Housing and Belonging in Latin America 9781782387411

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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.] VOLUME 98 Latin America Facing China: South-South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus Edited by Alex E. Fernández Jilberto and Barbara Hogenboom VOLUME 99 Foodscapes, Foodfields and Identities in Yucatán Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz VOLUME 100 Urban Residence: Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador Christien Klaufus VOLUME 101 Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles Edited by Alex Latta and Hannah Wittman VOLUME 102 Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy Edited by Jennifer L. Burrell and Ellen Moodie VOLUME 103 Dignity for the Voiceless: William Assies’s Anthropological Work in Context 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 978-1-78238741-1 (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

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Prefacexi Introduction. Taking up Residency: Spatial Reconfigurations and the Struggle to Belong in Urban Latin America Christien Klaufus

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Part I: The Latin American Context Chapter 1.  The Consolidation of the Latin American City and the Changing Bases for Social Order Bryan R. Roberts

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Chapter 2.  Proximity, Crime, Politics and Design: Medellín’s Popular Neighbourhoods and the Experience of Belonging Gerard Martin and Marijke Martin

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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 Erika Denisse Grajeda

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Contents

Chapter 5.  Favela Modelo: A Study on Housing, Belonging and Civic Engagement in a ‘Pacified’ Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Palloma Menezes

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Part III: Spaces of the Urban Middle Class Chapter 6.  Housing Policy in the City of Buenos Aires: Some Reflections on the Programa Federal Fernando Ostuni and Jean-Louis Van Gelder

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Chapter 7.  The Boom of High-rise Apartment Buildings in Buenos Aires: New Spaces of Residentiality or a Motor of Disintegration? Jan Dohnke and Corinna Hölzl

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Chapter 8.  Living With Style in My Casa GEO: Large-scale Housing Conjuntos in Urban Mexico Cristina Inclán-Valadez

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Part IV: Architectural and Spatial Representations Chapter 9.  Illiterate Modernists: Tracking the Dissemination of Architectural Knowledge in Brazilian Favelas Fernando Luiz Lara

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Chapter 10.  Towards Belonging: Informal Design and Dwelling Practices in Northern Colombia Peter Kellett

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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 Ann Varley

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C o n ten ts

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

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List of Contributors

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Index325

Figures and Tables

Figures   2.1

Mother with memorial for killed son

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  2.2

Medellín seen from the hills

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  3.1 Neighbourhood consolidation and new fences in Trebol Azul – Pampas de San Juan (Lima)

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

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  5.1

Pico residents in protest

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  5.2a  & b The Morro Santa Marta tramway

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

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  5.4 Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta Samba School crowded with people from outside the favela

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  6.1 Location of housing projects developed by the Programa Federal in the City of Buenos Aires’ neighbourhoods

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  8.1

Material objects

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  9.1

Diagram of the favela construction process

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  9.2

Favela da Serra, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

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  9.3

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

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Fi g u r es a n d T a b l es

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  9.4 A construction worker drawing with a piece of ceramic brick on the floor to explain his decision process

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  10.1a & b Olga, Jesus and their family outside their house in 1991 and 2008

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  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)

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  10.3a, b & c Well-consolidated dwellings

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  10.4a & b Many recent facades are more colourful and use more playful forms

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  10.5a, b & c The changing house of Nancy and Leopoldo: 1986, 1989 and 2008 

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  11.1 Homicide rate in Colombia vs. Medellín from 1975 to 2012 

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  12.1

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Rental housing in San Mateo, Guadalajara

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

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  12.3

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Home and ilusión: Dreaming of a car in Los Encinos

  13.1 Two models of urban development in Latin America after Borsdorf et al.

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Tables   3.1

Squatter settlement: Progressive development

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  3.2

Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010

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  3.3

Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010

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  3.4 Percentage of second generation and still living with parents, in age classes (2010)

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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

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  4.2 Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder and marital status

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  4.3 Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about will-making 

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Preface

This book addresses Latin American cities as places of residence in a contemporary context, in which the worldwide growth of urban populations, influences 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 disintegration 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 informality 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 territories, 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 –

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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 contemporary 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 identification 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, architecture, 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 histories 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 studies. 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 literature, 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

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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 cohesion, 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 international attention from architects and social scientists alike (Holston 1989; M.E. Kohlsdorf, G. Kohlsdorf and de Holanda 2010). Situated at the crossroads 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–

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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 unbalanced 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 creating 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 classbased 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 festivals 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 identification 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

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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 transformations 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 historically 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 scientific 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

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symptomatic for larger social problems that affect urban societies, the shortcomings of the planificación thesis became an outright threat to the development 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-àvis 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 urbanites 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 substitution 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 economic 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).

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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 question 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 urbanism (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 attraction and urban expansion. Aware of these shifting patterns, tourist cities like Havana, Cartagena de Indias, Puebla and Cuzco presented urban regeneration plans to ‘revitalize’ the centre and protect its historical architecture.

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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 ‘revitalization’, 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 cultural strategies to enhance the visual appeal of urban spaces developed as major trends … Yet these years were also the watershed in the institutionalization 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 insecurity, 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 institutions and a concomitant privatization of infrastructure, urban facilities and spaces. With a long history of liberal legalism, individual property rights had

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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 coherence 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 architecture 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 displaced 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 transformations 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 globalization 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 neighbourhoods 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 studies 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 authority void; the economic hardships in combination with increased consumer

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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 problematic 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 culture arises out of the experience and perception of exclusion. In this privatized 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 commercial 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 slaughtering. The scholarly debate about the social exclusion of the majority has redirected its focus towards the question of citizenship, and to the right-tothe-city as the condition for urban reform. With the ‘right to habitation’ and the ‘right to participation’ as the main constituents of citizenship, the activities 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).

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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 conditional cash-­transfer programme, poverty-driven problems concerning housing 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 transformation. 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 clientelism. 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 surprising ‘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’.

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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 proportionate 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 intermediate 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 societies 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 systems 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 accompanied 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-

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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 negative associations with other residents in their own community than with residents 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 difficult 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 proclaimed 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 manoeuvre 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 microlevel 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

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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 customers to formal planning perspectives and private sector involvement. Without stealing attention from the structural inequalities that continue to characterize 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 insufficiencies, 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 geographical 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 humanities: 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

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‘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 belonging. 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 fragmented 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 progress. 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 settlement 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 settlements. 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 professionals to improve the overall quality of housing in cities. It reconsiders

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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 morphology 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 condition of millions of Mexican families over the last fifteen years. She claims that a new cultural trend, ‘the GEO trend’, produces new forms of suburban 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 representations 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 settlements, 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 neighbourhoods to contemporary urban societies in a theoretical way. Based on research carried out in four different areas of the city of Guadalajara, Mexico,

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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 neighbourhood 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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Plöger, J. 2010. ‘Territory, Local Governance, and Urban Transformation: The Processes of Urban Enclave Building in Lima, Peru’, in P. van Lindert and O. Verkoren (eds), Decentralized Development in Latin America: Experiences in Local Governance and Local Development. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, and New York: Springer, pp. 35–48. Riley, E., J. Fiori and R. Ramirez. 2001. ‘Favela Bairro and a New Generation of Housing Programmes for the Urban Poor’, Geoforum 32: 521–31. Roberts, B. 2005. ‘Globalization and Latin American Cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29(1): 110–23. Roberts, B. and A. Portes. 2006. ‘Coping with the Free Market City: Collective Action in Six Latin American Cities at the End of the Twentieth Century’, Latin American Research Review 41(2): 57–83. Robinson, J. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2011. ‘Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35(1): 1–23. Rodgers, D. 2004. ‘“Disembedding” the City: Crime, Insecurity and Spatial Organization in Managua, Nicaragua’, Environment and Urbanization 16(2): 113–23. ———. 2009. ‘Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence, and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002’, in G. Jones and D. Rodgers (eds), Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 25–44. Rodgers, D., J. Beall and R. Kanbur. 2012. ‘Towards a New Research Agenda for 21st Century Latin American Urban Development’, in D. Rodgers, J. Beall and R. Kanbur (eds), Latin American Urban Development into the 21st Century: Towards a Renewed Perspective on the City. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 259–64. Rolnik, R. 2001. ‘Territorial Exclusion and Violence: The Case of the State of São Paulo, Brazil’, Geoforum 32(4): 471–82. Rosenthal, A. 2000. ‘Spectacle, Fear, and Protest: A Guide to the History of Urban Public Space in Latin America’, Social Science History 24(1): 33–73. Salcedo, R. and Á. Torres. 2004. ‘Gated Communities in Santiago: Wall or Frontier?’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28(1): 27–44. Saraví, G. 2004. ‘Urban Segregation and Public Space: Young People in Enclaves of Structural Poverty’, CEPAL Review 83: 31–46. Sassen, S. 1991. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Satterthwaite, D. 2007. ‘The Transition to a Predominantly Urban World and Its Underpinnings’. London: International Institute for Environment and Development, Human Settlements Discussion Paper - Urban Change 4. Scarpaci, J. 2005. Plazas and Barrios: Heritage Tourism and Globalization in the Latin American Centro Histórico. Tucson, AR: University of Arizona Press. Segre, R. 2010. ‘Formal-Informal Connections in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 163–79. Swanson, K. 2007. ‘Revanchist Urbanism Heads South: The Regulation of Indigenous Beggars and Street Vendors in Ecuador’, Antipode 39(4): 708–28. Turner, J. 1968a. ‘Housing Priorities, Settlement Patterns, and Urban Development in Modernizing Countries’, Journal of the American Planning Association 34(6): 354–63. ———. 1968b. ‘The Squatter Settlement: Architecture that Works’, Architectural Design 38: 355–60. ———. 1977. Housing By People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. New York: Pantheon Books.

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UN (United Nations). 2008. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision, Executive Summary. New York: United Nations. Wade, P. 1997. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. Ward, P.M. 1993. ‘The Latin American Inner City: Differences of Degree or of Kind?’, Environment and Planning A 25(8): 1131–160. Wilson, F. 2004. ‘Indian Citizenship and the Discourse of Hygiene/Disease in NineteenthCentury Peru’, Bulletin of Latin American Research 23(2): 165–80. Whitten, N. 2003. ‘Introduction’, in N. Whitten (ed.), Millennial Ecuador: Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Social Dynamics. Iowa City, IO: University of Iowa Press, pp. 1–45. Zukin, S. 1995. The Cultures of Cities. Oxford, and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Part I

The Latin American Context

1

The Consolidation of the Latin 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 characterized by urban disorder. The concepts used to identify the sources of disorganization 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 characteristics 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 competitive 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 –

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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 housing 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

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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 disorganization 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: neighbourhood effects, market-based competition for living space, urban residential 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 influenced 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

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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 families 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 territory, 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 disorganization 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, particularly 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

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that are the structural basis of urban social disorganization in the U.S. literature. 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 migrating 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 challenging 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 education. 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

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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 relatively 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 accommodate 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 settlements 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 growing 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

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areas are redeveloped for commerce and higher-end housing. This, when added to the new generations of family members who cannot be accommodated 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 neighbourhood cohesion – the need to work together to secure space. The children 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 housing 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 provide 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 housing and obtain their own services. When city governments provided s­ ervices

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and roads to these settlements, developers could then develop tracts of middle-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 concentration 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 formidable 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 piecemeal 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 transport- / 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 metropolitan 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 smallscale segregation described by Sabatini, Cáceres and Cerda (2001), which

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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 disorganization. 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 marginal 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 environment, 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 settlement 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

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production and street trade. There was a synergy between informal housing arrangements and informal economic activity – self-constructed housing would be adapted to a workshop, petty commerce and other domestic economic 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 economically active population worked informally, whether measured by the low productivity 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 assembly 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 contain 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 unemployed, and only with probing said that they maintained themselves and their families through changas. In Mexico, recorded unemployment rates were

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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 economic 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, communications and services, particularly producer services, such as finance, insurance, 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 achievement 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.

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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 spatially 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 considerable 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 previously 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 economic activities of youth gangs. To pay for their own consumption of drugs, unemployed youth also engage in other types of illegal activity, such as robbery 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

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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 outnumber 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 disorganization and reorganization accompanying the three structural processes 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 components are trust in public figures and confidence in political and other major social institutions. The objective components are participation in community 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 disorganization 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 services 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

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­ 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 favelados (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 neighbourhood committees was high, and these were committees created by the residents, 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 infrastructure and roads. The nearest that most low-income settlements came to relations 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 irrelevant to people like themselves. In my 1968 survey of the two low-income neighbourhoods, the majority of respondents said that they had no confidence 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.

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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 countervailing 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 government, 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 development 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 neighbourhood, 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-income 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 programmes 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,

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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 politics 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 relation 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 fatalistically reproduced material poverty, inhibiting enterprise and collective organization, 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

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Duro (hard hand) policy in Honduras, anyone with a tattoo was subject to arrest. One consequence is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gang members 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 contemporary 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 contemporary 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 integrated 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.

References Aliaga, L. 2012. ‘Shaping Informality in the Free Market City: A Comparative Spatial Analysis of Street Vending Policies in Lima and Bogotá’, Ph.D. Dissertation Austin, TX: Department of Sociology, University of Texas.

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Arias, P. and J. Durand (eds). 2008. Mexicanos en Chicago: Diario de Campo de Robert Redfield, 1924–1925. Guadalajara: Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Auyero, J. 2001. Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. CEPAL (Comisión Económica Para América Latina y el Caribe). 1986. Transición Estructural, Movilidad Ocupacional y Crisis Social en America Latina, 1960–1983. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL Documento LC/R.547. Caldeira, T. 1999. ‘Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation’, in S. Low (ed.), Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 83–107. Chan, J., H.P. To and E. Chan. 2006. ‘Reconsidering Social Cohesion: Developing a Definition and Analytical Framework for Empirical Research’, Social Indicators Research 75(2): 273–302. Cornelius, W. 1975. Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dosh, P. 2010. Demanding the Land: Urban Popular Movements in Peru and Ecuador, 1990– 2005. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Doughty, P. 1995. ‘Revisiting Lima’s Migrant Regional Associations’, in T. Altamirano and L. Hirobayashi (eds), The Regional Cultures of Latin America. Washington, DC: Society for Latin American Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, pp. 67–96. Duhau, E. 2003. ‘División del Espacio Metropolitano y Movilidad Residencial’, Papeles de Población, Nueva época 9(36): 161–210. Gilbert, A. 1996. ‘Land, Housing, and Infrastructure in Latin America’s Mega Cities’, in A. Gilbert (ed.), The Mega-city in Latin America. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Hannerz, U. 1969. Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community. New York: Columbia University Press. Hawley, A. 1950. Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure. New York: The Ronald Press Company. Jones, G.A. and D. Rodgers (eds). 2009. Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kowarick, L. 1977. The Logic of Disorder: Capitalist Expansion in the Metropolitan Area of Greater São Paulo. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. Leacock, E. (ed.) 1971. The Culture of Poverty: A Critique. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lewis, O. 1968. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty. New York: Random House. Lomnitz, L. 1977. Networks and Marginality: Life in a Mexican Shantytown. New York: Academic Press. López-Calva, L.F. and N. Lustig (eds). 2010. Declining Inequality in Latin America: A Decade of Progress? New York: United Nations Development Programme. Mangin, W. 1967. ‘Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution’, Latin American Research Review 2(3): 65–98. Massey, D. and R.J. Sampson. 2009. ‘Moynihan Redux: Legacies and Lessons’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621: 6–27. Monsiváis, C. 2002. ‘Citizenship and Urban Violence: Nightmares in the Open Air’, in S. Rotker and K. Goldman (eds), Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 240–47. Moser, C.O.N. and C. McIlwaine (eds). 2004. Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor Perceptions from Columbia and Guatemala. New York: Routledge.

