The process of popular habitat production in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA): in search of relations, agreements and disagreements.

DI VIRGILIO, MARÍA MERCEDES; ARQUEROS MEJICA, SOLEDAD; GUEVARA, TOMÁS

Amsterdam

Conferencia; Annual RC21 Conference 2011; 2011

Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research

In general terms, it is accepted that low income social sectors unable to access quality habitat conditions through the market develop their own strategies of urban land and housing production, giving rise to popular neighborhoods in the cities. These diverse processes of habitat self-construction and self-production -mainly based on the gradual investment in the dwelling- articulate housing trajectories and strategies that, considered on a global scale, constitute the fabric of social relations and processes of the urbanization of the popular neighborhood. From this perspective, this paper analyzes the transformations produced in the popular neighborhoods of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, pinpointing their linkage with family histories and with the housing strategies unfolded to finance and concrete dwelling projects, with the aim of explaining the aforementioned processes. In this context, the cases of families living in two popular neighborhoods of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires will be studied in depth: Villa 19, in the south-east corner of the City of Buenos Aires, and Villa Tranquila, in the first ?corona" of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, in the Avellaneda district. The methodology used combines the implementation and analysis of surveys in both neighborhoods with in-depth study cases, using a qualitative methodology that reconstructs family chronologies as regards the transformations that their houses and the plot of land where they are constructed have undergone. To this end, the development of low income neighborhoods in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires is characterized. Subsequently, the housing trajectories and strategies surveyed in our field work are detailed and in a third section, the different forms of development of family housing units are described. Finally, the link existing between housing trajectories and strategies with State implemented policies is analyzed.