State-community collaborative strategies to enable the right to the city in Argentina

Abstract

Since the 1990s, and especially in the wake of the 2002 social and economic crisis, there has been significant growth in the number of Argentinian grass-roots movements, NGOs, and cooperatives that focus on providing affordable housing for the urban poor. In response, the current federal government has advanced uniquely progressive housing policies that aim to address the housing deficit in concert with social and neighborhood organizations. This paper examines the strategies of the National Land Commission for Social Housing and investigates various participatory processes for meeting housing needs employed in the intermediate city of Santa Fe. The National Land Commission's notion of active participation will be discussed both in terms of how it affirms ‘right to the city’ principles and as a more progressive form of ‘assisted self-help’ housing, and how it better embodies the ideals of self-help than previous efforts to address the housing deficit. This paper highlights a recent collaborative effort between the state and community groups to introduce nationally-owned vacant land for cooperative/community-based housing production in the city of Santa Fe. We explore this initiative in terms of the institutional, financial, and technical support it provides for communities and the direct provision of urban land as a potential way forward for engaging with communities to address housing shortages.