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Park, R.E. 1915. ‘The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment’, The American Journal of Sociology 20(5): 577–612. Pérez Sáinz, J.P. 2005. ‘Exclusion and Employability: The New Labor Force Dynamics in Latin America’, in C.H. Wood and B. Roberts (eds), Rethinking Development in Latin America. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, pp. 205–31. Perlman, J.E. 1976. The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Portes, A., M. Castells and L.A. Benton (eds). 1989. The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Portes, A. and B. Roberts. 2005. ‘The Free Market City: Latin American Urbanization in the Years of the Neoliberal Experiment’, Studies in Comparative National Development 40(1): 43–82. Roberts, B. 1973. Organizing Strangers: Poor Families in Guatemala City. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ———. 2010. ‘Moving On and Moving Back: Rethinking Inequality and Migration in the Latin American City’, Journal of Latin American Studies 42: 587–614. Roberts, B. and A. Portes. 2006. ‘Coping With the Free Market City: Urban Collective Action in Latin America at the End of the Century’, Latin American Research Review 41(1): 57–83. Roberts, B. and R. Wilson. 2009. Urban Segregation and Governance in the Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sabatini, F., G. Cáceres and J. Cerda. 2001. ‘Segregación Residencial en las Principales Ciudades Chilenas: Tendencias de las Tres Últimas Décadas y Posibles Cursos de Acción’, EURE, Latin American Journal of Regional and Urban Studies 27(82): 21–42. Sampson R.J. 2009. ‘Disparity and Diversity in the Contemporary City: Social (Dis)order Revisited’, The British Journal of Sociology 60(1): 1–31. Sampson R.J. and W.B. Groves. 1989. ‘Community Structure and Crime: Testing SocialDisorganization Theory’, The American Journal of Sociology 94(4): 774–802. Shaw, C.R. and H.D. McKay. 1942. Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas: A Study of Rates of Delinquents in Relation to Differential Characteristics of Local Communities in American Cities. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Simmel, G. 1971 [1903]. ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in D. Levine (ed.), Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, pp. 324–39. Small, M.L., D.J. Harding and M. Lamont. 2010. ‘Reconsidering Culture and Poverty’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629: 6–27. Smith, C. 2005. Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model T. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sobrino, J. 2010. Migración Interna en México Durante el Siglo XX. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Población. Spagnolo, L. 2011. ‘Economic Inequality in The Southern Cone’, Ph.D. Dissertation Austin, TX: Department of Sociology, University of Texas. Suttles, G. 1974. The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thomas, W.I. and M. Janowitz. 1966 [1927]. W.I. Thomas on Social Organization and Social Personality: Selected Papers. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tokman, V. 1991. ‘The Informal Economy in Latin America’, in G. Standing and V.E. Tokman (eds), Towards Social Adjustment: Labour Market Issues in Structural Adjustment. Geneva: International Labour Office, pp. 141–59.

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Turner, J.F.C. 1968. ‘Housing Priorities, Settlement Patterns, and Urban Development in Modernizing Countries’, Journal of the American Planning Association 34(6): 354–63. ———. 1976. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments, Ideas in Progress. London: Marion Boyars. Wilson, W.J. 2009. More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: Norton and Company. Wirth, L. 1938. ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, American Journal of Sociology 44(1): 1–24.

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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 inequality, 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, dwellers 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 –

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informal settlements were said to exist (see F. Botero 1996: 353), but in the 1950s the city administration had already identified forty-one ‘pirate urbanizations’ 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, compared 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 neighbourhoods, similar to those in the city proper. (We use ‘informal’, ‘irregular’, ‘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 general 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

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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 wellto-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 structures, 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 bustling 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 neighbourhoods (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

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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 regulation 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 neighbourhoods 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 informal 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 regulated 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’ architecture 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 countries, including Colombia (Liernur 1998; Hofer 2003). Immediately after the Second World War, and in the context of interest in large-scale urban

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reconstruction in war-damaged Europe, modernist ideas rapidly spread to the region, resulting in – among other venues – regulatory plans and architectural 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 increasingly 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 unstoppable 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 question to which the ‘angry young men’ of Team X dedicated themselves in reaction to ‘outdated’ CIAM doctrines (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture 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

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for a supposedly over-regulated European and American planning practice, where hope and reinterpretation have been invested in DIY practices to promote 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 interdisciplinary 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 anonymous 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 symbolic 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

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‘­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 understood 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 irregularity 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 indigenous 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 twentieth century, the Aburrá flooded often, so settling on its banks was not an option. Clay was dug and baked into bricks (still the dominant building 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

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as a whole. (A metropolitan authority was created in 1980, but with limited 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 tramway 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 informal housing mushroomed. Various factors conspired against the implementation of more ‘progressive pillars of urban planning policy’.5 The 1886 Constitution dictated a highly centralized form of administration (maintained until 1991), with a very limited role for local government.6 Private urban boosters, among them prominent city councillors and members of the

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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 urbanization efforts. The tens of thousands of migrants, who arrived from the countryside 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 backbone 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 transformation 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

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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 countryside. 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 neighbourhoods 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 housing 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, relatively inefficient in answering to the demands of a rapidly modernizing society. 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 informal 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 traditional 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

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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 evaluation 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 complex 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

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in rage or for revenge. Various factors may explain this. First, basic public service provision was rather rapidly extended to the informal neighbourhoods by the EPM (sewers, water, electricity) and ESV (garbage collection, among other things). The coverage and quality of these services distinguished 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 facilities and road infrastructures, which were all put into place. Also, whatever the delays and insufficiencies in coverage and quality, the national government 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 government intervention and regulation provided fertile ground for the complex social and political dynamics of DIY urbanism (Do It Yourself) in the informal 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 services 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 (squatting, urban farming, festivals, ‘occupy now’ manifestations, etc.). When it comes to cities in the developing world, the concept refers to radically different 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

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of life and day-to-day practices and representations. Here, informal settling and self-built housing practices become an inherent part of the built environment 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 consolidate 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 neighbourhoods, 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 neighbourhoods (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 neighbourhoods, ‘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

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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 families 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 settling 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 provided 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 representation. Parents organized through other platforms to press for schools,

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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 including 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 payment of these services established rights that were used to prevent eviction, negotiate alternative solutions or obtain property titles. Ownership continuously 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 belonging. 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, electricity 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 neighbourhoods, 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

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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 militias. 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 dramatically 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 violence 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, organize military training, and impose their ‘order’ and ‘justice’ with threats and

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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 disorganized 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, anywhere. 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 particular 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 themselves. 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 activities 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

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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 freefor-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 relationships 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 prioritized 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 opportunities for disadvantaged youth, and improving the relationship between citizens and police; they pleaded for participation and proximity. They contributed to the creation of the presidential programme, integrating its implementing team. Territorially, efforts focused on some of Medellín’s poorest and most violent neighbourhoods (particularly in Comunas 1–4), and demographically 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

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(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 facilities 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 participation and debate, and their requests were often positively rewarded. New potential for belonging was thus operationalized both in relation to neighbourhood 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 administration (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 participation 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 visionaries and did not implement an ambitious urban development strategy, contrary 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.

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Second, basic public services continued to be run rather smoothly and to penetrate deeply in the informal and pirate settlements, thanks to the technocrat 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 lacking a comprehensive city development strategy, these efforts to strengthen local government services did somewhat diminish the distance and disaffection 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 technical 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 challenges. 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 shortcomings, 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,

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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 presidential programme for Medellín was not continued after 1994, when a new president was elected. Also, polarization between narco-paramilitary organizations (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) immediately 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 candidate 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 opinionated 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

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urban development firm Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano (EDU). His successor 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 concordance 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 transforming 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, contracted 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

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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 childhood 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 belonging 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 interventions 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.

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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, sentiments 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 neighbourhoods, 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 example, although national environmental laws require that both sides of a 10 metre stroke should be left free of private constructions, the reform-oriented

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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 character 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 spontaneous 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, without fully eliminating the pre-existing ones, which helps to steer the incomplete 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 violence.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 strategy. 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

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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 participation, 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 contribute 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 liveability 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

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of strict modernist or functionalist approaches, as well as from paternalistic miserabilism.23 Strong guidance and direction is evident, of course, but was voted into place three subsequent times under transparent local elections, 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 communication 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 interventions in their neighbourhoods have received prestigious architecture and urbanism awards, as has been the case with the habitat consolidation operation 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 projects and policies have been respectfully contextualized, in physical, social and political contexts, to improve and dignify quality of life. An interesting paradox 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

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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 coherent 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 considered 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 interventions, 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 substantive 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

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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 political, 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, insecurity 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 neighbourhoods 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) interpretation that qualifies Fajardo’s reform policies as ‘paramilitary modernization’ – 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 interpretations (‘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

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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-oriented 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 violence 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 experience 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 heuristic value in exploring the multidimensional implications of urban reform

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processes for those who live them most intensively. Belonging steers away from false dichotomies as inclusion-exclusion, and has a more dynamic connotation 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 municipalisation 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

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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 introduction 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 immediate 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 intervention 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’, providing 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

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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.

References Alcaldía de Medellín. 2011. BIO 2030 Plan Director Medellín, Valle del Aburrá: Un Sueño Que Juntos Podemos Alcanzar. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín. Alvarez, L.S., et al. 2010. La Exclusión Social y la Desigualdad en Medellín: Sus Dimensiones Objetivas y Sujetivas, Corporacion Region. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia, Escuela de Nutricion and Dietetica, Corporación Región, Escuela Nacional Sindical. Anthias, F. 2006. ‘Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World: Rethinking Translocations’, in N. Yuval-Davis, K. Kannabira¯n and U. Vieten (eds), The Situated Politics of Belonging. London: Sage, pp. 17–31. Arango, A.M., F. Orsini and A. Echeverri. 2011. ‘The Opportunity to Think Metropolitan’, Guía de la Transformación Ciudadana: 2004–2011, pp. 312–15. Arango, S. 2012. Ciudad y Arquitectura: Seis Generaciones que Construyeron la América Latina Moderna. México City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Avermaete, T. 2010. ‘Nomadic Experts and Travelling Perspectives: Colonial Modernity and the Epistemological Shift in Modern Architecture Culture’, in T. Avermaete, S. Karakayali and M. von Osten (eds), Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future. London: Black Dog Publishing, pp. 130–52. Biau, D. 2011. ‘L’ONU et le Développement Urbain: Un Voyage de Vancouver à Nairobi, Istanbul et Naples’, in F. Lieberherr-Gardiol and G. Solinis (eds), Quelles Villes Pour le 21e Siècle? Paris: Infolio, pp. 41–87. Botero, F. 1996. ‘Barrios Populares en Medellín, 1890–1950’, in J.O. Melo (ed.), Historia de Medellín. Bogotá: Compañía Suramericana de Seguros, pp. 353–72.

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Brillembourg, A., K. Feireiss and H. Klempner (eds). 2005. Informal City: Caracas Case. New York: Prestel Publishing. Bushnell, D. 1993. The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Calvo, O. and M. Parra. 2012. Medellín (rojo) 1968. Bogotá: Planeta. Crimson Architecture Historians and F. Rottenberg. 2007. Wimby! Hoogvliet: Future, Past and Present of a New Town. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers. Dapena, L.F. 2006. Núcleos de Vida Ciudadana: Racionalidades y Coyunturas en la Gestión de un Proyecto. Medellín: Universidad Nacional. Das, V., A. Kleinman, M. Lock, M. Ramphele and P. Reynolds. 2001. Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Davis, D. 1994. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia, PE: Temple University Press. De Solà-Morales, M. 2009 [1992]. ‘Public Spaces, Collective Spaces’, in T. Avermaete, S. Karakayali and M. von Osten (eds), Architectural Positions: Architecture, Modernity and the Public Space. Amsterdam: Sun Publishers, pp. 85–92. Deslandes, A. 2013. ‘Exemplary Amateurism: Thoughts on DIY Urbanism’, Culture Studies Review 19(1): 216–27. Duivesteijn, A., H. van de Wal, and Het Nederlands Architectuurinstituut. 1994. De Verborgen Opgave: Thuis in de Stad. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers. Eleb, M. 2010. ‘The Concept of Habitat: Ecochard in Marocco’, in T. Avermaete, S. Karakayali, M. von Osten (eds), Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future. London: Black Dog Publishing, pp. 152–62. Ellin, N. 1999. Postmodern Urbanism. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, revised edition. Fajardo, S. 2008. Del Miedo a la Esperanza: 2004/2007. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín, 2 Vols. Ghirardo, D. 1996. Architecture After Modernism. New York: Thames and Hudson. Gilbert, A. 1994. The Latin American City. London: Latin American Bureau. Glazer, N. 2007. From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. González, L.F. 2011. Ciudad y Arquitectura Urbana en Colombia. 1980–2010. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia. ———. 2007. Medellín, los Origines y la Transición a la Modernidad: Crecimiento y Modelos Urbanos 1775–1932. Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia. Hajer, M. and A. Reijndorp. 2001. Op Zoek Naar Nieuw Publiek Domein. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers. Harvey, D. 2008. ‘The Right to the City’, New Left Review 53: 23–40. Hernández, P. Kellett, and L. Allen (eds). 2010. Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Hofer, A. 2003. Karl Brunner y el Urbanismo Europeo en América Latina. Bogotá: El Ancora, Editores y Corporación la Candelaria. Holston, J. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hylton, F. 2010. ‘War Without End: Paramilitary Modernization in Medellín’, in G. Grandin and G.M. Joseph (eds), A Century of Revolution in Latin America: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence in Latin America’s Long Cold War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 338–69. International New Town Institute (INTI). 2012. Making Almere. Rotterdam: International Architectural Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). Jaramillo, R.L. 2006. ‘From Aburrá to Medellín’, in A. Escovar, Guide to Medellín. Bogotá: Gamma, pp. 9–15.

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Leich, N. 2002. ‘Belonging: Towards a Theory of Identification with Space’, in J. Hillier and E. Rooksby (eds), Habitus: A Sense of Place. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 281–98. Lejeune, J-F. (ed.) 2003. Cruelty and Utopia: Cities and Landscapes of Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press. Leyva Botero, S. 2010. ‘El Proceso de Construcción de Estatalidad Local (1998–2009): ¿La Clave para Entender el Cambio en Medellín?’, in M. Hermelin, A. Echeverri and J Giraldo (eds), Medellín: Medioambiente, Urbanismo y Gobernabilidad. Medellín: EAFIT, pp. 271–93. Liernur, J.F. 1998. ‘Latin America: The Places of the Other’, in R. Ferguson (ed.), At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture. Los Angeles, CA: The Museum of Contemporary Art, pp. 276–321. Martin, G. 1996. ‘Sociabilité, Institutions et Violences dans les Frontières Nouvelles en Colombie’, in J-M. Blanquer and C. Gros (eds), La Colombie à L’aube du Troisième Millénaire. Paris: Ed. Iheal, pp. 193–217. ———. 2000. ‘The Tradition of Violence in Colombia: Material and Symbolic Aspects’, in G. Aijmer and J. Abbink (eds), Meanings of Violence: A Cross Cultural Perspective. London: Berghahn, pp. 161–92. ———. 2012. Medellín Tragedia y Resurrección: Mafia, Ciudad y Estado: 1975–2012. Bogotá: Planeta. Martin, G. and M. Ceballos. 2004. Bogotá. Anatomía de Una Transformación. Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Martin, G. and D. Corrales (eds). 2009. Medellín: Transformación de Una Ciudad. Medellín: Alcaldia Medellín and Multimpresos. Martin, G., A. Escovar, M. Martin and M. Goossens. 2007. Bogotá. El Renacer de Una Ciudad. Bogotá: Editions Planeta. Martin, M. 2006. ‘De Schizofrene Stad’, in M. Dings (ed.), De Stad. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, pp. 331–49. ———. 2007. ‘La Ciudad Como Construcción Física y Mental: Bogotá’, in G. Martin, A. Escovar, M. Martin and M. Goossens, Bogotá. El Renacer de Una Ciudad. Bogotá: Planeta, pp. 29–45. Mumford, E. 2000. The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928–1960. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Oliver, P. (ed.) 1969. Shelter and Society: New Studies in Vernacular Architecture. London: Barrie and Rockliff the Cresset. Pécaut, D. 1996. ‘Réflexions sur la Violence en Colombie’, in F. Héritier (ed.), De la Violence. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, pp. 223–72. Pécaut, D. 2001. Guerra Contra la Sociedad. Bogotá: Espasa Hoy. ———. 2012 [1987]. Orden y Violencia: Colombia 1930–1953. Medellín: EAFIT University. Pedrazzini, Y., JC. Bolay and M. Bassand. 1996. Habitat Créatif, Eloge des Faiseurs de Ville: Habitants et Architectes d’Amérique Latine et d’Europe. Paris: Fondation pour le Progrès de l’Homme. Perlman, J.E. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Ramirez, R., J. Fiori, H. Harms and K. Mathey. 1991. ‘The Commodification of Self-help Housing and State Intervention: Household Experiences in the “Barrios” of Caracas’, in K. Mathéy (ed.), Beyond Self-help Housing. London: Mansell, pp. 95–144. Rave, B. 2008. La Ciudad Siguiente: Indicios de Futuro: Bases para la Participacion de la Ciudadania en la Construccion de un Proyecto Colectivo de Desarrollo Futuro para Medellín. Medellín: UPB. Reijndorp, A. 2004. Stadswijk: Stedenbouw en Dagelijks Leven. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers. Reijndorp, A. and L. Reijnders. 2010. De Alledaagse en de Geplande Stad: Over Identiteit, Plek en Thuis. Amsterdam: SUN.

