.
Source: Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses, Regional Noroccidente.
Boletin de Prensa 2002 to 2013.
Violence in Colombia and the Effects on Medellín’s

Urban Form
Since the mid 1980s Medellín has been an extraordinarily violent city in the
context of Colombia, itself a country where great violence has and is still
waged. In the wave of extreme violence between 1989 and 1994, Medellín
experienced 25 per cent of all public order problems in the entire country
(Betancur 2007a). This means that in a country with a history of violence and
an internal civil war, Medellín was the territory where those consequences
were among the most visible (see Figure 11.1). The narcotrafficking network
based in Medellín played an important factor in this increase of violence,
which peaked in 1991. The fact that violence in Medellín is higher than in
the rest of the country is, in our opinion, the spill-over effect of a series of
local and national conflicts occurring in the greater national sphere. Mayor
Sergio Fajardo, as part of his local, national and international publicity talks,
promoted the implementation of his campaign titled ‘Medellín, the most
educated city’.3 In Fajardo’s talks and in media coverage about ‘the “new”
Medellín’, part of the argument for ways these new urban interventions had
improved the city was the drop in homicide rates in Medellín from 1991
(Escobar Arango 2006) – when the city was known as the ‘most dangerous
city in the world’ – to the year 2007, the end of his term.
Several key figures played an important role in shifting homicide rates in
Medellín. These key figures are:
1. Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín drug cartel (homicide rate per
100,000 inhabitants 375 at peak year to a rate of 273 at the time of his
death. The war against narcotrafficking peaked in violence in 1991 in
Medellín. The death of Escobar in 1993 was part of a national offensive
against the known leaders of narcotrafficking. In Medellín, Escobar’s
armies were absorbed by other organizations, including urban guerrillas
and organized crime groups. These organizations also took control of
Escobar’s territories.
2. Andrés Pastrana, President of Colombia 1998–2002 (homicide rate
156–177). Spearheaded the failed peace process, which in turn inten-
sified the frequency of kidnappings and the escalation of the confron-
tation between right-wing paramilitary groups and the guerrillas. This
caused an increase in urban conflict. Colombia became the world’s
kidnapping capital.
3. Álvaro Uribe, President of Colombia 2002–10 (homicide rate per
100,000 inhabitants 177–86). Enacted two policies of security: one
increased military action at the national level and the second involved
peacekeeping via the Disarmament, Demobilizations and Reintegration
programme (DDR) with the paramilitary group AUC (Auto-Defensos
Unidas de Colombia). In Medellín, one of the military operations was
Operación Orión in 2002. This involved armed soldiers dropped in
by helicopter in an attempt to ‘exterminate’ left-wing guerrilla urban
groups in Comuna 13. This opened the opportunity for the AUC to
claim control over all illegal armed actors in the city. The DDR pro-
cess began in Medellín with the demobilization in 2003 of the urban
component of the AUC, known as the Bloque Cacique Nutibara.
4. Sergio Fajardo, Mayor of Medellín 2004–07 (homicide rate per 100,000
inhabitants 98–35); the period of his campaign and the associated series
of policies and practices were known as ‘Medellín, the most educated
city’.
Between 2003 and 2012, the city of Medellín has gone through a major
social and physical transformation. Colombia has experienced extreme levels
of violence caused by a complex web of armed groups. Various simultaneous
conflicts occurred amongst guerrilla, paramilitary and military groups, further
complicated by police forces and gangs (Bushnell 1993). Traffic of narcot-
ics, especially since the 1970s, provided the funding that perpetuated these
conflicts. Although resolving how narcotrafficking began and then became
integrated into these various conflict groups is beyond the scope of this chap-
ter, it is important to note that narcotrafficking was not originally founded
or supported by guerrilla or many left-wing groups. This happened later in
a series of complex events. However, in the period 2003–07, the levels of
conflict decreased drastically – by 50 per cent – throughout the city. This
change is closely connected with changes that have happened at the national
level (Romero 2003; Rozema 2008). An especially important change was

the 2001 presidential election. Contrary to the previous policy of focusing
on diplomacy (through dialogue with various warring groups), the new pres-
ident Alvaro Uribe (President: 2002–10) implemented an armed solution
to the conflict. The new national government policies were driven by two
predominant objectives: ‘demobilizing illegal groups and increasing defence
spending’ (McDermott 2003).
This policy of active defence spending modified the characteristics of
the conflict in Colombia. First, greater levels of security in the urban areas
encouraged more migration from rural areas within Colombia to major cities
like Medellín. Second, the intensification of armed conflict took the war from
the rural areas to the interior of cities. This was most visible in Medellín.
By 2001, the Comuna 13 sector of the city was an extreme example of a
place that had become a battleground for paramilitaries, guerrilla urban
groups and gangs. To explain this more clearly, let us return to a more
detailed close-up narrative that tells the story of a military operation we
mentioned in the timeline above: Operación Orión. In 2002, the national
army’s campaign, Operación Orión (DHColombia 2007), took over the
neighbourhood Comuna 13.4 The operation lasted four days and involved
three different armed groups trying to obtain control over the same terri-
tory. In this military operation, helicopters dropped fully armed soldiers into
the neighbourhood streets. At least seventy-two individuals who had been
kidnapped by the guerrillas were liberated. In the military operation, four
soldiers from the national army were killed, along with one civilian and four
insurgents (guerrilla members).5 Based on official reports and other sources,
more than twenty individuals were injured and up to seventy disappeared at
the hands of the paramilitary groups. These same sources report extrajudi-
cial executions by the national army forces, which were officially claimed as
friendly fire (Morris 2010). These groups that were fighting each other were
the same groups that were fighting at a national level, trying to take control
of the country. This type of urban manifestation of the national conflict is
what makes Medellín unique to study.
Specifically, these events affected the city’s poor in mostly informal neigh-
bourhoods, whose isolation was caused by the tension between themselves
and the state in the first place. The impact of violence on these neighbour-
hoods is further intensified by the presence of a multiplicity of illegal armed
actors, who brought the conflicts of Colombia’s rural areas to the ‘periph-
eral’ neighbourhoods of the city. These groups had to claim their own idea
of sovereignty away from and, in some cases, in contestation with the state.
It is during these periods of distance between the state and informal settlers
that we focused our interviews on the community residents, who were living
through it (Davis 1999).
They Are Not Victims, They Are Conquerors
The growth of what we call self-settled communities and what many call
‘slums’ in Medellín is not the product of a lack of planning. It is the result
of a political condition that makes the state unable to update and manage
its existing plan. By 1950 the city government had contracted a new master
plan from Paul Lester Wiener and Jose Luis Sert (International Congress
for Modern Architecture 1951). This plan – the foundation for the plan-
ning office of the city – was followed closely (Schnitter Castellanos 2007).
It was probably the only urban project fully executed by the Cambridge,
Massachusetts firm in Latin America (Samper Escobar 2010). Despite great
attention and expectations, it failed to forecast the scale of growth that
would, in just a few decades, flood the city. It also failed to forecast the chal-
lenges that the economic failure of Latin America’s largest textile exporter
would bring to those arriving populations (Roldan 2003: 131).
These failures were more visible in terms of the inability of the formal
housing market to reach all sectors of the population, especially those people
recently arrived from areas in conflict and without economic resources. The
marginalized city also became the chosen space to house other politics that were
excluded by the state. As they did with the guerrillas in the countryside, the
state engaged in forceful destruction of the new settlements on the periphery
of the city. The national politics we refer to here require a moment of explana-
tion. Up until recently, the two traditional parties (Liberal and Conservative)
had for a century fought for regional and national power through this state.
This fight known as La Violencia can be tracked to the beginning of the nation
and to the non-declared civil war of the 1950s. The fighting between the two
parties became so bloody that both agreed to an unorthodox solution to La
Violencia: to alternate power at every Presidential election for the period from
1958 to 1974. This was known as the Frente Nacional – the National Front
(Murillo-Castaño and Ungar Bleier 1978). The National Front’s exclusion of
the Left, ironically, led to the birth of the guerrillas, who desired but were not
granted the room to participate in this agreement.
The local and national politics and the socio-economics of the above sce-
nario, taken together, generate important distinctions (in a general context of
similarities) between what the literature on informality argues and its applica-
bility for the specific case of Medellín. The informal settlements are part of a
debate on low-income housing in Latin America (Ward 1976), in which com-
munities use self-help building mechanisms to improve their living conditions
in the absence of a better alternative to the state (Turner 1977). However,
a good portion of these groups did not try to represent ‘middle-class values’
with their self-made construction, as the literature, such as Holston’s (1991),
posits for the case of Brazil. In Medellín, many of the settlers are actually
iddle-class rural groups that, after being displaced, became lower-class

m
urbanites. This challenges key aspects of urban models that explain the Latin
American city (Griffin and Ford 1980; Ford 1996), or the updated samplings
of urban growth (Drummond 1981), which show that urban patterns in
Colombia are similar to other Latin American geographies. Medellín must be
considered in a context broader than just the geography of the city itself – that
is, Medellín as a city is the result of the confluence of the multiple rural and
urban warring groups and the variety of armed actors who imprint their influ-
ence on the urban fabric of the city (Koonings and Kruijt 1999; Moser and
McIlwaine 2004). It is the arrival of mass migrations of people to the urban
informal city after fleeing the rural conflict and then again encountering the
same group of armed actors in the city that had forced them to flee the coun-
tryside that makes the Medellín situation distinct. Here, the act of self-build-
ing is not only a way of creating and contesting an ‘insurgent citizenship’
(Holston 2008) that is opposed to the state; it is also a way of building new
‘synergies’ with the state (Evans 1996; Postigo 2011).
Narrativity and Archival Landscapes
Our historical memory project – Medellín Mi Hogar– started with a ques-

tion: What happens when the ‘official’ and ‘popular’ stories about your
neighbourhood do not match what you archive in your family album? Our
goal was to document those stories that – by not being recorded beyond
the multiplicity of memory projects dedicated to documenting violence –
were going to be lost (Estrada and Gómez 1992; Lacy and Riano-Alcala
2006; Boyd 2008; Morris 2010). Our research process from the beginning
has been, in a complicated sense, a synergy between the state and commu-
nities. We work with Medellín Solidaria as well as social workers from the
city of Medellín’s Department of Social Welfare and the population that
they attend, characterized as belonging to those of lower socio-economic
status than the rest of the city’s population (measured by Proxy Means
Test: Sistema de identificación y clasificación de potenciales beneficiarios
para programas sociales ‘Sisbén’ as the two lower ratings 1 and 2). From a
pool of 45,000 we randomly visited families, focusing on desplazados and
neighbourhood founders in Medellín, to craft documentary videos of the
narratives from their family albums.
We especially focused on stories of neighbourhood foundation and of
displaced campesinos – subsistence farmers who had fled violence in the
countryside to build their homes and communities in urban areas. Over
the past five years, our project has organically evolved into an ongoing
alternative feminist archive of how women have built the city of Medellín.
It includes 2,300 hours of stories from 650 people. People tell their stories
through their own images, written word and artistic performances; they
tell their stories in their homes, where we record them by photograph and
on video. The project is an alternative narrative force that complicates the
archival landscape of Medellín. From these narratives of settlement and
experience of the informal city of Medellín, a series of themes started to
emerge. What we do in our archive can be called narrativity, as in film
theory. This term refers to the processes through which a filmmaker pres-
ents a story as well as the way in which an audience interprets the story. In
the context of our Medellín archive, we want to focus on the narrativity not
only as the ‘container’ of such historical settlement processes. Rather we
wish to argue specifically that the narrative (the story an informal dweller
tells) and the narration of it (the act of telling it) are the mechanisms that
embrace or challenge state action. This narrativity is not only the tool that
informs present democratic arrangements (Perelman, Young and Ayariga
2011; White and Perelman 2011), but we posit that it is the base for future
state and community synergies.
To explain more concretely what we mean by narrativity, we describe
five of the most prominent themes that we see emerging from the stories
in our archive. Most stories initiate with narratives of 1) land grabbing as
foundational moments that are followed by 2) attacks on informal commu-
nities from private and public entities. The tension between destruction and
negotiation establishes 3) multifaceted relationships between communities,
state actors and institutions. It is this process of fighting the state but need-
ing its structures for long-term subsistence of the settlement that we call 4)
reclaiming sovereignty. This sovereignty over the territory is not only about
the production of private housing; it is a social act in which public ameni-
ties are produced collectively, meaning that 5) settlement infrastructures are
communal. The importance of this is crucial for understanding our final point
about synergies because it is with these communal infrastructures that new
state projects with a focus on the narrativity of the state ‘as a rescuer’ have
succeeded.
First there is land grabbing, which establishes uneasy relationships between
the state and communities. An example of such is the story of Falconery
Torres Úsuga, founding member and resident of the neighbourhood El
Triunfo. She narrates her story in her own words and images, many of which
come directly from her family photo album. She narrates the process of land
grabbing, including site research visits, gathering a coalition of community
members, and finally strategizing the actions of squatting. Second, this pro-
cess is followed by a contestation over the land: attacks on informal commu-
nities from private and public entities. Through erasure of houses and lives,
the state claims the land for the formal city and – through reconstruction of
their informal communities – reclaims what David Harvey proposes in global

terms as the ‘right to the city’. Harvey (2003: 941) defines this as ‘an active
right to make the city different, to shape it more in accord with our heart’s
desire, and to re-make ourselves thereby in a different image’. We are not
glorifying the informal settlements by ignoring the trauma, abuse and injus-
tice embedded in the need for their existence in the first place. However,
for those who spend their lives building these environments, each brick rep-
resents the desire to claim the right to make the city (Holston 1991; Harris
2003). In Falconery’s story, attacks are multiple and of increasing intensity,
beginning with the demolition of home structures and resulting in the burn-
ing of the entire squatting territory. These attacks are orchestrated by both
state and private actors. This multiplicity of attacks is not unique. These
families are evicted multiple times, with some suffering eviction from their
home on the same plot of land up to twenty times, like Maria Elena Alcaraz
(Samper and Marko 2011).
At each eviction, all or most of people’s belongings and units were
destroyed. Marta Nelly Villada Bedoya showed us a newspaper clipping with
a picture of her then-infant son in a crib outside in ‘the open air’, while she
was being evicted and her house destroyed in front of her and her family. She
presented this clipping from her family album, which she saves in her newly
occupied land and self-settled home in the Medellín neighbourhood of La
Cruz. Marta Nelly explained how she was removed from her previous unit by
the state. While these stories are comparable with others in Latin American
latitudes (Perlman 2010), what we find important to highlight here is that
they also show the third theme present in our archive: multifaceted relation-
ships between communities, state actors and institutions. Marta Nelly, for
example, is exposing the abuses of the state in talking about her eviction along
with her two-month-old son, while now also saying how grateful she is for
collaborating with a municipal welfare agency to receive additional income
for the support of her son, now ten-years-old. In fact, during the interview
on camera for our archive, this boy is the one who helps his mother when she
forgets what the state called the informal communities. Leaning into Marta
Nelly, he says to her, ‘invasiones’.
Falconery, on the other hand, continues her narrative of evictions of state
and private actors with a story of communal activism and how they negoti-
ated with the municipality to claim legal title to their land. Falconery explains
that she organized the families in her community:
First, they knocked down our houses, then, the second time, they burned
them down with the flag and everything. I sat to the side of the burning
flag, watching my house and everything I had, burning, and I began to
cry. Because I knew they were never going to leave us alone. Later when
more people had settled, we were already twelve families and we decided
to get everyone together … and we all got on a bus and went down to the
government building to protest. All of us women had our pillows perfectly
in place [to appear heavily pregnant] and we had given the children banana
water, which they say makes them have to go to the bathroom. All of us
stood with our kids outside the building pooping and peeing all over the
place. We were demonstrating our need. And so finally, they said yes, that
we could live in our houses, and that nothing would happen to them.
In this case, actions made by a collective made their community more resil-
ient and increased their capacity to fight back. This story, while remarkable
in the sense of the final result, is not unique among informal communities
in Medellín. Most of Medellín consolidates neighbourhoods born from a
tradition of urban informality (Independencias 1, 2, and 3 in Comuna 13,
Santo Domingo Savio in Comuna 1, Villatina in Comuna 8), which all have
similar stories of struggle and negotiation with the state over land claims.
Holston (2008) in his work exploring the urban peripheries of São Paulo
calls this ‘insurgent citizenship’. Key here is the fact that these claims are
in some cases the result of contesting with other armed groups. In the
case of Falconery, the act of private security burning her belongings with
the (Colombian) flag provided the incentive to reclaim sovereignty – what
we identify as a fourth theme. These ‘gray cities’ are ‘urban spheres lying
between full state sanction and expulsion, destruction or death’ (Yiftachel
2009). It is in this context that extra-legal arrangements happen, like grant-
ing titles on the spot to Falconery and her neighbourhood residents at
the municipality. This is because state agencies see their role in legalizing
land issues as the platform for successful engagement with communities
that share loyalties with state and non-state actors and that find themselves
negotiating with those alliances to survive.
Amador Giraldo Jaramillo’s story of his family’s multiple displacements
depicts the uniqueness of the ‘gray cities’ concept in Medellín. After fleeing
his farm in the countryside because his boss had been kidnapped by guer-
rillas, he and his family arrived at a neighbourhood called Santa Margarita,
which at the time was controlled by paramilitary groups. One day, he was
dragged out of his house and (illegally) judged on the street (for supposedly
aligning with warring groups) before being evicted from the neighbourhood.
Now an elderly man, he says: ‘Those days were really hard for us. We knew
that if we left, they would take our house. If we stayed, we’d run the risk of
getting killed … we stayed’. Another community member narrates a time
in which his neighbourhood in Comuna 13 in Medellín was controlled by
the guerrilla. This group enacted a curfew of several days, during which his
daughter had a fever and he was unable to take her to the hospital in time.
She suffered severe brain damage and died due to complications ten years
later. In the middle of such struggles, state actions that provide resources and
neighbourhood sovereignty to informal community residents become even
more significant for establishing connections and synergies between the state
and the informal communities.
Finally, there is a fifth theme: settlement infrastructure is communal and
extends beyond housing. When the state is absent and does not provide
infrastructural basics, these needs are fulfilled by the community residents
themselves. Marta Libia Velez Yepes, a community leader and founder of
an informal settlement, narrates how there were no paths or steps (paved or
otherwise) to access this hillside community when she arrived thirty years
ago. This was important because, in the frequent tropical rains, residents
and their children would slip and fall in the mud. It was nearly impossible
to carry groceries from the city below up the slippery slopes, flowing with
mud, just outside their homes. She explained that she and her community
organized among themselves to finance and build each one of the improve-
ments. Marta, now a grandmother, tells us, ‘If anyone does anything to my
stairs … it hurts me. Anyone who does anything to my stairs … has to deal
with me’.
This small but significant intervention builds on the continuous process of
upgrading and making value-added improvements (Sheuya 2007). Together,
these improvements add up to coherent urban environments that not only
fulfill the function of housing, but also include social, religious, educational
and activity areas. In Santo Domingo Savio, a neighbourhood founded by
squatters in late 1964, founder Luz Elena Marin de Mesa explains how the
first precarious housing units were so small that ‘we needed to lean down just
to come in’.6 She also narrates how the community united around religious
ties and built new and improved public facilities that included toilets and the
first neighbourhood school.
The improvements in the private and public sphere followed the same
pattern. As the neighbourhood becomes older, new investments are made
in both spheres. The church along with the school in the Santo Domingo
neighbourhood has been rebuilt three times in the last fifty years to accom-
modate the growing population and the availability of funds. The low-ceiling
shacks described by Luz Elena are also no longer found there, and many
have been replaced by the Maison Dom-ino design that Lara (2010 and this
volume) reveals. Key here is that with time, the absent state also began engag-
ing in these practices of rebuilding the urban environment. Maybe more
important for explaining those synergies is that today, besides the church,
the construction of most other public buildings and spaces have some kind
of community-state reconfiguration. This interdependence of state building
and community building will be the focus of the last section of this chapter.
What is clear from these testimonies is the level of engagement that the
community members have with their territories in the absence of the state.
They belong to these places because they ‘colonize’ their own territories
in their official legal status as displaced people who illegally ‘invade’ their
new self-settlements, from which the state can and often does challenge or
denounce their right to exist. They belong because they created their neigh-
bourhood and thus their city over and over again. In that process of claiming
their right to the city and building it, they are risking their lives. The narra-
tives of this process exist only in the ‘palabra’ (‘the word’) and ‘la imagen’
(‘the image’) of the founders who transfer the information from generation
to generation via storytelling. Doing so among family members in a private
moment is not per se a dangerous act. Even our recording of their stories in
the spaces of their own homes is not, per se, dangerous. The issue is that many
of these storytellers arrive to the city after fleeing illegal armed actors (and in
some cases also the state) only to find the same actors are fighting the state,
adding a constant possibility of danger. It makes the transfer of community
residents’ histories and knowledge a delicate issue. Another story regarding
Sobeida Tinoco and her multiple displacements and informal community
co-founding is a reminder of how latent the risks of retelling the stories of
displacement are in the context of an historically violent neighbourhood. To
access state funds and resources to pay for improvements to her home, she
must retell her story to state and national officials, who confirm her status as
being displaced. However, she realizes that making public what she knows
can also inspire retaliation. This is especially true in a neighbourhood where
just a few years ago she had to walk over dead bodies to go to work and where
she can identify by face and name the armed actors who committed crimes of
kidnapping and murder. Narrating her story, then, is an act of courage. We
argue that while there are many important projects dedicated to recording
and publicizing the state process of city building in informal communities in
the mist of conflict, we must be careful not to reduce the story to just the
state’s involvement and perspective.
Today in Medellín a succession of state interventions has changed the
way that communities and the state interact. This is a product of a democ-
ratization of the municipal power and the resulting accountability that the
state has to all of its city residents. This, in turn, is a product of changes
in democratic arrangements at the national level that have decentralized
and democratized the local governments in the new constitution (Pacheco
Blanco 2001; Donovan 2008). Specifically, the national government no
longer determines who is in office at the state level as governor or at the city
level as mayor. This process – of facilitating more local power instead of just
having national centralized power – is attempting to correct more than sixty
years of (national and local) state neglect of these informal communities.
However, as part of the state’s successful democratization and inclusion

