Rural to Urban Squatter Settlements: The Micro Model of Generational Self-Help Housing in Lima-Peru

Abstract

The urban model of development in Lima capital city has experienced a process of rapid growing from the 1950's due to an accelerated process of population growth influenced by migrants coming from the central highlands caused by political instability and extreme poverty. These homeless populations formed their squatter settlements by invading private and public lands with the purpose to settle their families in these rural precarious multi-familiar constructions made of straws and mats. They hold the only hope to live closer to a land with opportunities following a pattern of urban construction that starts on the settlement without any previous plans. These populations had built their own city development in the transition from rural to urban life styles. The purpose of this paper is to find an explanation from the ascendant urban model to this transition process of the informal urban settlements to a more extensively and collective organization. Through the analysis of the squatter settlements improvement reflected in the urbanization process, we aim to provide the understanding of how the self-help housing enhanced the progressive replacement of the rural space for an urban model of development. We want to examine as well the role of civil society and grassroots organizations in the settlement of these populations. We have found that generational family growth is on their community organization playing a primary role on the support of the infrastructural growing and improvement toward self-sustainability, bringing new dynamics for housing and urban development in poor countries.