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Risselada M. and D. van den Heuvel (eds). 2005. Team Ten 1953–81: In Search of a Utopia of the Present. Rotterdam: NAi Uitgevers. Romero, J.L. 2001. Latinoamerica: Las Ciudades y las Ideas. Mexico City: Siglo XXI. Rosanvallon, P. 2008. La Légitimité Démocratique: Impartialité, Réflexivité, Proximité. Paris: Seuil. Rotker, S. and K. Goldman (eds). 2002. Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Rudofsky, B. 1964. Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Salazar, A. 1990. No Nacimos Pa’Semilla. Bogotá: Cinep. Sánchez, G. 2008. ‘Tiempos de Memoria, Tiempo de Victimas’, Revista Analisis Politico 63: 3–21. Schnitter Castellanos, P. 2007. José Luis Sert y Colombia. De la Carta de Atenas a una Carta del Habitat. Medellín: UPB. Scott, F. 2000. ‘Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling’, in S. Williams Goldhagen and R. Legault (eds), Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 215–39. Segre, R. 2010. ‘Formal-Informal Connections in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: The FavelaBairro Programme’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 163–79. Tyler, T. 2006. Why People Obey the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Valencia, M. and C.M. Rodríguez. 2011. ‘Paths of Transformation’, in Guía de la Transformación Ciudadana: 2004–2011. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín, pp. 18–36. Vidal, D. 2000. La Politique au Quartier: Rapports Sociaux et Citoyenneté. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Wagenaar, C. 2011. Town Planning in the Netherlands Since 1800. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Weeber, C. and W. Vanstiphout. 1998. Het Wilde Wonen. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Zukin, S. 2010. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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 reconstruction, 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 indicates 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 architect John Turner – based his faith in its potential on his experiences in Peru, working together with, inter alia, the Peruvian scholar – 81 –

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José Matos Mar and Mangin. This led to a series of publications documenting 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 development 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 purpose’ (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’ changing 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 parallel satisfaction of both individual and collective needs that permits an

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Table 3.1  Squatter settlement: Progressive development Incipient (1–2 years)

Developing (4–5 years)

Layout

60m2–400m2 plots per family. Land reserved for community facilities

Houses

Straw huts, some permanent structures

Public utilities

Water drums, kerosene candles Market, stalls, bars, primary schools, chapels

Subdivision of plots, increased densities. Development of fringes of settlements on less suitable sites Ground floor with shell Ground floor of permanent material, complete with permanent roof, temporary roof second floor started, subdivision or subletting Stand pipes, local Mains water, mains electricity generators electricity, sewers Artisan workshops, TV- Banks, cinemas, cinemas, parish centres, restaurants, specialty stores, medical facilities for small industries: visiting doctors and furniture, shoes, dentists tricycles, ironwork, clinics Consolidated roads, Better buses, thus better bus services public telephones, post office, surfaced roads

Community facilities

Communications Public buses, communal taxis, dust roads

Completing (10–12 years)

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 consolidated slums of Latin American cities have appeared, of which the study

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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 document 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 relationships in the settlements and adds to the sense of insecurity and hopelessness (Perlman 2003, and 2010). Ward (2001) described similar trends, as follows: The “stock” of self-help settlements that were created between the mid1950s 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, following 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 neighbourhood 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

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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 settlements 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 children 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 consolidated 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 invasion 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 households,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,

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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 children) 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 situation 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 original 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 authoritarian 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 stabilization 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.

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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 normally 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.

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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 development 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 durable 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 connection, 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 clothing and household utensils. Along the major road many small workshops were established. One of the distinguishing functions of Turner’s classification, 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

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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

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Table 3.2  Consolidation of the houses in 1997 and 2010 Straw or wood Brick, one floor, no concrete roof Brick, one floor, concrete roof Brick, two floors, no concrete roof Brick, two floors, concrete roof or more Domestic water connection

1997

2010

32.5 % 36.1 % 22.9 %   8.5 % n.a. 71.6 % (n=388)

  8.8 % 16.1 % 22.6 % 25.8 % 26.7 % 98.6 % (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 different 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 primary 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

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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 topography 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 formation 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 municipality. 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,

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dig the ditches for the waterworks or clean up the neighbourhood (Hordijk 2000). Neighbourhood consolidation thus inevitably required a phase of collective 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 individual needs and community needs (for security of tenure and basic services) 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 community 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 infrastructure 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

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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 neighbourhood organizations still existed in name, and half of the respondents still knew the name of the neighbourhood leader. More surprisingly, three quarters 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 anymore’, ‘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 togetherness 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 generation had followed vocational training and 10 per cent had even studied at ­university level. The invaders thus managed to offer their children educational

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Table 3.3  Possession of artefacts, 1997 and 2010 Artefacts

1997 (percentages)

2010 (percentages)

TV black and white TV colour Video Cable Telephone, landline Mobile Phone Fridge Car Washing machine Computer Internet at home

64.7 36.2  8.2 n.d. 18.7 n.d. 44.9  5.6 n.d. n.d. n.d.

26.9 88.4 19.5 22.8 58.6 81.4 73.0 16.3 30.2 28.8 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 therefore be partially attributed to the pooling of financial resources, especially in the case of extended families. Seventy per cent of the respondents indicated 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

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Table 3.4  Percentage of second generation and still living with parents, in age classes (2010) Age class

second generation (percentages)

still living with parents (percentages)

0–16 16–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 >55

17.4 (n=108) 38.1 (n=236) 32.4 (n=201) 10.3 (n=64) 1.6 (n=10) 0.2 (n=1) 100 (n=620)

95 (n=102) 91.1 (n=215) 62.2 (n=125) 53.1 (n=34) 20.0 (n=2) 0 (n=0) 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:

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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 substantial 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 history 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 collectivity’. Collective action has been a formative discourse in their upbringing; being an offspring of an invader is part of the identity of the second generation (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).

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‘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 joining 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 mentioned, 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’ communal 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)

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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 integration and fulfilment of both individual and community needs has simultaneously 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 feeling 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 individual 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 ambitions of the first generation invaders. They have been able to gradually improve their houses and living environment, and were able to offer their children 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

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‘progressive development’. In the first decade of barriada formation, all four factors said to foster the sense of community were present among the invaders. 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 generation. 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 characterization 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 neighbourhoods 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 sanctioned. 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 respondents 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

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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 community 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 subdivision 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 settlements 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

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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 informal 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 building and safety regulations), as also mentioned by Ward (2001), was at the core of their work. For more information, see DESCO 2005.

References Arends, I. 2012. ‘A Reach for Public Life: A Study of the Online and Off Line Social Lives of Urban Youth Living in a Peripheral Neighbourhood of Lima, Peru’. MSc Thesis. Amsterdam:

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University of Amsterdam, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies. Baduel, B. and C. Quenan. 2011. ‘The Results of Peru’s Presidential Elections Explained’, Natixis Special Report 39. Retrieved 11 April 2011 from http://cib.natixis.com/flushdoc. aspx?id=57792. Barreda, J. and D. Ramírez. 2004. ‘Lima: Consolidación y Expansión de una Ciudad Popular’, Peru Hoy: Las Ciudades en el Perú 6: 199–218. Chambers, B. 2005. ‘The Barriadas of Lima: Slums of Hope or Despair? Problems or Solutions?’ Geography 90(3): 200–24. DESCO (Programma Urbana). 2005. ‘Densificación Habitacional una Propuesta de Crecimiento Para la Ciudad Popular’. Retrieved 28 October 2012 from http://www.urbano.org.pe/ downloads/documento/densificacion_habitacional.pdf. García, I., F. Giuliani and E. Wiesenfeld. 1999. ‘Community and Sense of Community: The Case of an Urban Barrio in Caracas’, Journal of Community Psychology 27(6): 727–40. Gilbert, A. 1996. The Mega-city in Latin America. Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Hordijk, M.A. 1999. ‘A Dream of Green and Water: Community Based Formulation of a Local Agenda 21 in Peri-urban Lima’, Environment and Urbanization 11(2):11–21. ———. 2000. ‘Of Dreams and Deeds: The Role of Local Initiatives for Community Based Environmental Management in Lima, Peru’. Amsterdam: Thela Thesis. ———. 2010. ‘Nuestra Realidad es Otra: Changing Realities in Lima’s Peripheral Settlements: A Case Study from San Juan de Miraflores’, in V. Brunfaut, V. d’Auria, B. De Meulder, L. Moretta and K. Shannon (eds), The Production, Use and Dissemination of Urban Knowledge in Cities of the South N-Aerus XI Conference Proceedings, Brussels, October, 28–30, 2010. Brussels: Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning KUL, pp. 361–74. Lewis, O. 1959. Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. New York: Basic Books. ———. 1966. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty: San Juan and New York. New York: Vintage Books. Lloyd, P.C. 1980. The ‘Young Towns’ of Lima: Aspects of Urbanization in Peru. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lobo, S. 1981. A House of My Own: Social Organization in the Squatter Settlements of Lima, Peru. Tucson, AR: The University of Arizona Press. Mangin, W. 1967. ‘Latin American Squatter Settlements: A Problem and a Solution’, Latin American Research Review 2(3): 65–98. Matos Mar, J. 1977. Las Barriadas de Lima, 1957. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. McMillan, D.W. and D.M. Chavis. 1986. ‘Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory’, Journal of Community Psychology 14(1): 6–23. Moser, C.O.N. 2009. Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives: Assets and Poverty Reduction in Guayaquil, 1978–2004. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Obst, P.L. and K.M. White. 2007. ‘Choosing to Belong: The Influence of Choice on Social Identification and Psychological Sense of Community’, Journal of Community Psychology 35(1): 77–90. Olthoff, J. 2006. ‘A Dream Denied: Teenage Girls in Migrant Popular Neighbourhoods’, Ph.D. dissertation. Utrecht: University of Utrecht, Department of Anthropology. Perlman, J.E. 2003. ‘Marginality: From Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969– 2002’, in A. Roy and N. AlSayyad (eds), Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives From the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lexington, CA: Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, pp. 105–46. ———. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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Plyushteva, A. 2009. ‘Something Interesting is Rising: The Collectivities and Citizenships of Young Adults in a Peripheral District in Lima, Peru’, MSc Thesis. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies. ———. 2012. ‘Locating Citizenship in Public Space: Lima’s Informal Urban Settlements’, in C. Certoma, N. Clewer and D. Elsey (eds), The Politics of Space and Place. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 71–99. Rodriguez, A., G. Riofrío and E. Welsh. 1973. De Invasores a Invadidos. Lima: DESCO. Schönwälder, G. 2002. ‘New Democratic Spaces at the Grassroots? Popular Participation in Latin American Local Governments’, Development and Change 28(4): 753–70. Skinner, R.J. 1982. ‘Community Organization, Collective Development and Politics in SelfHelp Housing: Villa El Salvador, Lima (1971–1976)’, Ph.D. Dissertation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Turner, J.F.C. 1967. ‘The Squatter Settlement: Architecture That Works’, Architectural Design 38: 355–60. ———. 1977. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. New York: Pantheon Books. Turner, J.F.C. and R. Fichter (eds). 1972. Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process. New York: The Macmillan Company. Ward, P.M. 2001. ‘The Rehabilitation of Consolidated Irregular Settlements in Latin American Cities: Towards a Third Generation of Public Policy Housing Analysis and Development’. Conference 2001 Coping with Informality and Illegality in Human Settlements in Developing Cities, 23–25 May. Leuven and Brussels: ESF/N-AERUS. Ward, P.M., E.R. Jiménez Huerta and M.Virgilio (2015) Housing Policy in Latin American Cities: A New Generation of Strategies and Approaches for 2016 UN-Habitat III. New York: Routledge. Ward, P.M., E.R. Jiménez Huerta, E. Grajeda and C. Ubaldo Velázquez. 2011. ‘Self-help Housing Policies for Second Generation Inheritance and Succession of “The House That Mum & Dad Built”’, Habitat International 35(3): 467–85. World Bank. 2008. Una Mirada a la Evolución Reciente de la Pobreza en el Perú: Avances y Desafíos. Washington, DC: World Bank. Zolezzi, M. and J. Calderón. 1985. Vivienda Popular: Autoconstrucción y Lucha por el Agua. Lima: DESCO.

4

On Housing, Inheritance and Succession Among Pioneer Squatters 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, inheritance and succession is an increasingly salient issue among pioneer squatters 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 generation to the next – is often an overlooked dimension of the family strategies 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 households 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 created 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 demonstrates 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 –

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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 suggests 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 elsewhere (see Ward et al. 2011), here I focus specifically on the emergence of living arrangements and future expectancies of the second and third generations, 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-family 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

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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 conducted of 253 low-income owner self-builder households across five settlements 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 longitudinal 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 grandchildren, 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 settlements in three Mexican cities – Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey –

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Table 4.1  Household structures and characteristics in consolidated self-help settlements: The case of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey Dimension of analysis

1a. Original family still living on lot in 2007 Confirmed – still the original family 1b. Lot land use change since 1978 No change – owner residential Residential but now rental residence 1c. Age of owner Mean age of owner % over age 60 1d. Lot details Average yrs living on the lot Average yr of occupancy of lot 1e. Households on lot Average # of households on lot in 1978 Average # of separate households in 2007 & families in 2009 1f. Separate households on lot Single family 2 families 3 families 4+ families 1g. Densities on lot – persons Average # of people arrived to lot Average # of people on lot today Median # people per lot Average # persons in household 1h. Household structure 2007 Me and my spouse Me and my siblings (or in-laws) A mix of parents/in-laws and siblings (children of the parents) Parents and other kin A mixture of parents/ children and (unrelated) renters Others (unclassified)

Mexico City 2007 5 colonias (N=253)

Guadalajara 2009 3 colonias (N=243)

Monterrey 2009 2 colonias (N=129)

81.8%

89.4% 7.3%

68.1* 77 35.2 1972

58.2 46.4

51.9 55.2

25.2 1985

29.8 1977

1.5

1.3

67.8% 21.5% 8.3% 2.5%

73.8% 20.6% 5.6% 0

5.0 5.9 5 4.7

4.8 5.1 5 3.9

1.4 2.4

35% 25% 15% 25% 5.5** 9.2 7.5 3.6 4.0% 15.2% 60.6% 15.2% 3.0% 2.0%

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Table 4.1 (Continued) Dimension of analysis

Mexico City 2007 5 colonias (N=253)

1i. Household structure 2009 Nuclear household Extended Singleton (non-family) 1j. Property values 2007 (in thousands of dollars) Trimmed mean self-assessed Self-assessed (median) Trimmed mean tax assessed (average) all settlements

Guadalajara 2009 3 colonias (N=243)

68.3% 31.4%

$101.8 $90.9 $66.7

$47.1 $37.7 $39.8

Monterrey 2009 2 colonias (N=129)

64% 33% 2.4%

$24.9 $22.6 $16.8

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 significant 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.

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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 communities, 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 considerable 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 settlements. 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.

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Table 4.2  Change of title of homeowners, gender of titleholder and marital status Dimension of analysis

2a. Sought to change name on title? Title change No title change In process of changing the title Not know how to change the title Year of title regularization (median) No change of title since regularization

Mexico City 2007 5 colonias (N=253)

83.8%

36.9% 13.5% 4.5%

2d. Couple was married or lived together when acquired home? 2e. Owner’s marital status Married Widow(er) Divorced / separated Single De facto union

Monterrey 2009 2 colonias (N=129)

1989

1988

10.8% 83.8% 2.7% 2.7%

2b. Title in name of one or both spouses One spouse Both spouses Don’t know 2c. Titleholder by gender Male Female Both

Guadalajara 2009 3 colonias (N=243)

72.9% 6.6% 7.4% 10% 3.1%

95%

89.5%

74.5% 19.8% 5%

50.4% 43% 7%

52.5% 35% 10.7%

34.4% 20.4% 45.2%

79.3%

81.7%

80.8% 9.3% 2.9% 5.2% 1.7%

74.1% 16.4% 3.4% 5.2% 0.9%

Source: Latin American Housing Network Project; Mexico City Restudy 2007, Guadalajara and Monterrey 2009 Note: Percentages may not sum exactly because of rounding.

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

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Table 4.3  Wills, informal arrangements and perceptions about will-making Dimension of analysis

Mexico City 2007 5 colonias

3a. Inheritance and wills   % of households with wills   Who is the beneficiary?  Spouse  Children   Spouse and children  Other 3b. Households w/o wills   % with informal arrangement   Who will be the beneficiary?  Spouse  Children   Spouse and children  Other 3c. Reasons for not executing a will  Cultural reasons and/or “desidia” [apathy]   Causes conflict with family members   We are poor, not much to leave   Vulnerability in old age   Don’t know how

Guadalajara 2009 3 colonias

Monterrey 2009 2 colonias

13.8 (31)

8.(9)

6.9 (2) 69.(20) 20.7 (6) 3.4 (1)

8.(1) 8.(6)

44.(84)

35.(35)

3.8 (3) 65.8 (52) 22.8 (18) 7.6 (6)

6.1 (2) 84.8 (28) 3.(1) 6.1 (2)

61.8 (123)

68.2 (58)

18.6 (37) 10.1 (20) 7.5 (15) 2.(4)

17.6 (15) 3.5 (3) 2.4 (2) 8.2 (7)

8.(1)

Source: Latin American Housing Network Project; Mexico City Restudy 2007, Guadalajara and Monterrey 2009 Note: Percentages may not sum exactly because of rounding.

a ­ significant housing asset for their families through their own self-help endeavours and government intervention, in the form of tenure regularization 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, ‘formalization 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

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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 LusoHispanic legal tradition and colonial rule (Deere and León 2005).3 Despite an initial continuity with the corpus of Hispanic law and colonial 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 community 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 (participation-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 competent 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 republican 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

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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 property 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 historically 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 colonial 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

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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 donations (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 property 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 partition, 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 inheritance; here the widowed spouse shares half of the estate with the parents of the deceased if the couple did not have children. However, although technically 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

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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 continual and active ‘doing’. Part of this ‘doing’ or constant enactment or performance 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 narratives, 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 struggle 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.