process, it is also erasing those community ‘palabra’ historical narratives of
empowerment, belonging and building their neighbourhoods, now a large
part of the city of Medellín. We posit that there is a grave danger (Marko
2012a) of the vast inequity of access that state and community members
have to safely distribute their respective narratives about informal commu-
nities in Medellín. The slick and massive nature of the publicity that posits
the state’s involvement in informal communities as the communities’ saviour
has quickly come to overshadow a more complex, nuanced and contradic-
tory timeline and series of stories that emerge when the story includes the
narratives as narrated by the desplazados, who founded and still live in these
communities. The next section highlights much-needed infrastructure now
in place thanks to this recent state intervention in informal settlements in
Medellín and at the same time warns how the publicity campaign of this
city government’s ‘Urbanismo Social’ is also (often unintentionally) erasing
narratives and histories of decades of community work and experiences in
building these territories.
‘We Bomb Medellín’: The New Urban Upgrading Projects

and the Rhetoric of Salvation
Over the past sixty years, there have been sporadic and unsystematic munic-
ipal interventions in the informal communities in Medellín that include
some revolutionary experiments like core housing (Caminos, Turner and
Steffian 1969), paving of streets and creation of recreational areas (Arango
Escobar 1985; Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales
en Medellín 1996; Betancur 2007b; Isaza-Figueroa 2010). Sometimes one
project (a peace process) in the same place then contradicts or erases another
project (a military invasion). Or some of these projects have been made redun-
dant, as in creating two soccer fields in the same neighbourhood (Samper
Escobar 2010). Other municipal interventions in informal communities, how-
ever, have been groundbreaking, and have established a foundation on which
to develop more cohesive and complex urban projects. Examples of ground-
breaking projects in informal settlements in Medellín include the first exper-
iments with core housing funded by the World Bank in 1967 (Interregional
Seminar on the Improvement of Slums and Uncontrolled Settlements 1971)
and PRIMED (Integral Program for the Informal Settlements Improvement
of Medellín) (Betancur 2007b), a project developed in Medellín in the 1990s
to provide basic infrastructure and upgrading in informal settlements. This
experience served as an example that informed the largest upgrading project
in the world, the Favela-Bairro in Rio de Janeiro. These projects were small
and isolated interventions in comparison to the systematic and large-scale

projects that the municipality of Medellín has been deploying since 2004 to
the present (2014).
As described by Martin and Martin elsewhere in this volume, Sergio
Fajardo, a mathematician with a doctorate from the University of Michigan,
founded his own political party in 2003 called Compromiso Ciudadano
(Citizen Commitment). This was a political party that had no affiliation
with the two traditional parties that had fought for power for over a cen-
tury. Fajardo’s plan of action, Medellín, la ciudad más educada (Medellín,
the most educated city), focused on developing soft and hard infrastruc-
ture throughout the city, all focused on ‘education in the biggest sense of
the word’: schools, health clinics, museums, parks, libraries and recreation
centres. It is important to understand that in Medellín, basic infrastructure
(water, energy and transportation) was for the most part not affected by the
conflict; nearly every city resident had access to water and most had access
to energy and transportation. But in general these educational infrastructural
projects executed since 2003 were overdue. The Compromiso Ciudadano
was originally comprised of academics, members of non-governmental orga-
nizations (NGOs) and leaders drawn from the private sector (Dávila 2009), a
pattern that other cities like Bogotá had already followed during the adminis-
tration of Antanas Mockus (Mayor: 1995–97 and 2001–03), in what Berney
(2011) called ‘Pedagogical Urbanism’. Their goal was, in Fajardo’s own
words, to solve two basic problems of the city, which they identified as: (1)
social inequality that created a ‘social debt’ between the rich and the poor,
and (2) violence, which had deep roots in many areas of society. Sergio
Fajardo explored the character and effects of violence in his public lectures:
The combination of social inequality, historical social debt, and violence

in Colombia is unique … the violence encloses; the violence divides us
into atoms, breaks all links between citizens. Because we start to move in
restricted circles of our city, we only relate with people who are similar
to us. Fear is part of society. We become survivors but not participants of
society. (Fajardo 2009)
The solution to this isolation problem, he concluded, was to create spaces

where individuals feel safe: ‘So we need to encounter each other … and the
place for this has to be public space’ (Fajardo 2009).
From the beginning of Fajardo’s mayoral campaign, the solutions to the
city’s social problems were identified as problems with the city’s physical
structure. The solutions, therefore, were to target that structure: ‘So in
places where before there was violence and destruction … we arrive with
the best physical buildings of the city. All the problems that we are solving
are inequality and violence’, argued Fajardo. And so, physical infrastructure
and architecture became the tools for transforming the city of Medellín and
bridging the social gap. All new infrastructure and architectural interventions
are seen as educational projects. The city of Medellín invested 52 per cent of
its 2004–07 investment budget into programmes affiliated with education,7
including physical development, rendering a total of 1.8 billion Colombian
Pesos (U.S. $936, 582,657.70) (Escobar Arango 2006).
Architecture plays an aesthetical role, the most beautiful for the most
humble. This sends a message of hope against inequality. We created spaces
never dreamed of in the most humble neighbourhoods of the city. And all
new spaces have a program related to education and knowledge in a larger
sense … Quality in education has to start with the quality of the space. This
means that the poorest kid of the city has to go to a school as good as the
one of the richest kid of the city. (Fajardo 2009)
This discourse, as inclusive as it tries to be, is basically unidirectional.

Community participation in the planning process was defined by a strong
top-down approach (Calderon 2009; Samper Escobar 2010). That is, the
state provided the rationale and the process by which this planning happened
and the state generally maintained control of the process, the final narrative
reports. ‘Education’ became a way to provide larger opportunities and the
way to pay for the social debt that the city owed to its poorest communities.
This approach itself is not part of a concerted effort and is not an element
that is up for discussion, as Fajardo put it: ‘We bomb Medellín, but in a dif-
ferent way – with opportunities and hope. This is a project of transformation
of social debt. It is not an issue of settling scores. The entire community is
proud of the new infrastructure put in place. So that way we all win’.
This new wave of ‘bombs’ has ‘exploded’ and continues to ‘explode’ in
Medellín, since 2003 through to the present (2014).8 It constitutes one of
the most radical urban transformations in the city’s history. The ‘la ciudad
más educada’ campaign, in three years, included renovating existing city
parks, adding a new interactive museum, building ten Colegios de Calidad
(new quality elementary and high schools) while renovating another 122
schools, adding sixty-four Ludotecas (public-run, free day care) and increas-
ing the capacity of city universities by 200 per cent. The city also built nine
free computer centres, nine CEDEZOs (small entrepreneurial centres in
low-income neighbourhoods) and a new performing arts centre. The city also
redeveloped large areas in three urban neighbourhoods through an institu-
tional, administrative and communicative structure called Proyecto Urbanos
Integrales or Integral Urban Projects (PUI), a new Centre for Justice
and twenty CAI (small neighbourhood police centres). The city also built
state-of-the-art transportation to link these new developments with the rest

of the city.
The physical interventions of such new political practices had become
the centre of research of multiple articles (Kidokoro et al. 2008; Blanco and
Kobayashi 2009; Calderon 2009; Hernández 2010; Samper Escobar 2010).
Key among these interventions is the new quality of state projects. This qual-
ity has been measured by the number of architectural awards (national and
international) that projects in informal settlements received for the following
criteria.9 First, there is the interconnectivity that is created by the multiple
infrastructure and public buildings being constructed next each other, which
created a new continuous public urban space. There is the introduction
of effective transportation and economic transportation systems for steep
(Andes mountain) areas. While schools and recreation areas are the central
core of this project, most of the infrastructure replaced that which was exis-
tent, obsolete or decaying. Therefore, their value did not reside in the ability
to provide more service (education or play), but rather in the ability to look
and perform at the same level, or better in many cases, than any other public
infrastructure of the formal city. Most of the improved schools replaced those
initially founded by communitarian organizations, like the one in the story of
Santo Domingo Savio.
Today Medellín is an example of ‘good governance’ (Gilbert 2006), but
different to what happened in Bogotá during the Mockus and Peñalosa
administrations. The city had the benefit of already having a developed cov-
erage of public services and a good record of fiscal responsibility. The key of
the Medellín projects, then, was not their increased ability to collect funds –
the city already had a good tax collection record and profits from its own
companies. The success, rather, was in how the city used their institutions as
a way to coordinate the spending of those resources. A unique example of
this new institutional capacity is the ability to coordinate all initiatives from
the municipal branches (Secretarias), along with private and public funding.
The PUI Nororiental alone has more than 200 individual physical projects.
In this neighbourhood there are three distinct public spaces, a metro-cable
station, a business incubator, a local branch of a state bank, a community
kitchen, a renovated school and a community centre/library. Furthermore,
they were all built together in the span of two years. A large measure of the
effectiveness of these projects, which highlights the importance of study-
ing and learning from them, is the state’s ability to modify the physical
public structure of a neighbourhood where they had not previously had any
important presence.
Also, the opportunity to make these projects in terms of a continuum of a
single large urban project has allowed the implementation – s imultaneously
– of a new network of publicly connected amenities throughout the existing
neighbourhoods to create a series of connected safe spaces. Even more strik-

ing is that these are ‘safe spaces’ for both the community and the state.10
These new areas permit these once-isolated communities to maintain open
lines of communication with the state that are required on the basis of the
necessary physical, human and architectural presence of the government.
The new buildings and infrastructure compete in quality and style with
the quality of new projects executed in any part of the city – regardless
of socio-economic strata – thereby having the potential to empower the
residents of communities, who have traditionally been approached as
second-class citizens.
These physical interventions were executed along with a number of diverse
education-oriented policies, such as an increase of the student capacity of
public education facilities, educational subsidies for the tuition of low-in-
come students, food subsidies for students enrolled in city-run educational
facilities, student transportation subsidies, health services and programmes
oriented towards at-risk populations, scholarships for college, and a series
of events aimed at making the students in all schools more competitive.
There were also policies that provided support to the national DDR process
of paramilitary members – during the first stages of the programme, rein-
serted individuals would help in the building of projects. Reduction of the
homicide rate along with the local administration’s support to this national
DDR process led the municipal administration to claim their urban poli-
cies of pacification a success (Samper Escobar 2010). Mismanagements of
the national DDR process and changes in the politics of reintegration later
incited critiques of the process as a whole (Rozema 2008). These scholarly
critiques, the criminalization of the reinserted populations and the increase
of violence in the years 2009 and 2010 eventually led to the suspension of
the DDR programme. So many initiatives and projects were generated in
this period that the city of Medellín has not kept consistent records of the
process or stored the existing records in a single place. Different departments
of the city gave different accounts of the same process, which came to be
called ‘the transformation of Medellín’. It is important to note that the city
of Medellín did and does indeed engage in careful efforts to include commu-
nity members in various stages of the urban transformation. Social workers,
urban planners, architects and other city officials invited community mem-
bers to participate in workshops and discussions in which the city planners
informed the community members of their overall ideas for urban reform and
invited the community members to tell them about their dreams and desires
and needs for the same spaces (Samper Escobar 2010). But rarely included
in these claims are the stories narrated from the perspective of community
members, who built their neighbourhoods and collaborated with the city in
various ways in this recent process of urban ‘transformation’.
The Danger of Competing Stories
At the moment, the very unique process over the last eight years in Medellín
is receiving a lot of attention. These projects receive constant publicity in
architectural books (Jodidio 2010; Roth 2011), academic papers (Mejia B
2008; Blanco and Kobayashi 2009; Isaza-Figueroa 2010; Beall, Goodfellow
and Rodgers 2011), Internet pages and blogs,11 policy recommendation
publications (Rojas 2010), exhibitions (Lepik 2010) and international news-
papers and television shows.12 This large production of content about the
process in Medellín has a commonality: all of it places the state at the fore-
front as the agent of change. This is the result, in no small part, of the active
role that the municipality has played in rewriting the image of Medellín
– once ‘the most violent city in the world’ (Fletcher 2008). It has done so
through advertisement and public relations campaigns of its institutions and
through collaborations with international partners (Escobar Arango 2006;
Martin and Corrales 2009). In general this cosmology of publications has, as
its goal, to show the positive aspects of the ‘transformation of Medellín’ as
spearheaded by the state.
The abundance of publicity and, more importantly, the ‘mobility’
of such publicity have rendered as an unintended consequence the era-
sure of local and less mobile narratives. These less mobile narratives are
those coming from the community members themselves and include their
perspectives and expertise regarding building and rebuilding their neigh-
bourhoods before, during and after the state engaged in urban reform.
It is this process of narrative erasure that reproduces and reinforces a new
foundational story of the past, present and future of the informal settlements
in Medellín, thereby erasing the conflicts and battles of informal dwellers
to claim their ‘right to the city’. By promoting the city as ‘saviour’ of the
informal settlements and other impoverished neighbourhoods, this implies,
then, that the community members who survived displacement due to vio-
lence and who rebuilt their lives by building their own neighbourhoods are
victims. Placing the city of Medellín as the saviour has a perilous potential
to render invisible the creativity, expertise and stamina of the thousands
of informal dwellers who built their communities in the first place. In
other words, over the last half a century, these informal settlements have
transformed what had been an almost unpopulated landscape of the Andes
Mountains surrounding the valley of the city of Medellín. Now when you
look up from the city in the valley down below, it is nearly impossible to
see a wide expanse of mountain without a building. It is possible to say,
then, that these dwellers constructed the first transformation of Medellín.
They have been no less involved in the city’s more current and very different
‘transformation’ process.
Narrative Erasure: Three Risks
We see three fundamental risks that result from such narrative erasure. The
first risk is that historically successful actions towards claiming rights can be
used as ‘rights as footprints’ (Perelman, Young and Ayariga 2011). In other
words, these ‘footprints’ can inspire and instruct people to follow in their
predecessors’ footsteps in future struggles between community and state
institutions. The second risk is that the community narratives can no longer
serve as a path towards structural institutional change. The idea that current
struggles can inspire future struggles to achieve structural change in the insti-
tutions that normalize the effects of life-threatening poverty are key in the
new theoretical framework in ‘legal experimentalism’ (Perelman, Young and
Ayariga 2011). In our Medellín Mi Hogar archive, people use their narratives
as ‘footprints’. Falconery’s story about organizing the children and women in
her community to protest at the municipality for the right to remain living on
the land they had developed within their neighbourhood is a strong example
of this. In the case of El Triunfo, Falconery cites her community’s claim to
rights to the land on previous struggles they had endured, serving as evi-
dence for community claims. Before their homes were burned to the ground
for the second time, they had raised the Colombian flag to avoid eviction.
This kind of footprint and legal claim is evoked by people from informal
communities in different times and places (La Sierra, Santo Domingo Savio,
Independencias 1 and 2, etc.).
The third risk of a city-only foundational narrative of the transforma-
tion of Medellín is that it erases the foundational struggle in which people
engaged to construct more than just shelter. During this process of informal
settlement, they made formal and key communitarian and public service
institutions. When the state steps in, the community and the state often start
collaborating or the original community-built projects are absorbed by the
services provided by the state. This is what we mean by synergy. These syn-
ergies are important because, when they work well, they improve the quality
of service by citizen-driven accountability measures and thereby complement
traditional state checks and balances (Malena, Forster and Singh 2004).
Sometimes, however, these synergies do not work. The community-built
infrastructure sometimes works better than the state infrastructure imposed
over it. Most of the state projects that get publicized – escalators, hundreds
of schools, public spaces – replace projects that were first executed and main-
tained by the community members. Keeping the stories of community mem-
bers alive in the foundational narrative also keeps these synergies alive. This
is what Desmond Arias called networks as tools to link civil o rganizations
to state actors, and what he saw as playing a critical role in ‘reducing vio-
lence and establishing democratic order’ (Arias 2004). These are important
because ‘synergies between civil society and state in the context of partic-
ipatory governance also have the potential to transform the institutions of
the State’ (Postigo 2011). The exclusion of community stories of building
improvement, struggle and synergies can erode a decades-long process of
the building of new democratic arrangements (Holston 1999, 2008), and
their stance against armed conflicts in spaces of informality (Caldeira 1996;
Caldeira and Holston 1999; Moser and McIlwaine 2006; Rodgers 2006;
Harbom and Wallensteen 2010).
Distancing the state from the communities can provide a context for
armed actors to co-opt community organizations (Arias 2004), leading to an
entrenchment of violence and further erosion of democratic rule. Because of
the slippery nature of generalizing the success or failure of synergies between
state and community rhetoric, practices and policies, each case must be
analysed carefully. Given that we are working with narratives of neighbour-
hoods throughout the city of Medellín – built by people from throughout
the country of Colombia – this is an especially time-consuming, sometimes
messy and even contradictory process that requires long-standing resources
and dedication that are not common in many state or academic research
projects, especially those that need to provide recommendations to urban
planners, politicians and community leaders for an impending urban inter-
vention. Further complicating our analysis is the diversity of culture, dialect,
racial tensions and the vertical nature of change that comes from life in the
steep Andes mountains, where the communities are located 2,000 feet above
or below each other. In our Medellín Mi Hogar archive, we commit to both
the short-term kinds of analysis (where should a new bus line be developed
in a community in order for children to access the new school?) and lon-
ger-term analysis (are the state interventions successful or not, and according
to whom?).
Concluding Thoughts
Up to this point, we have outlined two opposing stories about the construc-
tion of the city of Medellín. On one hand, informal and poor communities
struggle against private and public actors to claim their land and their belong-
ing to the place that they have conquered. On the other hand, the new pro-
poor policies of the state to recolonize these areas bring new and upgraded
services that improve living conditions, but also – in their rush to publicize
their efforts – bury decades of community engagement and belonging. One
key point that is missing in these competing narratives of belonging to the
city of Medellín is that one cannot exist without the other. Successful projects
involving both physical action and the implementation of policies are in fact
successful because they are carried out within cohesive communitarian social
structures and within consolidated, neighbourhood, urban public networks.
Luz Elena Marin de Mesa, founder of the Santo Domingo neighbourhood,
presents a wonderful perspective about the area as constantly evolving, where
small efforts have been reinforced by the community since the founding of
the neighbourhood in the early 1960s. In Luz Elena’s portrait, new projects
are just part of the latest chapter in her story about the community residents’
efforts over the last half century. She gives insight into the succession of new
projects that bring services that have been lacking and that have taken over
spaces before or after they are claimed by illegal armed actors. She explains,
pointing to one of the new parks: ‘In this neighbourhood, before there was a
lot of violence and death. If this park were able to talk, what stories it would
tell you … There in that small plaza, in that place was a very dangerous
hole …’.
In fact, before becoming a plaza and playground, the park was the dump-
ing ground for bodies from the different battles fought in the area. From her
perspective, neighbourhood and state narratives are not competing stories
but rather are part of a continuum. At least in this particular temporal neigh-
bourhood space, state and community are collaborating – with intertwining
enthusiasm. This is what we call effective ‘synergies’. Luz Elena’s participa-
tion as a resident, along with that of many others in the planning process of
the PUIs, is not, in her view, perfect. She does, however, believe that the
state-community collaboration and simultaneity of projects provide more
continuity in her community’s building process than would be possible with-
out state involvement. She concludes that if community members ‘still have
more needs’, then ‘little by little, through the Parque Biblioteca, these will
be fulfilled’. After state projects were implemented in Santo Domingo, local
business tripled,13 and by 2013 it was clear that this number was continuing
to increase. It is not only private incentives that continue reinforcing the
body of public space. Local community projects have also continued build-
ing. For example, through the local participatory budget, Santo Domingo
community members have built and run restaurants directed at the new
hordes of tourists to the Parque Biblioteca as a way to provide funding for
community projects.
Often, when we – as academic scholars with affiliations to U.S. and
Colombian universities – tell these stories about the city of Medellín, the
protagonist is isolated as the community member or the state representa-
tive and/or the infrastructure. The real value of what in a small way has
happened in Medellín is captured in the moments in which local commu-
nitarian efforts have been followed by strategic state policy and physical
projects. These synergies between state and community, which are part
of a large controversy in the context of participatory governance projects
throughout the world (Evans 1996; Postigo 2011), are still the most fun-
damental though perhaps least studied contributions to the improvement of
underrepresented communities in historical informal settlements. This is in
part because studying this synergy requires research based on a deep under-
standing of and access to both state and community narratives concerning
the same space and time. We require new types of foundational narratives
about cities with large informal and underrepresented communities. These
new narratives require interdisciplinary approaches to research collaborations
between university researchers and community members that regard ways in
which we can gather these stories, archive them and add them to the sources
that academics and city planners have traditionally analysed to understand
informal neighbourhoods and new state interventions within them. This is
crucial to the analysis of the synergies between local communities and state
interventions, and of how these synergies add value to both community and
state interventions. When we are able to more clearly identify and study
these synergies, we might finally be able to translate the actual (real) suc-
cess of these places beyond the beautiful pictures as posted in a New York
Times 2012 article concerning Medellín, titled ‘A City Rises, Along With its
Hopes’ (Kimmelman 2012).
Notes
1. Jose Samper and Tamera Marko, ‘Medellín Mi Hogar / My Home Medellín: 15 El Triunfo’.
Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://Medellínmihogar.blogspot.com/2011/02/15-
el-triunfo.html. We have edited fifty stories into videos of ten minutes or less, which we
circulate online, and through film festivals, exhibitions and in K-12 classrooms through-
out the Americas. Our documentaries put their stories into conversation with research in
archives, human rights and government publications, media coverage and academic liter-
ature. Mobility in and out of the neighbourhoods where the storytellers live also requires
that Medellín Solidaria social workers vouch for the integrity of our university students and
faculty so that people in power there allow us, and the stories we carry, to pass. Those with
power include gang leaders, church leaders, NGO workers, activists, and police, who have
come to trust the social workers and the city of Medellín they represent.
2. By 2010, the registered displaced population in Medellín was 189,144 (SIPOD 2010:
2).
3. ‘Medellín, la ciudad más educada.’
4. This kind of army presence had not been seen before in Colombia, even in the midst of the
1990s bloque de busqueda operations (the search for Pablo Escobar).
5. Emisora del Ejercito Nacional. 2007. ‘Ex Alcalde de Medellín habló sobre la Operación
Orión’. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.emisoraejercito.mil.co/index.
php?idcategoria=582.
6. ‘La Abuela Cuenta VIDEO’, DukeEngage Medellín. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from
http://dukeengageMedellín.blogspot.com/2010/06/la-abuela-cuenta.html.
7. Investment budget is the portion of the city budget after overhead and other recurrent
payments.
8. Towards the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, Medellín suffered a large
wave of terrorist attacks as part of the war against narcotrafficking in Colombia. The pro-
liferation of attacks, which many times accounted for more than one detonation per day, is
part of a chapter in Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Davis 2007).
9. The awards include: 2008 Iberoamerican Architecture Biennial award, 2009 Curry Stone
design prize, 2013 Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design, 2012 City of the Year
competition of the Urban Land Institute, 2013 Sustainable Urban Transport Award, 2014
Holcim Awards Gold.
10. Intense moments of increased violence impede the normal execution of any project of
the state or of any other organization. Maintaining these safe spaces and lines of state-
community communication at these times is important for the sustainability of any kind of
long-term initiative.
11. John Drissen. 2012. ‘The Urban Transformation of Medellín, Colombia’, Architecture in
Development. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.a-i-d.org/news.php?id=49
Adriana Navarro. ‘Medellín’, FAVELissues. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://
favelissues.com/category/medellin/.
12. Alex Schmidt. 2011. ‘Participatory Budgeting is Music to Medellín’s Poor : NPR’.
Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135152789/
participatory-budgeting-is-music-to-Medellín-s-poor. Charlie Rose. 2009. ‘A Conversation
with Sergio Fajardo’. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.charlierose.com/
view/interview/10098. Grace Bastidas. 2007. ‘A Drug-Runners’ Stronghold Finds a New
Life’, The New York Times, 12 August 2007. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://
travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/travel/12nextstop.html?_r=0. Simon Romero. 2007.
‘Medellín’s Nonconformist Mayor Turns Blight to Beauty’, The New York Times, 15 July
2007. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/
world/americas/15medellin.html?pagewanted=all.
13. Alcaldía de Medellín. 2010. ‘Planeación Local y Presupuesto Participativo’.
Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.medellin.gov.co/irj/portal/
ciudadanos?NavigationTarget=navurl://2dbde5c7d4abb8782ae4455b14893380.
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Part V
Reflections
12
Home and Belonging
Reflections from Urban Mexico
Ann Varley
In memory of Maurice Varley (1928–2011)
Home is an ambiguous space: a space of belonging and alienation, desire

