The Normalization of Bogota Social Housing Residents: Class Tensions in Third World Urban Peripheries

Abstract

AbstractStrangers with different economic needs come to live together in social housing projects, posing an organizational challenge. In most current Latin American cities, this tends to be in standardized complexes with small apartments in segregated peripheries. Many residents change from living in informal neighborhoods to a different type of urban citizenship based on partially subsidized home ownership, which they experience as social mobility. Others already live in the formal city and buy their apartments without a subsidy. How neighbors relate to each other, handle conflicts, and organize becomes a practical problem that worries governments, residents, and developers. This article analyzes tensions in social housing complexes in Bogotá, in relation to national regulations, architectural design, and residents’ hopes and aspirations. Based on survey and ethnographic data, it claims that the rigid material and normative environment of social housing negatively affects neighborly relations, resulting in lack of trust, conflicts, and working against a sense of community. It shows that educational community programs serve as vehicles for “normalization” and atomization according to middle‐class ideals of citizenship. Residents embrace the restrictions that suit their aspirations for social mobility and inclusion, yet negotiate others in the face of economic need.