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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 encapsulates 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 outside 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

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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 communicative 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 solidarity. 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 difference 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 remittances 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

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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 ‘stories’ 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 sections 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’ ownership 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 families 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 uncommon, particularly when ageing parents are attempting to negotiate care for future ownership. These oral ‘contracts’ may be accompanied by a series of

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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 claimants, 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 chapter 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 everyday 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’

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(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 establish 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 regarding 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 influences. 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

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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.

References Arrom, M.S. 1985. ‘Changes in Mexican Family Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Civil Codes of 1870 and 1884’, Journal of Family History 10(3): 305–17. ———. 1985. The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Blomley, N. 1998. ‘Landscapes of Property’, Law and Society Review 32(3): 567–612. Cooper, D. 2007. ‘Opening up Ownership: Community Belonging, Belongings, and the Productive Life of Property’, Law and Social Inquiry 32(3): 625–64. Deere, C.D. 2007. ‘Married Women’s Property Rights in Mexico: A Comparative Latin American Perspective and Research Agenda’, in H. Baitenmann, H.V. Chenaut and A. Varley (eds), Decoding Gender: Law and Practice in Contemporary Mexico. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pp. 213–30. Deere, D.C. and M. Leon. 2003. ‘The Gender Asset Gap: Land in Latin America’, World Development 31(6): 925–47. ———. 2005. ‘Liberalism and Married Women’s Property Rights in Nineteenth-century Latin America’, Hispanic American Historical Review 85(4): 627–78. Dore, E. 2000. ‘One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Gender and the State in the Long Nineteenth Century’, in E. Dore and M. Molyneux (eds), Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University, pp. 3–32. Dyer, J.F. and C. Bailey. 2008. ‘A Place to Call Home: Cultural Understandings of Heir Property Among Rural African Americans’, Rural Sociology 73(3): 317–38. Gilbert, A. 1999. ‘A Home is For Ever? Residential Mobility and Homeownership in Self-help Settlements’, Environment and Planning 31: 1073. Gilbert, A. and P.M. Ward. 1981. ‘Public Intervention, Housing and Land Use in Latin American Cities’, Bulletin of Latin American Research 1(1): 97–104. ———. 1985. Housing, the State, and the Poor: Policy and Practice in Three Latin American Cities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grajeda, E. and P. Ward. 2012. ‘Inheritance and Succession in Informal Settlements of Latin American Cities: A Mexican Case Study’, Latin American Research Review 47(4): 139–62. Gregson, N. and G. Rose. 2000. ‘Taking Butler Elsewhere: Performativities, Spatialities and Subjectivities’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18(4): 433–52.

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Korth, H.E. and M.D. Flusche. 1987. ‘Dowry and Inheritance in Colonial Spanish America: Peninsular Law and Chilean Practice’, The Americas 43(4): 395–410. Lavrin, A. and E. Courturier. 1979. ‘Dowries and Wills: A View of Women’s Socioeconomic Role in Colonial Guadalajara and Puebla, 1640–1790’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 59(2): 280–304. Moser, C.O.N. 2009. Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives: Assets and Poverty Reduction in Guayaquil, 1978–2004. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Perlman, J.E. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Razzaz, O. 1993. ‘Examining Property Rights and Investment in Informal Settlements: The Case of Jordan’, Land Economics 69(4): 341–55. Rose, C. M. 2004. Property & Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Solimano, A. 2006. Asset Accumulation by the Middle Class and the Poor in Latin America: Political Economy and Governance Dimensions. Santiago de Chile: United Nations. Sussman, B.M., N.J. Cates and D.T. Smith. 1970. The Family and Inheritance. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Turner, J.C. 1968. ‘Housing Priorities, Settlement Patterns, and Urban Development in Modernizing Countries’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 34(6): 354–63. Varley, A. 2010. ‘Modest Expectations: Gender and Property Rights in Urban Mexico’, Law and Society Review 44(1): 67–100. Varley, A. and M. Blasco. 2000. ‘Exiled to the Home: Masculinity and Ageing in Urban Mexico’, European Journal of Developmental Research 12(2): 115–38. ———. 2003. ‘Older Women’s Living Arrangements and Family Relationships in Urban Mexico’, Women’s Studies International Forum 26(6): 525–39. Ward, P.M. 2005. The Lack of ‘Cursive Thinking’ Within Social Theory and Public Policy: Four Decades of Marginality and Rationality in the So-called Slum. University Park, PE: Penn State Press. Ward, P.M., E.R. Jimenez Huerta, E. Grajeda and C. Ubaldo Velázquez. 2011. ‘Self-help Housing Policies for Second Generation Inheritance and Succession of “The House That Mum & Dad Built”’, Habitat International 35(3): 467–85.

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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 frequently associated with a lack of basic services, tenure insecurity and environmental 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 settlements 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 millennium, 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 inhabitants 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 association 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 –

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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 mainstream objective and subjective notions of poverty and social ­exclusion. (Koonings and Kruijt 2007: 2)

The dominating public discourse has apprehended and explained urban violence 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 connected 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 construction 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

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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 tourist 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 citizenship 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 ‘pacified’ 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 chapter, I examine what this threat of removal actually means from the point of

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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 occupied 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 previously 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

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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 involving 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 neighbourhood. 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 understanding 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 consolidated, 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.

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The first urbanization project in the favela began between 1985 and 1986, when City Hall installed pipes, opened streets and improved sanitation, 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 government 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 accommodate 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 urbanization project in Morro Santa Marta was discontinued. Later, the state government 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 demolished. 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

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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 numbers – 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 opportunities’. 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

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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, urbanization 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 demonstration 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 dialogue 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 discussion 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 introduced 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

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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 themselves 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 situation 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)

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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 ‘forgotten’? 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, according 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 meetings 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, resident of Santa Marta – speech made during a meeting about Urbanization ­organized by Grupo Eco)

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Alongside meetings and debates, Pico residents have organized demonstrations 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 disintegration. 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 authorities 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 strategies such as highlighting relationships that they keep with major characters. Strategies such as these are used by Morro Santa Marta leaders. They scheduled 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 community 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

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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

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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 comparison 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 backyard 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

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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 neighbours, 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

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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 transportation 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 urbanization organized by Grupo Eco)

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Figures 5.2a & b  The Morro Santa Marta tramway. Photos by the author.

The third point of critique is a counterargument opposing the government’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

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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 containing 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 million 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 engineer, 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.

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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, restaurants, 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 different 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 something, 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 government showcase for middle-class people and ‘gringos’ (tourists)? An important

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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 considered 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 gentrification 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.

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kinds of parties because they are considered trendy. Tickets for these parties 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 collective systems of education, health and social assistance’ can be considered ­‘ex-favelas’. They then released a list with forty-four locations that have officially 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

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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 attraction 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 touristic favela according to the ‘synthesis-image’, which ‘conforms values and beliefs, providing elements to those involved with marketing and technological 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 incorporated into local discourse. Residents used the term to criticize the government, 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 commented 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 “gringos” (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)

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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 incompetence, 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 created 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 ‘pacified’ 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 recognized 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.

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  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 activity 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 support 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-bailesfunk.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 Araujo, A. and R. Lopes. 2007. ‘A política de Urbanização de Favelas no Município do Rio de 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 São Paulo no Final do Século XX. Porto Alegre: ANTAC, pp. 277–323. Boltanski, L. 1999. Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Burgos, M.B. 1998. ‘Dos Parques Proletários: As Políticas Públicas nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro’, in A. Zaluar and M. Alvito (eds), Um Século de Favela. Rio de Janeiro: FGV, pp. 25–60.

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Cunha, N.V.and M.A.S. Mello. 2011. ‘Novos Conflitos na Cidade: A UPP e o Processo de Urbanização da Favela’, Dilemas: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 4: 371–401. Fisher, J. 1984. ‘Development From Below: Neighbourhood Improvement Associations in the Latin American Squatter Settlements’, Studies in Comparative International Development 19: 61–85. Freire-Medeiros, B. 2009. ‘The Favela and Its Touristic Transits’, Geoforum 40: 580–88. ———. 2012. ‘Favela Tourism: Listening to Local Voices’, in F. Frenzel, K. Koens and M. Steinbrink (eds), Slum Tourism: Poverty, Power and Ethics. London: Routledge, pp. 175–92. Gilbert, A. and P. Ward. 1985. Housing, the State, and the Poor: Policy and Practice in Three Latin American Cities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klaufus, C. 2012. ‘Moving and Improving: Poverty, Globalisation and Neighbourhood Transformation in Cuenca, Ecuador’, IDPR. International Development Planning Review 34(2): 147–66. Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt. 2007. ‘Fractured Cities, Second-class Citizenship and Urban Violence’, in K. Koonings and D. Kruijt (eds), Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America. London: Zed Books, pp. 7–12. Leeds, A. 1969. ‘The Significant Variables Determining the Character of Squatter Settlements’, America Latina 12: 44–86. Leite, M. 2001. ‘Para Além da Metáfora da Guerra’, Ph.D. Dissertation. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 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: Violência e Rotina nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, pp. 115–41. Lopes, F.A. 1955. Os Palácios de Vila Rica : Ouro Prêto no Ciclo do Ouro. Belo Horizonte. Machado da Silva, L.A. 1967. ‘A política na favela’, Cadernos Brasileiros 9(41): 35–47. ———. 2010. ‘Afinal, Qual é a das UPPs?’ Observatorio das Metropoles. Retrieved 10 March 2010 from http// www.observatoriodasmetropoles.ufrj.br. Machado da Silva, L.A. (ed.) 2008. Vida Sob Cerco: Violências e Rotinas nas Favelas do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira. Magalhães, A. 2013. ‘Transformações no “problema favela” e a reatualização da “remoção” no Rio de Janeiro’ Ph.D. Dissertation. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ, IESP. Menezes, P. 2012. ‘A Forgotten Place to Remember: Reflections on the Attempt to Turn a Favela into a Museum’, in F. Frenzel, K. Koens and M. Steinbrink (eds), Slum Tourism: Poverty, Power and Ethics. London: Routledge, pp. 103–24. Misse, M. 2006. Crime e Violência no Brasil Contemporâneo: Estudos de Sociologia do Crime e da Violência Urbana. Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris. Rocha, A. 2005. Cidade Cerzida: A Costura da Cidadania no Santa Marta. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Museu da República. Sánchez, F. 2003. A Reinvenção das Cidades para um Mercado Mundial. Chapecó: Argos. Zaluar, A. 2004. Integração Perverse: Pobreza e Tráfico de Drogas. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Zaluar, A. and M. Alvito (eds). 1998. Um Século de Favela. Rio de Janeiro: FGV.

Part III

Spaces of the Urban Middle Class

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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 housing 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 sectors. 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 expenditure 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 section, 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 regulatory framework, the availability of land, and the roles of the ­construction – 149 –

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sector and the state agencies involved in the implementation of the programme). 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 strategies 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) emphasize 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 determines 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

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(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 implementation 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 creation of the National Housing Commission in 1955, which was followed by the creation of the Federal Housing Fund in 1959, and the foundation 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 implementation 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 determined by the national authorities (Cravino, Fernández Wagner and Varela 2002; Rodríguez and Di Virgilio 2007). Until 1992 FONAVI built an

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a­ verage of 32,000 housing units per year. Gradually, however, social housing was pushed towards the background as the private sector gained more influence and large-scale urban projects and infrastructural works started to dominate 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 background. 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 encompasses 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 consequence of their inability to pay off the mortgage (Fernández Wagner 2008). During the crisis that began to unfold in the late 1990s – and which eventually 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).

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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 subsidiary goals: generating employment and boosting the construction sector. For the first phase of the programme, the federal government was to provide 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 unemployment 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.

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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 government 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 particular: 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 compulsory 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

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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 process 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 concerns 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

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CHACARITA HACARITA MAGR ALMAGRO FLORES

PARQUE E PATRICIOS PATRIC

BOCA

Number of dwellings by “plan Federal” 0 1 - 99 100 - 299 300 - 499 500 - 999

PARQUE AVELLANEDA E AVELLANE NEDA NUEVA POMPEYA N PO OMP SOLDATI VILLA SOLDA VILLA LUGANO V ANO O

0

Informal settlements (”Villas”)

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 reinforced the social and spatial segregation in the city. In other words, a housing 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 sustainability 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 characteristics that make it a problem in itself. These characteristics include inter alia chronic difficulties with respect to its functioning; slow ­administrative

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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 housing 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 existing housing stock that suffers from some kind of deficit but that can be rehabilitated. 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 complicated 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 concerns the potential role that social organizations could have played. According to the former director of the IVC, labour unions, besides their ability to organize 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 programme. The programme’s guidelines lack a clear understanding of the

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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 collective 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 difficulties 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 background. 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 differentiation processes are potentially harmful in the long run as they pose a risk to the sustainability of housing programmes. Besides the fact that specific

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situations may create conflicts between residents, the reference to the ‘slum’ during interviews with residents works as a stigma that (re)produces differences 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 addressing the housing deficit. Whereas the federal government develops the programme, 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 reconsideration of the relationship between the national and local levels of government. 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 generate 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

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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 environment (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 problems 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 centralized 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.

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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 considerations 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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Rodríguez, A. and A. Sugranyes, et al. 2005. Los ‘con Techo’: Un Desafío para la Política de Vivienda Social. Santiago: Ediciones SUR. 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.

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The Boom of High-rise Apartment 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 transformations 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 landscape, 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-economic 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 society 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 –

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t­ransformed into distinct urban fragments in the form of gated communities, 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 example 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 continuously 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 relevant 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 recognized (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

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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 phenomenon, 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 conducted 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 furnishing 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 realestate 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

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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 consequences 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 construction 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 constructible space, but also the construction of an EPL (Diez 1996). The EPL is constructed at a distance from the street perimeter and the adjacent buildings, 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

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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 economic 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 significant number of the apartments are vacant, serving as capital investment, while at the same time local residents are increasingly incapable of affording 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 proceeds 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 ‘sumptuous’ (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

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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 marketing 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 traditionally suffers from a rather negative reputation. In the districts and neighbourhoods 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, including 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 highlights the new urban qualities in the neighbourhoods. It is striking that advertisements and brochures compare living in a garden tower to suburban 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.

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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 highrise 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 considered. 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 ‘excessive 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

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social and demographic homogeneity among high-rise residents, comparable 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 suburban 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 everybody 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 carbased. This strengthens patterns of interaction with the urban environment

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that are highly fragmented, and increases tendencies for residents to retreat from communal spaces to their high-rise ‘enclaves’. High-income and politically influential residents, especially, expect a ‘complete package’ when selecting 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 qualities 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 neighbourhood 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, residents 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 kidnapping, among other concerns. Interviewees living in mid-­standard high-rises generally vocalized security considerations to a lesser extent, instead emphasizing the convenience of not having to leave the ­enclosure. However, notions

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of security were strongly related to the reputation of the urban surroundings; for example, for high-rise residents in the lower middle-class Abasto neighbourhood, 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 community, 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 residents 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

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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 epicentre of high-rise construction in Buenos Aires along the western corridor. 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 apartments appearing in their immediate surroundings. The new developments are perceived as not solving any of the city’s problems, 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 question 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 quality 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

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‘­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 allocation 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 parliament 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 highrises 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 manufactured 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 dangerous 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.

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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 traditional 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 highrises, 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 neighbourhoods. 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 highrises. 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

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personal interests and affiliation, physically enforcing the growing social and mental distance between the identities of the old residents in the neighbourhood and the identities of the new residents inside the high-rises. Alongside the proliferation of the high-rises, the senses of belonging bound to neighbourhood 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 countervailing 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: terminás 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.’

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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 corresponding 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.’