and fear (Blunt and Varley 2004: 3). In recent years, however, home has
received a lot of bad press in the academic literature. For example, geographer
Maria Kaika (2004) focuses on home in an article entitled, rather ominously,
‘Interrogating the Geographies of the Familiar’. The article criticizes the
reactionary political implications of making home into an individual utopia by
excluding undesired social and natural elements. It seeks to expose ‘the dys-
functionality of the private spaces where blind individualism can be practised
in isolation’ (Kaika 2004: 283). The author condemns the ideal of domestic
safety and familiarity as premised on exclusion of the ‘Other’, and calls for an
end to the alienation and selfishness promoted by the ideal of home.
Similarly, in a recent review of the concepts of ‘private’ and ‘public’, David
Sibley (2005) presents the private – the home and spaces made home-like for
the powerful by regulating public space – as unremittingly exclusionary. His
examples include panic rooms, gated communities and community policing;
the excluded others, the homeless, drug abusers, the mentally ill and street
children.
Home, then, is a space of ‘excess individualism’ (Kaika 2004: 281): a space
where selfishness reigns supreme amid unquestioned and unquestioning priv-
ilege. Home foments consumerist excess, a disregard for what is happening
elsewhere in the world and political quietism: you give your living room a
makeover rather than going on a demonstration. A consumer market report
reflecting on ‘the global trend towards a focus on home’ aptly captures this
idea; its title is ‘Cocooning – Home as Fortress’.1
In Britain and elsewhere, this is reflected in an obsession with DIY, with
large retail warehouses selling building and decorating materials where
seemingly half the population spend their Sundays. Television channels are
swamped with programmes about the home as commodity and as cultural
capital. In the UK you can rarely turn on the TV without encountering
presenters showing how to find a new home or a second home, at home or
– 275 –
2 76 | Ann Va rl ey
abroad, or how to make money from renovating and selling houses. Typically,
a programme will follow a chosen couple as they attempt to turn their home
into an icon of personal style or a money-spinner. The people featured seem
extraordinarily self-absorbed, overweeningly confident of their own aesthetic
judgements or financial acumen. (You can hardly blame them. Faced with the
gentle-but-firm contradictions of the ‘expert’ presenters, what other choice
do you have but to stick determinedly to your guns?) One such programme,
Building the Dream, married this fascination with home with a ‘reality TV’
game show format to produce a parody of the housing cooperatives that build
housing in some developing countries. The ‘blurb’ for the programme reads:
Building the Dream showcases twelve UK couples living and working

alongside each other to design, build and furnish a stunning dream home.
The catch? As the house goes up, the number of couples goes down. Those
not pulling their weight are voted off by their fellow contestants. The
series culminates in a head-to-head between the two remaining couples,
as the viewers vote to decide which of them is given the keys to their new
dream home.2
The house was designed in what is described, unsurprisingly, as a ‘contem-

porary aspirational’ style, and it is located in one of the most ‘picturesque’
parts of England.
For many people around the world, however, ‘building the dream’ is
no game show, which is why I found this programme concept distasteful.
I have a not-dissimilar problem with some recent theoretical critiques of
home. I have already given a brief overview of the charges that are levelled
against home. This chapter explores these charges in greater depth before
outlining a response based on personal experience and on some findings
from my research on housing and home for the low-income population of
Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city.
Concern about the meaning and ideal of home centres on its association
with a particular type of identity. From this perspective, home expresses in
material terms what Theodor Adorno (1973) calls ‘the logic of identity’.
Dwelling is associated with a fixed, inflexible identity: unitary, bounded and
exclusionary – what Iris Marion Young (1997: 135) calls a vision of home as
‘totalizing and imperialist’. Or, as architectural theorist Mark Wigley (1993:
104) writes: ‘The house is always first understood as the most primitive draw-
ing of a line that produces an inside opposed to an outside, a line that acts as
a mechanism of domestication’.
A very clear example of the place of home in the opposition of inside to
outside is provided by international migration. In this context, ‘home’ is
understood as ‘homeland’. Here, home represents ‘regressive nostalgia’ and
H o m e a n d B el o n g i n g | 277
‘reactionary nationalisms’: it is ‘dismissed as an embarrassing backwater of

unemancipated feelings or actively attacked as a breeding ground of repres-
sive and oppressive politics’ (Bammer 1992: x). This meaning of ‘home’ has
been summarized recently in the word ‘domopolitics’, invented by political
theorist William Walters, meaning:
A fateful conjunction of home, land and security … the home as our place,
where we belong naturally, and where, by definition, others do not; inter-
national order as a space of homes … We may invite guests into our home,
but they come at our invitation; they don’t stay indefinitely. Others are, by
definition, uninvited … [D]omopolitics embodies a tactic which juxtaposes
the ‘warm words’ … of community, trust, and citizenship, with the danger
words of a chaotic outside – illegals, traffickers, terrorists; a game which
configures things as ‘Us vs. Them’. (Walters 2004: 241)
Home therefore represents an essentialized, homogeneous, exclusionary

identity. It distinguishes between those who are like us and have rights,
including the right to be in this place (Arendt [1951] 2004: 376), and those
who do not. An elegant example is provided by one of the definitions of
home in the Oxford English Dictionary, as ‘a person’s own country or native
land’. The compilers note that this idea of home was used ‘by Britons abroad,
by inhabitants of (former) British colonies and territories’. They cite an 1837
letter from Madras, which pronounces that ‘home always means England;
nobody calls India home’.3 Who can and who cannot count as ‘somebody’
in this context is clear.
Home is an indispensable metaphor for the distinctions made by the pow-
erful between inside and outside, the same and the different, the self and the
other. But the observations on domopolitics also capture another, currently
much criticized, aspect of home and homeland: the valorization of dwelling,
of remaining in place, of rootedness – implicit for many in the idea of home.
A good example is provided by the suspicion with which tramps and gypsies
have traditionally been viewed in many European countries. Again, Walters
(2004: 247) brilliantly sums up this preoccupation:
Insecurity is bound up with themes of mobility: it is the movement, the

circulation, the presence of unauthorized bodies which have violated the
borders of the nation-state. But insecurity is connected at the same time
to criminality, with activities occupying a domain outside the law, trans-
gressing ‘our’ values, ‘our’ way of life. We are confronted with illegal acts:
it’s almost as though our response to them needs no further explanation.
Domopolitics: our homes are at risk.
This negative attitude to mobility contrasts with the current enthusiasm

for metaphors of mobility as a vehicle for thinking about identity in a more
2 78 | Ann Va rl ey
optimistic and politically progressive fashion: mobile or nomadic subjects;

metaphors of exile or migration; identity as a search, a journey – all of these
celebrate the transgressive quality that Walters identifies as the reason for
the repression of mobility by those seeking to preserve a clear distinction
between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. For example, a much-cited essay by U.S. author
Minnie Bruce Pratt (1984) describes the different homes she has occupied
over the years as a means to trace a growing awareness of social privilege and
a maturing political consciousness. The idea of leaving home is often used as
shorthand for such a process of acquiring intellectual and political maturity.
As James Clifford (1989: 177) asserts, ‘to theorize, one leaves home’, and
Teresa de Lauretis (1990: 138) calls us to embrace: ‘leaving or giving up a
place that is safe, that is “home” – physically, emotionally, linguistically, epis-
temologically – for another place that is unknown and risky, that is not only
emotionally but conceptually other’.
Postmodern subjectivity has been described in terms of ‘an active nomad-
ism’ that implies ‘not taking any kind of identity as permanent … The nomad
has no passport – or has too many of them’ (Braidotti 1994: 55, 64). In
short, as geographer Geraldine Pratt (1998: 19) observes: ‘in many feminist
narratives of self-discovery, it is only through leaving home places that an
understanding of the complexity of social location is attained’. In such narra-
tives of identity, home is always a place of lesser complexity.
There is an irony in these accounts of leaving home as a decentring of
the self, a renunciation of privilege; they overlook the ambiguity of home.
The understanding of the private that informs critiques of the exclusionary
home draws on the Latin word privatus, translated as ‘withdrawal from
public life’ (Sibley 2005: 157, citing Williams 1983). But, as Raymond
Williams (1983: 242) points out in his Keywords, privatus also has other con-
nections: with ‘privation’, for example. As such, it is the realm, as Hannah
Arendt (1958: 38) put it sixty years ago, of the ‘not fully human’. Home is
the space, then, both of the privileged self and of the marginalized other. It
signifies immanence, dependence and immaturity, which is why home can
be represented as lacking in complexity, ‘some sort of bedrock experience’
(Taylor 1992: 92). The private is regarded as an essential natural base,
holding up the edifice of politics and civic life but of no further interest
to politicians or theorists (Pateman 1988). The irony is that accounts of a
search for political awareness based on leaving home echo Kant’s descrip-
tion of enlightenment as a process of outgrowing domestic tutelage (Flax
1993). Home can also be a space of confinement: the excluded other is not
necessarily ‘out there’.
Depicting home as the place left behind in the quest for enhanced under-
standing and political maturity – or, for that matter, talk of moving ‘beyond’
binaries – thus reinstates in reverse the status of home as the marker of a
dividing line between good and bad, inside and outside, rather than under-
mining it. The ambiguity of home is denied, then, by the tendency to priv-
ilege mobility above dwelling: an action that reverses the valorization of
the mobility/dwelling binary. Certain groups of people are still treated as
‘bearers of a particular kind of existential truth’ (Dawson and Johnson 2001:
320; see also G. Pratt 1999: 155). The difference is that it is now different
types of people – exiles, refugees, nomads – who are placed on an ontological
pedestal:
in order to make the case that mobility and cultural mixing – not as con-
tingent historical experiences but as modes of being – are states of virtue.
What is implied is that these conditions are ontologically superior and that
political life today should be based on approximating them. (Brennan
2008: 46)
Some authors, however, have warned of the dangers of eliding home

as identity with home as the physical setting for our lives: ‘Home as an
identity really is somewhat different from home as a place, though the two
are interconnected’ (G. Pratt 1999: 160). If we lose this distinction from
sight, rejecting the colonizing imperatives of the domestic can, unintention-
ally, perpetuate the othering of home, promoting contempt for the home
as material space. How else, then, might we think about the home as dwell-
ing place? Iris Young comments that, while she agrees: ‘with those critics
of home who see it as a nostalgic longing for an impossible security and
comfort, a longing bought at the expense of women and of those con-
structed as Others … I think that there are also dangers in turning our backs
on home’ (Young 1997: 164). Young argues that ‘the idea of home and
the practices of home-making support personal and collective identity in a
more fluid and material sense’ (ibid.). She bases her argument on personal
experience. Her mother, a ‘bad housekeeper’, was twice jailed for failing to
maintain a home for her children to the standard the authorities deemed nec-
essary; but ‘from my mommy’, she recalls, ‘I learned to value books and song
and art and games, and to think that housework is not important’ (Young
1997: 149). She invites us to revisit the idea of home and its relationship to
identity.
The home supports identity in a material sense, firstly, as an extension
of the body.4 It is the space where the objects we use in our everyday lives
are kept and arranged, close to our bodies, in a way that ‘provides path-
ways for habits’ (ibid.: 150). It enables us to carry out our activities of daily
living without constantly attending directly to them. Secondly, some of
these objects and spaces ‘carry sedimented personal meaning as retainers of
personal narrative’ (Young 1997: 150). Although objects in the home can
2 80 | Ann Va rl ey
be empty status symbols, they can also recall events or journeys that mean
something to us, linking the past, present and future of both individuals and
groups. We can use them to re-examine the past in the light of new connec-
tions and commitments, rewriting our own stories. They are not, then, mere
containers for nostalgia; rather, they can serve as a basis for change, or what
Alison Blunt (2003: 720) calls ‘productive nostalgia’.
Time is central to the meaning of home, described in elegantly minimal-
ist terms as ‘an organization of space over time’ (Douglas 1991: 294). In
providing a material support for identity, home does not ‘fix’ it, but ‘anchors
it in physical being that makes a continuity between past and present’ (Young
1997: 151). As Seyla Benhabib (1999: 353) observes, ‘identity does not
mean “sameness in time” but rather the capacity to generate meaning over
time so as to hold past, present, and future together’. Iris Young concludes:
‘Without such anchoring of ourselves in things, we are, literally, lost’ (Young
1997: 151). We lose our narrative thread.
An Example Close to Home
In earlier work, I have discussed an example from personal experience that

supports Young’s argument (Varley 2008). It concerns the last decade of
my father’s life. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2001, at the age of sev-
enty-two years, but with help from social services and from me he managed
to stay in the home where my parents had lived since before I was born. A
year later, he was also diagnosed with angina, and, as a result of the fateful
interaction between these two conditions, he was hospitalized on more than
a dozen occasions over the following two years. Being in hospital seemed
to throw my father completely. He was unable to remember why he was
there and he always thought that no one was paying any attention to him,
as he had already forgotten the last time someone explained what was hap-
pening. At times he did not even seem to recognize his surroundings. One
day, he got very upset because he thought he had lost his wallet and would
be unable to pay his bill. In his mind, he was on holiday with his brother in
Wales (a holiday they had taken decades earlier) and the hospital was their
hotel. At other times he thought we were in a bar on the other side of the
city.
On later visits to hospital my father fought with the nurses, discharged
himself and walked the eight kilometres to his home (a route he had, for-
tunately, known for a long time and could therefore remember). He was
set on one thing: getting back home. Once there, he forgot all about the
distress he had experienced. The phenomenon of ‘sundowning’ that affects
care home residents with dementia, leading to increased confusion, wander-
ing and a gitation late in the day, was once described to me as a product of
people feeling that it is time to go home. My father certainly got that feeling
every time I visited him in the home where he spent the last years of his life;
a sudden dramatic decline in late 2004 had led doctors to conclude that he
was no longer capable of living alone, even with support.
It was not only that my father wanted to be at home or that he felt ‘going
home’ was the natural conclusion to any activity we undertook together
during the seven years he spent in the care home. Being at home, in familiar
surroundings, had held him together, enabling him to make some sort of
sense of his world to his own (relative) satisfaction. When taken away from
home he collapsed, mentally. I see this as an illustration of how the home
acts as a material support for identity. People suffering from dementia lose
the ability to hold past, present and future together coherently. As often
happens, my father occasionally mistook me for my mother, and would talk
about people from his distant past as though they were still around (asking,
for example, whether his mother had visited him in hospital). He had already
lost the ability to act on an intention, because his memory of what he had
set out to do often disappeared before he had time to complete the action
in question. Being at home, however, offered my father some protection
against the effects of dementia, because some of his memory was, as it were,
deposited in his surroundings.
In writing about how things in the home support ‘the body habits and
routines of those who dwell there’, Young (1997: 150) quotes Edward
Casey’s (1993: 117) notion of ‘habit memories’ in the home: ‘memories
formed by slow sedimentation and realized by the reenactment of bodily
motions … [from which] we get our bearings’. (I think, for example, of
how your hand knows where the light switch is in a darkened room; how we
know how many paces to take to navigate around the end of the bed without
colliding with the wardrobe. We have no need to think about this; we can
do it on semi-automatic pilot.) For my father, these habit memories had, for
some years, provided a framework within which he could continue to thread
together a narrative of his life that was enough to reassure him that things
were ‘normal’. Home, in this sense, encompassed not just his house, but the
surroundings where he had lived since he was a boy. He would take long,
twice daily walks around the area, and people meeting him on one of these
would not immediately have known how ill he was. Only after spending some
time with him would someone realize that he was repeating himself, or that
he did not remember meeting them the previous day. Without the support
of home, my father fell apart mentally, to the extent that, in hospital, he was
unable to recognize his surroundings and seemed almost to be hallucinating.
He lost the thread of his narrative. This is one reason why I find the hostility
of some current writing about home deeply problematic.
2 82 | Ann Va rl ey
Mobiles Homes: Like a Rolling Stone
I am also interested in exploring how far Young’s argument about home as

a material support for identity resonates with what people have to say about
home in urban Mexico. The research on which I draw here involved four
contrasting low-income housing areas in Guadalajara. Two of them were
‘self-help’ settlements where people had acquired land illegally and built their
own homes with paid labour or assistance from relatives and friends. Los
Encinos was an illegal self-built settlement where most people had arrived in
the past ten years; San Mateo was some forty years old and had a full range
of urban services. We also worked in an inner-city area, Las Ánimas, with a
high percentage of low-income tenants, some of them occupying the rental
tenements known as vecindades. Finally, we worked in El Ocote, a housing
project of four-storey apartment blocks where formal sector workers had
acquired flats with support from the Mexican government’s Institute of the
National Housing Fund for Workers (INFONAVIT).5
A negative or dismissive attitude to the home is easier to adopt if home-
lessness is a remote possibility in one’s own life. As a number of authors have
noted, ‘it is easier to criticize home from the position of having a secure one’
(G. Pratt 1999: 157; see also Ahmed 1999: 335; Benhabib 1999: 357).
Many of the people with whom we talked in Guadalajara had not enjoyed
such a secure relationship with home. Consequently, they generally set great
stock by continuity; but continuity does not require a complete absence of
change over time. It is, rather, a thread running through time. People saw the
home more as something in process than as something static or fixed. This
reflected the means by which many of them had come to house themselves,
building their homes bit by bit over the years.
Women and men often used the phrase andar rodando to express their
likes and dislikes in this context. The phrase means to go ‘rolling’ around,
like a wheel. The wheel analogy is useful because it captures the idea of
responding to forces outside yourself – rather as a stone rolls downhill under
the influence of gravity. I am struck by the aptness of Bob Dylan’s lines as a
way of making the connection with home and identity here:
How does it feel

