Latin America

BEATRIZ CUENYA; OCAR YUJNOVSKY; RUBÉN GAZZOLI

Three years after Habitat

International Institute for Environment and development

Lugar: Londres; Año: 1979; p. 41 - 63

A.t Habitat, the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements held at Vancouver in June 1976, the representatives of 132 nations unanimously approved sixty-four recommendations for national action. These included very specific recommendations such as each nation needing to establish a comprehensive national settlement policy, increased public control of land use. increased support for the construction industry with special emphasis on developing indigenous resources and skills, increased support for the informal sector in its efforts to provide shelter and services, promotion of public transport, priority to providing safe drinking water and hygienic waste disposal for the whole population and new institutions to implement settlement policy at national, regional and local level with provision for public participation at each of these levels. But Habitat´s impact should not be measured by the number of recommendations it approved or by the number of nations who sent representatives. Nor can it be measured by the vast amount of documentation, articles, books, films and other material specially prepared for the Conference. Its impact depends on what has happened since and how the enthusiasm for new approaches to settlement planning and development provoked by the Conference have pushed national governments into implementing some of the recommendations they approved. This book of settlement policies in selected developing countries attempts a preliminary analysis of what has happened in 17 countries since preparations for the Conference began in mid 1974. It is based on regional and national assessments prepared in 1978 by institutions in Argentina, India, Nigeria and the Sudan.