References Alfaro d’Alençon, P., W.A. Imilan and L.M. Sánchez (eds). 2011. Lateinamerikanische Städte im Wandel: Zwischen lokaler Stadtgesellschaft und globalem Einfluss. Berlisn: LIT. Baer, L. 2009. ‘La Ciudad y la Vida Urbana en Transformación: Una Mirada sobre las Prácticas Barriales de los Residentes de las Torres de Abasto’. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Cuadernos de Territorio 14. ———. 2011. ‘El Mercado de Suelo formal de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires en su contexto Metropolitano’, Pagina12, 13 November 2011 from http://www.pagina12.com.ar/ diario/suplementos/cash/17-5575-2011-11-13.html. Becker, A., O. Burkert, A. Doose, A. Jachnow and M. Poppitz (eds). 2008. Verhandlungssache Mexico Stadt: Umkämpfte Räume, Stadtaneignungen, Imaginarios urbanos. Berlin: b_books. Borsdorf, A. and R. Hidalgo. 2008. ‘New Dimensions of Social Exclusion in Latin America: From Gated Communities to Gated Cities, the Case of Santiago de Chile’, Land Use Policy 25: 153–60. Caldeira, T.P.R. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Canteros Gormaz, E. 2011. ‘Las Agrupaciones Vecinales en Defensa de los Barrios: La Construcción política desde lo Local’, Polis 10(28): 85–99. Carman, M. 2006. Las Trampas de la Cultura: Los ‘Intrusos’ y los Nuevos Usos del Barrio de Gardel. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Centner, R. 2012. ‘Microcitizenships: Fractious Forms of Urban Belonging after Argentine Neoliberalism’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36(2): 336–62. Ciccolella, P. and Mignaqui. 2008. ‘Metropolis Latinoamericanas: Fragilidad del Estado, Proyecto hegemónico y Demandas ciudadanas: Algunas Reflexiones a partir del Caso de Buenos Aires’, Cuadernos del Cendes 25(69): 47–68. Cosacov, N. 2009. ‘Dinámica del Capital y Movilización de Vecinos: Aproximaciones a un Análisis Microespacial de un Conflicto Urbano en un Barrio de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Intersticios: Revista Sociológica de Pensamiento Crítico 3(2): 193–204. Cuenya, B., P. Novais and C. Vainer (eds). 2012. Grandes Proyectos Urbanos: Miradas Críticas sobre la Experiencia Argentina y Brasileña. Buenos Aires: Café de las Ciudades. DGEyC (Dirección General de Estadistica y Censos). 2008. Edificación de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2006. Buenos Aires: Gobierno de la Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires.

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Diez, F. 1996. Buenos Aires y algunas Constantes en las Transformaciones Urbanas. Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano. Dohnke, J. 2011a. ‘Dem Europäer erschien es wie geschenkt: Tourismus und Recht auf Stadt in San Telmo (Buenos Aires)’, in A. Holm, D. Gebhardt (eds), Initiativen für ein Recht auf Stadt: Theorie und Praxis städtischer Aneignungen. Hamburg: VSA, pp. 221–44. ———. 2011b. ‘Stadterneuerung unter privaten Vorzeichen: Zur Wirkung von Partizipation in Buenos Aires’, in P. Alfaro d’Alençon, W.A. Imilan and L.M. Sánchez (eds), Lateinamerikanische Städte im Wandel: Zwischen lokaler Stadtgesellschaft und globalem Einfluss. Berlin: LIT, pp. 17–25. González Bracco, M. 2013. ‘¿La porteñidad en riesgo de extinción? Vecinos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires en Defensa de la Identidad Barrial’, Bifurcaciones 12. Retrieved 27 December 2013 from http://www.bifurcaciones.cl/2013/03/la-portenidad-en-riesgo-de-extincion/. Gorelik, A. and G. Silvestri. 2002. ‘Das Ende der Expansion: Stadt und Stadtkultur in Buenos Aires 1976–2000’, in K. Bodemer, A. Pagni and P. Waldmann (eds), Argentinien heute: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur. Frankfurt (Main): Vervuert, pp. 437–60. Holston, J. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hölzl, C. 2005. ‘Neue Tendenzen sozialräumlicher Fragmentierung in Buenos Aires: Im Herzen der Stadt und doch in einer anderen Welt?’ Diploma Thesis. Berlin: Humboldt University of Berlin. Janoschka, M. 2005. ‘El Modelo de Ciudad Latinoamericana. Privatización y Fragmentación del Espacio Urbano de Buenos Aires: el Caso Nordelta’, in: M. Welch Guerra (ed.), Buenos Aires a la deriva: Transformaciones Urbanas Recientes. Buenos Aires: Biblos, pp. 96–131. Janoschka, M. and G. Glasze. 2003. ‘Urbanizaciones Cerradas: Un Modelo Analítico’, Ciudades 59: 9–20. Lanz, S. (ed.) 2004. City of COOP: Ersatzökonomien und städtische Bewegungen in Rio de Janeiro und Buenos Aires. Berlin: b_books. Llanos, M. 2002. ‘Das neue Profil des Staates und der öffentlichen Verwaltung’, in K. Bodemer, A. Pagni and P. Waldmann (eds), Argentinien heute: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur. Frankfurt (Main): Vervuert, pp. 359–83. Lupano, M.M. 2004. ‘Buenos Aires: Inclusión y Exclusión, un par de Opuestos en la Ciudad Globalizada’. Tuxtla Gutierrez: Paper XXVII Encuentro de la Red Nacional de Investigadores Urbanos, September. Mignaqui, I. and D. Szajnberg. 2003. ‘Tendencias en la Organización del Espacio Residencial en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires en los Noventa’, in R. Bertoncello and A. Alessandri Carlos (eds), Procesos Territoriales en Argentina y Brasil. Buenos Aires: s.n., pp. 91–115. Pirez, P. 2002. ‘Buenos Aires: Fragmentation and Privatization of the Metropolitan City’, Environment and Urbanization 14: 145–58. Sabatini, F. and Salcedo, R. 2007. ‘Gated Communities and the Poor in Santiago, Chile: Functional and Symbolic Integration in a Context of Aggressive Capitalist Colonization of Lower-class Areas’, Housing Policy Debate 18(3): 577–606. Scheinsohn, M. and C. Cabrera. 2009. ‘Social Movements and the Production of Housing in Buenos Aires; When Policies Are Effective’, Environment and Urbanization 21(1): 109–125. Sur Corporaciónde Estudios Sociales y Educación. 2009. ‘Conflictos Urbanos en Santiago de Chile: Mapa de conflictos Urbanos’, Notas Digitales No. 1, Area Ciudad Barrio y Organización. Retrieved 27 December 2013 from http://diamundialdelhabitat.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/sur-corp-conflictos-urbanos-en-santiago.pdf. Svampa, M. 2001. Los que Ganaron: La vida en los Countries y Barrios Privados. Buenos Aires: Ed. Biblos.

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Thung, T. 2011. ‘Der Brasilianische Vertikalisierungsprozess: Auswirkung des Zunehmenden Baus von Apartmenthochhäusern und der Entwicklung von vertikalen Stadtteilen auf die Räumliche und Soziale Struktur der Stadt’, in P. Alfaro d’Alençon, W.A. Imilan and L.M. Sánchez (eds), Lateinamerikanische Städte im Wandel: Zwischen Lokaler Stadtgesellschaft und Globalem Einfluss. Berlin: LIT, pp. 113–20. Welch Guerra, M. 2002. ‘Gartentürme des Wohlstands in Buenos Aires: Projektionen einer Wohnhaustypologie’, Raum Planung 101: 71–76. ———. 2004. ‘Buenos Aires und die Europäisierung der Stadt’, in S. Lanz (ed.), City of COOP: Ersatzökonomien und städtische Bewegungen in Rio de Janeiro und Buenos Aires. Berlin: b_books, pp. 195–206. ———. 2005. ‘Introducción: Las Recientes Transformaciones Urbanas y su Estudio’, in M. Welch Guerra (ed.), Buenos Aires a la Deriva: Transformaciones Urbanas Recientes. Buenos Aires: Ed. Biblos, pp. 9–25. Welch Guerra, M. and P. Valentini. 2005. ‘Torres Jardín en Buenos Aires. Proyecciones de una Tipología Habitacional’, in M. Welch Guerra (ed.), Buenos Aires a la deriva: Transformaciones Urbanas Recientes. Buenos Aires: Ed. Biblos, pp. 74–95.

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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, painting 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 targeted at the foreign market, which could increase its commercial value and recognize Bosques as a ‘distinctive’ place. In explaining the municipal initiative 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 –

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and remodelled and extended their homes with what they considered ‘distinct’ 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 practices: ‘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 furniture 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 aspirations, and sense of identity. And, finally, it argues that the constant need for improvement made people reconsider the notions of housing from ‘permanent’ 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,

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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 differentiation’. 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 upperclass 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 replicas 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 economy 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 potentially 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

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upper classes, who have mostly benefited from economic liberalization (credentials 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 understand 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 individuals ‘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 practices’ 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’ practice. 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 assertion (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 ethnographical 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 architectural style. The author gives examples of how people attain a ‘Daoist

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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 features 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 contemporary 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 flattopped roofs) that can be regarded locally as ‘distinctive’ (Klaufus 2000). For Jones and Varley (1999), analysing the conservation of the Historic Centre

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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 identification 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 experience 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 expressions 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

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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 government through its public housing institutions produced a little over one million houses whereas Casas GEO, and a handful of other private developers, 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 allocation, marketing, sales and delivery and post-sale services. This construction process is divided into more than sixty different stages, and involves subsidiaries 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 modernization’. An essential part of this new path to modernization was the creation of an efficient and competitive housing sector, and a massive housing 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 intermediaries, 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 purchased land controlled by ejido (agrarian) communities and implementing what became a suburban model of low-cost housing (García Peralta and Hofer 2006).2

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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 prefabricated 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, potential 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’

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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 approximately 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 identified 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 construction permits (in terms of size of the dwellings, finishes and services and amenities provided). The residents are thus, at least in the developers’ rhetoric, encouraged to produce their own middle-class lifestyle through participating 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

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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 separated 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 improvements 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 footpaths. 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 bedroom added in the ‘extended’ model that faces the back of the house. The dwellings were exclusively planned to be extended with an additional bedroom 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

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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, exclusivity 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 project 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 benefit 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 property, 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

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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 decorated, 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 misunderstandings 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 heterogeneous group of official employees in long-term jobs or on temporary contracts, businesses owners, informal workers, pensioners or migrants working in the United States – portrayed themselves as having strong social aspiration; 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

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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 marketing 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 monotonous 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 promises 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

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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 throughout 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 lowerand 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. contemporary 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

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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 straightforward 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 disruptive 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 upgrading their houses by adapting similar practices reported by scholars studying

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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 concentrated 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

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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 extensions 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 righthand 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. ColloredoMansfeld (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 extravagant 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 balconies; 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

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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 improvements 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 influences, 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 bungalow’ 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 construction. 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.

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Figure 8.1  Material objects. Photo by the author.

In contrast to Fabián’s ideas about creating a modern house that highlights 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

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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 transforming 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 components 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 constructions. 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 residents explained that more space meant more opportunities for innovation, a fusion of styles and decoration. In addition, embarking on a major renovation 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

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larger bedrooms for the children, laundry rooms, roof gardens or patios for laundry. A variation of the extended home was created by changing the original 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 [construction] 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 including 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)

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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 establishing 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 maximum 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 residents 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 consumer goods, residents had to tackle the seemingly endless shortcomings of the original Casa GEO structures; the low-grade construction materials and

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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 radically 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 lifestyle 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

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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 weekend 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 personnel (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 profession 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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References Azuela, A. 1989. La Ciudad, la Propiedad Privada y el Derecho. Mexico City: El Colegio de México. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press; R. Nice, translation of La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979. Colloredo-Mansfeld, R. 1994. ‘Architectural Conspicuous Consumption and Economic Change in the Andes’, American Anthropologist 96(4): 845–65. CONAVI (Comisión Nacional de Vivienda). 2009. Retrieved 14 November 2014 from http:// www.inegi.org.mx/prod_serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/integracion/pais/ historicas10/tema2-vivienda_urban.pdf. Corporación GEO, S.A.B de C.V. 2010. ‘First Report of Sustainable Communities: Mexico 2010’. Retrieved 15 January 2012 from http://www.unglobalcompact.org/system/ attachments/11793/original/First_Report_of_Sustainable_Communities_2010. pdf?1314749445. De la Calle, L. and L. Rubio. 2010. Clasemediero Pobre no Más: Desarrollado aún No. Mexico City: CIDAC. Ehrenreich, B. and J. Ehrenreich. 1977a. ‘The Professional-Managerial Class’, Radical America 11(2): 7–32. ———. 1977b. ‘The New Left and the Professional-Managerial Class’, Radical America 11(2): 7–24. Fathy, H. 1976. Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fernandes, L. 2006. India’s New Middle-Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. García Peralta, B. and A. Hoffer. 2006. ‘Housing for the Working Class on the Periphery of Mexico City: A New Version of Gated Communities’, Social Justice 33(3): 105–20. García-Velez, C. (n.d) De Grandes Conjuntos a Ciudades: Por Qué la Arquitectura, Específicamente el Diseño Urbano Va en Decadencia? Mexico City: Garciavelez Arquitectos. Gerke, S. 2000. ‘Global Lifestyles Under Local Conditions: The New Indonesian MiddleClass’, in C. Beng (ed.), Consumption in Asia: Lifestyles and Identities. London: Routledge, pp. 135–58. Humphrey, C. 2002. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies After Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jackson, K. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Jones, G. and A. Varley. 1999. ‘The Reconquest of the Historic Centre: Urban Conservation and Gentrification in Puebla, Mexico’, Environment and Planning A 31(9): 1547–566. Klaufus, C. 2000. ‘Dwelling as Representation: Values of Architecture in an Ecuadorian Squatter Settlement’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 15(1): 341–65. ———. 2006. ‘Globalization in Residential Architecture in Cuenca, Ecuador: Social and Cultural Diversification of Architects and Their Clients’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(1): 69–89. Koning, A. 2009. Global Dreams: Class, Gender, and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Liechty, M. 2003. Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Palmeri, C. 1995. ‘We Have a Mission’, Forbes 156(12): 96–98.

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Puebla, C. 2002. Del Intervencionismo Estatal a las Estrategias Facilitadoras: Cambios en la Política de Vivienda en México. México: El Colegio de México. Siembieda, W. and E. López Moreno. 1999. ‘From Commercial Banking Systems to NonCommercial Banking Systems in Mexico’, in K. Datta and G.A. Jones (eds), Housing and Finance in Developing Countries. London: Routledge, pp. 75–88. Wacquant, L. 1991. ‘Making Class: The Middle-Class(es) in Social Theory and Social Structure’, in S.G. McNall, R.F. Levine and R. Fantasia (eds), Bringing Class Back in Contemporary and Historical Perspectives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 39–64. Zhang, L. 2010. In Search of Paradise: Middle-Class Living in a Chinese Metropolis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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 environment. 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 spatiality 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 (neighbourhood) in Latin America to understand my departing point; hundreds of thousands of structures share the same construction technology – a few columns 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 aesthetic 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 partnership with the city administration allowed me to have access to extensive documentation on the Acaba Mundo neighbourhood in Belo Horizonte, – 209 –

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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.

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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 twentieth 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 structures 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

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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 inexpensive 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 gradual 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 neighbours 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

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favelas has necessarily to go through the middle class. Although it is ­possible to hypothesize that architectural knowledge can flow directly from the construction 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 materials 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 neighbourhoods in the major Brazilian cities, one cannot avoid noticing a repetition 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.

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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 reinforced concrete its own strategy to enter modernity (García-Canclini 1995). The intriguing part of the equation was to try to figure out how the knowledge 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 contrasting 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 neighbourhoods 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

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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 workers. 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 renovations. 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.

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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 dealing 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 companies – 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 openings (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 dissemination 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.

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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 inexorably 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 technological 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

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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 episode 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 construction 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 footprint is small but only due to lack of money to consume more or the impossibility 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

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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 photographic 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 spatiality 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 movement 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 interviews with construction workers support that assumption, showing how the economically and technically more efficient reinforced concrete rapidly displaced the previous vernacular of load-bearing walls with wooden trusses. As a result, one of the most singular characteristics of the built environment in contemporary Brazil is the prevalence of modernism in one way

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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 million 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 modernism 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 technology 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,

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anthropologists, economists and demographers have scrutinized the favela’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 documented 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 materiality. 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 loteamentos 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 elements 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.

References Angel, S. 2000. Housing Policy Matters: A Global Analysis. Oxford: University Press. Barros, R. et al. 2001. A Estabilidade Inaceitável, Desigualdade e Pobreza no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: IPEA.