To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?6
The most common use of the phrase andar rodando was in reference to
renting accommodation. Remedios would hate to have to leave the home
she has built with her husband in Los Encinos, because: ‘It was the first
thing I wanted to do for my children, not to andar rodando with them and
now, to andar rodando, renting or as arrimados [people living rent-free]

– I don’t think so! [Eso, ¡cómo que no!]’ Remedios’s dislike of living ‘like a
rolling stone’ reflects her childhood experiences. Her parents had moved
house repeatedly because her father worked in different parts of the country
putting up electricity pylons. They started to build a home on the edge of
Guadalajara, but during one of many drinking binges her father sold it, so the
family ended up back ‘on the street’ again. The idea of ‘going around’ thus
signifies suffering or hardship in people’s housing narratives. As Remedios
commented: ‘Yes, I did suffer a lot with that business of going around rent-
ing. So, my children – I say, God willing, we’ll stay here in this little house,
so that they don’t have to suffer that’. The men said much the same thing. In
San Mateo, Jesús said, ‘It’s a real pain [es mucha friega], going around from
place to place renting’. Jaime added:
I used to rent and it was a problemota, what with the neighbours … and
especially in a vecindad, it’s so hard living in a vecindad. So, then, when I
moved to this house (which is your house),7 well, then, it was something
else – you live peacefully – but while you’re going around, here and there,
you get no peace, you can’t do anything.
Nor was it only owners who had previously been tenants (who might be
regarded as self-selecting in their views) who spoke in these terms. Current
tenants also expressed a dislike of constantly moving. Victoria, from Las
Ánimas, asked tartly, ‘Do you think I’m going to feel good going around
moving from house to house? Well I don’t’. And a tenant from San Mateo
Figure 12.1 Rental housing in San Mateo, Guadalajara. Photo by the author.
2 84 | Ann Va rl ey
said she would happily build her own home, if only she could afford it, ‘so as
not to rodar’.
The idea of renting as constantly being on the move should not, however,
be taken literally. Over one-third of the tenants surveyed had not moved
for five years or more; one-fifth, ten years or more. For tenants, the idea of
constant movement refers partly to the ever-present threat of eviction and
partly to the constantly recurring obligation to pay the rent each month,
come what may. Luisa, from Los Encinos, remembered how much of a drain
renting had been:
My husband, every month he had to pay and, well, to pay the rent at times
we even had to go without eating, because he had to pay and [his income]
wasn’t enough … And, well, it wasn’t until we got our own house that we
stopped suffering, going around from pillar to post.
And the men from this area confirmed this sense of pressure to have the rent
money ready every month:
Francisco: I mean, you’re only working to pay the rent.

Roberto: You’ve hardly paid one month …
Francisco: … and the next one is due again.
In a sense, paradoxically, people felt only too tied down as tenants: stuck
in a relationship with the landlord that brought them no long-term gain.
They were not, in this sense, going anywhere, despite the constant flow of
money to the landlord. They were running, as the saying has it, in order to
stand still; going nowhere fast. This was repeatedly spelled out by tenants.
It’s like a vicious circle, paying rent and it’s never going to be yours …
It’s like throwing money into a bottomless pit.
The day they want to take it off you, they take it off you.
In this life we’re only passing through, nothing is forever … [but] the
month comes around and there isn’t enough money.
The lack of literal movement encapsulated in people’s saying that they dislike
‘going around’ renting can be better illustrated by another way in which
they use the phrase ‘andar rodando’. The first quotation from Remedios,
above, referred both to renting and to being ‘arrimados’. The men from Los
Encinos also referred to this:
Rodolfo: And don’t even mention living as an arrimado.

Roberto: The person who lives as an arrimado: ‘the corpse and the arri-
mado, in three days they stink’ [‘El muerto y el arrimado, a los tres días
apesta’ – a much cited proverb].
Arrimados are people living rent-free with someone else, particularly young
couples living with his or her parents. The verb arrimar can mean ‘to draw
near’ but also ‘to set aside’, hinting that what is set aside is somehow inferior.
Arrimados are only there on sufferance, ‘rolling stones’ very much under the
thumb of the owners, who could ask them to leave at any time. They too,
then, are in the paradoxical situation of ‘going nowhere fast’: locked into a
relation of dependency and uncertainty. Men and women alike talk about the
need to get their own place [independizarse].
The issue of sharing with in-laws is particularly problematic for women,
with young wives traditionally taken to live with their husband’s family.
Nowadays, young couples may also live with the wife’s parents, but we found
that 33.4 per cent of the women householders who had (had) a partner had
lived in his parents’ home, compared with only 19.5 per cent, in their own
parents’ home, after marrying, with little variation by age (N=512; some had
done both). Living with your in-laws has a bad reputation, because it has
long been associated with domination of the young wife by her mother-in-
law (Stern 1995; Varley 1993, 2000). Mothers-in-law are described as ‘very
interfering [muy metiches]’. A few women reported a good relationship with
their husband’s mother, but they were in the minority. A more common
situation was described by Isabel, from El Ocote:
They cause a lot of problems. They want everything you do to be – I mean,

it’s “don’t go out”,“what are you going out for?”, “you shouldn’t dress
like that”, “you shouldn’t bring up your children like that”, “don’t change
their nappies that way”, “you shouldn’t arrange the furniture like that”.
They’re always on your case: “don’t do that!”
Her neighbour, Angeles, told the group what it was like at her mother-in-law’s:
It was hard, because if, say, I went to do the washing up, she’d pick up the
glasses and smell them to see if I’d washed them properly. When I hung the
washing out she’d go and smell it. If I started to iron she’d stand there on
one side and say “do it this way” – all sorts of maddening things like that.
Many parents nowadays try to give their son and his wife more space,
letting them live upstairs or in a small extension; but where all live as one
family, the young wife has traditionally found herself acting as a servant to
her in-laws. Nor is it only her husband’s mother who can make life a misery,
but also his father or siblings. Araceli, from San Mateo, described living with
her husband’s family:
I used to wash for them and they made more of a song and dance about
having their clothes all washed and ironed than my husband did, because
they were young and wanted to look good, and I was so naive, I did what
2 86 | Ann Va rl ey
they said … I was always rushing around everywhere. I didn’t stop all day,
washing, ironing, taking the girls to school, cooking …
Nor did it seem to matter how long a couple had been together: homeowners
would not hesitate to ask their relatives to leave at the drop of a hat, as Araceli
found out when, after almost thirteen years together, her in-laws kicked her
out.
Women mostly dislike living with their in-laws, then, because they feel that
they are being checked up on all the time, as regards both their d omestic and
childcare skills and their sexual propriety. Living with the in-laws, as one woman
put it, is like ‘scratching yourself with your own nails’. Women in this position
often complain about not getting enough support from their husbands. Time
after time, the explanation given was that men go out to work whereas women
are stuck in the house with their mothers-in-law all day.8 Husbands who are
not around much are often disinclined to believe their wife’s complaints. In
short, ‘going around’ renting or ‘going around’ as arrimados denies people
the freedom to develop their own story, their own housing narrative, because
tenants or arrimados are like characters in someone else’s story.
We should be wary of overvaluing mobility, since doing so can make ‘mat-
ters of identity seem infinitely deconstructable figurations’ (Benhabib 1999:
357; G. Pratt 1999: 153). A fondness for metaphors of mobility– of exile or
nomadism – should not close our eyes to the difference between travelling as
a leisured tourist and as a refugee (McDowell 2003): there is a great deal of
difference between having ‘too many’ passports and having none (Benhabib
1999: 357). When mobility is imposed on us, it can feel only too like fixity,
in our social if not our geographical location.
Putting Down Roots: Ownership as Ilusión
By contrast to imposed mobility, dwelling can mean having a greater sense

of the possibility of moving on – an example of the ‘movement inherent in
dwelling’ (G. Pratt 1999: 159) – or, at least, respite from undesired move-
ment. People who own their home say they are able to rest at ease, that they
find ‘tranquillity’. One woman from San Mateo expressed the contrast with
living (for a mere three months) with her in-laws by saying: ‘no, here I am
in my house – happy, with relief written all over my face [dichosa, con cara
de alivio]’. One way people expressed their sense of freedom from unwanted
mobility was in terms of ‘rootedness’. Plants or trees and houses share a
common physical connection with the land, as they are ‘rooted’ in the earth.
People expressed a deep-seated normative preference for ‘rootedness’ in this
sense, as opposed to constantly moving around. For example, Beatriz, who
had lived for thirty years in her self-built house in San Mateo, told us: ‘that’s
how my life has been, all my life, suffering, suffering, and moving around
until now, here where I’ve found my peace and that’s why, now, it would
make me very sad to sell or to move from here, because I’m like a plant that’s
put down roots here’.
Not, perhaps, coincidentally, women often spoke of their liking for having
plants around the place, often in old metal cans that make good improvised
flower pots. María’s house in Los Encinos is full of plants – ‘even under the
bed’. When talking about her love of having plants and birds around the
house, María emphasized both dwelling and mobility – referring, however, to
her ability to move things around and put them where she wanted:
The image that comes to my mind of my house, of my home, is a place to

rest, where you can feel free, and where I can say “this is where I’m putting
that glass … because that’s where I want it”, or “I want a plant there and
that’s where it’s going to stay”. But if you’re in someone else’s house they
Figure 12.2 ‘Even under the bed’: Some of the plants in Maria’s house in Los
Encinos. Photo by the author.
2 88 | Ann Va rl ey
say to you “that plant, I don’t want it there”, “that glass, why did you leave
it there?”
This theme of moving plant pots or other domestic objects about was picked
up by other women. Elena, a tenant in the central area, described her pleasure
at being ‘taken out’ of her in-law’s home by her husband: ‘Now, because
it’s your house, you can move and remove and do and undo [mover y quitar
y hacer y deshacer]’. Ester, from the same area, said that she enjoyed ‘above
all, [being able] to say “this is my house and here I move and I do [aquí
muevo y hago]”’. One woman, Lola, from Los Encinos even drew a rather
touching picture of her relationship with her husband this way: ‘I like having
plants, but I don’t know how to arrange them, and he arrives and he arranges
them for me, very nicely [muy bonito]’. The male tenants in Las Animas also
contrasted the enforced mobility of renting with a sense of rootedness:
Gerardo: “You know what, I want you out” – just as I was making my
nest …
Martín: … once you’ve got your own little house, you’re on firm ground,
no one can move you.
Alfonso: You’re not hopping from twig to twig [a salto de mata], you’re
out of that.
Martín: It’s like planting a tree; here you are, here you’re going to stay,
for ever; but renting, you’re only there for a little while, you
never know when you’re going to have to move.
The sense of permanence that comes from having your own home, then, is
understood as a respite from being at the mercy of forces outside yourself,
more than a celebration of stasis in and of itself. The analogy with plant life
can be seen as an appeal to nature and essentialism (the desire for ownership
is ‘only natural’ and Martín, as we have seen, talks about putting down roots
as being ‘for ever’) – or, alternatively, as expressing what we might call an
enduring impermanence (trees die and others take their place; ‘in this life
we’re only passing through’).
Putting down roots should not be equated with an exclusionary ‘fortress’
mentality, focused on threats from outside; and fearing threats from outside
is not, in any case, always about denying others the privileges we enjoy. In
the newer self-built area in particular, people often talked about the need for
good foundations and robust construction.9 Margarita stressed the dangers
of not having a safely-built house:
If you’re, I don’t know, living in a shack [chozita] – like me, I’ve lived
in shacks – well, you’re at the mercy of the elements [a la intemperie]. If
someone who’s up to no good, or, I don’t know, an animal, a hurricane,
a storm, comes along – I’ve known what it’s like to be hanging on to

the beams to hold them down, and [until] it arrives and it passes and it
dies down, no, I’ve seen it all, that’s why, I tell you, the home is very
important – and some good solid walls [unas paredes macizas].
Putting down roots seemed, rather, to mean establishing a basis from which
you can contemplate change in the future, for better or worse, with some
degree of equanimity. The tenant who said that ‘in this life we’re only passing
through’ expressed this sense of provisionality. Other people talked about
dreams and ilusiones. As in English, the word ‘ilusión’ can be negative, sig-
nalling falsity or deception, but the people we met used it in both this way
and, more positively, to mean ‘dreams’. To talk about an ilusión, therefore,
signals something that might turn out to be no more than a pipe dream, but
is not bound to do so. Martín, from Las Ánimas, said ‘it’s like an ilusión – a
dream that you have, that you hanker after … “I’d like a little house”: they’re
ilusiones that you have’. For most people who have managed to build their
own home, however, it was a dream that needed constant work, as Fernando,
from Los Encinos, explained: ‘What we’ve done we’ve done together … it’s
for her and for her children … that was my only ilusión, the one that I’m still
working on for them’.
To talk of dreams and hope in this context is not to peddle romanticized
notions of poverty and self-sacrifice, although discussion-group members
were as capable of trading in such idealizations as anyone who has not had
to undergo the sometimes miserably tough business of building their own
home. Ilusiones included consumer aspirations. Most people we spoke with
or whose house we visited in the self-help areas had set aside a sizeable chunk
of their plot as a garage-in-waiting, as though making space for it helped
ensure they would one day own a car. The men in Los Encinos discussed this
particular ilusión:
Roberto: Normally we all leave [space for] a garage with the idea or
the ilusión that someday we’ll get our hands on a carcancha
[wreck].
Felipe: One day.
Roberto: Even though that day never comes.
Saul: Or it gets sold.
Francisco: The ilusión is still there.
For men and women preserving their ilusiones in the face of uncertainty,
continuity over time is important. But continuity need not imply a fixed and
unchanging identity. It is, rather, a condition of intelligibility in the narra-
tive of the self. When people in Guadalajara expressed their dislike of rental
or shared housing as an expression of unwanted mobility, they were talking
2 90 | Ann Va rl ey
Figure 12.3 Home and ilusión: Dreaming of a car in Los Encinos. Photo by the
author.
about the problem I have discussed in this chapter – of holding past, present
and future together. The possibility of a coherent narrative – coherent not in
the sense of being exempt from interruption, but of not losing their thread as
a result of constant interruption – was what they looked for in a home of their
own. Rather than andar rodando, they wanted the chance to be able to put
down roots somewhere, to be able to rest. Consequently, many are prepared
to invest ‘blood, sweat and tears’, as well as daunting amounts of money, in
building their own home.
It takes time and effort, not only to build the house itself, but also to obtain
the urban services that are generally completely absent in such areas at the
outset. The sacrificios that people therefore have to make to acquire a home
themselves become part of the story of their (family) lives (Varley 2002). Just
as roots ‘anchor’ a plant in the soil, protecting it from being blown away by
the wind, then, ‘some good solid walls’ give people both protection from the
elements and a chance to develop their narrative of identity. That does not
necessarily make that identity, fixed, rigid and averse to change. The self-built
homes that house the narratives of identity of the urban poor in Mexico are
rarely regarded as ‘finished’.
Home, in short, ‘carries a core positive meaning as the material anchor for
a sense of agency and a shifting and fluid identity’ (Young 1997: 159).
Final Thoughts
Recent critics of home emphasize the selfish and alienating aspects of the pri-
vate space of the self and call instead for a ‘disintegration of the myth of the
autonomous citizen living in a private house’ enabling us to see that ‘both
our selves and our houses are far more fluid and contested than previously
thought’ (Crabtree 2006: 717). Like Young (1997) and G. Pratt (1999),
however, I am concerned that there are also dangers in turning our backs
on home. There is a danger that, in celebrating fluidity, we inadvertently or
deliberately reject all notion of coherence; that in celebrating the breakdown
of boundaries and engagement with the public we deny the need for a place
and a time for retreat and renewal of the self, both in solitude and in intimacy
with those closest to us. Janna Malamud Smith (2003) describes the need for
solitude and intimacy as two aspects of privacy that are of central importance
to the modern self.
The core values of home as a space of safety, renewal and individuation,
as described by Young (1997), were echoed in the discussion groups in
Guadalajara. Participants emphasized the value of having somewhere to get
away from life’s hustle – to find what could be described as ‘mental continu-
ity, quiet, and relief from feeling noticed’ (Smith 2003: 43). Roberto, in Los
Encinos, explicitly contrasted this value with the value of house as commod-
ity: ‘It’s the same for men and women, the sense of appreciation [el valor
estimativo]. We’re not talking about the monetary value. It’s the sense of
appreciation that we have for things that we’ve invested a lot of effort in,
for the four walls we have here, that serve as our refuge’. Roberto’s ‘sense
of appreciation’ of the home speaks to what Young (1997: 162) describes
as ‘a certain meaning of ownership, not as private property in exchangeable
goods, but in the sense of meaningful use and reuse for life’. But to give the
last word to María, from Los Encinos: ‘none of us can be safe all our lives,
[but] you have a little room where you can rest, that you sweep, it’s not
painted, it’s not plastered, none of that, but you have a place where you can
be at ease’.
Notes
1. Euromonitor International Report, October 2006. Retrieved 24 July 2012 from http://
www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/359297/cocooning_home_as_fortress.
2. Building the Dream, Zeal TV for ITV1, broadcast daily April–July 2004. The rights are appar-
ently now owned by the U.S.-based cable-television channel Home and Garden Television.
Programme description retrieved 24 July 2012 from http://www.hgtv.ca/ontv/titledetails.
aspx?titleid=248574.
3. Oxford English Dictionary Online, www.oed.com; accessed 24 July 2012.
2 92 | Ann Va rl ey
4. Or, as I heard a radio presenter observe in Mexico: ‘La casa es como tu segunda piel; es tu
segundo cuerpo’ [The house is like your second skin; it’s your second body] Radio Mujer,
Guadalajara, 19 March 1998.
5. Research funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (UK), grant R 000 23
6808. In each area, two discussion groups – one of women, one of men – met six times; dis-
cussions in the women’s groups were facilitated by research officer Maribel Blasco; those in
the men’s by Martín Ortiz González. In addition, two surveys were conducted in each area.
The first gathered socio-economic and housing data for 405 randomly selected households
and 1,058 adult members. The second followed up topics from the discussion groups with
538 randomly selected women householders. Quotations without names are from survey
respondents. All names are pseudonyms.
6. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ lyrics from http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/rolling-stone;
accessed 24 July 2012.
7. Mi casa es su casa, a polite phrase.
8. This argument does not seem to be affected by the fact that, in Mexico, one in three married
women is economically active (Pedrero Nieto 2005: 36).
9. Self-built housing not infrequently occupies sites that make the residents vulnerable. Los
Encinos was built on sandy deposits from a shallow stream, which sometimes flooded houses
in the area in the rainy season.
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13
One Block at a Time
Performing the Neighbourhood
Arij Ouweneel
This chapter is about the meaning that neighbourhood residents give to their
community via the medium of fiction films, through which they try to rec-
reate their neighbourhood through narratives. One of its major c onclusions
is that neighbourhoods are privileged over the city in a broader sense. No
wonder – reading the preceding chapters on housing and belonging, one
could easily get the impression that the field of urban studies is, in practice,
neighbourhood studies. We should sense a certain tension between the
institutionalized and personalized perspectives. Scholars zooming in on the
neighbourhood level would stress personalized social interactions – which
they know very well indeed – whereas scholars discussing urban policies tend
to stick with the institutionalized relationships and discuss policies, laws and
decrees, and programmes and projects. Interestingly, examples of the latter
include two of urban studies’ classic works, which are quoted in this volume
several times. In 1972, John F.C. Turner launched his credo of ‘Housing as a
Verb’ (J. Turner 1972), and next, some thirty years later, David Harvey pub-
lished the first of his manifestoes on ‘The Right to the City’ (Harvey 2003;
different versions came out in 2008 and 2012), both with urban politicians
and activists in mind. However, when scholars need to pair ‘housing’ and
‘belonging’, an emphasis on the analysis of personalized relationships breaks
the surface. For example, in their overview of urban history from a local or
micro perspective – in this case: Medellín in Colombia – Gerard and Marijke
Martin work with Floya Anthias’s definition of ‘belonging’. ‘Asking “where
do I belong?”,’ Anthias writes (2006: 21), ‘may be prompted by a feeling
that there are a range of spaces, places, locales and identities that we feel we
do not, and cannot, belong to.’ She concludes that ‘[b]elonging, therefore,
involves an important affective dimension relating to social bonds and ties’.
In short, belonging is an ‘emotionally charged social location’ – a being
involved in social interaction.
Clearly, for us who study the city, this perspective is important – even if we
dissociate from the bottom-up/top-down perspectives – because almost all of
us do our fieldwork in neighbourhoods. Our Lima is Pampas de San Juan or
Comas; our Rio de Janeiro is the Morro Santa Marta; our Belo Horizonte is
– 294 –
O n e B l o ck a t a T i m e | 295
the Favela da Serra; our Buenos Aires is La Boca or Puerto Madero; our Santa
Marta and our Medellín also consist of two or three squatter settlements as
does our Mexico City, with research done in the Chalma Guadalupe, Jardines
de Tepeyac, El Sol, Santo Domingo, Isidro Fabela and Liberales settlements.
All this fits well in the accepted social science standards of qualitative research
that most of us use, because it is practically very difficult indeed for a single
researcher or even a group of researchers to get the full picture of an entire
city (Hannerz 1980). But this is also the consequence of the qualitative
research method itself, because it means getting to know people by observ-
ing them and talking to them. This usually implies a limited number of
informants. Look around: even in our own daily existence, with how many
townspeople do we regularly interact? As a rule, it seems we know – and
thus regularly interact with – about 150 people. Most important to us is the
group of family members, friends and acquaintances. They live dispersed
over the city, the region and the country – perhaps even over the world. If
the distance between their homes and ours can be bridged and tided over
within reasonable limits, we see them frequently face-to-face. The second
group consists of our neighbours, who live next to our homes, in the street
and in the neighbourhood in general. We may see them regularly, perhaps
sometimes even as friends – but then they are friends and not ‘neighbours’.
A third group is made up of the people with whom we work, usually some-
where else in the city; and no doubt the people we meet on our way between
work and home. Some may have joined the group of our friends as well,
most will not. Outside the ‘150’ are the other city dwellers. Although we
may personally know the officials of the urban districts where our houses or
apartments are built, and perhaps we may even know city councillors or the
mayor, the majority of the people in neighbourhoods would certainly know
them only in their official institutional capacities. In short, there is obviously a
difference between the institutionalized relationship among neighbourhood
dwellers and urban officials – on all levels – and the personalized relationships
that the neighbourhood dwellers have with each other.
Reading the preceding chapters one could also easily get the impression
that the field of urban studies is based on narratives – specifically, the sub-
jective narratives of our informants. Based on interviews, most social science
researchers present narratives about the neighbourhoods of their investiga-
tions. In a way, through their research, they turn the city into a narrative,
creating a narrative world. Most of us quote a series of individuals and
sometimes we paint their life histories. Furthermore, as usual in the social
sciences, we build our cases on anecdotes (Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000).
All this is not only a consequence of the qualitative method, it also corre-
sponds to the human need for storytelling. We are the storytelling animal,
Jonathan Gottschall (2012) tells us. Storytelling is seen as collaborative,
2 96 | Arij Ouwen e e l
even in the case of individual authors. People need stories to lead their
lives; in the city, in the countryside, anywhere. The stories are as much
about mainland (our reality) as about neverland (the world of Homo fictus,
fiction man) (Gottschall 2012: xiv). The cultural effects of learning from
storytelling do not depend on whether the stories are fictional or non-fic-
tional. Narratives call on someone to adapt willingly to the conditions of the
narrative: the diegesis in film, the scene in a network news item, the plot of
a theatre performance, or a worldview on how housing and cities need to
look. Stories, whatever their origins, are encoded in our brains for use in
a near or distant future when the situation asks for a script or scenario to
survive it by acting ‘properly’. Recent research has shown that ideas, values
and behavioural and conversational solutions presented in narratives, stories,
essays, journals, literature, theatre and films take root in our brains as poten-
tial simulations to influence behaviour (for an overview: Gerrig 1993; Pinker
1997: 521–65; Goleman 2006: 41–42; Oatley 2011: 133–53; Gottschall
2012: 56–67). The importance of fiction comes from the fact that stories
transport readers and viewers into simulations of situations in which they
may not normally be, including unnatural dangers, thus allowing them
to think them through and how eventually to respond to them. For that
reason, fictional narratives may have profound consequences in the non-fic-
tional world – as any real-life story – and may alter daily human activities
(among others M. Turner 1996; Oatley 1999; Ryan 2004; McAdams et al.
2006; Eakin 2008; Boyd 2009; McLean et al. 2010). Hence, fiction can be
studied on the same level as non-fiction stories because fiction is rooted in
real life as the outcome of experiences told by groups, nations and societ-
ies about themselves – including stories about the origins, the design and
arrangement of the world. Fiction is no longer taboo for the social sciences.
Even a biologist like David Sloan Wilson reproduces stories in his book, The
Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a
Time (2011). Interestingly, he consciously privileges the neighbourhood,
because using evolutionary theories to actively improve the city cannot but
work ‘one block at a time’. Following Turner, Wilson writes about activities
and interactions, stressing the fact that ‘belonging is a verb’.
Adolescents Determined to Succeed
The narratives and stories about housing and belonging told in the pre-
ceding chapters are selected and worded by the researcher. He tries as well
as he can to seriously convey the vision of the informants, but this remains
nevertheless a ventriloquist position. Therefore, it would be interesting to
look for narratives and stories that come from the neighbourhood without
the intervention or mediation of an outside scholar. As an historian of con-

