Bottom-up Urban Planning Alternatives in Precarious Latin American Contexts: Politics, Architecture and Appropriation to the Social Production of Habitat and Housing in Lima, Peru

Abstract

Facing excluding policies that don’t confront urban poverty situations in precarious Latin-American territories, the present article tries to formulate some guidelines based on urbanism and architecture to guide mass housing public policies in the Peruvian case, more specifically in Lima. The main object of this study was modern housing sets of Lima, those planned under the imported European model of a garden city that were adopted, however, to the inhabitants needs in a progressive way. The “another modernity” concept from Franco, C. helps us interpret the change of the planned model as an association between a dominated static city (the garden city) and an everyday dynamic city (the informal city) in which the appropriation and self-construction are essential. Strategies become readable from Habraken’s theory of “level uses” and Salignaro’s“ biologic systems”. That makes us think about the need for change in the neoliberal housing policies for low-income groups to policies that can move away from the idea of housing as a product and that can foment housing as a process; in which the residents become creative co-producers of their constructed surroundings and the social production of habitat and housing is possible. We analyze the role of the State, local government, architects and city planners when planning inclusive and resilient neighborhoods that adapt to the changing resident needs on their own initiative and self-management.