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Berenstein Jacques, P. 2003. Esthétique des favelas: Les favelas de Rio à travers l’oeuvre de Hélio Oiticic. Paris: L’Harmattan. Davis, H. 1999. The Culture of Building. New York: Oxford University Press. Forty, A. 2005. ‘Cement and Multiculturalism’, in F. Hernández, M. Millington and I. Borden (eds), Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 144–54. García-Canclini, N. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press. Holston, J. 1991. ‘Autoconstruction in Working Class Brazil’, Cultural Anthropology 6(4): 447–65. Kellett, P. 2005. ‘The Construction of Home in the Informal City’, in F. Hernández, M. Millington and I. Borden (eds), Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 22–42. King, A. 1996. ‘Vernacular, Transitional, Post-Colonial’, Casabella 6063–71. Lara, F. 2002. ‘One Step Back, Two Steps Forward: The Maneuvering of Brazilian AvantGarde’, Journal of Architectural Education 55(4): 211–19. ———. 2006. ‘Brazilian Popular Modernism: Analyzing the Dissemination of Architectural Vocabulary’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 23(2): 91–112. ———. 2008. The Rise of Popular Modernist Architecture in Brazil. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ———. 2009. ‘Modernism Made Vernacular: The Brazilian Case’, Journal of Architectural Education 63(1): 41–50. ———. 2010. ‘The Form of the Informal, Investigating Brazilian Self-built Housing Solutions’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 23–38. Segawa, H. 1994. ‘The Essentials of Brazilian Modernism’, Design Book Review 32–33: 64–68. Valladares, L. 2005. A Invenção da Favela: Do Mito de Origem a Favela.com. Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Vaz, L.F. 2002. Modernidade e Moradia: Habitação Coletiva no Rio de Janeiro, Séculos XIX e XX. Rio de Janeiro: 7 letras and FAPERJ.

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Towards Belonging Informal Design and Dwelling Practices in Northern Colombia Peter Kellett

Although limited by economic constraints, builder-dwellers in informal, selfmade 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 materials and house furnishings. The main arena for competitive display and distinction 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 neighbourhoods 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 fundamental 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 –

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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 formalized processes such as education, which historically has employed copying 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 development 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.

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Constructing Order and Belonging Many authors have emphasized the symbolic dimension of housing and identified 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 position 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 significantly 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 relatively 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 interpreted as striving to achieve formal respectability, conventionality, order

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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 habitation, 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 domestic 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 building. 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

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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 dominated by numerous framed educational certificates and graduation-style photographs 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 message 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 nostalgia 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 progress 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

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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 conditions. 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 minimal) 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 housing 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.

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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 dwellers aspire: a language of order, formality and affluence. Knowledge and imagery 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 population 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 relative 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

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concrete block walls, cement floors and fibre-cement roofs. The houses are later rendered and painted. These materials and the accompanying construction 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 dwellers 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

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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 urbanbased 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 difference. However, a delicate balance is required between difference and similarity: 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 recognize 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-income residents hold clear aesthetic preferences and participate with knowledge 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 occasional 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,

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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 culture 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:

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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 unattended … 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 essential final touch in the production of a completed house, one which will ­demonstrate beyond doubt that the inhabitants have transformed themselves 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.

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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 identities, and vice versa’ (Vellinga 2007: 761). Just as social identities are in a state of change and flux, so too material objects ‘acquire different, changeable, 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 constructed in solid materials, many painted in lively colours. Such ­improvements

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appear to be accounted for by a linear model of dwelling consolidation intimately 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 community 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 residents suggests we need to analyse further the actual usage of domestic space and objects. The house can be interpreted as a microcosm of significant cognitive 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 (habitus) 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 signals 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 position between the sitting area and the kitchen. Such furniture arrangements appear to define clear activity settings (Rapoport 1982). We would expect

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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 particular 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 deepseated 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

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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: settlement layout, dwelling plans, building materials, type and location of furniture, 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

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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 conclusions. 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 considerably 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 continuing 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.

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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.

References Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press; R. Nice, translation of La distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979. Camargo Rodríguez, J.A. and C.A. Blanco Botero. 2007. Voces y Silencios: Sobre el Desplazamiento Forzado en Santa Marta. Santa Marta: Universidad Sergio Arboleda. Carrillo, A.C. 2009. ‘Internal Displacement in Colombia: Humanitarian, Economic and Social Consequences in Urban Settings and Current Challenges’, International Review of the Red Cross 91(875): 527–46. Cooper Marcus, C. 1995. House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home. Berkeley: Conari Press. Douglas, M. 2006 [1966]. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Dovey, K. 1985. ‘Home and Homelessness’, in I. Altman and C. Werner (eds), Home Environments. New York and London: Plenum Press, pp. 33–64. ———. 2010. Becoming Places: Urbanism/Architecture/Identity/Power. London: Routledge. Fletcher, P. 1999. La Casa de Mis Sueños: Dreams of Home in a Transnational Migrant Community. Boulder: Westview Press. Foster, D.W. 1975. ‘Survival Strategies of Low-income Households in a Colombian City’, Ph.D. dissertation. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois. García Fernández, J.L. 1989. ‘Trazas Urbanas Hispanoamericanas y sus Antecedentes’, in CEHOPU (ed.), La Ciudad Hispanoamericana: El Sueño de un Orden. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Historicas de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo (CEHOPU), Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo, pp. 213–21. Goffman, E. 1969. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Allen Lane and Penguin. Gough, K.V. and Kellett, P. 2001. ‘Housing Consolidation and Home-based Income Generation: Evidence from Self-help Settlements in two Colombian Cities’, Cities 18(4): 235–47. Gullestad, M. 1993. ‘Home Decoration as Popular Culture: Constructing Homes, Genders and Classes in Norway’, in T. del Valle (ed.), Gendered Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp. 128–61. Hardoy, J.E. 1982. ‘The Building of Latin American Cities’, in A. Gilbert (ed.), Urbanization in Contemporary Latin America: Critical Approaches to the Analysis of Urban Issues. London: Wiley, pp. 19–33. Heidegger, M. 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. Edited and translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row. Hernández, F. and P. Kellett. 2010. ‘Re-imagining the Informal in Latin America’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 1–19. Hillier, B. and J. Hanson. 1984. The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holston, J. 1991. ‘Autoconstruction in Working-Class Brazil’, Cultural Anthropology 6(4): 447–65.

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ICRC. 2007. A Review of the Displaced Population in Eight Cities of Colombia: Local Institutional Response, Living Conditions and Recommendations for Their Assistance. Bogotá: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), World Food Programme (WFP). Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Kellett, P. 1995. ‘Constructing Home: Production and Consumption of Popular Housing in Northern Colombia’, Ph.D. dissertation. Newcastle: University of Newcastle upon Tyne. ———. 2000. ‘Voices From the Barrio: Oral Testimony and Informal Housing Processes’, Third World Planning Review 22(2): 189–205. ———. 2005. ‘The Construction of Home in the Informal City’, in F. Hernández, M. Millington and I. Borden (eds), Transculturation: Cities, Spaces and Architectures in Latin America. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. 22–42. ———. 2012. ‘Living in the field: Ethnographic Experience of Place’, ARQ: Architectural Review Quarterly 15(4): 341–46. Klaufus, C. 2012. Urban Residence: Housing and Social Transformations in Globalizing Ecuador. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Lara, F.L. 2006. ‘Brazilian Popular Modernism: Analysing the Dissemination of Architectural Vocabulary’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 23(2): 91–112. ———. 2010. ‘The Form of the Informal: Investigating Brazilian Self-built Housing Solutions’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 23–38. Lawrence, R. 1987. Housing, Dwellings, and Homes: Design Theory, Research and Practice. Chichester: Wiley. Levi-Strauss, C. 1983. The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques, Volume 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Miller, D. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ———. 1994. Modernity: An Ethnographic Approach: Dualism and Mass Consumption in Trinidad. Oxford: Berg. Mintz, S.W. and C.M. Du Bois. 2002. ‘The Anthropology of Food and Eating’, Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 99–119. Peattie, L.R. 1992. ‘Aesthetic Politics: Shantytown Architecture or New Vernacular?’ Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 3(2): 23–32. Probyn, E. 1996. Outside Belongings. London: Routledge. Rapoport, A. 1982. The Meaning of the Built Environment: A Non-verbal Communication Approach. London: Sage. Sharr, A. 2007. Heidegger for Architects. London: Routledge. Streicker, J. 1993. ‘Sexuality, Power and Social Order in Cartagena, Colombia’, Ethnology: International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology 22(4): 359–74. ———. 1995. ‘Policing Boundaries: Race, Class, and Gender in Cartagena, Colombia’, American Ethnologist 22(1): 54–74. ———. 1997. ‘Spatial Reconfiguration, Imagined Geographies, and Social Conflicts in Cartagena, Colombia’, Cultural Anthropology 12(1): 109–28. Vellinga, M. 2007. ‘Anthropology and the Materiality of Architecture’, American Ethnologist 34(4): 756–66. Waterson, R. 1997. The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-east Asia. London: Thames and Hudson. Wiesenfeld, E. 2001. La Autoconstrucción: Un Estudio Psicosocial del Significado de la Vivienda. Caracas: Comisión de Estudios de Posgrado, Universidad Central de Venezuela.

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(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 documentary 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 rhetorical 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 deterritorialized individuals but instead as a collective that claims its rightful – 241 –

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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 synergies 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 relationships 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 meaningfully 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

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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 distinct 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 landscape. 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 intensification 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 complicating 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

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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 competing histories, the state histories win. This is thanks to the overwhelming production of material that supports efforts to enhance the informal communities’ 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 planners, 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 neighbourhoods 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 erasing 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

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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 perspectives’ (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 communities involved physical and programmatic interventions in violent neighbourhoods 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 aesthetically 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

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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 positions 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 publicity – 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 humanitarian 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 neighbourhood 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.

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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:

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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 intensified the frequency of kidnappings and the escalation of the confrontation 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 process 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 narcotics, 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 chapter, 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

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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 president 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 territory. 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 extrajudicial 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 neighbourhoods, whose isolation was caused by the tension between themselves and the state in the first place. The impact of violence on these neighbourhoods is further intensified by the presence of a multiplicity of illegal armed actors, who brought the conflicts of Colombia’s rural areas to the ‘peripheral’ 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).

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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 planning 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 challenges 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 explanation. 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 scenario, taken together, generate important distinctions (in a general context of similarities) between what the literature on informality argues and its applicability 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 communities 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

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­ 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 influence 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 countryside that makes the Medellín situation distinct. Here, the act of self-building 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 question: 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 communities. 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.

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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 presents 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 communities 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 needing 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 amenities 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 process is followed by a contestation over the land: attacks on informal communities from private and public entities. Through erasure of houses and lives, the state claims the land for the formal city and – through reconstruction of

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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 injustice embedded in the need for their existence in the first place. However, for those who spend their lives building these environments, each brick represents 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 burning 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 relationships 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 negotiated 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

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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 resilient 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 granting 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 guerrillas, 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.

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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 improvements. 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 accommodate 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 engaging 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.

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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 neighbourhood 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 narratives 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 democratization 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.

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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 communities 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 contradictory 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 municipal 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 redundant, as in creating two soccer fields in the same neighbourhood (Samper Escobar 2010). Other municipal interventions in informal communities, however, have been groundbreaking, and have established a foundation on which to develop more cohesive and complex urban projects. Examples of groundbreaking projects in informal settlements in Medellín include the first experiments 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

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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 century. Fajardo’s plan of action, Medellín, la ciudad más educada (Medellín, the most educated city), focused on developing soft and hard infrastructure 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 organizations (NGOs) and leaders drawn from the private sector (Dávila 2009), a pattern that other cities like Bogotá had already followed during the administration 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

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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 different 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 increasing 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 institutional, 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

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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 quality 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 existent, 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 coverage 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 studying 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

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neighbourhoods to create a series of connected safe spaces. Even more striking 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-income 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, reinserted 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 policies 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 community members in various stages of the urban transformation. Social workers, urban planners, architects and other city officials invited community members 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’.

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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 newspapers 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 forefront 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 erasure 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 neighbourhoods 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 violence 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.

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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 institutions 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 evidence 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 transformation 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 synergies 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 maintained by the community members. Keeping the stories of community members 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 violence and establishing democratic order’ (Arias 2004). These are important

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because ‘synergies between civil society and state in the context of participatory 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 neighbourhoods 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 intervention. 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 longer-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 construction of the city of Medellín. On one hand, informal and poor communities struggle against private and public actors to claim their land and their belonging to the place that they have conquered. On the other hand, the new propoor 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

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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 dumping 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 neighbourhood space, state and community are collaborating – with intertwining enthusiasm. This is what we call effective ‘synergies’. Luz Elena’s participation 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 without 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 building. 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 representative 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 communitarian 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

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throughout the world (Evans 1996; Postigo 2011), are still the most fundamental 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 understanding 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) success 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/2011/02/15el-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 throughout the Americas. Our documentaries put their stories into conversation with research in archives, human rights and government publications, media coverage and academic literature. 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.

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  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 proliferation 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.

References Alcaldía de Medellín. 2011. Análisis Descriptivo Asentamiento y Movilidad de Población Desplazada en Medellín. Secretaría de Bienestar Social Unidad de Atención a La Población Desplazada Unidad de Análisis y Evaluación de Política Pública Alcaldia de Medellín. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.medellin.gov.co/irj/portal/ ciudadanos?NavigationTarget=navurl://3a491b0c03faefd62164fce72571394d. Arango Escobar, G. 1985. Mejoramiento Barrial en Medellín, 1964–1984 : Asentamientos San Pablo, el Playón de los Comuneros, los Caunces, Aures, la Candelaria, María Cano, Nuevos Conquistadores, San Martín de Porres. Medellín: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Seccional Medellín, Programa de Estudios de Vivienda en América Latina (PEVAL). Arias, E.D. 2004. ‘Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas’, Latin American Politics and Society 46(1): 1–38. Beall, J., T. Goodfellow and D. Rodgers. 2011. Cities, Conflict and State Fragility. London: Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. Berney, R. 2011. ‘Pedagogical Urbanism: Creating Citizen Space in Bogotá, Colombia’, Planning Theory Planning Theory 10(1): 16–34. Betancur, J. 2007a. ‘Urban Challenges in Latin American Cities: Medellín and the Limits of Governance’, in R. Hambleton and J.S. Gross (eds), Governing Cities in a Global Era:

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Urban Innovation, Competition, and Democratic Reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 125–38. ——. 2007b. ‘Approaches to the Regularization of Informal Settlements: The Case of PRIMED in Medellín, Colombia’, Global Urban Development Magazine 3(1) (2007), online World Bank IPEA International Urban Research Symposium. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.globalurban.org/GUDMag07Vol3Iss1/Betancur.htm. Blanco, C. and H. Kobayashi. 2009. ‘Urban Transformation in Slum Districts Through Public Space Generation and Cable Transportation at Northeastern Area: Medellín, Colombia’, Journal of International Social Research. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www. sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt2/sayi8pdf/Blanco_Kobayashi.pdf. Bouvier, V.M. 2009. Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. Boyd, D. 2008. ‘Dwellers of Memory: Youth and Violence in Medellín, Colombia’, Oral History Review 35(2): 206–8. Bushnell, D. 1993. The Making of Modern Colombia : A Nation in Spite of Itself. Berkeley: University of California Press. Caldeira, T.P.R. 1996. ‘Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation’, Public Culture: Bulletin of the Project for Transnational Cultural Studies 8(2): 303–28. Caldeira, T.P.R. and J. Holston. 1999. ‘Democracy and Violence in Brazil’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 41(4): 691–729. Calderon, C. 2009. Learning From Slum Upgrading and Participation: A Case Study of Participatory Slum Upgrading in the Emergence of New Governance in the City of Medellín, Colombia. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Caminos, H., J.F. Turner and J.A. Steffian. 1969. Urban Dwelling Environments: An Elementary Survey of Settlements for the Study of Design Determinants. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Castells, M. 1989. The Informational City : Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-regional Process. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ‘Cinco Años de la Operación Orión: No más Mentiras’. 2007, DHColombia, Red de Defensores No Institucionalizados. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.dhcolombia.info/ spip.php?article432. Dávila, J. 2009. ‘Being a Mayor: The View From Four Colombian Cities’, Environment and Urbanization 21(1): 37–57. Davis, D.E. 1999. ‘The Power of Distance: Re-theorizing Social Movements in Latin America’, Theory and Society 28(4): 585–638. ——. 2007. Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb. London: Verso. Donovan, M.G. 2008. ‘Informal Cities and the Contestation of Public Space: The Case of Bogotá’s Street Vendors, 1988–2003’, Urban Studies 45(1): 29–51. Drummond, D. 1981. Architectes des Favelas. Paris: Dunod. Escobar Arango, D. 2006. Medellín del Miedo a la Esperanza (2004–2006): El Modelo Que Siguió la Ciudad para Mejorar en Seguridad Convivencia. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín. Estrada C.W. and A.V Gómez. 1992. Somos Historia : Comuna Nororiental. Medellín: s.n. Evans, P. 1996. ‘Government Action, Social Capital and Development: Reviewing the Evidence on Synergy’, World Development 24(6): 1119–32. Fajardo, S. 2009. ‘Del miedo a la Esperanza’. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=YBaVbSE5uXg. Fletcher, K. 2008. ‘Colombia Dispatch 9: The Story of Medellín’, Smithsonian Magazine Online, 29 October. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://www.smithsonianmag. com/travel/Colombia-Dispatch-9-The-Story-of-Medellin.html Ford, L.R. 1996. ‘A New and Improved Model of Latin American City Structure’, Geographical Review 86(3): 437–40.