temporary times, I use fiction film as a source for research, and not so long
ago I came across the work of a Peruvian neighbourhood collective called
JADAT (Jovenes Adolescentes Decididos A Triunfar/Young Adolescents
Determined to Succeed). In the year 2000, tired of gang violence and sad-
dened by the loss of friends, adolescents from the Cajamarquilla neighbour-
hood – a sub-division of the peripheral district of Lurigancho-Chosica in
eastern Lima – founded the youth organization JADAT. Led by former gang
leader Joaquín Ventura Unocc, aka Nando, who was in his early twenties at
the time, they wanted to bring the adversaries together for positive action.
True, there were outsiders involved, because the group had invited Peruvian
non-governmental organization CEPRODEP (Centro de Promoción y
Desarrollo Poblacional) – guided by psychologist Juan Carlos Contreras
Velásquez – to conduct a pilot project to work with them. They began as
a group of approximately twenty young adults and adolescents, children of
Andean migrants now in their twenties, who had been promoting the partic-
ipation of the youth in activities to improve their community. The group did
so through theatre workshops, the filming of shorts and the organization of
a football competition. It is interesting to note that most of them are former
members of local gangs and that they were able to incorporate their leaders
into the new youth group through a novel and different proposal: ‘to make
movies’. Ventura Unocc began as scriptwriter; later on he switched to direct-
ing. He became the group’s senior member. Filmmaker Héctor Gálvez from
Callao, Lima, acted as assessor of most films. Some professional actors had
given workshops based on the scripts, including Aldo Miyashiro, a leading
television personality. In fact, the initiative proved very successful indeed, as
gang violence ceased to exist in the community. The major success, however,
was not the demise of the gangs but the resurrection of neighbourhood com-
munity life in Cajamarquilla.
More than playing football – which excluded the girls – the fictionalization
of their past by collective storytelling had a real-life impact. Ventura Unocc
told me that two factors had been crucial for JADAT’s success: working on
the spot in the neighbourhood itself, and including girls. Gang violence had
been generally a male activity; an effective solution needed to include boys on
stage acting but with the girls as transforming agents. For sure, the context of
the group’s neighbourhood activity had been violence. Gang strife triggered
their work. Ventura Unocc said to me that they had had no previous theory
about what to do against the gang violence in the district, but unknowingly
in their films JADAT has perhaps replicated a well-known psychological
intervention method, originally formulated by Gordon Allport in 1954 (see
Strocka 2009: 108): the contact hypothesis. It says that contact with members
of disliked groups, under appropriate conditions, would improve relations
and decrease prejudice against them as well. The ‘appropriate conditions’

consist of four features: equal status among the groups and members, the
pursuit of common goals, intergroup cooperation and institutional support.
As can be seen below, all four were present during JADAT’s projects.
Psychologist Cordula Strocka describes a camping expedition with rival
manchas (groups, in fact: gangs) in Ayacucho, with similar results (Strocka
2009, also 2008: 269–323). In 2003–04, there existed about thirty-five gangs
in the city of Ayacucho – locally called by its colonial name of Huamanga –
with thousands of members in all. Most of them were children of rural
migrants and were living in the marginal neighbourhoods of the city. All
gangs were attached to territories in the neighbourhoods. They fought each
other with stones and knives. Among the mostly male members, a strong
sense of unity and adherence to a symbolic cult of honour prevailed. They
caused a lot of inconvenience for the city through petty and violent crime.
The camping expedition focused on the leaders of these gangs. The organiz-
ers brought together leaders of four rivalling groups. They were quite suc-
cessful, because after the camping trip was over – it had included the design
of common rules, football games and several other activities, and a collective
fear of ghosts at night time — the gang leaders had indeed strongly bonded
and had even developed a common group identity and several cross-group
friendships. The participants were positive about the interaction between the
groups and the reduction of intergroup anxiety. However, although some
personal friendships lasted, the violence in the neighbourhood could not
be prevented. The reason for this failure, I think, is that the interaction had
taken place in a different area of the city and between the leaders only, not
in the neighbourhoods themselves – not on the spot – and had excluded the
majority of the thousand gang members, and most certainly also the girls
(on the crucial role of girls in ending gang violence, see Brenneman’s book
Homies and Hermanos (2012) on the maras of Central America). Compared
to this Huamanga experiment, JADAT did a much better job.
JADAT’s first short film, Días en la Vida or Days in a Life (2001, 19
minutes), is about the life and death of Che Loco, the leader of one of the
most frightening gangs of Cajamarquilla. He had been a personal friend of
Ventura Unocc and his death had launched the idea of the neighbourhood
project. The script of the film was written by locals Kike Cangana, Karla
Heredia, Edgar Lifoncio Sullca, Joaquín Ventura Unocc and his brother
Jorge Ventura Unocc, all of whom had roles in the film. The DVD says that
the film narrates the circumstance of the death of Che Loco, here called
Carnal (played by Edgar Rivera): ‘Despised by his father, Carnal partici-
pates increasingly in local gang life. He promised his girlfriend to change
his behaviour, but perhaps it is too late …’ After his death, at the ceme-
tery, the girlfriend thinks out loud: ‘What a waste. Why does the world not
change?’ In 2003, JADAT made Historias Marcadas or Marked Stories (34

minutes) with a similar group based in nearby La Florida. The script was
written by locals Maricela Ambrosia, Alan Arancibia, Javier Farfán, Joaquín
Quispe and Percy Quispe. Maricela and Percy also took on leading roles;
Joaquín Ventura played another leading part, and his brother Jorge directed
along with Javier Farfán. This film is based on the life of a group of young
people – their love stories, their problems, their illusions regarding the
future, the friendships that keeps them together and the violence that sur-
rounds them. Two years later, JADAT made what they consider to be their
best film, Ángeles Caídos or Fallen Angels (2005, 30 minutes), directed by
Joaquín Ventura and professional activist filmmaker Felipe Degregori. The
script was another local group effort, written by Jhon Oblitas Arriola, Katy
Salvador Vega, Lizet Quispe Ñaupas, Joaquín Ventura Unocc and Jorge
Ventura Unocc. Jorge Ventura, Lizet Quispe and Katy Salvador also played
major parts. The film depicts the life of a young man, Piter (Jorge Galarreta
Mozombite), who decides to get away from the gangs, alcohol and drugs
after falling in love with Valery (Lizet Quispe). As a result, he joins the youth
organization JADAT. The fourth project, De Niña a Mujer or From Girl
to Woman (2006), deals with adolescent pregnancy; and a fifth, Un Mundo
Sin Colores or A World Without Colors (2007), pictures the impossibility of a
romance between a poor boy from Lurigancho-Chosica and a rich girl from
southern Lima. Several of the films are supported by the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) and the German technical social cooperation
service DED (Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst).1 The participants – former
adversaries turned friends – saw to it that gang violence disappeared from the
neighbourhood.
A number of narrative themes return in almost every JADAT film. First, of
course, the stage is set in Cajamarquilla Paraíso. JADAT wants to portray life
in their neighbourhood. Boys and girls are filmed walking and chatting on
the major street of the district – a kind of dusty promenade with shops and
bus stops. Regularly, boys are hanging out on street corners at the edges of
the community, somewhat removed from the promenade. They drink and,
in some sequences, take drugs, usually inhaling adhesives. Girls generally
walk in groups as well but rarely hang around out of boredom as the boys
do. Their focus is on the basketball and football field that functions as the
district’s central plaza; sometimes they go to a party or an improvised disco.
The adolescents sometimes meet in their houses. Although the boys and girls
do have their own rooms, so it seems, they receive their friends in the living
room, which is directly connected to the front door. The dwellings are poorly
built, with adobe bricks that are whitewashed on the inside. Furniture is
sparse, old and usually in a bad state. Curiously, adornment is mostly limited
to illustrated calendars. There are television devices and, occasionally, simple
sound equipment. The roofs are poor; it almost never rains in this desert
area. There are no showers; people use buckets to wash themselves. Water
is brought in by huge trucks and sold to the people. It is obvious that the
adolescents’ parents, with the exception of one or two, have no resources to
improve their dwellings.
A second theme is the generation gap. The films are not about poverty per
se. All boys and girls have something to do. They go to school or little by
little they earn a living. They own relatively little and even for drinking they
need to borrow coins from someone who has earned a bit more. In sequences
depicting the ‘bad boys’ of the district, the viewer is confronted with robbery
and assaults for them to get money and clothing. These bad boys drink and
sniff drugs out of despair over their relationships with their parents. Girls
also continually complain about this. Although we learn about the lack of
respect and recognition, arguments are rarely shown. Boys complain about
their fathers, girls about their mothers. This is in line with recent findings in
human development psychology, which suggest that a boy’s self-esteem is
influenced by both his mother and father’s parenting behaviour, whereas a
girl’s self-esteem is mainly influenced by her mother’s behaviour. In addition,
the findings provide partial support for the notion that parenting influences
on psychological outcomes vary based on neighbourhood context (Bámaca
et al. 2005). It is striking that JADAT reserves little room for parents in their
films. Sometimes a father is shown, usually drunk and violent towards his
son. Mothers are filmed working in the house in the background or, interest-
ingly, defending their sons against their fathers. The adolescents in the films
conclude that they have to earn respect from each other by moving on in
life – superar (overcome) – by their own initiative. Nothing can be expected
from their parents.
The notion of respect is key for understanding adolescents’ behaviour,
including gang life. In his pivotal book on the idea of the crucial social emo-
tion that holds societies together, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,
sociologist Erving Goffman speaks of embarrassment as the master emotion
of social life (1969 [1959]). Goffman preferred this word – says Thomas
Scheff (2006), another sociologist – due to a taboo against the concept of
shame in Western culture. Intricately linked to shame/embarrassment is
respect. Psychologists would think in terms of high or low self-esteem. If we
look at respect and pride, attunement with others would be their fundamen-
tal basis and lack of attunement would result in shame and lack of respect or
even disrespect. ‘One is rewarded by pride to the extent that one participates,
level by level, in the cognitive structure of mutual awareness’, says Scheff
(2006: 84), referring to the pride/shame continuum of social emotions, ‘and
punished by shame …’ In his formulation, respect is ‘an emotional/relational
correlate of the pride end of the pride/shame continuum’. From her research
on ‘young men of a violent life’ in the poorer districts of Caracas, Venezuelan

sociologist Verónica Zubillaga (2009) also concludes that the discourses
of violent life focus on a ‘search for respect’. Strocka (2009: 129) deduces
from her research among gang members in the city of Ayacucho, Peru, that
one of the major reasons why gangs fight each other is ‘that by presenting
themselves as tough and aggressive and by taking over a territory, manche-
ros [group/gang members] acquire a certain degree of respect and status,
which they feel unable to achieve by nonviolent means such as education or
employment’.
Zubillaga (2009: 87–94) recognized ‘four demands of respect’. First, the
demand for preservation challenges the threat to physical integrity and help-
lessness that results from the deinstitutionalization of security and justice.
Second, the demand for affiliation comes from the need to be accepted and
recognized by others and by the community – including the parents’ genera-
tion – and if this is problematic then at least as part of a peer group. Third, the
demand for economic participation fights informality in a society where social
mobility is associated with informal or illegal economic activity and hence is
perceived as an empty promise. Fourth, the demand for ascendance is linked
to a traditional model of masculine respect, like being the centre of a family
or group, giving orders or caring for a community. The Andean highlands,
the region of origin of the parents of the Cajamarquilla Paraíso adolescents,
stand out as a typical shared experiential world, where the future of the young
resembles that of their parents (Bolin 1998 and 2006). In the city this may
also be the case, but not so if the migrants have arrived in the city with a rural
culture in mind while needing to raise their children for the urban world. In
such cases where deinstitutionalization of family life prevails, mutual genera-
tional respect, inevitably important in social attunement, might fail. JADAT
shows that in Cajamarquilla Paraíso it did.
The third theme of the films is change. The world is at a dead end in
Cajamarquilla Paraíso, especially because of drinking, gang life and the gen-
eration gap. Something must happen. Gang life must be ended and peace
must return to the district. As the characters express, the problems originate
from the lack of respect that the boys earn from their fathers and from the
continuous quarrels at home between daughters and mothers. The ‘edges’
of the four corners – where the boys hang out in despair – must be drawn
towards the centre again: the central plaza, where football is played and the
girls chatter. In fact, the girls play a decisive role in pulling the strings again.
They try to persuade the boys to change – and mostly with success. JADAT
offers the boys an instrument to regain respect, as does participation in
organized football teams with their professional gear. The intensity to force
change reminds me of the Andean concept of pachacuti, cataclysms or ‘turn-
ing of the times’. This typical Andean concept combines time and place. In
Andean belief, time is cyclical, in which linear time has little meaning. Every
cycle begins with creation after a reversal or inversion of time (pachacuti).
The changing force is called wiracocha or wiracochas. The end occurs at the
edges, at the fringes – in JADAT’s films where the boys hang out, drinking
and robbing – whereas the new beginning starts at the centre, where JADAT
holds office and organizes events, including football games and theatre per-
formances. The behaviour of the adolescents in Cajamarquilla Paraíso shows
that they experience their life today as part of a pachacuti (Randall 1982:
48–9; Urbano 1991: 342).
The change that the girls want has to do with the defeat of the edges by
the centre. This sounds like the Andean concepts of a change from hurin to
hanan. Hurin is lower, at the edges, subaltern, older, past; whereas hanan is
upper, in the centre, newer, today. At a pachacuti, a lower world is turned
into an upper world, and inferior becomes superior, former latter, minority
majority, past a present or future, dark turns into light, inside becomes out-
side, and all this mostly at the same time. During the pachacuti the centre is
also dark; dark is hanan then. This means for Cajamarquilla Paraíso that vio-
lence and gang life had taken the centre for a while. During this period, the
girls were in danger of being harassed or even raped and were kept at home.
In most JADAT films this is the case in the earlier sequences. However, their
‘former hanan’ must become hurin by the pachacuti procedure, sitting in
the antechamber to take over hanan – taking it back – whenever possible, in
these gang-based times of deep trouble, disarray and chaos. Through JADAT
and the ‘conversion’ of key boys to the juvenile course, the girls succeed in
changing Cajamarquilla Paraíso.
The Gridiron Pattern is Older than the Colony
For drawing serious conclusions, my material is not sufficient. Thus far in this
chapter I have presented the JADAT films as contributions to the available
repertoire of simulations from which the people of Cajamarquilla can choose
when the situation asks for it. The simulation theories of the psychologists
convince us that the films may have actually worked this way – and indeed,
all locals involved have told me that the films have done so. But because
of the hypothetical situation in which we find ourselves, we are invited to
further explore theories – after all, this contribution is an exercise in applied
psychology. I think there are two elements that need further theorization.
First, trying to find an answer to the question of why the simulations as such
might have worked. Second, there is the question of whether or not the joint
activity – the interaction of making films together – might have contributed
to the changes in Cajamarquilla. For the first question, the Peruvian film
Paraíso (Paradise, 2009), written by Bárbara Acosta and directed by Héctor

