Grassroots and Top-Down Metamorphoses: The Conflict Between Shantytowns? Thrive and State Intervention Seen through the Pilot Plan for Villa 7 (Buenos Aires, 1971-75)

ADRIANA LAURA MASSIDDA

Cambridge

Simposio; Metamorphoses of the Contemporary City; 2014

Centre for Urban Conflict Research, University of Cambridge / Sapienza - Università di Roma

In 1971, after more than a decade of State policies aimed at shantytowns eviction, the Buenos Aires City Council approved a Pilot Plan for the re-accommodation of a small shantytown, Villa 7, through a participatory approach. Emerging from a context of intense popular mobilisations and a transition to democracy, the initiative sought to empower the shantytown´s residents by designing the new housing in continuous consultation with them, maintaining the shantytown´s location, and by formally employing some of them for the stage of construction. This approach responded to key demands of shantytowns organisations at that time, with whom the architects had previously collaborated. The Pilot Plan contrasted with contemporary initiatives where the residents were forcefully re-accommodated far away, or the aided self-housing programme ATEPAM, celebrated but also criticised for the over-working of the neighbours. At the same time, the initiative echoed the debate on the role of users that was emerging over those years and which remains open until today.                This paper will examine the context in which the Plan Piloto for Villa 7 was conceived as a way of re-assessing the roles of the State, the user and housing-related professionals, often seen as antagonistic. The paper will propose that people´s fair participation and State intervention are not necessarily incompatible but may be articulated, in specific social and political contexts, through interdisciplinary proposals where the role of professionals is key.