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Gilbert, A. 1996. The Mega-city in Latin America. United Nations University Press. ——. 2006. ‘Good Urban Governance: Evidence from a Model City?’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 25(3): 392–419. Griffin, E. and L. Ford. 1980. ‘A Model of Latin American City Structure’, Geographical Review 70(4): 397–422. Gutiérrez Sanín, F., M.E. Wills, O.G. Sánchez and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 2006. Nuestra Guerra Sin Nombre: Transformaciones del Conflicto en Colombia. Bogotá: Grupo Editorial Norma and Universidad Nacional de Colombia Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales. Harbom L. and P. Wallensteen. 2010. ‘Armed Conflicts, 1946–2009’, Journal of Peace Research 47(4): 501–9. Harris, R. 2003. ‘A Double Irony: The Originality and Influence of John F.C. Turner’, Habitat International 27(2): 245–69. Harvey, D. 2003. ‘The Right to the City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(4): 939–41. Hernández, F. 2010. Beyond Modernist Masters: Contemporary Architecture in Latin America. Basel: Birkhäuser. Holston, J. 1991. ‘Autoconstruction in Working-class Brazil’, Cultural Anthropology 6(4): 447–65. ——. 1999. Cities and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ——. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ibáñez, A. and A. Velásquez. 2009. ‘Identifying Victims of Civil Conflicts: An Evaluation of Forced Displaced Households in Colombia’, Journal of Peace Research 46(3): 431–51. International Congress for Modern Architecture. 1951. CIAM 8. 8th International Congress for Modern Architecture. Interregional Seminar on the Improvement of Slums and Uncontrolled Settlements. 1971. Report of the Interregional Seminar on the Improvement of Slums and Uncontrolled Settlements, Medellín, Colombia, 15 February–1 March 1970. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, and Universidad de Antioquia. Isaza-Figueroa, I. 2010. ‘The Legacy of Modernist Planning: The Slums of Medellín and the Impact of the Metrocable’, Ph.D. dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Urban Studies (A.B., Honors in Special Concentrations). Jodidio, P. 2010. Public Architecture Now! = Öffentliche Architecktur Heute! = L’architecture Publique D’aujourd’hui! Köln: Taschen. Kidokoro, T., et al. (eds). 2008. Vulnerable Cities Realities, Innovations and Strategies. Tokyo: Springer. Kimmelman, M. 2012. ‘A City Rises, Along With its Hopes’, The New York Times, 18 May 2012. Retrieved 20 May 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/arts/design/ fighting-crime-with-architecture-in-medellin-colombia.html?_r=2&hp. Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt (eds). 1999. Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America. London: Zed Books. Lacy, S. and P. Riano-Alcala. 2006. ‘Medellín, Colombia: Reinhabiting Memory’, Art Journal – New York 65(4): 96–112. Lara, F.L. 2010. ‘The Form of the Informal: Investigating Brazilian Self-built Housing Solutions’, in F. Hernández, P. Kellett and L. Allen (eds), Re-thinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 23–38. Lepik, A. 2010. Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Malena, C., R. Forster and J. Singh. 2004. Social Accountability: An Introduction to the Concept and Emerging Practice. Washington, DC: World Bank, Participation and Civic Engagement,

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Social Development Department, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network. Marko, T. 2012. ‘Disrupting Doble Desplazamiento in Conflict Zones: Alternative Feminist Stories Cross the Colombia-U.S. Border’, Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing and Service Learning 12(1): 9–53. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http:// reflectionsjournal.net/. ——. 2014. ‘We Also Built the City of Medellín: Desplazadas’ Family Albums as Feminist Archival Activism’, in J. Shayne (ed.), Taking Risks: Feminist Stories of Activist Research in the Americas. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ——. Forthcoming. The Making (& Unmaking) of the U.S.-Colombia Cocaine Trade Violence Fetish. University of Illinois Press. Martin, G. and D. Corrales (eds). 2009. Medellín: Transformación de una Ciudad. Medellín: Alcaldia Medellín and Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo. McDermott, J. 2003. ‘Colombia Unveils Security Plan’, BBC News Americas, 30 June 2003. Retrieved 17 December 2012 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ americas/3030768.stm. Mejia B, J.R. 2008. ‘Methodology for Intervention in Vulnerable Settlements in Medellín, Colombia: Urban Destructuralization in Relation to the Topography of the Territory’, in T. Kidokoro et al. (eds), Vulnerable Cities Realities, Innovations and Strategies. Tokyo: Springer, pp. 119–40. Morris, H. 2010. Comuna 13 De Medellín. Bogotá: Morris Producciones y Communicaciones. Moser, C.O.N. and C. McIlwaine. 2004. Encounters With Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor Perceptions From Colombia and Guatemala. New York: Routledge. ——. 2006. ‘Latin American Urban Violence as a Development Concern: Towards a Framework for Violence Reduction’, World Development 34(1): 89–112. Murillo-Castaño, G. and E. Ungar Bleier. 1978. Política, Vivienda Popular y el Proceso de Toma de Decisiones en Colombia: Análisis de la Coyuntura Actual y Viabilidad de las Soluciones Propuestas Durante el Frente Nacional. Bogotá: Departamento de Ciencia Política, Facultad de Artes y Ciencias, Universidad de Los Andes. Pacheco Blanco, R. 2001. La Constitución Colombiana de 1991. Bucaramanga: Universidad Santo Tomás, Seccional Bucaramanga. Perelman, J., K. Young and M. Ayariga. 2011. ‘Freeing Mohammed Zakari: Rights as Footprints’, in L.E. White and J. Perelman (eds), Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 122–45. Perlman, J.E. 1976. The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——. 2010. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Postigo, A. 2011. ‘Accounting for Outcomes in Participatory Urban Governance Through State-Civil-Society Synergies’, Urban Studies 48(9): 1945–67. Programa Integral de Mejoramiento de Barrios Subnormales en Medellín. 1996. Una Experiencia Exitosa en la Intervencion Urbana. Medellín: Primed. Rodgers, D. 2006. ‘Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002’, Journal of Latin American Studies 38(2): 267–92. Rojas, E. (ed.) 2010. Building Cities: Neighbourhood Upgrading and Urban Quality of Life. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank: Cities Alliance. Roldan, M. 1999. ‘Colombia: Cocaine and the “Miracle” of Modernity in Medellín’, in P. Gootenburg (ed.), Cocaine: Global Histories. London: Routledge, pp. 165–82.

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——. 2003. ‘Wounded Medellín: Narcotics Traffic Against a Background of Industrial Decline’, in J. Schneider and I. Susser (eds), Wounded Cities: Destruction and Reconstruction in a Globalized World. Oxford: Berg, pp. 129–48. Romero, M. 2003. Paramilitares y Autodefensas, 1982–2003. Bogotá: Temas de Hoy, Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Editorial Planeta Colombiana. Roth, M. 2011. Library Architecture and Design. [Salenstein]; London: Braun, and Thames & Hudson [distributor]. Rozema, R. 2008. ‘Urban DDR-processes: Paramilitaries and Criminal Networks in Medellín, Colombia’, Journal of Latin American Studies 40(3): 423–52. Samper Escobar, J. 2010. ‘The Politics of Peace Process in Cities in Conflict : The Medellín Case as a Best Practice’, Ph.D. dissertation (M.C.P.). Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Samper, J. and T. Marko. 2011. ‘Medellín Mi Hogar/My Home Medellín: 9-2011 La Necesidad de Tener un Hogar’. Retrieved 30 October 2012 from http://medellinmihogar.blogspot. com/2012/01/9-2011-la-necesidad-de-tener-un-hogar.html. Schnitter Castellanos, P. 2007. José Luis Sert y Colombia: De la Carta de Atenas a una Carta del Hábitat. Medellín: Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Area Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá. Sheuya, S. 2007. ‘Reconceptualizing Housing Finance in Informal Settlements: The Case of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’, Environment and Urbanization 19(2): 441–56. SIPOD (Sistema de Información de Población Desplazada). 2010. Desplazamiento Forzado por La Violencia en la Ciudad de Medellín: Seguimiento Descriptivo del Fenómeno. Secretaría de Bienestar Social Gerencia Para La Coordinación y Atención a la Población Desplazada Alcaldía de Medellín. Turner, J.F.C. 1977. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. New York: Pantheon Books. Ward, P.M. 1976. ‘The Squatter Settlement as Slum or Housing Solution: Evidence from Mexico City’, Land Economics 52(3): 330–46. White, L. and J. Perelman. 2011. Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yiftachel, O. 2009. ‘Critical Theory and “Gray Space”: Mobilization of the Colonized’, City 13(2–3): 246–63.

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 dysfunctionality 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 privilege. 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 –

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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 ‘contemporary 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 drawing 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

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‘reactionary nationalisms’: it is ‘dismissed as an embarrassing backwater of unemancipated feelings or actively attacked as a breeding ground of repressive 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; international 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 powerful 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, transgressing ‘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

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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, epistemologically – 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 nomadism’ 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 narratives 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 connections: 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 description 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 understanding 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

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dividing line between good and bad, inside and outside, rather than undermining it. The ambiguity of home is denied, then, by the tendency to privilege 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 contingent 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, unintentionally, ­perpetuate the othering of home, promoting contempt for the home as material space. How else, then, might we think about the home as dwelling 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 constructed 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 necessary; 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 pathways 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

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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 connections 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 minimalist 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 seventy-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 happening. 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, fortunately, 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-

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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.

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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 homelessness 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

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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 renting. 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.

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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 arrimado, in three days they stink’ [‘El muerto y el arrimado, a los tres días apesta’ – a much cited proverb].

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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-inlaw (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

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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 ‘matters 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 movement. 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

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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.

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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,

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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, signalling 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 narrative of the self. When people in Guadalajara expressed their dislike of rental or shared housing as an expression of unwanted mobility, they were talking

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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).

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Final Thoughts Recent critics of home emphasize the selfish and alienating aspects of the private 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 continuity, quiet, and relief from feeling noticed’ (Smith 2003: 43). Roberto, in Los Encinos, explicitly contrasted this value with the value of house as commodity: ‘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 apparently 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.

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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; discussions 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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De Lauretis, T. 1990. ‘Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness’, Feminist Studies 16(1): 115–50. Douglas, M. 1991. ‘The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space’, Social Research 58(1): 287–307. Flax, J. 1993. Disputed Subjects: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics and Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Kaika, M. 2004. ‘Interrogating the Geographies of the Familiar: Domesticating Nature and Constructing the Autonomy of the Modern Home’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28(2): 265–86. McDowell, L. 2003. ‘Place and Space’, in M. Eagleton (ed.), A Concise Companion to Feminist Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 11–31. Pedrero Nieto, M. 2005. Trabajo Doméstico no Remunerado en México: Una Estimación de su Valor Económico a Través de la Encuesta Nacional Sobre Uso del Tiempo 2002. México DF: Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres. Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pratt, G. 1998. ‘Geographic Metaphors in Feminist Theory’, in S.H. Aiken, A. Brigham, S.A. Marston and P. Waterstone (eds), Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality. Tucson AZ: University of Arizona, pp. 13–30. ———. 1999. ‘Geographies of Identity and Difference: Marking Boundaries’, in D. Massey, J. Allen and P. Sarre (eds), Human Geography Today. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 151–67. Pratt, M.B. 1984. ‘Identity: Skin Blood Heart’, in E. Bulkin, M.B. Pratt and B Smith (eds), Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism. New York: Long Haul Press, pp. 10–63. Sibley, D. 2005. ‘Private/Public’, in P. Jackson, D. Sibley and N. Washbourne (eds), Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts. London: IB Tauris, pp. 155–160. Smith, J.M. 2003. Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life, revised edition. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press. Stern, S.J. 1995. The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Taylor, J.B. 1992. ‘Re: Locations – From Bradford to Brighton’, New Formations 17: 86–94. Varley, A. 1993. ‘Gender and Housing: The Provision of Accommodation for Young Adults in Three Mexican Cities’, Habitat International 17(4): 13–30. ———. 2000. ‘Women and the Home in Mexican Family Law’, in E. Dore and M. Molyneux (eds), The Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America. Durham, USA: Duke University Press, pp. 238–61. ———. 2002. ‘Private or Public: Debating the Meaning of Tenure Legalization’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(3): 449–61. ———. 2008. ‘A Place Like This? Stories of Dementia, Home and the Self’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26(1): 47–67. Walters, W. 2004. ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven, Domopolitics’, Citizenship Studies 8(3): 237–60. Wigley, M. 1993. The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Williams, R. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society 2nd edition. London: Fontana. Young, I.M. 1997. Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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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 recreate 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 published 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 –

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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 observing 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 somewhere 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 subjective narratives of our informants. Based on interviews, most social science researchers present narratives about the neighbourhoods of their investigations. 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 corresponds to the human need for storytelling. We are the storytelling animal, Jonathan Gottschall (2012) tells us. Storytelling is seen as c­ollaborative,

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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-fictional. 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 potential 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-fictional 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 societies 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 preceding 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

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the intervention or mediation of an outside scholar. As an historian of contemporary 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 saddened by the loss of friends, adolescents from the Cajamarquilla neighbourhood – 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 participation 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 directing. 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 community 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

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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 organizers brought together leaders of four rivalling groups. They were quite successful, 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 participates increasingly in local gang life. He promised his girlfriend to change his behaviour, but perhaps it is too late …’ After his death, at the cemetery, the girlfriend thinks out loud: ‘What a waste. Why does the world not

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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 surrounds 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

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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, interestingly, 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 emotion 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 fundamental 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

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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, mancheros [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 helplessness 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’ generation – 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 generational 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 generation 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 ‘turning of the times’. This typical Andean concept combines time and place. In

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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 performances. 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 outside, 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 violence 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

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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 opening 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 cavelike 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 adolescents, 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

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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, gridiron-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 ‘monsters 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

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The contemporary fragmented city

The colonial city, compact

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 general 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 metaphor 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, metaphor 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

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­ 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 gridiron 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

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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 modern-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, jewellers 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 deterioration. 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 rectangular 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

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no centre without its corners and vice versa. This principle has guarded community 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 monetarism 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 indigenous 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

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patterns of thought or behaviour, structured clusters of preconceived ideas that help us to organize social information. Schematic encoding and decoding occur rapidly, automatically and unconsciously. An important contribution 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 economically. 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 interactive 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 procedural 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

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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 interpretation 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 schemas become more abstract and less tied to concrete instances. They also become richer and more complex, as more data needs be processed or ‘modernized’. 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 artefacts 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 neighbourhood 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 history, 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

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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 produces 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 specific 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 emotions 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 interaction of a group of people living together in a street, a quarter or a neighbourhood. 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

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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 cosmopolitan 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 historical 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 interaction ritual, acting out scripts historically encoded in the gridiron schema. This makes the circle round, because it cannot be but the same performance 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 developing 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: belonging is the EE result of the performance of community. This can be recognized 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,

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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 gridiron 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 community? The major result of the performance of neighbourhood is the translation of the sense of belonging into ‘Us versus Them’. The neighbourhood not only comes out of an interaction with Us but sometimes also in reaction 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 constructing ‘natural units’, as anthropologist Peter Mewett (1986) preferred to call them, a category relevant to the local conceptualization of spatial organization 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 contextualization 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)­

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– has been very important over the centuries. In fact, neighbourliness may have been a stronger bond than kinship. As Peter Laslett argues in his influential 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 democracies. 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 discussed by the four essential ingredients of Collins’s theory (Collins 2004: 47–64): co-presence, barriers, mutual attention and shared mood or collective 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 outsiders, 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, ‘collective 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

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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 multicellular. 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 regenerated 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 neighbourhood. 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 communal 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,

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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 JanuaryFebruary 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 policies 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.

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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 interrelationships 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 specializes 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 hundreds 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 contexts. 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.

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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 socialecono­mic 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 intersection between urban informality and urban ­violent conflict, focusing on community development and urban upgrading in Latin America.