Gálvez, might help. The film shows us Gálvez and Acosta’s version of life
in the Cajamarquilla neighbourhood, based on the stories that the JADAT
members had told them. Because Gálvez and Acosta are outsiders, not unlike
university scholars, I leave the discussion of their film to another occasion.
Nevertheless, two scenes in Paraíso are interesting to include here because
they articulate a vision of the full ‘body’ of that Lima neighbourhood –
from a birds’-eye perspective – taking into account the deep history of its
inhabitants:
[1] The choice of the musical score that the viewer hears during the open-
ing scenes and credit titles establishes beyond any doubt that we are in
Peruvian popular circles. The Andean cumbia is typical for Lima. With the
first images, the film turns silent. A young man, dressed in football gear
and a baseball cap, walks through a dry and desolate landscape among the
remains of a pre-Hispanic civilization. He stops at the grave of a deceased
friend and leaves some food for the deceased, mainly pieces of white bread
and a kind of chocolate bar. Then, from a rock next to the ruins, we see him
looking at the district where he lives, some thirty metres below him. The
neighbourhood is poor, poverty stricken perhaps, and dusty. The houses
are one- and two-story buildings, square or rectangular, set in the gridiron
pattern that defines so many of this kind of district. Even the parts at the
back, built on the lower sides of a hill, sit in this format. A city bus passes
by; no doubt on his way to older parts of Lima.
[2] [An hour later in the film.] Three boys and two girls walk through
the desert that surrounds the neighbourhood. The young man from the
opening scene is with them. He seems to be their leader. Again, they visit
the shrine of their deceased friend. They talk about him as if he is really
there with them. “Let’s pray for Che Loco, and for ourselves too, to get
our wished granted,” one of the girls says. Next, they climb one of the
stony hills, to visit Che Loco’s favourite spot. It is high up, and has a cave-
like appearance. The five sit down in two covered spots that look like cave
entrances. They look down at Cajamarquilla. After a few silent minutes, the
leader starts shouting: “Concha tu madre!” [“Fucking hell!”] The others
follow him, yelling as hard as they can. The camera moves to the left,
also looking at the neighbourhood down below. We see the well-ordered
blocks – about seven by four – surrounded by the stony and sandy hills of
the desert, at the fringes of the Peruvian capital. As from afar we hear street
noises.
The scenes show the close articulation between the neighbourhood adoles-
cents, the vision of their lives, and the neighbourhood as a whole, depicted
as a rectangular gridironed body – the ordered arrangement of streets in a
regular grid pattern, intersecting at right angles. By cursing and condemning
Cajamarquilla as a whole, the five youngsters address the neighbourhood as a

body. This embodiment is a normal human personification, of course, but it
is in this case associated to its morphology.
What always strikes me, walking through much of these neighbourhoods –
spontaneously created building blocks of the mounting urban culture that
can be found all over Latin America – is their very orderly architecture. No
one, no state, no community officials force the settlers to settle along the
gridiron pattern shared by most neighbourhoods region wide. In general,
people do things because they have learned it somehow. In this sense, grid-
iron-designed Cajamarquilla is a recreation, or a replica, of the quintessential
way of physically building the ‘city’ in Latin America. Over the past century,
or perhaps for even longer, Latin Americanists have believed that this pattern
was introduced by the colonizers. The ‘quintessential’ neighbourhood is seen
as a Spanish-European renaissance invention. In a paper published in the
journal Cities half a decade ago, Axel Borsdorf, Rodrigo Hidalgo and Rafael
Sánchez (2007: 369, Figure 1) reproduced this image in text and graphically
in four models (based on Borsdorf, Bähr and Janoschka 2002: 305, Abb. 1).
The story goes from the first model, a ‘compact city model’ from colonial
times (1550–1820), to the fourth, the chaotic ‘fragmented town’ or the
‘contemporary city structure’ (ca. 2000). The first of the four models shows
us a perfect square with several smaller perfect squares inside – the smallest
as its centre – while the last model consists of chaotic imperfect circles, sliced
through or overlapped by smaller circles, squares and rectangles. In Figure
13.1, I have tried to replicate the model by Borsdorf, Hidalgo and Sánchez,
though in a somewhat more simplified form. It gives models one and four
only; I left models two and three out. The modelling by Borsdorf et al. of the
fragmented city to the right is much richer. It comes as no surprise – their
argument is to sketch a development from ‘order’ to ‘fragmentation’; the
idea was that something had gone wrong over the centuries, that the city had
fallen ill. ‘In terms of the city the intimate relation between urban space and
the human body’, says Svend Erik Larsen (2004: 27; also: Sennett 1994), a
literary scientist, ‘has been a point of reference since Vitruvius defined spatial
proportions of the city from the ideal proportions of the human body in the
first century AD’.
In principle, authors prefer to look at the city as a body fully intact and
functioning well. Today, no city can satisfy this requirement. Hence, the
urbanists will speak of incapacitated cities, fragmented cities, or even ‘mon-
sters devouring souls and Nature, as animals recovering from the blows
meted out to them, or as organisms growing without limit or logic’ (Walther
and Matthey 2010). Such metaphors are not just for use in conversation.
Metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) told us, is one of the
most fundamental mechanisms of the human mind, allowing us to use what
The colonial city, compact The contemporary fragmented city
City centre Marginal quarter, peripheral

Mixed zone Marginal quarter, consolidated
Industrial Fenced township
Upper class Suburban closed neighbourhood
Middle class Urban closed neighbourhood
Lower class Mall
Figure 13.1 Two models of urban development in Latin America after Borsdorf et al.
we know from our bodily existence to provide understanding of countless

other subjects (see also: Gibbs, Jr. 2005). The world is categorized to our
being moving around on earth. Metaphors can be recognized behind gen-
eral political attitudes and specific political practice (Lakoff 1987 and 2008).
Scholars, politicians, officials, journalists and activists would set out to cure
the sick body or even to exorcize the Devil Within.2 Curiously, the meta-
phor provides for a mature body; cities in the past were in some ‘childhood’.
Contemporary cities are not treated as children – neither were they in the
past. In a sense, this can be understood from the City-as-Body, or CaB, met-
aphor as well: the unhealthy, sick or even monstrous city of today was once
safe, healthy and nice: innocent as a child. Because the CaB tells us that the
city must have grown over time, older cities could be depicted as such tiny
but ‘whole’ children – not mature but nevertheless well structured. Borsdorf
et al. show us the growing period of the Latin American city. The city
matured in the twentieth century, but something went wrong: ‘childhood’
unity was lost, the city became fragmented. The ensuing policy was to heal
the body – as a whole – and combat fragmentation.
Growing older, the CaB became ill and urbanists stepped in to heal it.
Borsdorf et al. say that, contrary to the contemporary fragmented city, the
colonial city had not been of any economic significance because the city was
not involved in trade networks. We can read in ‘A Model of Latin American
City Structure’, by Ernst Griffin and Larry Ford (1980), that during the
colonial period ‘cities in Spanish America were thoroughly regulated by
rovisions in the Laws of the Indies that mandated everything from treatment
p
of the Indians to the width of streets’. We find this in many other studies as
well, for example in Daniel Goldstein’s The Spectacular City (2004: 6–10).
However, decades of historical research have demonstrated that a large gap
existed between official regulations and historical practice. Historically, urban
development has not taken place this way. The urbanists’ official narrative is
wrong. Borsdorf’s model, shared by many urbanists, gives us an incomplete
picture. I will leave a discussion of the fragmented part of the model for
another occasion. Now, ojo, as the Mexicans say; careful: in 2002, Borsdorf
et al. were basically interested in the contemporary fragmented city, not in its
colonial roots. Their article consists of fifteen columns of text, and only one
of these describes the situation in the colonial period. In all fairness, I have to
acknowledge that the works by Borsdorf and his colleagues in Germany and
Chile are ultimately rooted in works like Griffin and Ford (1980) – discussing
the colonial city in only one out of fifty paragraphs. With so little attention,
is it important? Well, in Borsdorf ’s work the accompanying graph is, because
this leaves the impression that we are dealing with an unhealthy or sick
mature body that has violently lost its former, almost harmonious childhood.
What is important here is its historical roots – its ‘childhood’. As a colonial
historian, I feel confident to state that the colonial city – for the most part –
had much more in common with the right part of Borsdorf’s model than with
the left part. It is not true that the colonial city was mainly administrative.
Trade, especially domestic trade, was actually very important (Ouweneel
1996 and 1998). Of course, there were no modern highways, train stations
or airports and the cities were much smaller. But this is a matter of scale only,
not of principle. The colonial cities were not compact or squared at all. True,
sixteenth-century Spanish officials took the well-known ancient Roman grid-
iron urban planning system to the Americas in order to fulfil some classical
European ideal. In two clarifying figures, Adriaan Van Oss demonstrated
the tension between real settlement and the official gridiron layout. The
figures show the distribution of the population of the colonial city of Tunja,
Colombia, in 1623, mapped in a star-like form on an almost perfect gridded
pattern. Regulation was acknowledged because everyone lived according to
the pattern, but for the traveller entering the city the star-like distribution
of the buildings must have been obvious (Van Oss 2003: 172–73, Figures
1 and 2). Other studies confirm that the colonial cities had industrial parts
dispersed throughout, sometimes from near the city centre to the outskirts.
Members of the elite lived in the centre, but sometimes also in blocks at some
distance. For their entertainment, the population – elite or poor – in Mexico
City, Lima and Cuzco, to name a few, went to parks outside the city centre,
not to its central plaza (for example Ramos Medina 2001). Furthermore,
several cities had specific ‘gated’ quarters, especially set apart for the so-called
indios (Indian), members of the república de indios (Indian republic) or

Amerindian Order.
On closer examination, we must conclude that the gridiron plan was not
imported from Europe at all. It finds its origins in the pre-Hispanic period.
Indeed, the gridiron plan in urban design is indigenous to Latin America.
Long before the conquest, Amerindians built their cities according to the
dictum ‘in the four corners, in the centre’, as it became known in our days
(Freidel, Schele and J. Parker 1993; Medina 2000). Teotihuacan (near mod-
ern-day Mexico City), for example, is the largest ancient grid-plan site in
the Americas. The city’s grid covered eight square miles. The city is thought
to have been established as early as 100 bc. At its zenith, in the first half of
the first millennium, the city consisted of more than 200,000 inhabitants.
Teotihuacan had been a centre of industry, home to many potters, jewel-
lers and craftsmen – its economy was based on the manufacture of obsidian
tools and utensils. Even then, there were quarters for the rich and the poor,
some even to be described as ‘marginal quarters’ dispersed over the city
(Manzanilla and Pérez-Duarte 1994; Matos Moctezuma 2009; Arnauld,
Manzanilla, and Smith 2012). In the first half of the sixth century, the centre
was ritually destroyed by the inhabitants themselves, after decades of dete-
rioration. In the Andes, the grid planning can be recognized in most urban
settlements, both in the highlands and on the coast – from early pre-Hispanic
times to the Inca period – and continued in town settlements during the
colonial era, including settlements founded not under Spanish surveillance.
The rigid pattern includes cities, towns, villages, palaces, individual stone
buildings and raised field systems of agriculture. Ollantaytambo, north-east
of Cuzco, is a well-known example because of its contemporary character
as a major tourist attraction. Less visited but more intriguing is the Wari
settlement of Pikillacta, twenty kilometres east of Cuzco. The site is rigid in
form, ignoring topographical features, and, interestingly, the central plazas
and patios tend to be rectangular instead of square. One notable exception
to of all this, of course, is Machu Picchu, although it does have its rectangu-
lar centre. (For the Andes, see: Hemming and Ranney 1982; Kolata 1993;
Morris and Von Hagen 1993; Moore 1996; Von Hagen and Morris 1998.)
In short, the squared formation was an ideal, inherited from the pre-Hispanic
cities – Spanish regulation had confirmed something already in place.
Significantly, apart from the grid, the pattern is drawn ‘around’ – perhaps
‘squared’ is a better word – a centre and four corners. This was ritually
important all over the ancient Americas. In pre-Hispanic times, creation
stories involved the creation of the world by ‘raising the sky’ – terminating
a long period of darkness by introducing the sun and the moon – and the
foundation of human settlement by the unfolding of ‘four partitions, four
corners’ (Freidel, Schele and Parker 1993: 113). This means that there was
no centre without its corners and vice versa. This principle has guarded com-
munity bonding ever since. During my own research into colonial settlement
patterns, the so-called pueblos de indios (Indian village) or towns administered
by the república de indios (Ouweneel 1996, and 2005), I recognized similar
planning principles. There was usually a square or rectangular centre, and
there were four neighbourhoods or wards, stretching out from the centre
into the four corners. Ideally, each ward participated in town government,
mostly taking turns by the year, clockwise. This was in line with the idea of
space as time, with the centre representing the present and the future, and
the areas further away representing older periods. In the Andes, older periods
are also regarded as ‘below’ or ‘under’ – hurin. The centre is ‘current’ and
therefore ‘upper’ or ‘above’ – hanan. If the town is falling apart, the groups
living in hurin need to join hands and take over the powers in hanan. This
pattern blends time and space, story and settlement. All this means that the
twentieth-century fragmentation – described by authors like Borsdorf and his
colleagues, or by Griffin and Ford twenty years before them, and Goldstein
and many others more recently – caused by natural population growth, mass
immigration from rural sectors, and the politics of neo-liberalism and mon-
etarism should be investigated on its own contemporary mapping, not as
the ‘mature body’ of a century-old organism. The CaB metaphor has misled
many contemporary urban theorists, seducing them to follow a mistaken
narrative. A more historically correct theory is inevitable. Recreating the
gridiron pattern, the Andean migrants in Lima, for example, confirmed the
ancient recreation of the urban body. They had indeed ‘mined’ an indige-
nous cultural resource in trying to give social and collective meaning to their
new settlement, modified no doubt over and over again without losing its key
aspects – history legitimizes the community’s present existence.
Thinking is for Doing
The very same happens in JADAT’s storytelling. Drawing out a series of

cultural resources from the Andean past of the neighbourhood population,
JADAT uses cultural knowledge that has survived from ancient times. In
psychology, psychological anthropology and linguistics, the building blocks
of cultural knowledge like this are called schemas. They are structural mental
frameworks for the portrayal, storage and communication of information
about behaviour in specific situations in specific moments (Markus 1977;
Markus and Kitayama 1991; Shore 1996; Nishida 1999; Sumbadze 1999;
Garro 2000; Ouweneel 2005 and 2007). Schemas are also shared cognitive
representations (whether real or imagined) of a class of people, objects,
events or situations, thereby representing aspects of the world as organized
patterns of thought or behaviour, structured clusters of preconceived ideas

that help us to organize social information. Schematic encoding and decod-
ing occur rapidly, automatically and unconsciously. An important contribu-
tion to the founding of schema theory was made by Frederick C. Bartlett
in his book Remembering (1932). Assuming that cultures are organized
collectives with shared customs, institutions and values – of which members
form ‘strong sentiments’ around valued, institutionalized activities – Bartlett
was among the first to take up the question of culture and memory. These
values and their expression through culture shape psychological tendencies
to select certain kinds of information for remembering. The cultures have
assimilated knowledge through their operation and then constituted schemas
upon which the universal process of reconstructive remembering operates.
Perceiving and thinking in terms of schemas enables people as individuals
and as groups to process large amounts of information swiftly and economi-
cally. Instead of having to perceive and remember all the details of each new
person, object or situation someone encounters, they are recognized as an
already encoded schema, so that combining the encoding of this likeliness
with their most distinctive features is sufficient. Driven simultaneously by
structure and meaning and represented propositionally, schemas are actively
constructed neuronal networks.3
Because schemas are interrelated, forming a network to generate interac-
tive behaviour, a change in one schema causes changes in all the others and
finally in the entire system. Nevertheless, specific changes, for example, in
the self-schemas are made only after continued experience of severe failure
in particular situations. Once formed, people tend to keep their schemas
intact and to protect them for as long as sustainable, by uncritically relying
on their own previous judgements. Schemas tend to become increasingly
resistant to inconsistent or contradictory information, although as Hazel
Markus notes, ‘they are never totally invulnerable to it’ (Markus 1977: 64).
Schema-disconfirming information is in general disregarded or reinterpreted.
While individuals build schemas unique to their personal experience, their
schemas are confined to the forces of culture and language. When people
communicate, they depend on shared schemas. Although the number of
schemas is infinite, some may be easily foregrounded (Fiske 1992; Hogg and
Vaughan 1995: 49; Atkinson, et al. 1996: 598–600; Hilton and Von Hippel
1996: 240, 248–51; Kunda and Thagard 1996; Nishida 1999). For example,
where we speak of ‘me’ and ‘I’, the active schema in our brains is called a
self-schema. Schemas about ‘what ought to be’ are referred to as attitudes.
The stereotype is a schema to classify people in general. An important pro-
cedural schema is called an event schema or script, which contains encoded
sequences of events in particular situations or places, or between groups of
people – believed likely to occur and used to guide our behaviour in familiar
situations. Even the experience of illness may be conceptualized as schematic.

Hawaiian psychologists Jeanne Edman and Velma Kameoka have shown how
event schemas that provide information pertaining to illness events exist.
Illness schemas, they write, ‘can be viewed as mental representations of the
illness concept’ (Edman and Kameoka 1997: 252). Illness is the interpre-
tation of disease and a person’s illness schema is the ‘conceptualized link’
between disease and illness – and so is cure.
Storytelling also uses schemas. Cultural psychologist Michael Cole stresses
that a story schema is at hand in the ‘narratives-people-tell-themselves’ (Cole
1996: 119–20, 125). The story schema consists of sets of expectations about
how stories progress. It refers to any kind of story, from the flight of a bird
from one tree to another or the graph representing economic decline, to the
fairy tale of Red Riding Hood or the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
With the aid of artefacts, narratives are transferred through learning to the
next generation. Each narrative survives generation after generation, until
‘something better’ is found. As more instances are encountered, story sche-
mas become more abstract and less tied to concrete instances. They also
become richer and more complex, as more data needs be processed or ‘mod-
ernized’. We may recognize complexes of local schemas as the culture people
inherit and may describe these as ‘living’ at a certain point in space and time.
Cueing is culturally dependent – limited to space and time, to its ‘residence’.
Certain cueing of schema activation is, so to speak, a feature of certain groups
of people who share language, religion, ideologies and norms and values.
They share the same cultural memory. The artefacts are the instruments
people use to assist the process. Cole advises his readers to understand arte-
facts as both material objects manufactured by humans and as something
produced by material culture. This definition includes texts. The artefact is
material and ideal, conceptual. Triggered by artefacts, schemas also tell Latin
Americans how stories should develop, and hence how developments may
advance. Because schemas have places of residence during specific periods of
time, they were no doubt used by the inhabitants of Cajamarquilla to build
their neighbourhood. It is as if the new builders used a specific neighbour-
hood schema to build their houses, the blocks, the central plaza and other
elements. It was a rebuilding of an older plan, the use of a script rooted in his-
tory, which they had inherited from the past. And as indicated, the gridiron
schema is pre-Hispanic and indigenous to Latin America.
At a certain time and place, culture is the activity of the people present,
produced with the resources in their surroundings, the old material world
and the new world they create: information from next of kin, community
members, migrants and the media. ‘Thinking is for doing’, explained Susan
Fiske (1992). Building almost literally on past experience, Cajamarquillas
erected their neighbourhood by acting out replicated and renovated schemas
several times. Because humans are a social species, inevitably – says sociologist
Randall Collins (2004), following Erving Goffman’s (1967) pioneering work
– this ‘doing’ should be understood within the context of interaction, even if
done seemingly completely alone. For Collins, the ‘doing’ is a Durkheimian
ritual, ‘a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention that pro-
duces a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and
symbols of group membership’ (2004: 7). It is a ‘doing’ by a people – from
the lone individual ‘interacting’ with virtual others to larger groups in a spe-
cific place and at a specific moment – and it produces, if done well, feelings
of participation and community, or success and failure at the other end of the
spectrum. The most effective interaction ritual bolsters institutional stability
through its major product, which Collins calls emotional energy, abbreviated
as EE. Humans are hardwired to experience emotions – in fact, without emo-
tions we cannot make even the simplest of decisions. Because the gathering
of EE is such a central motivating force, affect must be viewed as the engine
of social order – and where failed rituals in turn drain emotional energy,
the ‘society’ may collapse. This means that where people interact, there are
always emotions involved.
Seen from this micro-sociological perspective, belonging and housing are
examples of interactions; ‘doings’ with the home, the family, the circle of
friends, the street, the neighbourhood, the district and the city as their stages.
If successful, this interaction process generates increasing EE, sufficient to
‘feel to belong’. Goffman’s and Collins’ theories on social interaction ritual
fit well in this paradigm, as extensions of schema theory. This gives a slightly
different wording of ‘belonging’: as the EE produced by the social interac-
tion of a group of people living together in a street, a quarter or a neigh-
bourhood. The neighbours contribute with their own mental schemas about
living together, and during the interaction process they produce – active of
course, but also passive – new mental schemas, including norms and values.
Collins explicitly presents the process as a chain of interactions holding on
to the mental schemas as long as they are useful to the group. This means
that every new social interaction between neighbours can modify, change or
replace the mental schemas in operation between them at any moment and
in any capacity. Every scholar studying the neighbourhood will typically only
take ‘snapshots’ of this process, concentrating on the mental schemas active
during the interactions that the scholar observes.
As mentioned above, due to the obvious physical restrictions of human
face-to-face actions, most successful interaction rituals can only occur at
lower levels; in other words, at home – as Ann Varley has just stressed – but
also with family and friends, in the street, and with the neighbourhood. The
district or even the city at large involves too many people – practical, not in
principal, because the identification with the larger imagined community
may generate sufficient EE to, for example, follow the national football team
or to go to war enthusiastically (as happened in Europe in 1914). Contrary
to the inner and neighbour circles, the wider society comes with a relatively
loose network, consisting of different kinds of groups and situations. Collins
(2004: 117) points to a theory that ‘predicts [that] the result of cosmopoli-
tan network structure is individualism, relativistic attitudes towards symbols,
abstract rather than concrete thinking’. He proposes that all persons flow
from situation to situation, drawn to those interactions in which their cultural
capital gives them the best emotional energy pay-off. Thinking, too, can be
explained by the internalization of conversations within the flow of situations;
individual selves are thoroughly and continually social, constructed from the
outside in. In Cajamarquilla, during the interaction ritual, the carrying out of
the building schemas created or recreated a sense of community among them
– the EE being the outcome of this activity. Because of the quantity of his-
torical knowledge that is involved, it was a ‘doing’ that could be seen as the
practice of cultural memory. For Goffman, one of Collins’s heroes, this was
performance. The performance of neighbourhood is the same as the inter-
action ritual, acting out scripts historically encoded in the gridiron schema.
This makes the circle round, because it cannot be but the same perfor-
mance that went into JADAT’s films – which explains the outcome of the
filming activities: reduced gang violence. Schema theory helps to understand
that the traditionally recognized gap between ‘real life’ and fiction might have
been exaggerated. Schemas are used to act and behave in situations on stage.
Humans are actors and any role on a stage is scripted; such scripts form parts
of schemas. Collaborative storytelling, founded on cultural schemas, needs
actors performing a character to help us manage social realities by thinking
about them, improving the schemas of their behaviour and potentially devel-
oping better social skills. As mentioned above, fiction rooted in stories and
narrative groups, nations and societies tell about themselves how they should
live and build their settlements – their ‘collective body’. This implies, indeed,
that the adolescents of JADAT created their films directly from life – as, in
fact, they argued in several ‘making-of’ segments published on the YouTube
website and on their DVDs. They also stressed this when I visited JADAT in
2010, adding that they hardly considered their films to be fiction.
Hypothesis
By way of conclusion, I would like to end with a kind of hypothesis: belong-

ing is the EE result of the performance of community. This can be recog-
nized in both the stories told in previous chapters and the ones in JADAT’s
films. The main premise defended so far is that specific cultural resources,
especially the ones focused on Andean time and space, accommodate the
patterns of residence and housing of a community. The ‘performance’ of
the JADAT youth was finally in line with the ‘stage’ itself; something that
their parents – mostly victims of the 1980s warfare – had failed to do. The
intensity of interaction (Collins) recognizable in co-presence, the building
of real or virtual barriers, the raising of mutual attention and an awakening
of a shared mood or collective consciousness can easily be recognized in the
work of JADAT. No wonder that the sequences of the films I have discussed
combine popular music, the pre-Hispanic heritage (the ruins), remnants of
contemporary Andean beliefs (feeding the recently deceased), and the grid-
iron plan in urban design. This very same sequence is present in most other
JADAT films as well. We are looking at a performance of the quintessential
neighbourhood, and the large city of Lima is far away.
In fact, how important is the city in these people’s construction of com-
munity? The major result of the performance of neighbourhood is the trans-
lation of the sense of belonging into ‘Us versus Them’. The neighbourhood
not only comes out of an interaction with Us but sometimes also in reac-
tion to an opponent, hence its probable conflictive nature. Communities
are drawing boundaries, and they do so in a mainly symbolic way (Collins
2004: 32). This kind of effervescent interaction produces heightened mutual
awareness and emotional arousal, which in turn gives rise to sentiments that
‘can only be prolonged by symbols’, ‘group emblems, markers of group identity’
(Collins 2004: 37 and 36, both quotes in italics in the original, also 32). This
observation applies to a range of interactions from, for example, crofting by
neighbours or football hooligans singing club songs in a stadium, to youth
gangs fighting in a major Latin American city. Any form of Us and Them
interaction – aggressive or not – serves the cohesion of identifying and con-
structing ‘natural units’, as anthropologist Peter Mewett (1986) preferred to
call them, a category relevant to the local conceptualization of spatial orga-
nization and discernible only through local ‘knowledge’ – mental schemas –
and without affecting structural links. The ‘natural unit’, constructed during
interaction both in sociocultural space and through interaction chains over
time, is symbolic because it does not have an independent existence – it is not
an officially institutionalized unit – and it is considered ‘natural’ because it
came out as ‘normal’ and ‘proper’ during the interaction process, reflecting
the feeling of, ‘that is the way things are’. A ‘community’ serves a purpose:
the engagement with Them by Us, and thus the establishment of who is Us
and who is not. The boundaries of the community are implied in the con-
textualization of everyday life, not in official legal mapping (Ouweneel 1996:
45, 50).
However, bodily co-presence – where people are assembled in the same
space, affecting each other by their presence (Heider and Warner 2010: 88)
– has been very important over the centuries. In fact, neighbourliness may
have been a stronger bond than kinship. As Peter Laslett argues in his influ-
ential The World We Have Lost (1983: 79), kinship might have historically
been a consequence and not a cause of community formation. This does not
mean that neighbourhood communities were some kind of Arcadian democ-
racies. Also Collins (2004) stresses the fundamental non-egalitarian character
of social interactions. There are always leaders and followers; human society is
fundamentally hierarchical. Someone carries the load of the neighbourhood.
Despite this, most theorists seem to appreciate Durkheim’s view that ‘the
very possibility of society is contingent upon individuals being incorporated
into [the] corporeal experience of solidarity’ (Heider and Warner 2010: 77).4
Doing patterned physical things together, even as simple as following the
rhythms of daily life, induces feelings of togetherness in participants.
In all, much depends upon the intensity of interaction. This can be dis-
cussed by the four essential ingredients of Collins’s theory (Collins 2004:
47–64): co-presence, barriers, mutual attention and shared mood or col-
lective consciousness. Intensive participation in social interaction creates a
lot of EE, and perhaps a stronger bonding than much lower-intensity social
interaction. Most current neighbourhoods in Latin America do not stem
from centuries-old solidarities. Their direct interaction chain goes back a
few generations at the most (although foundational interaction chains, as
cultural memory, would be much older). Usually, it brings people together
from different rural and sometimes urban backgrounds. The barrier to out-
siders, produced during interaction, is much stronger the more intensive
participation is; hence the recognition of a kind of dichotomy from low
and steady to fiery and effervescent. Locations with low social interaction
would most certainly hardly produce barriers to outsiders. The same can be
said for the mutual focus of attention that is required for a successful social
interaction ritual in Collins’s eyes. The latter eventually produces a ‘shared
mood’ at the fiery effervescent side, or as Heider and Warner suggest, ‘col-
lective consciousness’ at the steady side (Heider and Warner 2010: 89–90).
A shared mood of the effervescent type is described in Palloma Menezes
chapter on the Morro Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro. The inheritance
perils behind Erika Grajeda’s narrative about Mexico’s pioneer squatters and
self-builders is potentially fiery interaction as well; as is life in the shadows of
the high-rise apartment buildings in Buenos Aires described by Jan Dohnke
and Corinna Hölzl. A case not truly fiery but certainly close to effervescent,
I think, is offered by Cristina Inclán-Valadez with her description of life
in Geo Bosques of Cuernavaca, Mexico. On the steady side, we find the
neighbourhoods described by Fernando Luiz Lara in Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
and Peter Kellett in Santa Marta, Colombia. Their accents on the buildings
in the neighbourhoods are examples of calm progress. Different are the
neighbourhood histories of Medellín and Buenos Aires, which are hidden

somewhat in the chapters by Gerard and Marijke Martin, Tamera Marko and
Jota Samper, and Fernando Ostuni and Jean-Louis Van Gelder. They look
at these cities from a bird’s-eye view. Michaela Hordijk’s piece on Lima also
suggests a steady side.
Urbanists all stay in neighbourhoods one way or another. Wilson calls his
look at the city ‘multicellular’ – many neighbourhoods next to each other. He
thinks that as part of an ‘ancestral natural environment’ it has really ancient
roots and that this ancient part needs to be recreated in the neighbourhoods
in order for us ‘to feel fully at home in our cities’ (Wilson 2011: 383). The
conclusion from his work in his own neighbourhood leaves no doubt:
After five years of listening and reflecting on my city of Binghamton from

an evolutionary perspective, I feel in a strong position to advise about how
to raise its valleys into hills. … An organism the size of a city must be mul-
ticellular. The cells are small groups of people with the authority to manage
their own affairs in ways that contribute to, or at least do not interfere
with, the larger common good. People come alive in small groups working
together to solve problems of common interest. That is where they feel
safe, known and liked as individuals, and respected for their contributions
to the group. It is the ancestral human social environment, and we will
never fully be at home when we depart from it. (Wilson 2011: 383)
In line with this, the films produced by JADAT are expressions of a regen-
erated Andean story schema, a way of collaborative storytelling based on
Andean self-schemas that trigger behaviour according to the concepts of
hanan/hurin, pachacuti and tinkuy (binding, conjoining of complementary
forces or entities, a power measurement) in order to improve the neighbour-
hood. The interaction as communal action by young men and women was
space related, for it must unite the four corners of a gridironed settlement
with the centre. At the same time it is time related, for it occurs during a
pachacuti of generational chaos. Breathing new life into the community
means in Cajamarquilla that girls must stimulate men to participate in com-
munal actions both at the central plaza and at the edges of the district. If
‘belonging’ is a kind of EE, the outcome of a performance, ‘neighbourhood
studies’ would focus on social interaction theory.
Visitors to Cajamarquilla at the time saw with their own eyes that
JADAT’s project worked. Working on the films – intensive interactions at
the local level – produced high levels of EE, which paid off. Gang violence
diminished and eventually disappeared from the neighbourhood. But that
was almost a side issue, for their actions were directed at the recreation of
community after violence. By distributing their films on DVD among the
adolescents of the community, and projecting them in the central plaza,
JADAT created simulators in their viewers’ minds for future action and
intensively extended their EE to the others in the neighbourhood. JADAT
aims at a regeneration of respectful social attunement – which will be in line
with the schemas triggered by the form of the ‘in the four corners, in the
centre’ characteristic for the settlement of Cajamarquilla itself. Drawing on
sometimes very ancient cultural resources, grounded in their mental schemas
by a large interaction ritual chain, the youth of this district are designing a
truly urban future – a new community in a globalized world. The Young
Adolescents Determined to Succeed show, beyond a doubt, that not only
is city improvement neighbourhood-based, but that all urban studies are in
fact neighbourhood studies.
Notes
1. See the JADAT website at http://jadat.spaces.live.com/. Retrieved 10 October 2009.
2. Julie Ha Tran, another literary scholar, asks the correct questions: ‘[H]ow does the city
construct itself as an organic entity? Where is its mind, its heart? Who draws the contours of
this body and decides on the abject wastes to cast out of it? Julie Ha Tran, a course website,
‘Urban Bodies: The City-Body Metaphor in American Literature and Culture’, at http://
english.ucdavis.edu/courses-schedules/p-ucd/2011/Winter/4/. Retrieved 4 April 2013,
from a course at the University of California at Davis. Not so long ago, critic Peter Ackroyd
(2000) described London in this way; and note this website: http://www.stanford.edu/
dept/german/berlin_class/index.html. Retrieved 4 January 2013; accompanying a January-
February 2013 course at Stanford University.
3. The price to be paid, of course, is distortion, if the schema used to encode it does not fit well.
Research over the past few decades has confirmed Bartlett’s suggestions.
4. In fact, Heider and Warner quote Mellor and Shilling 1997:1.
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List of Contributors
Jan Dohnke Geographer, works as a research assistant at the University of

Kiel. His research focuses on participatory governance and urban conflict,
as well as the dynamics of housing markets and corresponding socio-spatial
implications, and is based on developments in Argentina, Chile and Central
Europe.
Corinna Hölzl Researcher at Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel. In her

Ph.D. thesis she discusses the political impact of urban development conflicts
in Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. Her current research interests focus
on urban development, social movements and emancipatory practices in
Latin American cities.
Erika Denisse Grajeda Ph.D. candidate and graduate fellow at the Urban
Ethnography Lab in the Sociology Department at the University of Texas,
Austin. Erika holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies and Global Policy
Studies from the University of Texas, Austin. Prior to beginning her Ph.D.,
Erika was a research assistant with the Latin American Housing Network
(LAHN), a multi-country project that examines housing practices and poli-
cies in the region and is headed by Peter M. Ward at the Lyndon B. Johnson
School of Public Affairs. Her research interests are in the areas of gender,
work, poverty and immigration.
Michaela Hordijk Assistant professor of International Development Studies

at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development
Research (GPIO) at the University of Amsterdam, and senior researcher at the
Governance for Inclusive Development (GID) and the Programme Group of
the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). She is guest
lecturer at UNESCO-IHE in the water governance chairgroup. In the past
she has worked at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies
(IHS), at the Centre for Latin American Education and Documentation
(CEDLA) and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
– 321 –
3 22 | Lis t of Con t ri bu t ors
Cristina Inclán-Valadez Researcher in the field of city planning with a focus

on emerging patterns of new middle-class groups in cities in Latin America
and Eastern Europe. She holds a Ph.D. in Regional and Urban Planning at
the London School of Economics. She is project coordinator of TRACECA
(Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia) Road Safety II at the Global
Road Safety Partnership, a hosted programme at the International Federation
of the Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland, and has previously worked for
academic institutions in Mexico and the UK.
Peter Kellett Architect and social anthropologist in the Global Urban

Research Unit at Newcastle University and Visiting Professor at Addis Ababa
University, Ethiopia. His research and teaching focuses on the interrelation-
ships between social, material and spatial practices, particularly with reference
to informal housing, settlement planning and poverty alleviation.
Christien Klaufus Assistant professor of Human Geography at the Centre

of Latin American Research and Documentation, Amsterdam. She special-
izes in urban studies and the Andean region. She holds a Master’s degree
in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology. Before working at
CEDLA she was employed at Delft University of Technology.
Fernando Luiz Lara Brazilian architect with degrees from the Federal
University of Minas Gerais and the University of Michigan (Ph.D. 2001).
He is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas, Austin,
where he also serves as Chair of the Brazil Centre at the Lozano Long
Institute of Latin American Studies. The author of several books and hun-
dreds of articles, he writes extensively on a variety of issues regarding the
Latin American built environment.
Gerard Martin Independent social scientist based in Washington DC,

and specializes in dynamics of crime and violence in urban and rural con-
texts. He consults for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development
Bank, USAID and the City of Medellín, among others, and is the former
director of the Colombia programme at Georgetown University. He has
authored four books on the crisis and recovery processes of Bogota and
Medellín, and co-curated related exhibitions at the 2006 Biennale of Venice
and elsewhere.
Marijke Martin Assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts, Groningen

University, The Netherlands, and specializes in the history of modern
architecture and urbanism. In her work she focuses on the ethical aspects
of architecture and urbanisms and on ethics in architectural theories.
L i s t o f C o n tr i b u to r s | 323
She has published several works on urban change in Bogotá and was involved
in the 2006 exhibition of Colombia at the Biennale of Venice.
Palloma Menezes P.hD. candidate in sociology at The Institute of Social and

Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP/UERJ) and
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Vrije University,
Amsterdam. Her main fields of interest include urban sociology, violence
studies and Latin American studies.
Fernando Ostuni Sociologist, Magister in Public Administration and

P.hD. candidate in social sciences (University of Buenos Aires). During the
past decade he has been a member of the Urban Studies Department at
Instituto de Investigaciones “Gino Germani” – UBA. He has also addressed
urban problems from the perspective of social movements and public policy
implementation.
Jean-Louis Van Gelder Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the

Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR). He has done extensive
research on housing and tenure security in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His
other research interests include criminal decision making, personality and
crime and informality in developing countries.
Bryan R. Roberts Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin,

and holds the C.B. Smith Sr. Chair # 1 in US-Mexico Relations. His research
focuses on urban poverty, spatial differentiation and employment in Latin
America; on migration, citizenship and social policy and on urban crime and
violence.
Arij Ouweneel Associate Professor of History at CEDLA since 1985. He

was Special Professor of Historical Anthropology of the Amerindian Peoples
at the Universiteit Utrecht (1999–2004). He graduated cum laude in social-
economic history at the Universiteit Leiden in 1983 and received his P.hD.
cum laude in social-economic history at the same university in 1989. In 2012
he published a book on the Freudian Excuse in film criticism. His current
projects include a study of discrimination in Peru.
Jota (José) Samper Lecturer in International Development and Urban

Design in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP),
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His work lies in the inter-
section between urban informality and urban violent conflict, focusing on
community development and urban upgrading in Latin America.
3 24 | Lis t of Con t ri bu t ors
Tamera Marko Director of the First Year Writing Programme at Emerson

College and Faculty Affiliate at Duke University and Universidad Nacional
de Colombia, Medellín. Her recent publications focus on theories and peda-
gogies of disrupting forced displacement caused by violence in the Americas
and doing the writing necessary for storytellers and her story to cross borders.
Ann Varley Professor in Human Geography, University College, London.