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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 pedagogies 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 Alliance for Progress, 52, 56 Andes (mountains), 11, 242, 260, 262, 264, 307–8 apartment, 11, 13, 29, 128, 135, 229, 295 building, 14, 53, 132, 169–78, 282, 314 architecture, xii, 5, 7, 12, 46, 47, 50, 51, 64, 65, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 81, 82, 118, 185–88, 197, 198, 202, 213, 216, 217, 220, 221, 231, 232, 238, 250, 259, 267n9, 304 Argentina, 12, 36, 123, 149–63, 164–79 auto-construcción, 54, 55, 57, 66, 69 See also DIY and self-help housing B barriada, 8, 81–103 meaning of, 82 See also barrio, favela, neighbourhood, tugurio barrio, 43, 45, 61, 69, 165, 173, 175, 188, 209, 223, 230, 231, 235, 236, 257 See also barriada, favela, neighbourhood, tugurio basic need, 54, 150, 220 Belo Horizonte, 1, 12, 209–22, 294, 314 Bogotá, 9, 10, 31, 46, 47, 52, 61, 63, 70, 72, 73n7, 73n8–74n8, 74n17, 75n25, 109, 229, 258, 260 Bolsa Família, 9, 33, 37 Brasília, 1–2 Brazil, 1–2, 6, 9, 12, 14, 15n1, 33, 34, 60, 74n8, 112, 123–48, 209–22, 228, 230, 238n4, 250, 314 Buenos Aires, 7, 14, 28, 32, 33, 149–80, 295, 314, 315

C capital, capitalism, 57, 140 capitalist economy, 24, 183, 227 cultural, 170, 183, 202, 227, 275, 312 economic, 33, 164, 168 symbolic, 170, 237 Central America, 6, 7, 34, 38, 112, 298 Chicago School of Sociology, 13, 25 childhood, 65, 88, 93, 136, 173, 283, 305, 306 Chile, 31, 123, 158, 306 Church, 7, 36, 37, 45, 46, 50, 53, 55, 131, 189, 246, 255, 266n1 Roman Catholic, 52, 55 CIAM, 3, 47, 51, 73n8, 250 citizenship, xii, 8, 12, 38, 43, 70, 71, 125, 145n5, 166, 242, 251, 254 civil society, 58, 63, 69, 160, 264 clientelism, 9, 69 clientelistic nature, 30, 36, 37 clouded title, 108, 111, 120n2 cocaine, 57, 58, 59, 71 collective, 37, 65, 132, 241, 252, 254, 297, 309, 312 action, lobby, organization, participation, 13, 28, 38, 57, 91–93, 96–98, 100, 127, 130, 134, 236 aspirations, concerns, fear, needs, struggle, 39, 82, 85, 115, 223, 298 consciousness, identity, imaginaries, meaning, memory, 73, 117, 169, 173, 220, 279, 308, 313–14 housing, 158 narratives, phase, process, storytelling, system, 15, 83, 99–100, 142, 196, 297 Colombia, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 34, 43–78, 214, 223–240, 241–71, 294, 306, 314

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community, 11, 14, 15, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 35, 38, 55, 56, 82, 83, 85, 91–98, 99–100, 112–15, 120n6, 120n8, 121n9, 124, 128, 130, 132, 133, 139, 142, 144n1, 145n5, 160, 161n4, 173, 185, 188, 189, 191, 218, 226, 235, 241–46, 249, 252–57, 259–66, 267n10, 275, 277, 294, 297, 299, 301, 304, 308, 310–16 See also gated community/ies concrete (construction material), 88, 90 Table 3.2, 91, 189, 190, 196, 209, 211–21, 223, 230 condominium, condominio, 30, 165, 172 consolidated dwellings, 230–32, 235 consolidated settlements, 1–6, 107, 118, 119 consolidation, 13, 23–42, 64, 69, 82, 85, 87–92, 98, 105, 126, 127, 130, 176, 213, 223, 225, 235, 237 construction sector, 86, 153, 154, 155, 175, 221n1 contraband, 35, 57 credit, 152, 153, 193–95, 203, 303 See also mortgage crime, 7, 23, 25, 26, 38, 39, 43, 46, 47, 49, 57–60, 71, 74n10, 123, 124, 139, 142, 145n4, 172, 248, 256, 298 D demography, demographic, 13, 29, 51, 60, 72, 171, 221 design, xiii, 1, 7, 14, 47, 50, 53, 55, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 73n1, 74n8, 114, 133, 143, 149, 151, 155, 160, 169, 175, 182, 185, 187–95, 198, 201, 204, 209, 213, 214, 216, 219, 220, 221n2, 223, 225, 226, 229–34, 255, 276, 296, 298, 304, 316 urban design, 2, 3, 64, 188, 267n9, 307, 313 displacement, displaced people, desplazadas, 6, 7, 9, 26, 44, 63, 144, 229, 241–43, 245, 251, 254, 256–57, 262, 266n2 distinction, 7, 34, 45, 73n5, 166, 170, 174–77, 196, 202, 223, 230, 231, 234, 250, 277–79 DIY, Do It Yourself, 48, 53, 54, 58, 69, 72, 275 DIY urbanism, 53–57 domestic practice, 14, 223, 237 drugs, 34, 56, 247 Figure 11.1, 299, 300

E Ecuador, 11, 185, 197, 198, 204, 231 education, 9, 27, 33, 37, 39, 61, 70, 75, 84, 93, 142, 145n5, 150, 152, 156, 160, 189, 211, 224, 227, 255, 258, 259, 260, 262, 301 higher, 65, 93 primary, 93 secondary, 227 ejido, 187 meaning of, 204n2 elite, 4, 50, 52, 71, 150, 174, 220, 232, 244, 306 architecture, 232 group, 229, 231 school, 184 symbol, 232 venture, 219 enclave, 8, 165, 168, 172, 175, 176 ethnicity, 11, 26, 47 exclusion (social), 8, 73, 117, 124, 183, 226 F Fajardo, Sergio, Mayor of Medellín (2004–07), 63–64, 69, 70, 71, 74n12, 243, 246–48, 248n4, 258–59 favela, 8, 9, 13, 14, 36, 84, 123–46, 209–21, 257, 295, 314 See also barrio, barriada, neighbourhood, tugurio favelado, 36, 127 Favela-Bairro programme, 9, 257 feminist, 241, 251, 278 foreign direct investment, 30, 33 formal sector, 4, 32, 33, 34, 282 See also informal sector fragmented (urban), 6–8, 165, 172, 175, 304, 305 Figure 13.1, 306 G gang, see youth gang gated community/ies, 11, 13, 30, 31, 164, 165, 166, 169, 171, 176, 189, 191, 220, 229, 275 gender, 110, 113, 114, 117, 118 gentrification, 5, 6, 139, 141, 169 ghetto, 9, 26, 48 globalization, xi, 7, 85, 183, 248 Figure 11.1

I n d ex

grid (streets, urban pattern), 188, 190, 211, 225, 302–8, 310, 312–13, 315 Guadalajara, 14, 106, 107–8 Table 4.1, 108–10, 110 Table 4.2, 111 Table 4.3, 121n9, 276, 282–83, 289, 291, 292n4 Guatemala, 29, 35, 36 Guatemala City, 28, 29, 33, 37, 38 H health, healthy, 3, 37, 49, 54, 60, 61, 84, 101n15, 136, 142, 152, 156, 160, 189, 245, 258, 211, 305, 306 heritage, 5, 6, 53, 176, 313 high-rise building, 164–78, 314 history, xii, 2, 6, 61, 85, 96, 144n2, 167, 247, 259, 303, 308, 310 colonial, 1 shared, 82, 92, 96, 98 urban, xii, 48, 241, 294 home, xi, xii, xiii, 11–15, 34, 55, 82, 85, 89, 94, 96, 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, 115–20, 126, 130, 132, 134–37, 139, 141, 145n3, 161n2, 166, 173, 182, 184, 185, 189, 191, 193–97, 199, 200, 201, 203, 215, 216, 234, 241, 243, 251–56, 263, 266n1, 275–92, 295, 301, 302, 307, 311, 315 builder, 110, 187, 194 improvement, 92 less, 58, 233 town, 245 homeowner, 104, 105, 110 Table 4.2, 120, 186 household, 8, 11, 27, 28, 32, 33, 39, 45, 81, 85, 86, 88–94, 100n4, 101n11, 104–11, 115–19, 152, 210, 218, 219, 220, 224, 227, 228 Figure 10.2b, 230, 232, 235, 236, 238n6, 292n5 housing model, 182, 191, 203, 204 need, 11, 28, 85, 99, 100, 105, 151, 159 policy, 149–61 problem, 11, 52, 157, 159, 211 project, 14, 28, 47, 53, 154, 156 Figure 6.1, 181, 282 rental housing, 283 Figure 12.1 type, 13, 176, 229, 230 human rights, 60, 133, 266n1

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I identity, xiii, 14, 15, 26, 34, 35, 73, 74n16, 96, 98, 99, 135, 166, 167, 174, 182, 184, 186, 197, 214, 223, 226–28, 276–78, 279–81, 282, 286, 289–90, 298, 313 ilusión, 286, 289, 290 meaning of, 289 import substitution industrialization, 4, 33 inequality, xii, 4, 8, 12, 33, 43, 59, 117, 150, 242, 258–59 informal economy, 32, 34, 35 See also informal sector informal sector, 4, 32, 33, 35, 36, 55, 89, 221n1 See also formal sector inheritance, xi, 13, 104–21, 182, 314 innerburb, 106, 120n1 inner city, 5, 29 inner-city slums, 3 inner-city tenements, 81, 282 insecurity, 5, 6, 7, 37–38, 49, 58, 60, 62, 64, 71, 84, 123–24, 172, 190, 202, 234, 277 See also security Internet, 39, 68, 70, 71, 90, 94 Table 3.3, 128, 221, 263 invasion, 26, 29, 44, 53, 54, 55, 73n3, 83, 84, 85, 88, 91, 92, 95, 99, 101n12, n13, n17, 218, 225, 226, 238n2, 246, 253, 257 L La Violencia (Colombia), 52, 59, 250 labour market, 26, 27, 31–35, 126 library, 54, 62, 74n13, 221, 245, 260 Lima, 11, 13, 15, 28, 30, 31, 74n8, 81–101, 221, 294, 297, 299, 303, 306, 308, 313, 315 M mall, 7, 8, 30, 31, 33, 305 Figure 13.1 master plan, 3, 51, 53, 64, 66, 74n15, 191, 250 Medellín, 10, 13, 14, 43–75, 241–67, 294, 295, 315 media, the, 34, 35, 38, 59, 60, 130, 140, 142, 170, 172, 175, 214, 215, 229, 245, 246, 247, 266n1, 310 megacities, xiii, 5, 6, 10

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Index

metropolitan, 27–31, 50, 63, 86, 152, 155, 164 Mexico, xi, 12, 13, 14, 27, 31–38, 60, 104–22, 181–206, 238n5, 275–93, 314 Mexico City, 28–30, 33, 69, 295, 306, 307 middle class, xiii, 4, 7, 8, 14, 29, 37, 72, 152, 164, 165, 172, 175, 178n16, 182–86, 212–14, 219, 229, 305 Figure 13.1 middle-class housing, 30, 165, 171, 168n16, 191, 209, 212–14, 220, 229, 233, 239 middle-class lifestyle, 186, 189, 193, 196, 200, 202, 203, 252 middle-class neighbourhood, 45, 53, 124, 164, 168, 173, 188 middle-class residents, 41 military, 52, 58, 63, 144n1, 247 Figure 11.1, 248n3, 249, 257 migration, 25–29, 36, 45, 242, 249, 251, 278, 308 rural-urban, xii, 23, 27, 123, 243 transnational, 11, 256 mobility, 2, 11, 25, 51, 183, 245, 262, 266n1, 277, 278, 279, 286, 287, 288, 289, 305 Figure 13.1 physical, 59 population, 23, 24, 27–29 residential, 25, 26, 106, 108 social, xii, 38, 55, 186, 189, 204n6, 301 spatial, 171 Mockus, Antanas, Mayor of Bogotá (1995–97, 2001–3), 9, 61, 70, 75n25, 258, 260 mortgage, 152–53, 187, 199, 201–3 See also credit N neo-liberal city, 11 measures, 7, 8 model, 152 policy, policies, xii, 5, 6, 149, 152 state, 183 wave, 164 neo-liberalism, 5, 308 neighbourhood, see barrio, barriada, favela, tugurio association, 56, 58, 139 consolidation, see consolidation

organization, 61, 91, 93, 97 reputation, xiii, 14, 169 O obra negra, 227 meaning of, 192 P paramilitary, 59–60, 63, 71, 247 Figure 11.1, 248n2, 248n3, 249, 254, 261 participatory, 2, 9, 43, 49, 63, 85, 97, 145n5, 264, 265 Peñalosa, Enrique, Mayor of Bogotá (1998–2001), 9, 61, 260 Peru, 12, 81–103, 123, 297, 301–3 plaza, 74n13, 188, 245, 265, 299, 301, 306–7, 310, 315 poblador, 36, 86, 88, 90, 101n13, 164–77 police, 33, 35, 36, 37, 58, 59, 60, 61, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 137, 142, 144n1, 211, 248, 259, 266n1 politics, 8, 23, 30, 31, 36, 38, 64, 71, 145n4, 246, 250, 261, 277, 278, 308 domopolitics, 277 poverty, 5, 7, 9, 23, 24, 27, 30, 31–35, 38, 47, 48, 57, 59, 69, 70, 81, 86, 101n15, 104, 106, 124, 127, 152, 176, 183, 186, 220, 226, 229, 245, 263, 289, 300, 303 culture of poverty, 26, 81 privada, 181, 182, 188, 190, 192, 201, 202 meaning of, 181 private security, see security property, 8, 58, 100, 104–21, 140, 141, 173, 176, 191 private, 291 title, 44, 57, 64, 129 rights, 6 public security, see security public space, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 31, 53, 55, 64, 65, 68, 92, 128–29, 145n4, 165, 173, 258, 260, 263, 265, 295 public transport, see transport pueblo, 49, 123, 308 R real estate, 33, 157 agent, 170, 176, 185

I n d ex

boom, 14, 168 development, 126, 165, 166, 172, 177, 178n16 religion, religious, 37, 127, 255, 310 revitalization, 2, 6, 7 ‘right to the city’, 47, 256, 262, 294 Rio de Janeiro, 1, 2, 9, 12, 13, 37, 46, 75n21, 84, 123–45, 217, 257, 294, 314 S Salazar, Alonso, Mayor of Medellín (2008–11), 64, 69, 71, 74n12, 74n15, 243 Santiago de Chile, 11, 30, 32, 39n4, 175 São Paulo, 1, 2, 8, 33, 38, 254 security, 7–9, 31, 32–34, 57–59, 63, 66, 92, 101n15, 143, 145n4, 165, 170–73, 175–77, 178n16, 182, 191, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 232–34, 248–49, 277, 279, 301, 323 private, 7, 31, 35, 254 public, 124, 142 See also insecurity segregation, xii, 8, 30–31, 118, 149 self-, 165, 173 spatial, 31, 62, 156, 160 residential, 25, 27, 30 self-help housing, 13, 81–84, 100n2, 104, 108, 123, 150 adaptations, xi areas, 289 building, 101n18, 250 consolidation, 105 endeavours, 111 settlements, 106, 109, 118, 158, 282 solutions, xii See also auto-construcción and DIY slum, 3–4, 44, 46–48, 53, 61, 81, 83, 84, 100, 123, 149, 153, 157–59, 190, 250 of hope/of despair contrast, 4, 81, 100 See also favela social cohesion, 1, 13, 23, 35–38 social movement, 30, 47, 57, 59, 130, 133, 150, 160 social urbanism, 43, 46, 48, 66–70, 71, 72, 74n12 See also Medellín

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329

solidarity, 2, 11, 26, 28, 38, 117, 127, 145n5, 311, 314 speculation, 31, 87, 139, 178n16 sports, 61, 65, 142, 172, 189, 190 squatter, 104, 110, 229, 233, 255, 314 squatter settlement, 3, 37, 81, 82, 83, 83 Table 3.1, 84, 85, 115, 123, 224, 295 street vendor, peddler, 6, 10, 32, 129, 145n4, 186 T tenure, 87, 98, 92, 111, 123 territory, territorially, xi, 6, 26, 53, 60, 61–62, 64, 100, 123, 128, 131, 144n1, 150, 151, 159, 241, 247, 248n1, 249, 252, 253, 256, 257, 277, 298, 301 tourism, 137, 139, 140, 143, 170 transport, transportation, 29–31, 33–34, 45, 130, 137, 158, 160, 172, 189, 199, 204, 245, 258, 260, 261, 296 public, 55, 62, 64 trust, 28, 35, 36, 37, 75n22, 171, 266n1, 277 distrust, 45, 71, 74n11, 178n16 mistrust, 59, 97 tugurio, 44, 57 See also barrio, barriada, favela, neighbourhood Turner, John FC, 81–84, 88–91, 98–100, 160, 294, 296 U UNESCO, 5, 54 university, 51, 61, 63, 93, 188, 204n6, 210, 266, 266n1, 303 urban development, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 61, 63, 64, 74n17, 105, 151, 154, 164, 175, 305, 306 urban fabric, 46, 62, 69, 169, 243, 251 V vecindad, 283 meaning of, 190, 282 Venezuela, 6, 69, 228, 301 violence, xii, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 23, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 49, 57–63, 67, 71, 72, 84, 124, 137, 229, 234, 241–51, 258, 259, 261–71, 302

3 30

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Index

gang violence, 15, 34, 38, 48, 297–99, 312, 315 W World Bank, 5, 75n21, 257

Y youth, 31, 60, 61, 145n5, 313, 316 gang, 26, 34, 35, 59, 313 group, 26, 60, 86, 297 organization, 15, 297, 299 (un)employment, 34, 39, 61