Her research focuses on urban housing and the home, gender, families and
households, and law and urban governance. She has held a residency at the
Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Centre and has been awarded the
Royal Geographical Society’s Busk Medal.
Index
A C
Alliance for Progress, 52, 56 capital, capitalism, 57, 140
Andes (mountains), 11, 242, 260, 262, 264, capitalist economy, 24, 183, 227
307–8 cultural, 170, 183, 202, 227, 275,
apartment, 11, 13, 29, 128, 135, 229, 312
295 economic, 33, 164, 168
building, 14, 53, 132, 169–78, 282, symbolic, 170, 237
314 Central America, 6, 7, 34, 38, 112, 298
architecture, xii, 5, 7, 12, 46, 47, 50, 51, Chicago School of Sociology, 13, 25
64, 65, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 81, 82, 118, childhood, 65, 88, 93, 136, 173, 283, 305,
185–88, 197, 198, 202, 213, 216, 217, 306
220, 221, 231, 232, 238, 250, 259, Chile, 31, 123, 158, 306
267n9, 304 Church, 7, 36, 37, 45, 46, 50, 53, 55, 131,
Argentina, 12, 36, 123, 149–63, 164–79 189, 246, 255, 266n1
auto-construcción, 54, 55, 57, 66, 69 Roman Catholic, 52, 55
See also DIY and self-help housing CIAM, 3, 47, 51, 73n8, 250
citizenship, xii, 8, 12, 38, 43, 70, 71, 125,
B 145n5, 166, 242, 251, 254
barriada, 8, 81–103 civil society, 58, 63, 69, 160, 264
meaning of, 82 clientelism, 9, 69
See also barrio, favela, neighbourhood, clientelistic nature, 30, 36, 37
tugurio clouded title, 108, 111, 120n2
barrio, 43, 45, 61, 69, 165, 173, 175, 188, cocaine, 57, 58, 59, 71
209, 223, 230, 231, 235, 236, 257 collective, 37, 65, 132, 241, 252, 254, 297,
See also barriada, favela, 309, 312
neighbourhood, tugurio action, lobby, organization,
basic need, 54, 150, 220 participation, 13, 28, 38, 57, 91–93,
Belo Horizonte, 1, 12, 209–22, 294, 96–98, 100, 127, 130, 134, 236
314 aspirations, concerns, fear, needs,
Bogotá, 9, 10, 31, 46, 47, 52, 61, 63, 70, struggle, 39, 82, 85, 115, 223, 298
72, 73n7, 73n8–74n8, 74n17, 75n25, consciousness, identity, imaginaries,
109, 229, 258, 260 meaning, memory, 73, 117, 169,
Bolsa Família, 9, 33, 37 173, 220, 279, 308, 313–14
Brasília, 1–2 housing, 158
Brazil, 1–2, 6, 9, 12, 14, 15n1, 33, 34, 60, narratives, phase, process, storytelling,
74n8, 112, 123–48, 209–22, 228, 230, system, 15, 83, 99–100, 142, 196,
238n4, 250, 314 297
Buenos Aires, 7, 14, 28, 32, 33, 149–80, Colombia, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 34, 43–78, 214,
295, 314, 315 223–240, 241–71, 294, 306, 314
– 325 –
3 26 | Index
community, 11, 14, 15, 23, 24, 25, 28, E

29, 35, 38, 55, 56, 82, 83, 85, 91–98, Ecuador, 11, 185, 197, 198, 204, 231
99–100, 112–15, 120n6, 120n8, 121n9, education, 9, 27, 33, 37, 39, 61, 70, 75, 84,
124, 128, 130, 132, 133, 139, 142, 93, 142, 145n5, 150, 152, 156, 160, 189,
144n1, 145n5, 160, 161n4, 173, 185, 211, 224, 227, 255, 258, 259, 260, 262,
188, 189, 191, 218, 226, 235, 241–46, 301
249, 252–57, 259–66, 267n10, 275, 277, higher, 65, 93
294, 297, 299, 301, 304, 308, 310–16 primary, 93
See also gated community/ies secondary, 227
concrete (construction material), 88, 90 ejido, 187
Table 3.2, 91, 189, 190, 196, 209, meaning of, 204n2
211–21, 223, 230 elite, 4, 50, 52, 71, 150, 174, 220, 232, 244,
condominium, condominio, 30, 165, 172 306
consolidated dwellings, 230–32, 235 architecture, 232
consolidated settlements, 1–6, 107, 118, 119 group, 229, 231
consolidation, 13, 23–42, 64, 69, 82, 85, school, 184
87–92, 98, 105, 126, 127, 130, 176, 213, symbol, 232
223, 225, 235, 237 venture, 219
construction sector, 86, 153, 154, 155, 175, enclave, 8, 165, 168, 172, 175, 176
221n1 ethnicity, 11, 26, 47
contraband, 35, 57 exclusion (social), 8, 73, 117, 124, 183, 226
credit, 152, 153, 193–95, 203, 303
See also mortgage F
crime, 7, 23, 25, 26, 38, 39, 43, 46, 47, 49, Fajardo, Sergio, Mayor of Medellín
57–60, 71, 74n10, 123, 124, 139, 142, (2004–07), 63–64, 69, 70, 71, 74n12,
145n4, 172, 248, 256, 298 243, 246–48, 248n4, 258–59
favela, 8, 9, 13, 14, 36, 84, 123–46, 209–21,
D 257, 295, 314
demography, demographic, 13, 29, 51, 60, See also barrio, barriada,
72, 171, 221 neighbourhood, tugurio
design, xiii, 1, 7, 14, 47, 50, 53, 55, 63, 64, favelado, 36, 127
65, 66, 68, 73n1, 74n8, 114, 133, 143, Favela-Bairro programme, 9, 257
149, 151, 155, 160, 169, 175, 182, 185, feminist, 241, 251, 278
187–95, 198, 201, 204, 209, 213, 214, foreign direct investment, 30, 33
216, 219, 220, 221n2, 223, 225, 226, formal sector, 4, 32, 33, 34, 282
229–34, 255, 276, 296, 298, 304, 316 See also informal sector
urban design, 2, 3, 64, 188, 267n9, 307, fragmented (urban), 6–8, 165, 172, 175,
313 304, 305 Figure 13.1, 306
displacement, displaced people, desplazadas,
6, 7, 9, 26, 44, 63, 144, 229, 241–43, G
245, 251, 254, 256–57, 262, 266n2 gang, see youth gang
distinction, 7, 34, 45, 73n5, 166, 170, gated community/ies, 11, 13, 30, 31, 164,
174–77, 196, 202, 223, 230, 231, 234, 165, 166, 169, 171, 176, 189, 191, 220,
250, 277–79 229, 275
DIY, Do It Yourself, 48, 53, 54, 58, 69, 72, gender, 110, 113, 114, 117, 118
275 gentrification, 5, 6, 139, 141, 169
DIY urbanism, 53–57 ghetto, 9, 26, 48
domestic practice, 14, 223, 237 globalization, xi, 7, 85, 183, 248 Figure
drugs, 34, 56, 247 Figure 11.1, 299, 300 11.1
I n d ex | 327
grid (streets, urban pattern), 188, 190, 211, I

225, 302–8, 310, 312–13, 315 identity, xiii, 14, 15, 26, 34, 35, 73, 74n16,
Guadalajara, 14, 106, 107–8 Table 4.1, 96, 98, 99, 135, 166, 167, 174, 182, 184,
108–10, 110 Table 4.2, 111 Table 4.3, 186, 197, 214, 223, 226–28, 276–78,
121n9, 276, 282–83, 289, 291, 292n4 279–81, 282, 286, 289–90, 298, 313
Guatemala, 29, 35, 36 ilusión, 286, 289, 290
Guatemala City, 28, 29, 33, 37, 38 meaning of, 289
import substitution industrialization, 4, 33
H inequality, xii, 4, 8, 12, 33, 43, 59, 117, 150,
health, healthy, 3, 37, 49, 54, 60, 61, 84, 242, 258–59
101n15, 136, 142, 152, 156, 160, 189, informal economy, 32, 34, 35
245, 258, 211, 305, 306 See also informal sector
heritage, 5, 6, 53, 176, 313 informal sector, 4, 32, 33, 35, 36, 55, 89,
high-rise building, 164–78, 314 221n1
history, xii, 2, 6, 61, 85, 96, 144n2, 167, See also formal sector
247, 259, 303, 308, 310 inheritance, xi, 13, 104–21, 182, 314
colonial, 1 innerburb, 106, 120n1
shared, 82, 92, 96, 98 inner city, 5, 29
urban, xii, 48, 241, 294 inner-city slums, 3
home, xi, xii, xiii, 11–15, 34, 55, 82, 85, inner-city tenements, 81, 282
89, 94, 96, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, insecurity, 5, 6, 7, 37–38, 49, 58, 60, 62,
115–20, 126, 130, 132, 134–37, 139, 64, 71, 84, 123–24, 172, 190, 202, 234,
141, 145n3, 161n2, 166, 173, 182, 184, 277
185, 189, 191, 193–97, 199, 200, 201, See also security
203, 215, 216, 234, 241, 243, 251–56, Internet, 39, 68, 70, 71, 90, 94 Table 3.3,
263, 266n1, 275–92, 295, 301, 302, 307, 128, 221, 263
311, 315 invasion, 26, 29, 44, 53, 54, 55, 73n3, 83,
builder, 110, 187, 194 84, 85, 88, 91, 92, 95, 99, 101n12, n13,
improvement, 92 n17, 218, 225, 226, 238n2, 246, 253,
less, 58, 233 257
town, 245
homeowner, 104, 105, 110 Table 4.2, 120, L
186 La Violencia (Colombia), 52, 59, 250
household, 8, 11, 27, 28, 32, 33, 39, 45, 81, labour market, 26, 27, 31–35, 126
85, 86, 88–94, 100n4, 101n11, 104–11, library, 54, 62, 74n13, 221, 245, 260
115–19, 152, 210, 218, 219, 220, 224, Lima, 11, 13, 15, 28, 30, 31, 74n8, 81–101,
227, 228 Figure 10.2b, 230, 232, 235, 221, 294, 297, 299, 303, 306, 308, 313,
236, 238n6, 292n5 315
housing
model, 182, 191, 203, 204 M
need, 11, 28, 85, 99, 100, 105, 151, mall, 7, 8, 30, 31, 33, 305 Figure 13.1
159 master plan, 3, 51, 53, 64, 66, 74n15, 191,
policy, 149–61 250
problem, 11, 52, 157, 159, 211 Medellín, 10, 13, 14, 43–75, 241–67, 294,
project, 14, 28, 47, 53, 154, 156 Figure 295, 315
6.1, 181, 282 media, the, 34, 35, 38, 59, 60, 130, 140,
rental housing, 283 Figure 12.1 142, 170, 172, 175, 214, 215, 229, 245,
type, 13, 176, 229, 230 246, 247, 266n1, 310
human rights, 60, 133, 266n1 megacities, xiii, 5, 6, 10
3 28 | Index
metropolitan, 27–31, 50, 63, 86, 152, 155, organization, 61, 91, 93, 97
164 reputation, xiii, 14, 169
Mexico, xi, 12, 13, 14, 27, 31–38, 60,
104–22, 181–206, 238n5, 275–93, 314 O
Mexico City, 28–30, 33, 69, 295, 306, obra negra, 227
307 meaning of, 192
middle class, xiii, 4, 7, 8, 14, 29, 37, 72, 152,
164, 165, 172, 175, 178n16, 182–86, P
212–14, 219, 229, 305 Figure 13.1 paramilitary, 59–60, 63, 71, 247 Figure 11.1,
middle-class housing, 30, 165, 171, 248n2, 248n3, 249, 254, 261
168n16, 191, 209, 212–14, 220, participatory, 2, 9, 43, 49, 63, 85, 97,
229, 233, 239 145n5, 264, 265
middle-class lifestyle, 186, 189, 193, Peñalosa, Enrique, Mayor of Bogotá
196, 200, 202, 203, 252 (1998–2001), 9, 61, 260
middle-class neighbourhood, 45, 53, Peru, 12, 81–103, 123, 297, 301–3
124, 164, 168, 173, 188 plaza, 74n13, 188, 245, 265, 299, 301,
middle-class residents, 41 306–7, 310, 315
military, 52, 58, 63, 144n1, 247 Figure 11.1, poblador, 36, 86, 88, 90, 101n13,
248n3, 249, 257 164–77
migration, 25–29, 36, 45, 242, 249, 251, police, 33, 35, 36, 37, 58, 59, 60, 61, 123,
278, 308 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 137, 142,
rural-urban, xii, 23, 27, 123, 243 144n1, 211, 248, 259, 266n1
transnational, 11, 256 politics, 8, 23, 30, 31, 36, 38, 64, 71,
mobility, 2, 11, 25, 51, 183, 245, 262, 145n4, 246, 250, 261, 277, 278, 308
266n1, 277, 278, 279, 286, 287, 288, domopolitics, 277
289, 305 Figure 13.1 poverty, 5, 7, 9, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31–35, 38,
physical, 59 47, 48, 57, 59, 69, 70, 81, 86, 101n15,
population, 23, 24, 27–29 104, 106, 124, 127, 152, 176, 183,
residential, 25, 26, 106, 108 186, 220, 226, 229, 245, 263, 289, 300,
social, xii, 38, 55, 186, 189, 204n6, 301 303
spatial, 171 culture of poverty, 26, 81
Mockus, Antanas, Mayor of Bogotá privada, 181, 182, 188, 190, 192, 201, 202
(1995–97, 2001–3), 9, 61, 70, 75n25, meaning of, 181
258, 260 private security, see security
mortgage, 152–53, 187, 199, 201–3 property, 8, 58, 100, 104–21, 140, 141,
See also credit 173, 176, 191
private, 291
N title, 44, 57, 64, 129
neo-liberal city, 11 rights, 6
measures, 7, 8 public security, see security
model, 152 public space, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 31, 53, 55, 64,
policy, policies, xii, 5, 6, 149, 152 65, 68, 92, 128–29, 145n4, 165, 173,
state, 183 258, 260, 263, 265, 295
wave, 164 public transport, see transport
neo-liberalism, 5, 308 pueblo, 49, 123, 308
neighbourhood, see barrio, barriada, favela,
tugurio R
association, 56, 58, 139 real estate, 33, 157
consolidation, see consolidation agent, 170, 176, 185
I n d ex | 329
boom, 14, 168 solidarity, 2, 11, 26, 28, 38, 117, 127,
development, 126, 165, 166, 172, 177, 145n5, 311, 314
178n16 speculation, 31, 87, 139, 178n16
religion, religious, 37, 127, 255, 310 sports, 61, 65, 142, 172, 189, 190
revitalization, 2, 6, 7 squatter, 104, 110, 229, 233, 255, 314
‘right to the city’, 47, 256, 262, 294 squatter settlement, 3, 37, 81, 82, 83,
Rio de Janeiro, 1, 2, 9, 12, 13, 37, 46, 83 Table 3.1, 84, 85, 115, 123, 224,
75n21, 84, 123–45, 217, 257, 294, 295
314 street vendor, peddler, 6, 10, 32, 129,
145n4, 186
S
Salazar, Alonso, Mayor of Medellín T
(2008–11), 64, 69, 71, 74n12, 74n15, tenure, 87, 98, 92, 111, 123
243 territory, territorially, xi, 6, 26, 53, 60,
Santiago de Chile, 11, 30, 32, 39n4, 175 61–62, 64, 100, 123, 128, 131, 144n1,
São Paulo, 1, 2, 8, 33, 38, 254 150, 151, 159, 241, 247, 248n1, 249,
security, 7–9, 31, 32–34, 57–59, 63, 66, 252, 253, 256, 257, 277, 298, 301
92, 101n15, 143, 145n4, 165, 170–73, tourism, 137, 139, 140, 143, 170
175–77, 178n16, 182, 191, 193, 196, transport, transportation, 29–31, 33–34, 45,
198, 199, 202, 232–34, 248–49, 277, 130, 137, 158, 160, 172, 189, 199, 204,
279, 301, 323 245, 258, 260, 261, 296
private, 7, 31, 35, 254 public, 55, 62, 64
public, 124, 142 trust, 28, 35, 36, 37, 75n22, 171, 266n1,
See also insecurity 277
segregation, xii, 8, 30–31, 118, 149 distrust, 45, 71, 74n11, 178n16
self-, 165, 173 mistrust, 59, 97
spatial, 31, 62, 156, 160 tugurio, 44, 57
residential, 25, 27, 30 See also barrio, barriada, favela,
self-help housing, 13, 81–84, 100n2, 104, neighbourhood
108, 123, 150 Turner, John FC, 81–84, 88–91, 98–100,
adaptations, xi 160, 294, 296
areas, 289
building, 101n18, 250 U
consolidation, 105 UNESCO, 5, 54
endeavours, 111 university, 51, 61, 63, 93, 188, 204n6, 210,
settlements, 106, 109, 118, 158, 282 266, 266n1, 303
solutions, xii urban development, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 61,
See also auto-construcción and DIY 63, 64, 74n17, 105, 151, 154, 164, 175,
slum, 3–4, 44, 46–48, 53, 61, 81, 83, 84, 305, 306
100, 123, 149, 153, 157–59, 190, 250 urban fabric, 46, 62, 69, 169, 243, 251
of hope/of despair contrast, 4, 81,
100 V
See also favela vecindad, 283
social cohesion, 1, 13, 23, 35–38 meaning of, 190, 282
social movement, 30, 47, 57, 59, 130, 133, Venezuela, 6, 69, 228, 301
150, 160 violence, xii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 23, 34, 38,
social urbanism, 43, 46, 48, 66–70, 71, 72, 39, 43, 44, 46, 49, 57–63, 67, 71, 72, 84,
74n12 124, 137, 229, 234, 241–51, 258, 259,
See also Medellín 261–71, 302
3 30 | Index
gang violence, 15, 34, 38, 48, 297–99, 312, Y

315 youth, 31, 60, 61, 145n5, 313, 316
gang, 26, 34, 35, 59, 313
W group, 26, 60, 86, 297
World Bank, 5, 75n21, 257 organization, 15, 297, 299
(un)employment, 34, 39, 61

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Housing and Belonging in Latin America

Cedla Latin America Studies (CLAS)

Series Editorial Board

© 2015 Christien Klaufus and Arij Ouweneel

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 978-1-78238-740-4 (hardback)

List of Figures and Tables viii

Introduction. Taking up Residency: Spatial Reconfigurations and the

Part I: The Latin American Context

Chapter 1. The Consolidation of the Latin American City and the

Chapter 2. Proximity, Crime, Politics and Design: Medellín’s Popular

Part II: Family and Belonging in Consolidated Settlements

Chapter 3. Debe Ser Esfuerzo Propio: Aspirations and Belongings of

Chapter 4. On Housing, Inheritance and Succession Among Pioneer

Chapter 5. Favela Modelo: A Study on Housing, Belonging and

Part III: Spaces of the Urban Middle Class

Chapter 6. Housing Policy in the City of Buenos Aires: Some

Chapter 7. The Boom of High-rise Apartment Buildings in Buenos

Chapter 8. Living With Style in My Casa GEO: Large-scale Housing

Part IV: Architectural and Spatial Representations

Chapter 9. Illiterate Modernists: Tracking the Dissemination of

Chapter 10. Towards Belonging: Informal Design and Dwelling

Chapter 11. (Re)Building the City of Medellín: Beyond State

Chapter 13. One Block at a Time: Performing the Neighbourhood 294

List of Contributors 321

2.1 Mother with memorial for killed son 56

2.2 Medellín seen from the hills 65

3.1 Neighbourhood consolidation and new fences in Trebol

3.2 Professional services now on offer in Trebol Azul – Pampas

5.1 Pico residents in protest 134

5.2a & b The Morro Santa Marta tramway 138

5.3a & b The Morro Santa Marta as a tourist attraction 139

5.4 Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta Samba School crowded

6.1 Location of housing projects developed by the Programa

8.1 Material objects 199

9.1 Diagram of the favela construction process 210

9.2 Favela da Serra, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 210

9.3 A middle-class modernist house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil 213

9.4 A construction worker drawing with a piece of ceramic

10.2a & b Dwellings in the early stages are made from

10.3a, b & c Well-consolidated dwellings 232

10.5a, b & c The changing house of Nancy and Leopoldo: 1986,

11.1 Homicide rate in Colombia vs. Medellín from 1975 to

12.1 Rental housing in San Mateo, Guadalajara 283

12.2 ‘Even under the bed’: Some of the plants in Maria’s

12.3 Home and ilusión: Dreaming of a car in Los Encinos 290

13.1 Two models of urban development in Latin America

3.1 Squatter settlement: Progressive development 83

3.2 Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010 90

3.3 Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010 94

3.4 Percentage of second generation and still living with

4.1 Household structures and characteristics in

4.2 Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder

4.3 Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about

This book addresses Latin American cities as places of residence in a contem-

from the social sciences and humanities. Social anthropological accounts

to improve the overall quality of housing in cities. It re-considers the role

Linger 1992). Curitiba became famous among international urban designers

[T]he “rhythm of Brasília” [was] defined as “36 hours of work a day — 12

The utopian rhythm of modernity resulted in a sense of fellowship during the

Knowledge about Latin American cities and urbanization processes is histori-

List of Figures and Tables viii

Chapter 13. One Block at a Time: Performing the Neighbourhood 294

List of Contributors 321

2.1 Mother with memorial for killed son 56

2.2 Medellín seen from the hills 65

3.1 Neighbourhood consolidation and new fences in Trebol

3.2 Professional services now on offer in Trebol Azul – Pampas

5.1 Pico residents in protest 134

5.2a & b The Morro Santa Marta tramway 138

5.3a & b The Morro Santa Marta as a tourist attraction 139

5.4 Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta Samba School crowded

6.1 Location of housing projects developed by the Programa

8.1 Material objects 199

9.1 Diagram of the favela construction process 210

9.2 Favela da Serra, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 210

9.3 A middle-class modernist house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil 213

9.4 A construction worker drawing with a piece of ceramic

10.2a & b Dwellings in the early stages are made from

10.3a, b & c Well-consolidated dwellings 232

10.5a, b & c The changing house of Nancy and Leopoldo: 1986,

11.1 Homicide rate in Colombia vs. Medellín from 1975 to

12.1 Rental housing in San Mateo, Guadalajara 283

12.2 ‘Even under the bed’: Some of the plants in Maria’s

12.3 Home and ilusión: Dreaming of a car in Los Encinos 290

13.1 Two models of urban development in Latin America

3.1 Squatter settlement: Progressive development 83

3.2 Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010 90

3.3 Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010 94

3.4 Percentage of second generation and still living with

4.1 Household structures and characteristics in

4.2 Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder

4.3 Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about

rbanization. My spatial dimension is family, neighbourhood and city. The

‘belonging’ to a combination of spatial and mental bonds as associated to

administration – when consolidating informal housing – often decided to

– the feeling of belonging and identification, of being a part of a

individual to experience his or her own relationship with the collective